Part 2

How light the air is! I’m dizzy ... my feet fly up ... And this mad confusion of things topsy-turvey, With the friendly comprehensible roots all hidden, In this queer world where one can’t see how things happen, But only what they become.... Was it always so queer and inexplicable? Yes, but the fresh smell of things ... Are these apples in the wet grass, I wonder? Sweet, sweet, sweet, the smell of the living! And the far-off sky, and the stars, And the quiet spaces between, So that one can float and fly ... Why used we only to walk?

This is the gate—and the latch still unmended! Yet how often I told him.... Ah, the scent of my box-border! And a late clove-pink still unfrozen. It’s what they call a “mild November” ... I knew that, below there, by the way the roots kept pushing, But I’d forgotten how tender it was on the earth ... So quickly the dead forget! And the living? I think, after all, they remember, With everything about them so unchanged, And no leaden loam on their eyes. Yes, surely, I know _he_ remembers; Whenever he touches the broken latch, He thinks: “How often she asked me, And how careless I was not to mend it!” And smiles and sighs; then recalls How we planted the box-border together, Knee to knee in the wet, one November ... And the clove-pinks— Here is the window. They’ve put the green lamp on the table, Where his books lie, heaped as of old— Ah, thank God for the old disorder! How I used to hate it, and now— Now I could kiss the dust on the mirror, the pipe-ashes Over everything—all the old mess That no strange hand interferes with ... Bless him for that!

(iij)

Just at first This much contents me; why should I peer Past the stripped arms of the rose, the metallic Rattle of clematis dry as my hair, There where June flushes and purples the window like sunset? I know So well the room’s other corner: the hearth Where autumn logs smoulder, The hob, The kettle, the crane, the cushion he put for my feet, And my Chair— O Chair, always mine! Do I dare? What—the room so the same, his and mine, Not a book changed, the inkstand uncleaned, The old pipe-burn scarring the table, The old rent in the rug, where I tripped And he caught me—no woman’s hand here Has mended or marred; all’s the same! Why not dare, then? Oh, but to think, If I stole to my chair, if I sat there, Feet folded, arms stretched on the arms, So quiet, And waited for night and his coming ... Oh, think, when he came And sank in the other chair, facing me, Not a line of his face would alter, Nor his hands fall like sun on my hair, Nor the old dog jump on me, grinning Yet cringing, because she half-knew I’d found out the hole in my border, And why my tallest auratum was dead— But his face would be there, unseeing, His eyes look through me; And the old dog—not pausing At her bowl for a long choking drink, Or to bite the burrs from her toes, and stretch Sideward to the fire, dreaming over their tramp in the stubble— Would creep to his feet Bristling a little ... And I, I should be there, in the old place, All the old life bubbling up in me, And to him no more felt than the sap Struggling up unseen in the clematis— Ah, then, then, then I were dead!

But what _was_ I, then? Lips and hands only— Since soul cannot reach him without them? Oh, heavy grave of the flesh, Did I never once reach to him through you? I part the branches and look....

(iv)

O my Chair ... But who sits in you? One like me Aflame yet invisible! Only I, with eyes death-anointed, Can see her young hair, and the happy heart riding The dancing sea of her breast! Then she too is waiting— And young as I was? Was she always there? Were her lips between all our kisses? Did her hands know the folds of his hair? Did she hear what I said when I loved him? Was the room never empty? Not once? When I leaned in that chair, which one of us two did he see? Did he feel us both on his bosom? How strange! If I spoke to her now she would hear me, She alone ... Would tell me all, through her weeping, Or rise up and curse me, perhaps— As I might her, were she living!

But since she is dead, I will go— Go home, and leave them together ... I will go back to my dungeon, Go back, and never return; Lest another year, in my chair, I find one sitting, One whom he sees, and the old dog fears not, but springs on ... I will not suffer what _she_ must have suffered, but creep To my bed in the dark, And mind how the girl below called to me, Called up through the mould and the grave-slabs: “_Do not go! Do not go! Do not go!_”

ALTERNATIVE EPITAPHS

“—— _of heart-failure_.”

(i)

Death touched me where your head had lain. What other spot could he have found So tender to receive a wound, So versed in all the arts of pain?

(ii)

Love came, and gave me wind and sun, Love went, and left me light and air. Nor gave he anything more fair Than what I found when he was gone.

HERE END THE TWELVE POEMS BY EDITH WHARTON, PRINTED IN THE RICCARDI PRESS FOUNT AT THE CHISWICK PRESS FOR THE MEDICI SOCIETY, LONDON. MDCCCCXXVI

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.