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LONELINESS
(Her Word)
ONE ought not to have to care | |
| So much as you and I | |
| Care when the birds come round the house | |
| To seem to say good-bye; | |
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| Or care so much when they come back | 5 |
| With whatever it is they sing; | |
| The truth being we are as much | |
| Too glad for the one thing | |
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| As we are too sad for the other here— | |
| With birds that fill their breasts | 10 |
| But with each other and themselves | |
| And their built or driven nests. | |
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HOUSE FEAR
Always—I tell you this they learned— | |
| Always at night when they returned | |
| To the lonely house from far away | 15 |
| To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray, | |
| They learned to rattle the lock and key | |
| To give whatever might chance to be | |
| Warning and time to be off in flight: | |
| And preferring the out- to the in-door night, | 20 |
| They learned to leave the house-door wide | |
| Until they had lit the lamp inside. | |
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THE SMILE
(Her Word)
I didn’t like the way he went away. | |
| That smile! It never came of being gay. | |
| Still he smiled—did you see him?—I was sure! | 25 |
| Perhaps because we gave him only bread | |
| And the wretch knew from that that we were poor. | |
| Perhaps because he let us give instead | |
| Of seizing from us as he might have seized. | |
| Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed, | 30 |
| Or being very young (and he was pleased | |
| To have a vision of us old and dead). | |
| I wonder how far down the road he’s got. | |
| He’s watching from the woods as like as not. | |
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THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM
She had no saying dark enough | 35 |
| For the dark pine that kept | |
| Forever trying the window-latch | |
| Of the room where they slept. | |
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| The tireless but ineffectual hands | |
| That with every futile pass | 40 |
| Made the great tree seem as a little bird | |
| Before the mystery of glass! | |
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| It never had been inside the room, | |
| And only one of the two | |
| Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream | 45 |
| Of what the tree might do. | |
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THE IMPULSE
It was too lonely for her there, | |
| And too wild, | |
| And since there were but two of them, | |
| And no child, | 50 |
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| And work was little in the house, | |
| She was free, | |
| And followed where he furrowed field, | |
| Or felled tree. | |
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| She rested on a log and tossed | 55 |
| The fresh chips, | |
| With a song only to herself | |
| On her lips. | |
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| And once she went to break a bough | |
| Of black alder. | 60 |
| She strayed so far she scarcely heard | |
| When he called her— | |
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| And didn’t answer—didn’t speak— | |
| Or return. | |
| She stood, and then she ran and hid | 65 |
| In the fern. | |
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| He never found her, though he looked | |
| Everywhere, | |
| And he asked at her mother’s house | |
| Was she there. | 70 |
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| Sudden and swift and light as that | |
| The ties gave, | |
| And he learned of finalities | |
| Besides the grave. | |
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