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 exquisite Fine pattern is destroyed; part of your heart Aches in my breast; part of my heart lies chilled In the damp earth with you. I have been torn In two, and suffer for the rest of me.
What is my life to me? And what am I To life, -- a ship whose star has guttered out?
A Fear that in the deep night starts awake Perpetually, to find its senses strained Against the taut strings of the quivering air, Awaiting the return of some dread chord?
Dark, Dark, is all I find for metaphor;
All else were contrast, -- save that contrast's wall Is down, and all opposed things flow together Into a vast monotony, where night And day, and frost and thaw, and death and life, Are synonyms. What now -- what now to me Are all the jabbering birds and foolish flowers That clutter up the world? You were my song!
Now, let discord scream! You were my flower!
Now let the world grow weeds! For I shall not Plant things above your grave -- (the common balm Of the conventional woe for its own wound!)
Amid sensations rendered negative By your elimination stands to-day, Certain, unmixed, the element of grief;
I sorrow; and I shall not mock my truth With travesties of suffering, nor seek To effigy its incorporeal bulk In little wry-faced images of woe.
I cannot call you back; and I desire No utterance of my immaterial voice.
I cannot even turn my face this way Or that, and say, "My face is turned to you";
I know not where you are, I do not know If Heaven hold you or if earth transmute, Body and soul, you into earth again;
But this I know: -- not for one second's space Shall I insult my sight with visionings Such as the credulous crowd so eager-eyed Beholds, self-conjured, in the empty air.
Let the world wail! Let drip its easy tears!
My sorrow shall be dumb!
-- What do I say?
God! God! -- God pity me! Am I gone mad That I should spit upon a rosary?
Am I become so shrunken? Would to God I too might feel that frenzied faith whose touch Makes temporal the most enduring grief;
Though it must walk a while, as is its wont, With wild lamenting! Would I too might weep Where weeps the world and hangs its piteous wreaths For its new dead! Not Truth, but Faith, it is That keeps the world alive. If all at once Faith were to slacken, -- that unconscious faith Which must, I know, yet be the corner-stone Of all believing, -- birds now flying fearless Across would drop in terror to the earth;
Fishes would drown; and the all-governing reins Would tangle in the frantic hands of God And the worlds gallop headlong to destruction!
O God, I see it now, and my sick brain Staggers and swoons! How often over me Flashes this breathlessness of sudden sight In which I see the universe unrolled Before me like a scroll and read thereon Chaos and Doom, where helpless planets whirl Dizzily round and round and round and round, Like tops across a table, gathering speed With every spin, to waver on the edge One instant -- looking over -- and the next To shudder and lurch forward out of sight-- * * * * *
Ah, I am worn out -- I am wearied out-- It is too much -- I am but flesh and blood, And I must sleep. Though you were dead again, I am but flesh and blood and I must sleep.
