| |
| SHE heard the children playing in the sun, | |
| And through her window saw the white-stemmed trees | |
| Sway like a film of silver in the breeze | |
| Under the purple hills; and one by one | |
| She noted chairs and cabinets, and spun | 5 |
| The pattern of her bed’s pale draperies: | |
| Yet all the while she knew that each of these | |
| Was a dull lie, in irony begun. | |
| For down in hell she lay, whose livid fires | |
| Love may not quench, whose pangs death may not quell. | 10 |
| The round immensity of earth and sky | |
| Shrank to a point that speared her. Loves, desires, | |
| Darkened to torturing ministers of hell, | |
| Whose mockery of joy deepened the lie. | |
| |
| Little eternities the black hours were, | 15 |
| Day waned, and night came like a faithless friend, | |
| Bringing no joy; till slowly over her | |
| A numbness grew, and life became a blur, | |
| A silence, an oblivion, a dark blend | |
| Of dim lost agonies, whose downward trend | 20 |
| Led into time’s eternal sepulchre. | |
| And yet, when, after aeons infinite | |
| Of dark eclipse she woke—lo, it was day! | |
| The pictures hung upon the walls, each one; | |
| Under the same rose-patterned coverlet | 25 |
| She lay; spring was still young, and still the play | |
| Of happy children sounded in the sun. | |
| |
