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HER ardent spirit ran beyond her years | |
As light before a flame. | |
At fifteen, the tennis medal; at sixteen, the golf cup; | |
Thenthe coveted!bluest of blue ribbons | |
For faultless horsemanship. | 5 |
No man in all that country, | |
Whatever his sport, | |
But had to own the girl a better man. | |
As that she merely laughedsaying that triumph | |
Is all a matter of thrill: who tingles most, | 10 |
He wins inevitably. | |
Half bewilderment, half jest, | |
They called her Sprite, those ordinary folk | |
Who thought such urge, such instinct of life to joy | |
Was somehow mythical. | 15 |
And having named her, they no longer thought of her, | |
To their relief, as young or old, one sex or other | |
Just herself, apart, a goddess of out-of-doors. | |
School boys never dreamed of her tenderly | |
As one to send a perfumed valentine; | 20 |
But when she strode among the horses in the field | |
They pawed the ground. | |
No leash could hold a dog when she passed by. | |
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Then, despite her ardent race with time | |
Ardent as though each moment were a dare | 25 |
To some adventure of freed muscle and thrilled nerve | |
A fleeter runner overtook her flight | |
And bound her tightly in a golden net | |
Hands, feet and bosom; lips and hair and eyes | |
Beauty, beauty of women. | 30 |
Or was it she, unconscious what she raced, | |
Ran suddenly, breathless, glad and yet dismayed, | |
Into the arms of her own womanhood? | |
Which, no one knew, herself the least of all. | |
But no more did she fly beyond herself, | 35 |
As eager to leave the very flesh behind, | |
But stayed with it in deep and rapturous content; | |
Her ardor turned | |
Henceforth within upon a secret goal. | |
Spirit and beauty seemed to flow together, | 40 |
Each rapt in each | |
Like a hushed lily in a hidden pool. | |
Only at dances did the sprite peep out, | |
Ardent and yet controlled, | |
Alive to every turn and slope of the rhythm | 45 |
As if the music spread a path for her | |
To what she truly sought. | |
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Twas at a dance she found itfound the man | |
And no one had to question what she found: | |
Her eyes, her very finger-tips, proclaimed | 50 |
The marvel it was to be a part of her, | |
A part of love. | |
The manhe had no medals and ribbons of triumph; | |
If she had fled on horse or even on foot | |
He never could have caught her. | 55 |
It must have been his minds humility | |
That made her stay, | |
So thoughtless of itself, so thoughtful of | |
Forgotten wisdoms, old greatness, world riddles; | |
A patient, slow, but never yielding search | 60 |
(Passionate too, with wings flight of its own) | |
For whatcompared with other minds she knew | |
Might well have seemed the blessed western isles. | |
They lived beyond the village on a hill | |
Beneath a row of pines; a house without pretense | 65 |
Yet fully conscious of uncommon worth | |
A house all books inside. | |
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Their only neighbor was a garrulous man, | |
Who smoked a never finished pipe | |
Upon a never finished woodpile | 70 |
Strategically placed beside the road | |
So none could pass without his toll of gossip. | |
He started it. | |
One day, pointing his thumb across the pines, he said: | |
Theres something wrong up yonder; | 75 |
Their honeymoon has set behind a storm. | |
I heard em fight last night
| |
Well, whatd he expect? Theyre all alikewomen. | |
Of course it got about, | |
And while no one quite believed, | 80 |
Still, to make sure, some friendly women called. | |
They said that he was studying, quite as usual, | |
Not changed at all, just quiet and indrawn | |
The last man in the world to make a quarrel; | |
And she, well, of course she wasnt so easy to read, | 85 |
Always strange and different from a child; | |
But even in her the sharpest eye saw nothing | |
That seemed the loose end of the littlest quarrel. | |
No couple could have acted more at ease; | |
And anyhow, a woman like that, they said, | 90 |
Would never have stayed so quiet in the pines | |
With unhappiness, but tossed it from her broadcast | |
Like brands from a bonfire. | |
She said the house was dampand that was all. | |
At last even the old garrulous woodpile | 95 |
Knocked out the ashes of it from his pipe. | |
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But then, a few months later, a frightened servant girl | |
Ran at early morning from the pines, | |
Crying the judge in town. | |
She said her mistress suddenly, without cause, | 100 |
Standing by her in the kitchen, turned on her | |
Blackly with words no decent girl deserved, | |
Then struck her full in the face, spat on her, pulled her hair. | |
She wanted compensation, the servant did, | |
And a clean character before the world, | 105 |
Yes, and punishment for the beast who hurt her | |
That is, if the woman wasnt mad. | |
Madoh ho! the shock of it | |
Rolled seething over the place like a tidal wave, | |
And in the wake of the wave, like weed and wreckage, | 110 |
Many a hint and sense of something wrong at the pines | |
Sprawled in the daylight. | |
A stable boy remembered | |
How not a week before shed called for a horse, | |
The spiritedest saddle they had, | 115 |
And when she brought him back twas late at night, | |
The horse and woman both done up, | |
Slashed, splashed and dripping; | |
But all she said was, Send the bill; | |
The beasts no goodIll never ride again. | 120 |
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So this and other stories quite as strange | |
Stretched everybodys nerves for the trial to come | |
And made them furious when it didnt come | |
He settling with the girl outside of court. | |
The judges wife knew all there was to know: | 125 |
Not jealousy at all, just nerves | |
Every woman, you know, at certain times
| |
Of course, agreed the village, so thats it? still | |
(Not to be cheated outright), still, | |
Even so, shed best take care of that temper; | 130 |
A husbands one thing, an unborn childs another | |
Shed always been a stormy, uncontrollable soul. | |
Some blamed the husband he had never reined her in, | |
Most pitied him a task impossible. | |
All waited the event on tiptoe | 135 |
It wasnt like other women, somehow, for her to have a child. | |
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The months passed, no child was born. | |
Then other women sneered openly: | |
She wanted one and couldntserved her right. | |
This lapse from the common law of wives | 140 |
Was all the fissure the sea required | |
To force the dike with. Little by little then, | |
The pressure of year on year, | |
The pines and the two lives they hid | |
Grew dubious, then disagreeable, then at last sinister. | 145 |
At this point the new generation took up | |
Its inheritance, the habit of myth, | |
And quite as a matter of course it found her hateful, | |
Ugly, a symbol of sudden fear by darkened paths | |
Cross Patch! | 150 |
And one by one the people who were young | |
Beside her youth, moved off or died or changed, | |
Forgetting her youth as they forgot their own; | |
Until if ever she herself | |
Had felt a sudden overwhelming pang | 155 |
To stop some old acquaintance on the road | |
And stammer out, You knowdont youthe girl I was | |
I was not always this, was I? she might have found | |
A dozen at most to know the Sprite her youth, | |
But none to clear the overtangled path | 160 |
That led from Sprite to Cross Patch; not one, not one, | |
But looking back would damn | |
The very urge of joy in Sprite, and all its ardent spirit | |
For having mothered Cross Patch; not one, not one, | |
To see the baffled womanhood she was, | 165 |
Orphan of hopes too bright, not mother of evil. | |
And thus besieged on all sides by the present | |
She fought against all sides, as if by fury | |
To force one way to yield. | |
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For both it was a nightmare, not a life, and neither | 170 |
Could well have told how it had ever begun; | |
But once begun it seemed inevitable, | |
A storm that settled darkly round their souls, | |
Unwilled as winter, | |
With moan of wind through sere and barren boughs | 175 |
And skies forever masked. | |
The first blow of the quarrel had been hers, | |
A blow unguessed by either, for she struck | |
Like nature, not to hurt but to survive. | |
But wrath accrued | 180 |
So soon thereafter that the blow seemed angry, | |
And she struck out again with eyes and tongue | |
Pursuing him, the angrier at his grief, | |
Until in sheer defense he hit | |
Not at herself, but at her blows, to ward them; | 185 |
Keeping the while | |
His thought above the dark upon a star or so | |
Fixed in the past. But she defended her wrath | |
As part of her dignity and right: they stormed | |
Up, up the hill and down, | 190 |
Increasing darkness to the end of life. | |
Of him friends said | |
He seemed like a lonely sentinel | |
Posted against the very edge of doom, | |
Whom no watch came relieving. | 195 |
Shell kill him yet, the fool! the woodpiles verdict | |
Before the pipe went out for the last time, | |
Leaving the pines unneighbored. | |
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But he was wrong, the urn outlasted the flame. | |
One night, hands at her throat, she came | 200 |
And knelt before him, timidly reaching out | |
And trying to speak, to speakstruggling as if words | |
Were something still to learn. | |
At last speech broke from her, so agonized | |
He hardly knew if it were supreme wrath or supreme supplication: | 205 |
You did not love me
| |
And as he bent to her he felt | |
Her girlhood cry, a murdered thing returned. | |
He hoped that it was wrath, as easier to endure, | |
Feeling it burn from mind to heart, from heart to soul, | 210 |
Gathering more awe, more terror, at each advance. | |
Like a priest with sacrifice it passed | |
The colonnades of his thought, entering without pause | |
An unknown altar of his being | |
Behind a curtain never moved before. | 215 |
You did not love me
| |
Both gazed upon the sacrifice held up | |
As though it were the bleeding heart of their own lives | |
Somehow no longer their own. | |
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And then the priest returned, slowly, pace by pace, | 220 |
Out of the hush of feeling into the hush of thought. | |
It was the priest and not himself, the man believed, | |
Who like an echo, not less agonized, | |
Whispered across the waste of many lives, | |
Whispering No
| 225 |
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Whose heart, the mans or womans, lowest stooped | |
To raise the other prostrate heart aloft | |
With supplication and consolement, urging it | |
To liveoh, live!dying itself the while, | |
God knew before the beginning of the world. | 230 |
We only know that stooping so, dust turned to dust, | |
All hearts meet at last. | |
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