| |
| THIS is the last of all, then, this is the last! | |
| I must fold my hands, and turn my face to the fire, | |
| And watch my dead days fusing into dross, | |
| Shape after shape, and scene after scene, from the past | |
| Sinking to one dead mass in the dying fire, | 5 |
| Leaving the grey ash cold and heavy with loss. | |
| |
| Strange he is to me, my son, whom I waited like a lover; | |
| Strange as a captive held in a foreign country, haunting | |
| The shore and gazing out on the level sea; | |
| White, and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover | 10 |
| Always upon the distance, as his soul were chaunting | |
| The dreary weird of departure away from me. | |
| |
| Like a young bird blown from out of the frozen seas, | |
| Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken wing | |
| Into our sooty garden, he drags and beats | 15 |
| From place to place perpetually, and seeks release | |
| From me, and the hound of my love that creeps up fawning | |
| For his mastership, while he in displeasure retreats. | |
| |
| I must look away from him, for my fading eyes | |
| Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him now, | 20 |
| Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my eyes, | |
| Till he chafes at my cringing persistence, and a sharp spark flies | |
| Into my soul from the sudden fall of his brow | |
| And he bites his lip in pain as he hears my sighs. | |
| |
| This is my last—it will not be any more— | 25 |
| All my life I have borne the burden of myself, | |
| All the long years of sitting in my husband’s house, | |
| And never have I said to myself, as he closed the door: | |
| “Now I am caught—you are hopelessly lost, O self; | |
| You are frightened with joy, my heart, like a frightened mouse.”— | 30 |
| |
| Three times have I offered my soul—three times rejected— | |
| It will not be any more—no more, my son, my son! | |
| Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since long ago | |
| The angel of childhood kissed me and went. I expected | |
| A man would take me, and now, my son, O my son, | 35 |
| I must sit awhile and wait and never know | |
| A bridegroom, till ’twixt me and the bright sun | |
| Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes me. | |
| For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil, | |
| And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father shakes me | 40 |
| With fear, and fills my eyes with tears of desire; | |
| But the voice of my life is dumb and of no avail, | |
| And the hands in my lap grow cold as the night draws nigher. | |
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