| SHE fears him, and will always ask | |
| What fated her to choose him; | |
| She meets in his engaging mask | |
| All reasons to refuse him; | |
| But what she meets and what she fears | 5 |
| Are less than are the downward years, | |
| Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs | |
| Of age, were she to lose him. | |
| |
| Between a blurred sagacity | |
| That once had power to sound him, | 10 |
| And Love, that will not let him be | |
| The Judas that she found him, | |
| Her pride assuages her almost, | |
| As if it were alone the cost.— | |
| He sees that he will not be lost, | 15 |
| And waits and looks around him. | |
| |
| A sense of ocean and old trees | |
| Envelops and allures him; | |
| Tradition, touching all he sees, | |
| Beguiles and reassures him; | 20 |
| And all her doubts of what he says | |
| Are dimmed with what she knows of days— | |
| Till even prejudice delays | |
| And fades, and she secures him. | |
| |
| The falling leaf inaugurates | 25 |
| The reign of her confusion; | |
| The pounding wave reverberates | |
| The dirge of her illusion; | |
| And home, where passion lived and died, | |
| Becomes a place where she can hide, | 30 |
| While all the town and harbor side | |
| Vibrate with her seclusion. | |
| |
| We tell you, tapping on our brows, | |
| The story as it should be,— | |
| As if the story of a house | 35 |
| Were told, or ever could be; | |
| We’ll have no kindly veil between | |
| Her visions and those we have seen,— | |
| As if we guessed what hers have been, | |
| Or what they are or would be. | 40 |
| |
| Meanwhile we do no harm; for they | |
| That with a god have striven, | |
| Not hearing much of what we say, | |
| Take what the god has given; | |
| Though like waves breaking it may be, | 45 |
| Or like a changed familiar tree, | |
| Or like a stairway to the sea | |
| Where down the blind are driven. | |
