A Man's Reply
That heart were something cold, I think,
That on the light of stars relied
For daily fire; and cruel is
The perfumed breath of flowers denied
The longing, lifted human hand;
And bitter to the soul, I stand
And fling your woman's fancies back
Beneath the woman's tender feet!
A woman only knoweth love
To know that it is passing sweet,
To know that all her heart is glad,
Or else to know that she is sad
Because it failed her; and forsooth,
I think she has an extra sense
To love by, granted not to man:
Love's measureless own recompense
Consists in loving: there 's her creed.
A pretty thought, in faith or deed!
A feminine fair thought, but false
To man forever! false as light
To the born blind, as painted fruit
To starving lips; or as a bright
Departing sail to drowning eyes
Arch not to me, in mild surprise,
Those glorious calm brows of yours!
Man loveth in another way!
He cannot take the less without
The more; he has a bitter way
In loving, that you know not of;
No tireless, tender, calm resolve
To take Fate's meagre crumbs when dry
From life's feast-tables overswept
And salt them with his hidden, hot,
Vain tears! Contented to be kept
As cup-bearer beside a goddess' place!
Contented so he see her face,
Her dear, denied, sweet face, and die!
O lost, my love! I tell you nay,
You do not, cannot understand;
Man loveth in another way!
He is too strong, or is too weak:
I cannot be the friend you seek!
And yet, in the incertitudes
Of some uncomforted, cold moods,
I cast my soul before you, Sweet!
My very soul beneath your feet,
And, daring and despairing, think
That could I stoop but once and drink,-
One little moment lean above
The sealed, lost fountain of your love,-
Could taste, just taste before I die,
Its sacred, sheltered mystery,-
Could call you for one hour mine!
One little, little hour mine!-
I think I could arise and go
From out your presence then, and know
Myself that possible poised man
Who, living, loving, longing, can
Yet make himself the thing he may,-
Live in the woman's nobler way,-
Love, asking Love no other gauge
Than the exceeding privilege
Of adding by some patient stress.
Of pain, unto the happiness,-
Or be it bright, or be it dim-
Of the sweet soul denied to him.
A Woman's Mood
Because you cannot pluck the flower,
You pass the sweet scent by;
Because you cannot have the stars
You will not see the sky
No matter what the fable means
Put into English speech;
No matter what the thing may be
You long for, out of reach.
'T is out of reach, and that 's enough
For you and me for aye,
And understood in that still speech
That souls interpret by.
The 'little language' of a look,
A tone, a turn, a touch,
An eloquence that while it speaketh
Nothing, yet sayeth much.
Suppose that in some steadfast hour
I offered you the hand
Of a woman's faithful friendliness-
Ah, hush! I understand.
I spare you speech, to spare you pain;
Perhaps I 'd spare you more
Than men are made to comprehend,
If, as I said before,
I held to you that open hand,
And you should turn away
I hardly know which one of us
Were hurt the worse that day.
I hardly know the reason why,
But women are so made;
I could not give a man a rose
To see it 'neath his tread.
Although he trod on it, indeed,
To save his very soul
From stifling in the thoughts of me
Its sweetness might enroll.
I 'd rather he should gather it
Within his trembling hand
As sacredly as twilight takes
The shapes of sea and land,
And solemnly as twilight learns,
In lonely, purple state,
Upon the hills the sun has fled
To bide its time, and wait.
For what?-to wait for what, you ask?
I cannot tell, indeed,
For what. I do not know for what.
It is the woman's creed!
I only know I 'd wait, and keep
Steel-loyal and steel-true
Unto the highest hope I held,
Though 't were the saddest, too.
Unto the deepest faith I had
In a created thing;
Unto the largest love I knew,
Though love's delight took wing
And fled away from me, and left
Love's dear regret alone.
The chrism of loving all I could,
And loving only one.
I think the woman I preferred-
If I were such a man-
Might lean out helpfully across
My life's imperfect plan;
Might lend me mercy, grace, and peace
In fashion womanly,
Although I knew her rarest smile
Would never shine on me;
I think I 'd say right manfully,-
And so it all would end,-
Than any other woman's love,
I 'd rather be her friend!
And take the hand she dared not hold,
Before its courage slips,
And take the word she could not speak
From off her grieving lips,
And be to her heart what I could
(We will not mark the line),
And, like a comrade, call her soul
To walk in peace with mine.
A nobler man for that grave peace,
I think, dear friend, I were,
And richer were I than to lose
My love in losing her.
And if I speak a riddle, sir,
That on your fancy jars,-
You know we're talking about flowers,
And thinking about stars!
Stronger Than Death
prologue
Who shall tell the story
As it was?
Write it with the heart's blood?
(Pale ink, alas!)
Speak it with the soul's lips,
Or be dumb?
Tell me, singers fled, and
Song to come!
No answer; like a shell the silence curls,
And far within it leans a whisper out,
Breathless and inarticulate, and whirls
And dies as dies an ailing dread or doubt.
And I-since there is found none else than I,
No stronger, sweeter voice than mine, to tell
This tale of love that cannot stoop to die-
Were fain to be the whisper in the shell;
Were fain to lose and spend myself within
The sacred silence of one mighty heart,
And leaning from it, hidden there, to win
Some finer ear that, listening, bends apart.
'Fly for your lives!' The entrails of the earth
Trembled, resounding to the cry,
That, like a chasing ghost, around the mine
Crept ghastly: 'The pit 's on fire! Fly!'
The shaft, a poisoned throat whose breath was death,
Like hell itself grown sick of sin,
Hurled up the men; haggard and terrible;
Leaping upon us through the din
That all our voices made; and back we shrank
From them as from the starting dead;
Recoiling, shrieked, but knew not why we shrieked;
And cried, but knew not what we said.
And still that awful mouth did toss them up:
'The last is safe! The last is sound!'
We sobbed to see them where they sunk and crawled,
Like beaten hounds, upon the ground.
Some sat with lolling, idiot head, and laughed;
One reached to clutch the air away
His gasping lips refused; some cursed; and one
Knelt down-but he was old-to pray.
We huddled there together all that night,
Women and men from the wild Town;
I heard a shrill voice cry, 'We all are up,
But some-ye have forgot-are down!'
'Who is forgot?' We stared from face to face;
But answering through the dark, she said
(It was a woman): 'Eh, ye need not fret;
None is forgot except the dead.
'The buried dead asleep there in the works-
Eh, Lord! It must be hot below!
Ye'll keep 'em waking all the livelong night,
To set the mine a-burning so!'
And all the night the mine did burn and burst,
As if the earth were but a shell
Through which a child had thrust a finger-touch,
And, peal on dreadful peal, the bell,
The miner's 'larum, wrenched the quaking air;
And through the flaring light we saw
The solid forehead of the eternal hill
Take on a human look of awe;
As if it were a living thing, that spoke
And flung some protest to the sky,
As if it were a dying thing that saw,
But could not tell, a mystery.
The bells ran ringing by us all that night.
The bells ceased jangling with the morn.
About the blackened works,-sunk, tossed, and rent,-
We gathered in the foreign dawn;
Women and men, with eyes askance and strange,
Fearing, we knew not what, to see.
Against the hollowed jaws of the torn hill,
Why creep the miners silently?
From man to man, a whisper chills: 'See, see,
The sunken shaft of Thirty-one!
The earth, a traitor to her trust, has fled
And turned the dead unto the sun.
'And here-O God of life and death! Thy work,
Thine only, this!' With foreheads bare,
We knelt, and drew him, young and beautiful,
Thirty years dead, into the air.
Thus had he perished; buried from the day;
By the swift poison caught and slain;
By the kind poison unmarred, rendered fair
Back to the upper earth again-
The warm and breathing earth that knew him not;
And men and women wept to see-
For kindred had he none among us all-
How lonely even the dead may be.
We wept, I say; we wept who knew him not;
But sharp, a tearless woman sprang
From out the crowd (that quavering voice I knew),
And terrible her cry outrang:
'I pass, I pass ye all! Make way! Stand back!
Mine is the place ye yield,' she said.
'He was my lover once-my own, my own;
Oh, he was mine, and he is dead!'
Women and men, we gave her royal way;
Proud as young joy the smile she had.
We knew her for a neighbor in the Town,
Unmated, solitary, sad.
Youth, hope, and love, we gave her silent way,
Calm as a sigh she swept us all;
Then swiftly, as a word leans to a thought,
We saw her lean to him, and fall
Upon the happy body of the dead-
An aged woman, poor and gray.
Bright as the day, immortal as young Love,
And glorious as life, he lay.
Her shrunken hands caressed his rounded cheek,
Her white locks on his golden hair
Fell sadly. 'O love!' she cried with shriveled lips,
'O love, my love, my own, my fair!
'See, I am old, and all my heart is gray.
They say the dead are aye forgot-
There, there, my sweet! I whisper, leaning low,
That all these women hear it not.
'Deep in the darkness there, didst think on me?
High in the heavens, have ye been true?
Since I was young, and since you called me fair,
I never loved a man but you.
And here, my boy, you lie, so safe, so still'-
But there she hushed; and in the dim,
Cool morning, timid as a bride, but calm
As a glad mother, gathered him
Unto her heart. And all the people then,
Women and men, and children too,
Crept back, and back, and back, and on,
Still as the morning shadows do.
And left them in the lifting dawn-they two,
On her sad breast, his shining head
Stirred softly, as were he the living one,
And she had been the moveless dead.
And yet we crept on, back, and back, and on.
The distance widened like the sky,
Between our little restlessness,
And Love so godlike that it could not die.
