Part 22

I SHOULD not have shown in the flesh, I ought to have gone as a ghost; It was awkward, unseemly almost, Standing solidly there as when fresh, Pink, tiny, crisp-curled, My pinions yet furled From the winds of the world.

After waiting so many a year To wait longer, and go as a sprite From the tomb at the mid of some night Was the right, radiant way to appear; Not as one wanzing weak From life’s roar and reek, His rest still to seek:

Yea, beglimpsed through the quaint quarried glass Of green moonlight, by me greener made, When they’d cry, perhaps, “There sits his shade In his olden haunt—just as he was When in Walkingame he Conned the grand Rule-of-Three With the bent of a bee.”

But to show in the afternoon sun, With an aspect of hollow-eyed care, When none wished to see me come there, Was a garish thing, better undone. Yes; wrong was the way; But yet, let me say, I may right it—some day.

“I THOUGHT, MY HEART”

I THOUGHT, my Heart, that you had healed Of those sore smartings of the past, And that the summers had oversealed All mark of them at last. But closely scanning in the night I saw them standing crimson-bright Just as she made them: Nothing could fade them; Yea, I can swear That there they were— They still were there!

Then the Vision of her who cut them came, And looking over my shoulder said, “I am sure you deal me all the blame For those sharp smarts and red; But meet me, dearest, to-morrow night, In the churchyard at the moon’s half-height, And so strange a kiss Shall be mine, I wis, That you’ll cease to know If the wounds you show Be there or no!”

FRAGMENT

AT last I entered a long dark gallery, Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side Were the bodies of men from far and wide Who, motion past, were nevertheless not dead.

“The sense of waiting here strikes strong; Everyone’s waiting, waiting, it seems to me; What are you waiting for so long?— What is to happen?” I said.

“O we are waiting for one called God,” said they, “(Though by some the Will, or Force, or Laws; And, vaguely, by some, the Ultimate Cause;) Waiting for him to see us before we are clay. Yes; waiting, waiting, for God to know it” . . .

“To know what?” questioned I. “To know how things have been going on earth and below it: It is clear he must know some day.” I thereon asked them why.

“Since he made us humble pioneers Of himself in consciousness of Life’s tears, It needs no mighty prophecy To tell that what he could mindlessly show His creatures, he himself will know.

“By some still close-cowled mystery We have reached feeling faster than he, But he will overtake us anon, If the world goes on.”

MIDNIGHT ON THE GREAT WESTERN

In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy, And the roof-lamp’s oily flame Played down on his listless form and face, Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going, Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy Had a ticket stuck; and a string Around his neck bore the key of his box, That twinkled gleams of the lamp’s sad beams Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy Towards a world unknown, Who calmly, as if incurious quite On all at stake, can undertake This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy, Our rude realms far above, Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete This region of sin that you find you in, But are not of?

HONEYMOON TIME AT AN INN

AT the shiver of morning, a little before the false dawn, The moon was at the window-square, Deedily brooding in deformed decay— The curve hewn off her cheek as by an adze; At the shiver of morning a little before the false dawn So the moon looked in there.

Her speechless eyeing reached across the chamber, Where lay two souls opprest, One a white lady sighing, “Why am I sad!” To him who sighed back, “Sad, my Love, am I!” And speechlessly the old moon conned the chamber, And these two reft of rest.

While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there, Nought seeming imminent, Something fell sheer, and crashed, and from the floor Lay glittering at the pair with a shattered gaze, While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there, And the many-eyed thing outleant.

With a start they saw that it was an old-time pier-glass Which had stood on the mantel near, Its silvering blemished,—yes, as if worn away By the eyes of the countless dead who had smirked at it Ere these two ever knew that old-time pier-glass And its vague and vacant leer.

As he looked, his bride like a moth skimmed forth, and kneeling Quick, with quivering sighs, Gathered the pieces under the moon’s sly ray, Unwitting as an automaton what she did; Till he entreated, hasting to where she was kneeling, “Let it stay where it lies!”

“Long years of sorrow this means!” breathed the lady As they retired. “Alas!” And she lifted one pale hand across her eyes. “Don’t trouble, Love; it’s nothing,” the bridegroom said. “Long years of sorrow for us!” murmured the lady, “Or ever this evil pass!”

And the Spirits Ironic laughed behind the wainscot, And the Spirits of Pity sighed. “It’s good,” said the Spirits Ironic, “to tickle their minds With a portent of their wedlock’s after-grinds.” And the Spirits of Pity sighed behind the wainscot, “It’s a portent we cannot abide!

“More, what shall happen to prove the truth of the portent?” —“Oh; in brief, they will fade till old, And their loves grow numbed ere death, by the cark of care.” —“But nought see we that asks for portents there?— ’Tis the lot of all.”—“Well, no less true is a portent That it fits all mortal mould.”