Part 7

O God, she did not know!--Yet future sorrow Seemed somehow paid for by this instant bliss, A brief to-day was worth a long to-morrow; O youth, O night,--this joy she dared not miss! Her whole soul yearned for this young lover’s kiss, Though it be paid for through eternity. O, had not God designed this thing to be?

Was not her mouth for this young mouth intended, Since all her living body told her so? Was it not preordained that so be ended A girlhood colder than December snow? A starlight kiss--she need no further go--: His warm hands touching hers: O was this sin? Just this?--She shut her eyes to fires within....

To those fierce central fires she closed her eyes, Yet dimly of their passion was aware, And felt their flames like drunkenness arise Whirling her soul, making life strangely fair.... She eyed herself with held breath, frightened stare.... Alas, was it the alchemy of sin That made her lovelier far than e’er she’d been?

Plausibly sweet the music came to her, Through many doors, most plausible and sweet, Setting some subtle pulse in her astir, Smoothing in song her heart’s erratic beat. Dizziness came, unstrung her knees, her feet, And she sank down a space upon her bed, Shutting her eyes, mad reelings in her head.

How would this end? And would her whole life change, Swayed by this mastering sun as sways the moon? Would all her way of life be new and strange, Her friends be lost, her kin desert her soon? Passion surged up in her, and in its swoon These doubts were swept aside, obscure and fleeting; Somewhere she heard a beating ... beating ... beating....

Was it her heart, the loud pulse in her ear, Or music, some recurring undertone?-- The drums perhaps.... She raised her head to hear, The beating ceased.... Only the tireless drone Of toiling engines, and the sea’s hushed moan Soft through the fast-shut port ... and that was all. Steps passed and re-passed down the muffled hall.

Steps passed and re-passed on the deck above Ringing like iron.... The curtains by her bed Quivered forever to the engine’s move, And from the lamp a quivering light was shed. These senseless things, when all her life was dead, Would still go on: steps pass, the curtains quiver, These things or others,--they would last forever.

Quickly she rose, and in the mirror’s shine Looked at herself a quiet moment’s space; It was as if the earth’s autumnal wine Had touched her soul,--her body had a grace That passing life has, lovely was her face With a strange loveliness, and in her eyes Was the deep glory of October skies.

She was alive! her blood flew warm and young; No more than this she knew, that she was fair; And happiness through her deep heart was sung; Passionate joy as light as flame in air; O youth! O love, oblivious of all care! O lithe swift-blooded youth, O rose of earth, O warm-eyed loveliness of fragrant mirth!--

Giddy, with whirling thoughts, she left her room; And down the corridor, with fainting feet, Lightly she went, caught onward to sweet doom, And only heard her heart’s loud tremulous beat; Through opening doors, most plausible, most sweet, The music rose to her; and he stood there, Smiling, in all that noise and whir and glare....

Over the shining silver, sparkling glass, The smooth white table-cloth, he leaned and smiled; The whole world vanished, they were lad and lass, In love, and face to face, hearts running wild. Deep in her eyes he looked: O what a child! Her soft breast rose and fell, her throat’s pure white Beat with a little pulse of joy and fright.

No need to talk.... For in their eyes they met, Treading an air so soft, so light, so fine, That they were speechless, words they could forget; They only smiled, and shyly sipped their wine, And smiled again, and felt their full hearts shine, Talked breathlessly a little, and longed to lean Nearer, more near,--till no mote lay between,--

Not light or darkness, world or heaven or star, Not wind, nor warm, nor cold ... but just they two Meeting at last, two spirits come from far, Face raised to face, white flowers made sweet with dew,-- Shining and passionate, and young and new,-- Their two warm bodies singing each to each, Mingling at last in love’s harmonious speech....

The lights, the noise, the tumult passed away; As in a dream without a sound they passed; She only knew that it was wildly gay, And shy, and bliss unbearable.... At last Under the high dark starward-gliding mast In grateful night they sat; he brought her coat And trembling wrapped the scarf around her throat;

Letting his fingers linger there a space, Longer than there was need, so sweet she smiled, So close they were to that soft wistful face.... The stars looked down upon them, clear and mild.... Woman and maiden, girl, and little child,-- She was all these.... A moment, he was shaken,-- Lest he do wrong, lest he might prove mistaken....

Only a moment ... passion rose again, Quiet he took her hand and held it long, And all her virgin heart grew big with pain, And all her new-born body ached with song. Blindly she prayed to God to make her strong,-- More blindly cried to earth to make her weak; And looked at him, near tears, and could not speak.

He was a loveliness she could not bear.... Like a fierce furnace seemed his beauty now.... A fire that caught her throat, her lips, her hair, Her parching eyes, her pained and beating brow. Only to give herself,--she cared not how.-- Into the flame, body and soul to fling; To have him hurt her,--ah, divinest thing!...

Four bells were struck: ’twas ten o’clock he said; And still the sea rushed past, under the night. The engines toiled and the great steamer sped; And they could see the bow-wash, dimly white, Fall into darkness; the mast-head light Quivered among the stars, and in its fire A span of fore-stay shone like golden wire....

Little by little they were left alone, The decks were emptied; only, from the bar, Came shouts and laughter, and a drunkard’s groan, The glasses clinking, and a strummed guitar, The door shut, and the sounds grew faint and far, And all the deck was dark; only the sea Lifted its great voice, like infinity.

O youth, O music, O sweet wizardy Of young love sung like fire through beating veins! O covering darkness and persuasive sea! O night of stars, of blisses and of pains! But most, O youth that but an hour remains,-- Be fierce, be sweet with us, before you go; For knowing you the best of life we know!

Beneath his kiss her mouth rose soft and warm, And dewy soft as rose-leaves were her eyes, Under his hands, shaken as with a storm He felt her soft breast fall and shudder and rise, Torn with impassioned breath, unuttered cries, Quivering, straining breast against his breast, She clung to him, her mouth on his mouth pressed....

And only knew that this was life at last, Forgot all else in agony of bliss; Into this fire of love all earth was cast; The stars, the sea, were mingled in this kiss. And through her heart the blood, with sing and hiss, Poured a red madness, surged a riotous pain,-- Unbearable music cried out in her brain....

“O love,” he said, “O let me come with you! I love you so! This night,--O let me come!” Ah, God have pity! she knew not what to do, But sat all quiet,--frozen, shrinking, dumb; And only heard the toiling engines hum, The rush of sea, the swish of dropping spray, Her clamorous heart; and all that she could say

Was a quick “yes,” and then a broken breath That quivered like a sob; and then she rose, Dizzy and weak and pale, like one near death, And now her heart was fire, and now it froze.... Faint in her room she stood; the door to close,-- She might still turn the key.... She cried a space,-- Long in the glass stared at her pallid face....

And heard a step tramp over the deck above, Ringing like iron.... The curtains by her bed Quivered forever to the engine’s move, And from the lamp a quivering light was shed.... These things would all go on when she was dead.... Trembling, with misty eyes, she loosed the pin Under her throat ... mad fires whirled up within....

Mad fires whirled up, ungulfing all her soul; Beyond the sun and stars, across all space, Power that earth nor heaven could now control, She heard her lover come, with quickening pace; Nowhere to hide! Alas, his shining face, Though she hid under seas would find her there, Though she hid under mountains lay her bare!

Across the stars, nearer, more near it came, And now earth shook with it, and now the sea, And her white body, tremulous with shame, From its sheer anguish knew that it was he,-- Yearned for this wonder that was soon to be; And all her heart made music for his feet, All of the world re-echoed to their beat....

Marriage of youth! And quick a darkness fell, And time and space went down, consumed in fire; Through that dark space, only one breath, to tell That here was youth, and love, and wild desire: One heart that to itself sang ever higher, Tremulous, passionate, despite all pain,-- “How wonderful!--how wonderful!”--again.

III

October earth, with scarlet maple-leaf, With oak-leaves brown, with flaming leaves and pale; Mysterious autumn, symbol of all grief, Symbol of lives that die and hopes that fail: Now on the threshing-floor has fallen the flail, The hands are elsewhere that have stored the grain; Now comes the season of snows and bitter rain.

Weeks passed.... And then one day there came a note To New York for this youth ... he tore and read. It was that girl he played with on the boat.... Scarcely three shaky lines ... in which she said, That she was sick with typhoid, nearly dead,-- Wanted to say she loved him; then she cried, O God, if he would come before she died!--

Loved him!... a blackness fell; and in his eyes, So long unused, and even now ashamed, He felt the warm tears quickening to rise.... Loved him!--he had not known.... Could he be blamed?-- Then a great light of sorrow in him flamed,-- And bitterness, his sight swam quickly dim,-- Thinking how little it had meant to him!

Scarce knowing why, he packed his things and went.... He was surprised, on seeing her, to find how lovely she had been, though pale and spent.... He sat beside her, striving to be kind, Stroking her forehead.... Yet, she had divined, And known too bitterly, before she died, This man had never loved her, but had lied....

And he knew this: he knew that she had known; In her dark eyes he saw the mastered yearning, All the unspoken love that died in moan, Shrunk on itself, through all her body burning.... And many days the memory came returning Of her last kiss,--quivering, wet with tears,-- Her clinging hands, her brimmed eyes dark with fears....

Until at times a sudden terror came Lest, through great pity, he should love one dead,-- So burning sweet recurred in him this shame, So haunted him those eyes, that fallen head; The lips that pleaded so, the words she said,-- Pathetic words!--these haunted him a space; Then, in the dark of time he lost her face....

O Autumn! bringing to old adventures death, Sadness at all things past, things passing still,-- You touched this love with strange and dreadful breath; Easy as leaf is human love to chill,-- Easy as leaf is human to kill; Yet beautiful is that death with sudden flame, Ere it goes down to darkness, whence it came!...

_The Poetry Journal_ _Conrad Aiken_

“IF YOU SHOULD CEASE TO LOVE ME”

If you should cease to love me, tell me so! I could not bear to feel your ardent hand That waked the chords of life to understand, Hold mine less closely; no, belovèd, no; If you should cease to love me, tell me so!

If you should cease to love me, do not dare To meet me with a masque of tenderness; I could not stoop to suffer one caress That any other had the right to share,-- If you should cease to love me, do not dare!

If you should cease to love me, do not fear-- I would not have you think I made one claim. If your great love should pass, there is no blame; For love grown cold, I would not shed a tear;-- If you should cease to love me, do not fear!

If you should cease to love me, let us part, As friends who part for all eternity; Let us make grave the reverent obsequy For what was once our very soul and heart-- If you should cease to love me, let us part!

But while you love me, keep our hearts’ deep faith As some High Priest would guard the holy place; Let me not see the shame upon your face Of one unworthy of Love’s vital breath, So while you love me, keep our hearts’ high faith!

Thus, if you cease to love me, save my soul By having kept our love so pure and high That if the time must come when it shall die, I may retain my treasure fair and whole,-- If you should cease to love me,--save my soul!

_Scribner’s_ _Corinne Roosevelt Robinson_

VAIN EXCUSE

Be patient, Life, when Love is at the gate, And when he enters let him be at home. Think of the roads that he has had to roam, Think of the years that he has had to wait.

But if I let Love in I shall be late. Another has come first, there is no room; And I am busy at the thoughtful loom; Let Love be patient, the importunate.

O Life, be idle, and let Love come in, And give thy dreamy hair that Love may spin.

But Love himself is idle with his song. Let Love come last, and then may Love last long.

Be patient, Life, for Love is not the last; Be patient now with Death, for Love has passed.

_The Trend_ _Walter Conrad Arensberg_

SONNET XXX

You mean, my friend, you do not greatly care For these harsh portraits I have lately done? You like my old style better,--like the rare Enamelled softness of that princess-one? True, this old woman, with the sunken throat Painted like cordage, is not sweet to view. Perhaps the blear whites of her eyes connote No element of loveliness to you. Ah yes, we all must love the sapphire lake, The rainbow, and the rose,--but these alone? Or is there some slight wonder where pines shake On bare-ribbed mountain-peaks of shattered stone? So these disturb? I fear this is the end Of days when I shall please your taste, my friend.

_The Forum_ _Arthur Davison Ficke_

LOST TREASURE

You know deep in your heart, it could not last-- And, when a wind, newborn on some hillside-- (Some fair tall hill the other side of Crete) Came laden with the dear and odorous past-- (Laden with scents of gardens that have died, Buried in dust, not any longer sweet.)

Then, realized, all the unlovely years Lay on your heart, like those old gardens’ dust; You had forgotten how your life was fair, For all the memories were dulled with tears Since shed, and unsuspected moth and rust Ate deep, and naught remembered was but care.

So is your treasure lost, vanished away-- Nothing but wind and half-shut eyes and grass-- Nothing of now but strivings after then. And naught heard in the clear air of to-day But dusty wings that crumble as they pass-- You have not strength to make them live again.

_The Masses_ _Lydia Gibson_

OLD FAIRINGDOWN

Soft as a treader on mosses I go through the village that sleeps; The village too early abed, For the night still shuffles, a gypsy, In the woods of the east, And the west remembers the sun.

Not all are asleep; there are faces That lean from the walls of the gardens. Look sharply, or you will not see them, Or think them another stone in the wall. I spoke to a stone, and it answered Like an agèd rock that crumbles; Each falling piece was a word. “Five have I buried,” it said, “And seven are over the sea.”

Here is a hut that I pass, So lowly it has no brow, And dwarfs sit within at a table. A boy waits apart by the hearth; On his face is the patience of firelight, But his eyes seek the door and a far-world It is not the call to the table he waits, But the call of the sea-rimmed forests, And cities that stir in a dream. I haste by the low-browed door, Lest my arms go in and betray me, A mother jealously passing. He will go, the pale dwarf, and walk tall among giants; The child with his eyes on the far land, And fame like a young curled leaf in his heart.

The stream that darts from the hanging hill Like a silver wing that must sing as it flies, Is folded and still on the breast Of the village that sleeps. Each mute old house is more old than the other, And each wears its vines like ragged hair Round the half-blind windows. If a child should laugh, if a girl should sing, Would the houses rub the vines from their eyes, And listen and live? A voice comes now from a cottage, A voice that is young and must sing, A honeyed stab on the air, And the houses do not wake.

I look through the leaf-blowsed window, And start as a gazer who, passing a death-vault, Sees Life sitting hopeful within. She is young, but a woman, round-breasted, Waiting the peril of Eve; And she makes the shadows about her sweet As the glooms that play in a pine-wood. She sits at a harpsichord (old as the walls are), And longing flows in the trickling, fairy notes Like a hidden brook in a forest Seeking and seeking the sun.

I have watched a young tree on the edge of a wood When the mist is weaving and drifting; Slowly the boughs disappear, and the leaves reach out Like the drowning hands of children, Till a grey blur quivers cold Where the green grace drank of the sun. So now, as I gaze, the morrows Creep weaving and winding their mist Round the beauty of her who sings. They hide the soft rings of her hair, Dear as a child’s curling fingers; They shut out the trembling sun of eyes That are deep as a bending mother’s; And her bridal body is scarfed with their chill.

For old, and old, is the story; Over and over I hear it, Over and over I listen to murmurs That are always the same in these towns that sleep; Where, grey and unwed, a woman passes, Her cramped, drab gown the bounds of a world She holds with grief and silence; And a gossip whose tongue alone is unwithered Mumbles the tale by her affable gate; How the lad must go, and the girl must stay, Singing alone to the years and a dream; Then a letter, a rumor, a word, From the land that reaches for lovers And gives them not back; And the maiden looks up with a face that is old; Her smile, as her body, is evermore barren; Her cheek like the bark of the beech-tree Where climbs the grey winter.

Now have I seen her young, The lone girl singing, With the full, round breast and the berry lip, And heart that runs to a dawn-rise On new-world mountains. The weeping ash in the dooryard Gathers the song in its boughs, And the gown of dawn she will never wear.

I can listen no more; good-by, little town, old Fairingdown. I climb the long, dark hillside, But the ache I have found here I cannot outclimb. O Heart, if we had not heard, if we did not know There is that in the village that never will sleep!

Hampshire, England.

_Scribner’s_ _Olive Tilford Dargan_

IN THE ROMAN FORUM

Nothing but beauty, now. No longer at the point of goading fear The sullen, tributary world comes near Before all-subjugating Rome to bow. No more the pavement of the Forum rings To breathless Victory’s exultant tread Before the heavy march of captive kings. Here stood the royal dead In sculptured immortality; their gaze Remote above the turmoil of the street Hoarse with its living struggle at their feet. Here spoke the law--that voice of bronze was heard By all the world, and stirred The latent mind of nations in the bud. Bright with the laurels, bitter with the blood Of heroes upon heroes was this place Where the strong heart of an imperial race Beat with the essence of a man’s life. Princes and people evermore at strife-- Incense and worship--clash of armored rage-- Ambition soaring up the sky like flame-- Interminable war that mortals wage From century to century the same. Still Fortune holds the crown for those who dare; Mankind in many a distant otherwhere Leaps panting toward the promise of her face-- But here, no more of coveting nor care. No longer here the weltering human tide Sluices the market-place and scatters wide The weak as foam, to perish where they list. Now by the Sovereign Silence purified, Spring showers all with fragrant amethyst. Were once these pulses violent and swift As those that shake the cities of to-day? How indolently sweet the petals drift From yonder nodding spray! Warming their broidered raiment in the sun, The little-bright-eyed lizards bask and run O’er fallen temples gracious in decay. Man’s arrogance with calculated art Boasted in marble--now the quiet heart Of the Great Mother dreams eternal things In brief, bright roses and ethereal green, Or more exuberant, sings In poppies poured profusely to the air From secret hoards of scarlet. Nothing seen But swoons with beauty--beauty everywhere-- Nothing but beauty ... now. Here is the immortality of Rome. Not where the city rises, dome on dome, Seek we the living soul of ancient might, But in this temple of green silence--here Flame purer than the vestal is alight. The world again draws near In reverence, but now it comes to pay The tribute of a nobler coin than fear. In wondering worship, not in fierce dismay, Men bow the knee to what of Rome remains. Time’s long lustration has effaced her stains, All that is perishable now is past And earth her portion tenderly transmutes To evanescent beauty of her own-- Jubilant flowers and nectar-breathing fruits-- Living in deathless glory at the last Divinity alone.

_The Bellman_ _Amelia Josephine Burr_

ASH WEDNESDAY

(_After hearing a lecture on the origins of religion_)