(ALCAICS)
CONFUSED, he found her lavishing feminine | |
| Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable; | |
| And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors | |
| Be as they were, without end, her playthings? | |
| |
| And why were dead years hungrily telling her | 5 |
| Lies of the dead, who told them again to her? | |
| If now she knew, there might be kindness | |
| Clamoring yet where a faith lay stifled. | |
| |
| A little faith in him, and the ruinous | |
| Past would be for time to annihilate, | 10 |
| And wash out, like a tide that washes | |
| Out of the sand what a child has drawn there. | |
| |
| God, what a shining handful of happiness, | |
| Made out of days and out of eternities, | |
| Were now the pulsing end of patience— | 15 |
| Could he but have what a ghost had stolen! | |
| |
| What was a man before him, or ten of them, | |
| While he was here alive who could answer them, | |
| And in their teeth fling confirmations | |
| Harder than agates against an egg-shell? | 20 |
| |
| But now the man was dead, and would come again | |
| Never, though she might honor ineffably | |
| The flimsy wraith of him she conjured | |
| Out of a dream with his wand of absence. | |
| |
| And if the truth were now but a mummery, | 25 |
| Meriting pride’s implacable irony, | |
| So much the worse for pride. Moreover, | |
| Save her or fail, there was conscience always. | |
| |
| Meanwhile, a few misgivings of innocence, | |
| Imploring to be sheltered and credited, | 30 |
| Were not amiss when she revealed them. | |
| Whether she struggled or not, he saw them. | |
| |
| Also, he saw that while she was hearing him | |
| Her eyes had more and more of the past in them; | |
| And while he told what cautious honor | 35 |
| Told him was all he had best be sure of, | |
| |
| He wondered once or twice, inadvertently, | |
| Where shifting winds were driving his argosies, | |
| Long anchored and as long unladen, | |
| Over the foam for the golden chances. | 40 |
| |
| “If men were not for killing so carelessly, | |
| And women were for wiser endurances,” | |
| He said, “we might have yet a world here | |
| Fitter for Truth to be seen abroad in; | |
| |
| “If Truth were not so strange in her nakedness, | 45 |
| And we were less forbidden to look at it, | |
| We might not have to look.” He stared then | |
| Down at the sand where the tide threw forward | |
| |
| Its cold, unconquered lines, that unceasingly | |
| Foamed against hope, and fell. He was calm enough, | 50 |
| Although he knew he might be silenced | |
| Out of all calm; and the night was coming. | |
| |
| “I climb for you the peak of his infamy | |
| That you may choose your fall if you cling to it. | |
| No more for me unless you say more. | 55 |
| All you have left of a dream defends you: | |
| |
| “The truth may be as evil an augury | |
| As it was needful now for the two of us. | |
| We cannot have the dead between us. | |
| Tell me to go, and I go.”—She pondered: | 60 |
| |
| “What you believe is right for the two of us | |
| Makes it as right that you are not one of us. | |
| If this be needful truth you tell me, | |
| Spare me, and let me have lies hereafter.” | |
| |
| She gazed away where shadows were covering | 65 |
| The whole cold ocean’s healing indifference. | |
| No ship was coming. When the darkness | |
| Fell, she was there, and alone, still gazing. | |
