| “Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it? | |
| Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? | |
| If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, | |
| We might believe they made a noise…. What are you—driving at!” | |
| |
| “Well, be glad that you can hear them, and be glad they are so near us,— | 5 |
| For I have heard the stars of heaven, and they were nearer still. | |
| All within an hour it is that I have heard them calling, | |
| And though I pray for them to cease, I know they never will; | |
| For their music on my heart, though you may freeze it, will fall always, | |
| Like summer snow that never melts upon a mountain-top. | 10 |
| Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead—the children—singing? | |
| Do you hear the children singing?… God, will you make them stop!” | |
| |
| “And what now in His holy name have you to do with mountains? | |
| We’re back to town again, my dear, and we’ve a dance tonight. | |
| Frozen hearts and falling music? Snow and stars, and—what the devil! | 15 |
| Say it over to me slowly, and be sure you have it right.” | |
| |
| “God knows if I be right or wrong in saying what I tell you, | |
| Or if I know the meaning any more of what I say. | |
| All I know is, it will kill me if I try to keep it hidden— | |
| Well, I met him…. Yes, I met him, and I talked with him—today.” | 20 |
| |
| “You met him? Did you meet the ghost of someone you had poisoned, | |
| Long ago, before I knew you for the woman that you are? | |
| Take a chair; and don’t begin your stories always in the middle. | |
| Was he man, or was he demon? Anyhow, you’ve gone too far | |
| To go back, and I’m your servant. I’m the lord, but you’re the master. | 25 |
| Now go on with what you know, for I’m excited.” | |
| |
| “Do you mean— | |
| Do you mean to make me try to think that you know less than I do?” | |
| |
| “I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a scene. | |
| Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of heaven | 30 |
| Were to swing or to stay bolted from now on for evermore.” | |
| |
| “Do you conceive, with all your smooth contempt of every feeling, | |
| Of hiding what you know and what you must have known before? | |
| Is it worth a woman’s torture to stand here and have you smiling, | |
| With only your poor fetish of possession on your side? | 35 |
| No thing but one is wholly sure, and that’s not one to scare me; | |
| When I meet it I may say to God at last that I have tried. | |
| And yet, for all I know, or all I dare believe, my trials | |
| Henceforward will be more for you to bear than are your own; | |
| And you must give me keys of yours to rooms I have not entered. | 40 |
| Do you see me on your threshold all my life, and there alone? | |
| Will you tell me where you see me in your fancy—when it leads you | |
| Far enough beyond the moment for a glance at the abyss?” | |
| |
| “Will you tell me what intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense | |
| You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you—this? | 45 |
| Look around you and be sorry you’re not living in an attic, | |
| With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent. | |
| I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters; | |
| And I grant, if you insist, that I’ve a guess at what you meant.” | |
| |
| “Have I told you, then, for nothing, that I met him? Are you trying | 50 |
| To be merry while you try to make me hate you?” | |
| |
| “Think again, | |
| My dear, before you tell me, in a language unbecoming | |
| To a lady, what you plan to tell me next. If I complain, | |
| If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you mention— | 55 |
| Or imply, to be precise—you may believe, or you may not, | |
| That I’m a trifle more aware of what he wants than you are. | |
| But I shouldn’t throw that at you. Make believe that I forgot. | |
| Make believe that he’s a genius, if you like,—but in the meantime | |
| Don’t go back to rocking-horses. There, there, there, now.” | 60 |
| |
| “Make believe! | |
| When you see me standing helpless on a plank above a whirlpool, | |
| Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say it? Make believe? | |
| How much more am I to say or do for you before I tell you | |
| That I met him! What’s to follow now may be for you to choose. | 65 |
| Do you hear me? Won’t you listen? It’s an easy thing to listen….” | |
| |
| “And it’s easy to be crazy when there’s everything to lose.” | |
| “If at last you have a notion that I mean what I am saying, | |
| Do I seem to tell you nothing when I tell you I shall try? | |
| If you save me, and I lose him—I don’t know—it won’t much matter. | 70 |
| I dare say that I’ve lied enough, but now I do not lie.” | |
| |
| “Do you fancy me the one man who has waited and said nothing | |
| While a wife has dragged an old infatuation from a tomb? | |
| Give the thing a little air and it will vanish into ashes. | |
| There you are—piff! presto!” | 75 |
| |
| “When I came into this room, | |
| It seemed as if I saw the place, and you there at your table, | |
| As you are now at this moment, for the last time in my life; | |
| And I told myself before I came to find you, ‘I shall tell him, | |
| If I can, what I have learned of him since I became his wife.’ | 80 |
| And if you say, as I’ve no doubt you will before I finish, | |
| That you have tried unceasingly, with all your might and main, | |
| To teach me, knowing more than I of what it was I needed, | |
| Don’t think, with all you may have thought, that you have tried in vain; | |
| For you have taught me more than hides in all the shelves of knowledge | 85 |
| Of how little you found that’s in me and was in me all along. | |
| I believed, if I intruded nothing on you that I cared for, | |
| I’d be half as much as horses,—and it seems that I was wrong; | |
| I believed there was enough of earth in me, with all my nonsense | |
| Over things that made you sleepy, to keep something still awake; | 90 |
| But you taught me soon to read my book, and God knows I have read it— | |
| Ages longer than an angel would have read it for your sake. | |
| I have said that you must open other doors than I have entered, | |
| But I wondered while I said it if I might not be obscure. | |
| Is there anything in all your pedigrees and inventories | 95 |
| With a value more elusive than a dollar’s? Are you sure | |
| That if I starve another year for you I shall be stronger | |
| To endure another like it—and another—till I’m dead?” | |
| |
| “Has your tame cat sold a picture?—or more likely had a windfall? | |
| Or for God’s sake, what’s broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head? | 100 |
| A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing | |
| Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won’t…. | |
| What the devil are you saying! Make believe you never said it, | |
| And I’ll say I never heard it…. Oh, you…. If you….” | |
| |
| “If I don’t?” | 105 |
| “There are men who say there’s reason hidden somewhere in a woman, | |
| But I doubt if God himself remembers where the key was hung.” | |
| |
| “He may not; for they say that even God himself is growing. | |
| I wonder if He makes believe that He is growing young; | |
| I wonder if He makes believe that women who are giving | 110 |
| All they have in holy loathing to a stranger all their lives | |
| Are the wise ones who build houses in the Bible….” | |
| |
| “Stop—you devil!” | |
| “…Or that souls are any whiter when their bodies are called wives. | |
| If a dollar’s worth of gold will hoop the walls of hell together, | 115 |
| Why need heaven be such a ruin of a place that never was? | |
| And if at last I lied my starving soul away to nothing, | |
| Are you sure you might not miss it? Have you come to such a pass | |
| That you would have me longer in your arms if you discovered | |
| That I made you into someone else…. Oh!…Well, there are worse ways. | 120 |
| But why aim it at my feet—unless you fear you may be sorry…. | |
| There are many days ahead of you.” | |
| |
| “I do not see those days.” | |
| “I can see them. Granted even I am wrong, there are the children. | |
| And are they to praise their father for his insight if we die? | 125 |
| Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead—the children—singing? | |
| Do you hear them? Do you hear the children?” | |
| “Damn the children!” | |
| |
| “Why? | |
| What have they done?…Well, then,—do it…. Do it now, and have it over.” | 130 |
| “Oh, you devil!…Oh, you….” | |
| |
| “No, I’m not a devil, I’m a prophet— | |
| One who sees the end already of so much that one end more | |
| Would have now the small importance of one other small illusion, | |
| Which in turn would have a welcome where the rest have gone before. | 135 |
| But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little farther | |
| For the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere still in sight. | |
| Furthermore, you must remember those two hundred invitations | |
| For the dancing after dinner. We shall have to shine tonight. | |
| We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of merry spectres, | 140 |
| On the grave of all the lies that we shall never have to tell; | |
| We shall dance among the ruins of the tomb of our endurance, | |
| And I have not a doubt that we shall do it very well. | |
| There!—I’m glad you’ve put it back; for I don’t like it. Shut the drawer now. | |
| No—no—don’t cancel anything. I’ll dance until I drop. | 145 |
| I can’t walk yet, but I’m going to…. Go away somewhere, and leave me…. | |
| Oh, you children! Oh, you children!…God, will they never stop!” | |
