Renascence and Other Poems | Page 5

glows between?The dust's grey fingers like a shielded light.
There is your book, just as you laid it down,?Face to the table, -- I cannot believe?That you are gone! -- Just then it seemed to me?You must be here. I almost laughed to think?How like reality the dream had been;?Yet knew before I laughed, and so was still.?That book, outspread, just as you laid it down!?Perhaps you thought, "I wonder what comes next,?And whether this or this will be the end";?So rose, and left it, thinking to return.
Perhaps that chair, when you arose and passed?Out of the room, rocked silently a while?Ere it again was still. When you were gone?Forever from the room, perhaps that chair,?Stirred by your movement, rocked a little while,?Silently, to and fro. . .
And here are the last words your fingers wrote,?Scrawled in broad characters across a page?In this brown book I gave you. Here your hand,?Guiding your rapid pen, moved up and down.?Here with a looping knot you crossed a "t",?And here another like it, just beyond?These two eccentric "e's". You were so small,?And wrote so brave a hand!
How strange it seems?That of all words these are the words you chose!?And yet a simple choice; you did not know?You would not write again. If you had known --?But then, it does not matter, -- and indeed?If you had known there was so little time?You would have dropped your pen and come to me?And this page would be empty, and some phrase?Other than this would hold my wonder now.?Yet, since you could not know, and it befell?That these are the last words your fingers wrote,?There is a dignity some might not see?In this, "I picked the first sweet-pea to-day."?To-day! Was there an opening bud beside it?You left until to-morrow? -- O my love,?The things that withered, -- and you came not back!?That day you filled this circle of my arms?That now is empty. (O my empty life!)?That day -- that day you picked the first sweet-pea, --?And brought it in to show me! I recall?With terrible distinctness how the smell?Of your cool gardens drifted in with you.?I know, you held it up for me to see?And flushed because I looked not at the flower,?But at your face; and when behind my look?You saw such unmistakable intent?You laughed and brushed your flower against my lips.?(You were the fairest thing God ever made,?I think.) And then your hands above my heart?Drew down its stem into a fastening,?And while your head was bent I kissed your hair.?I wonder if you knew. (Beloved hands!?Somehow I cannot seem to see them still.?Somehow I cannot seem to see the dust?In your bright hair.) What is the need of Heaven?When earth can be so sweet? -- If only God?Had let us love, -- and show the world the way!?Strange cancellings must ink th' eternal books?When love-crossed-out will bring the answer right!?That first sweet-pea! I wonder where it is.?It seems to me I laid it down somewhere,?And yet, -- I am not sure. I am not sure,?Even, if it was white or pink; for then?'Twas much like any other flower to me,?Save that it was the first. I did not know,?Then, that it was the last. If I had known --?But then, it does not matter. Strange how few,?After all's said and done, the things that are?Of moment.
Few indeed! When I can make?Of ten small words a rope to hang the world!?"I had you and I have you now no more."?There, there it dangles, -- where's the little truth?That can for long keep footing under that?When its slack syllables tighten to a thought??Here, let me write it down! I wish to see?Just how a thing like that will look on paper!
"*I had you and I have you now no more*."
O little words, how can you run so straight?Across the page, beneath the weight you bear??How can you fall apart, whom such a theme?Has bound together, and hereafter aid?In trivial expression, that have been?So hideously dignified? -- Would God?That tearing you apart would tear the thread?I strung you on! Would God -- O God, my mind?Stretches asunder on this merciless rack?Of imagery! O, let me sleep a while!?Would I could sleep, and wake to find me back?In that sweet summer afternoon with you.?Summer? 'Tis summer still by the calendar!?How easily could God, if He so willed,?Set back the world a little turn or two!?Correct its griefs, and bring its joys again!
We were so wholly one I had not thought?That we could die apart. I had not thought?That I could move, -- and you be stiff and still!?That I could speak, -- and you perforce be dumb!?I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof?In some firm fabric, woven in and out;?Your golden filaments in fair design?Across my duller fibre. And to-day?The shining strip is rent; the