| |
The Wife
CHILD, why do you linger beside her portal? | |
| None shall hear you now if you knock or clamor. | |
| All is dark, hidden in heaviest leafage. | |
| None shall behold you. | |
| |
Truth
Gone, gone, the dear, the beautiful lady! | 5 |
| I, her comrade, tarry but to lament her. | |
| Ah, the day of her vanishing all things lovely | |
| Shared in her fleetness! | |
| Tell me her going. | |
| |
The Wife
You are a child. How tell you? | 10 |
| |
Truth
I am a child, yet old as the earliest sorrow. | |
| Talk to me as you would to an old, old woman. | |
| I own the ages. | |
| |
The Wife
Voices, they say, gossipped around her dwelling. | |
| She awoke, departing, they say, in silence. | 15 |
| I am glad she is gone. The old hurt fastens. | |
| Hate is upon me. | |
| |
| It was hard to live down the day, and wonder, | |
| Wonder why the tears were forever welling, | |
| Wonder if on his lips her kiss I tasted | 20 |
| Turning to claim him. | |
| |
Truth
Jealousy, mad, brooding blind and unfettered, | |
| Takes its terrible leap over lie and malice. | |
| Who shall question her now in the land of shadow? | |
| Who shall uphold her? | 25 |
| |
The Wife
It was hard to know that peace had forsaken | |
| All my house, to greet with a dull endeavor | |
| Babe or book, so to forget a moment | |
| I was forgotten. | |
| |
Truth
Who shall question her now in the land of shadow, | 30 |
| Question the mute pale lips, and the marble fingers, | |
| Eyelids fallen on eyes grown dim as the autumn? | |
| Ah, the beloved! | |
| |
The Wife
Go, go, bringer of ache and discord! | |
| |
Truth
Go I may not. Some, they think to inter me. | 35 |
| Out of the mold and clay my visible raiment | |
| Rises forever. | |
| |
The Wife
Hers the sin that lured the light from our threshold, | |
| Hers the sin that I lost his love and grew bitter. | |
| |
Truth
Lost his love? You never possessed it, woman. | 40 |
| |
The Wife
Sharp tongue, have pity!… | |
| |
| Yes, I knew. But I loved him, hoping for all. | |
| I said in my heart: “Time shall bring buds to blossom.” | |
| I almost saw the flower of the flame descending. | |
| Then—she came toying. | 45 |
| |
| He is mine, mine, by the laws of the ages! | |
| Mine, mine, mine—yes, body and spirit! | |
| I am glad she has gone her way to the shadow. | |
| Hate is upon me. | |
| |
| Oh, the bar over which my soul would see | 50 |
| All that eludes my soul, while he remembers! | |
| You, dispel if you can my avenging passion— | |
| Clouds are before me! | |
| |
