Classic Poem

At last she too
Desperately knew
That the words of her reading brought
Neither to him nor her meaning or thought
Or the inevitable painful speech they sought.
And throwing aside the volume she bent down
And, with a little frown
Lit by a smile, said to him tenderly—
“It is not what you thought that it would be?”

Pressing his shoulder closer to her side,
Striving to dull the loneliness of the hour,
He said—“Dear one, you know I cannot hide
From you that I have been a puppet in the power
Of an unearthly dream so long,—
Have been so long haunted, in toil or rest,
By memories of your sweetness, and clear song
Born of your lips, born of your maddening breast,—
That I am dizzied. Yet I understand
That there is nothing for you now to say.
See with what friendly calm I take your hand!
Let us be happy today!”

She turned her face aside—
It seemed, a moment, that she would have lied
Some intricate bewildering lie,—and then
She turned again
With frank pained eyes, unguarded and oppressed.
“I know that it is best
To tell you what I can,” she said,—“to tell
What little can be told of this mad miserable
Heart that you know so small a portion of,—
A heart that cannot rest, not even in love …”

She paused; her eyes grew fathomless; but he broke
The silence, and spoke—
“Dear, dear, I love the tortured soul of you,
With curious fires fretted through and through;
The intricate homeless passions I divine
And all the longings that have been as wine
Drawing your spirit another way than mine.
And I ask nothing of this history.
Let it be mystery
To my dull brain—turn only and look at me.”

And she, turning, with quiet voice and slow,
Said, as out of some depth of long-ago:

“Dear, have you hoped to find me
As in our sea-spell mood?
I cannot look behind me,
Stranger to certitude.
If happiness could but bind me,
Or beauty daze my blood! …
“Ah, will you understand? …
How can you know this strange hand in your hand,
Or think me other than more perverse, more vain, than shifting sand! …

“I was utterly mad when you knew me
That first wild summer day.
I loved the swift winds that blew me
So wholly their way.
That hour in its curious fashion
Held wonderfully more
Of beautiful summer-born passion
Than any before.
I think that I loved you … but after,
What was I to do?
I drowned in renewals of laughter
My longing for you—
Seeking new flashes of summer
And singing and light …
But now my song has died; I have grown dumber
Than a desert at night.
I needed you, I wanted you,—but broken
Seem now my eager wings …
I scarcely understand what I have spoken
These troubled things.”

He answered her—“I think that now
You are tired by your baffling nights and days
Moving on barren ways.
I see your brow
More shadowy than it was.
But this will pass—
Pass, and the sun returning glimmer through
Its clouds to you.
Till then, a quiet pilgrim at your gate
Let me but wait.”

“Is it so hard,” she whispered, “to understand
That no old summer can return again?
My heart can never dwell in a belovèd land;
It wanders far away, in rapture or in pain,
And has its only strength in never seeking rest
For days or years on any human breast.
It must go crying
Up and down all the ways of the world, denied
That simple dying
Into mere peace by which alone it could be satisfied.
It cries for happiness, and each new wonder
In spite of distant thunder
Shines in the sunlight for it; and it takes:—
Then the earth shakes
And the skies darken about the sun
And the hour is done.
And onward down its labryinths my soul must move alone.

“You were my happiness: but now … My dear,
How you must hate me! … I am as one dead! …
Our madness has gone from me; I am here,
But my old joy is fled.
I am tired, tired, tired; the fevered day
Treads close upon the heels of fevered night;
I have thrown the sunshine and the stars away,
And whirled from vain delight to vain delight.
My dear, I am sorry … It is the spite of Fate …
But I am useless to you; you come too late!”

And he said—“Come away!
Somewhere there waits a new and fairer day
To set you free.
Let us go down into dear Italy,—
Florence, Ravenna, the groves of Sicily,—
And be together in each lovely spot
Until you have quite forgot
Your weariness and fever; these dead things
Shall seem to you but old imaginings.
This room, where I had thought to find
The Eden of my dreams, shall slip from mind
Wholly; and we shall be glad children again,
Playing beneath a sun that knows no pain
Nor any memory of the dismal rain
Of these dark northern cities, where too long
Your heart has stifled in labyrinths of wrong
Until, poor bird! it has forgot its song.”

She listened; and there flickered on her face
A flush, a windy light; she raised her eyes
And searched his look, as though she hoped to trace
Beyond his words some gate of certainties,
Some spirit-portal flashing to her own
Its authenticity, to which her fears
Might flee secure. … Then the brief light was gone;
And forcing back to ebb a sudden tide of tears,
She only shook her head
Smilingly, gravely, and said—

“I am tired, tired, tired; no fresh rapture
Can wait for me. It has all been vain before! …
The butterflies I chase are broken by capture;
The vista pales as I pass through each door.
I have ruined all the fair sweet things around me;
I have poisoned every flower that once I had;
All who have loved me in the end have found me
Cruel and base and profitless and mad.
Sole of them all, I mourn to see your going,
Yet have no power to hold you at my side.
I dreamed of you, once, by some magic growing
Into my friend, my lasting friend. I lied
Then even to myself. What friendship ever
Could cling to me, who am so little to trust? …
You will go from me: I desire it! Never
Shall anything but hate spring from love's dust.”

She let him lift
His head from off her lap, and look her in the eyes.
He said—“I am not swift
To find a hatred ready to my hand:
Love stirs and cries
Even through this dusk I cannot understand,
Even through the silence of this desert land
Where we are wandering now. My very dear,
Oh hear
From one who loves you, your own true report,
Of other sort.—

“I think of you as of some jar
Moulded in days and lands afar
By an Egyptian potter, whom
Dawn, and the secrets of the tomb,
And desert-spaces, and the stars,
And doubt, and dreams, and life's fierce wars
So haunted that with curious hand
Around this urn he wove a band
Of intricate lovely tracery—
Illusive shapes that half-defy
One's vision:—spirits winged and proud—
Monsters as formless as a cloud—
High gateways of dull carven gold—
Sphinxes with cruel eyes, and cold
Pure water-nymphs. And many a face
Inscrutable and fair found place
Amid this pattern:—doubtful gleams
Of figures fainter than faint dreams—
The eyes of fear, the hands of lust,
The wings that flash above earth's dust.
And, finished, then he sealed inside
A perfume into which had died
Lotus and jasmine, honey-flower
And myrrh, from many a rose-hung bower
In Cashmere or in Samarkand.
And as its slender outlines stand
Before me now, my thoughts are lost
In marveling at the cruel cost
That made this beautiful tortured shape;
And from its perfumed heart escape
Such bitter-sweets of mystery
That I must love it till I die.”

She laughed, with half a sob behind her tone.
“Oh dreamer! Had I known
That thus you held me, I would never have let
You see my face again,—never have met
Your mad, mad picture of me
With stark reality …
How shall I find a spell
To make me over into the miracle
That you have dreamed?
But, oh my dear! before you came, it seemed
That my prophetic fancy almost knew
What your wild hope would be …
—I will do anything that can set you free
From the unreal desire that witches you! …
I thought, at first, to meet you as you wanted—
Meet you with open arms and calling lips—
Trusting the picture that your heart has haunted
Would wane and die, under the slow eclipse
Of beauty in the torn storm of mere passion
Which still along my body your touch could wake.—
Aye, even now I can change,—in other fashion
Be with you, be your lover,—for your sake
Slaking the thirst, ridding you of this vision
Of you and me as white gods on a hill,—
Change love to calm and longing to derision …
If you choose, take me! … I will do your will” …

And a swift momentary brightness then
Swept through her eyes,
As though an authenticity, long lost to her, again
Was born out of the dust of old uncertainties
As Springs are born from snows, as flowers are born from dust—
Sweet, frank, unguarded,—like the tender and sacred breast
Of such a mother-love as can transcend the lust
Of its belovèd, offering sanctuary and rest …
Or like a desperate weary spirit, driven
To yield its outer walls, in last vain sacrifice given. . . .

Yet as she poured on him this light, there grew
A wider wonder in her face—
A flickering dream, a passion, that she too
Could by some magic word of his, some triumphing look, retrace
The labyrinth, and come swiftly again
To regions where old doubts of forest-lairs are slain,
And only splendors of wild wings sweep the sun-flooded plain. . . .

And he was silent, and on her shoulder
Laid his head, where the drooping dress
Down from the slender arm and throat had crept.
His heart was colder
Than snow, save that her delicate tenderness
Stirred in his soul so gently he could have wept.

And he said only—“No. . . .
It shall not be so.” …

Her face paled, and a sudden weariness came
Into her eyes;
As though hope died then that his reckless flame
Of passion might with glorious surprise
Rekindle the grey embers: thus the last light went;
And she returned with tender voice to the old argument.

She said—“Oh are you sure?
Think not that if you suddenly went mad
It would be but a penance I must endure. . . .
I could be glad
And eager with your madness a little while—
My lips could smile
And my heart leap!—
And then, as out of sleep
We might hear echoes from a lovelier deep
That once we knew,—whose shores I can no longer keep. . . .”

“It is enough; the dream is done;
The hour is over …” he said; and walked to where
Beyond the window the slow rain had begun
To blur the black night air
With greyness; and he watched the rivulets run
Down the dim street
Beneath the cold lamps' light,
And heard the hurrying feet
Of some late passer in the solitary night.

And then at last he turned
Back to the circle where
The soft light burned
In rose and topaz on her cheek and hair.
And with the wind and rain
Monotonously astir
Outside the pane, quietly sat and endlessly talked with her.

They talked quietly, slowly,
As friends for a long time parted,
As lovers whose loving was over. . . .
The hour grew tranquil and holy.
Once more she seemed the clear-hearted
Girl he had dreamed of as lover.
They were shut in by the sleeping
City around them wide,
Curious vigil keeping
Side by side. . . .

And in that pause, when the great stillness lay
Desert-like round the low dim words they said,
His vision swept to regions far away,
And a wide glow across his sight was shed.—
He seemed to see the whirling hosts of heaven,
Star after star, through endless voids of dark,
Each down its own gigantic orbit driven
Splendid and white and stark;
He saw the earth, that small dim troubled star,
Whirled in terrific dance amid the rest,
Swept by the tides' and by the seasons' war,
With earthquake-fires still threatening in its breast;
And on its surface in tumultuous droves
The passionate eager straining race of men,
Rapt in their labors, panting in their loves,
Dreaming, and dying into dreams again. . . .
And he beheld themselves:—bright spirits come
From earth's mysterious chemistry,—for a space
No longer dead, no longer blind and dumb,
Looking with human face on human face.
Here hand in hand and lip to eager lip
They might forget the irony of their doom,—
Possessed of happiness, before should slip
This one short hour into its waiting tomb.
For this was their hour, never to come again,
Never to sweep her eager heart and his
With these warm floods of human joy and pain
Mid candle-light and shadowy mysteries.
Strange life now for a moment filled their veins;
Strange death withheld its stroke a little while;
Now the world's chaos, its grim wars and pains,
Lay far apart; now they could meet, and smile,
And clasp each other,—lonely spirits lost
Amid time, space, that doomed them to defeat;
By hostile waves on this small island tossed
For this hour wholly sacred, wholly sweet,—
To touch each other wonderfully, know their hands,
Their brains, their bodies mingled in delight,—
Drawn from the limits of the farthest lands
To this one spot, to this immortal night!

But they,—he seemed to see,—
Who soon must die, never again to be
In any future time, on any other star
However far,
This passionate tragic human two
That this hour knew,—
They thus in the obscurity of pained thought
Desperately sought
Question and answer, and with intricate speech
Perturbed themselves, and each to each
Opposed vague subtleties of mind
And wandered blind. . . .
Ah, for a moment an overmastering hate
Rose in him against her whom he had late
Loved passionately well,—
Hate for her, that she could not, would not break
The spell
That bound them, and awake
Their own authentic ecstasies to leap
From this entangled nightmare-sleep,
And claim
Here on the very edge of death their April hour of flame.

He saw the sweetness
Of life, youth, love slip by them
Momently.
The ultimate completeness—
That did those powers deny them
Into which all things die…