"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.'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 knowledgeOf 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 nonsenseOver things that made you sleepy, to keep something still awake;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 inventoriesWith a value more elusive than a dollar's? Are you sureThat if I starve another year for you I shall be strongerTo 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?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?"
"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 givingAll they have in holy loathing to a stranger all their livesAre 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,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 passThat you would have me longer in your arms if you discoveredThat I made you into someone else. . . . Oh! . . . Well, there areworse ways.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?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."
"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 moreWould have now the small importance of one other small illusion,Which in turn would have a welcome where the rest have gone before.But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little fartherFor the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere still in sight.Furthermore, you must remember those two hundred invitationsFor the dancing after dinner. We shall have to shine tonight.We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of merry spectres,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.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!"
"Whether all towns and all who live in them —So long as they be somewhere in this worldThat we in our complacency call ours —Are more or less the same, I leave to you.I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile,We've all two legs — and as for that, we haven't —There were three kinds of men where I was born:The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross.Now there are two kinds."
"Meaning, as I divine,Your friend is dead," I ventured.
Ferguson,Who talked himself at last out of the worldHe censured, and is therefore silent now,Agreed indifferently: "My friends are dead —Or most of them."
"Remember one that isn't,"I said, protesting. "Honor him for his ears;Treasure him also for his understanding."Ferguson sighed, and then talked on again:"You have an overgrown alacrityFor saying nothing much and hearing less;And I've a thankless wonder, at the start,How much it is to you that I shall tellWhat I have now to say of Tasker Norcross,And how much to the air that is around you.But given a patience that is not averseTo the slow tragedies of haunted men —Horrors, in fact, if you've a skilful eyeTo know them at their firesides, or out walking, —"
"Horrors," I said, "are my necessity;And I would have them, for their best effect,Always out walking."
Ferguson frowned at me:"The wisest of us are not those who laughBefore they know. Most of us never know —Or the long toil of our mortalityWould not be done. Most of us never know —And there you have a reason to believeIn God, if you may have no other. Norcross,Or so I gather of his infirmity,Was given to know more than he should have known,And only God knows why. See for yourselfAn old house full of ghosts of ancestors,Who did their best, or worst, and having done it,Died honorably; and each with a distinctionThat hardly would have been for him that had it,Had honor failed him wholly as a friend.Honor that is a friend begets a friend.Whether or not we love him, still we have him;And we must live somehow by what we have,Or then we die. If you say chemistry,Then you must have your molecules in motion,And in their right abundance. Failing either,You have not long to dance. Failing a friend,A genius, or a madness, or a faithLarger than desperation, you are hereFor as much longer than you like as may be.Imagining now, by way of an example,Myself a more or less remembered phantom —Again, I should say less — how many timesA day should I come back to you? No answer.Forgive me when I seem a little careless,But we must have examples, or be lucidWithout them; and I question your adherenceTo such an undramatic narrativeAs this of mine, without the personal hook."
"A time is given in EcclesiastesFor divers works," I told him. "Is there oneFor saying nothing in return for nothing?If not, there should be." I could feel his eyes,And they were like two cold inquiring pointsOf a sharp metal. When I looked again,To see them shine, the cold that I had feltWas gone to make way for a smoulderingOf lonely fire that I, as I knew then,Could never quench with kindness or with lies.I should have done whatever there was to doFor Ferguson, yet I could not have mournedIn honesty for once around the clockThe loss of him, for my sake or for his,Try as I might; nor would his ghost approve,Had I the power and the unthinking willTo make him tread again without an aimThe road that was behind him — and withoutThe faith, or friend, or genius, or the madnessThat he contended was imperative.
After a silence that had been too long,"It may be quite as well we don't," he said;"As well, I mean, that we don't always say it.You know best what I mean, and I supposeYou might have said it better. What was that?Incorrigible? Am I incorrigible?Well, it's a word; and a word has its use,Or, like a man, it will soon have a grave.It's a good word enough. Incorrigible,May be, for all I know, the word for Norcross.See for yourself that house of his againThat he called home: An old house, painted white,Square as a box, and chillier than a tombTo look at or to live in. There were trees —Too many of them, if such a thing may be —Before it and around it. Down in frontThere was a road, a railroad, and a river;Then there were hills behind it, and more trees.The thing would fairly stare at you through trees,Like a pale inmate out of a barred windowWith a green shade half down; and I dare sayPeople who passed have said: `There's where he lives.We know him, but we do not seem to knowThat we remember any good of him,Or any evil that is interesting.There you have all we know and all we care.'They might have said it in all sorts of ways;And then, if they perceived a cat, they mightOr might not have remembered what they said.The cat might have a personality —And maybe the same one the Lord left outOf Tasker Norcross, who, for lack of it,Saw the same sun go down year after year;All which at last was my discovery.And only mine, so far as evidenceEnlightens one more darkness. You have knownAll round you, all your days, men who are nothing —Nothing, I mean, so far as time tells yetOf any other need it has of themThan to make sextons hardy — but no lessAre to themselves incalculably something,And therefore to be cherished. God, you see,Being sorry for them in their fashioning,Indemnified them with a quaint esteemOf self, and with illusions long as life.You know them well, and you have smiled at them;And they, in their serenity, may have hadTheir time to smile at you. Blessed are theyThat see themselves for what they never wereOr were to be, and are, for their defect,At ease with mirrors and the dim remarksThat pass their tranquil ears."
"Come, come," said I;"There may be names in your compendiumThat we are not yet all on fire for shouting.Skin most of us of our mediocrity,We should have nothing then that we could scratch.The picture smarts. Cover it, if you please,And do so rather gently. Now for Norcross."
Ferguson closed his eyes in resignation,While a dead sigh came out of him. "Good God!"He said, and said it only half aloud,As if he knew no longer now, nor cared,If one were there to listen: "Have I said nothing —Nothing at all — of Norcross? Do you meanTo patronize him till his name becomesA toy made out of letters? If a nameIs all you need, arrange an honest columnOf all the people you have ever knownThat you have never liked. You'll have enough;And you'll have mine, moreover. No, not yet.If I assume too many privileges,I pay, and I alone, for their assumption;By which, if I assume a darker knowledgeOf Norcross than another, let the weightOf my injustice aggravate the loadThat is not on your shoulders. When I cameTo know this fellow Norcross in his house,I found him as I found him in the street —No more, no less; indifferent, but no better.`Worse' were not quite the word: he was not bad;He was not . . . well, he was not anything.Has your invention ever entertainedThe picture of a dusty worm so dryThat even the early bird would shake his headAnd fly on farther for another breakfast?"
"But why forget the fortune of the worm,"I said, "if in the dryness you deploreSalvation centred and endured? Your NorcrossMay have been one for many to have envied."
"Salvation? Fortune? Would the worm say that?He might; and therefore I dismiss the wormWith all dry things but one. Figures away,Do you begin to see this man a little?Do you begin to see him in the air,With all the vacant horrors of his outlineFor you to fill with more than it will hold?If so, you needn't crown yourself at onceWith epic laurel if you seem to fill it.Horrors, I say, for in the fires and forksOf a new hell — if one were not enough —I doubt if a new horror would have held himWith a malignant ingenuityMore to be feared than his before he died.You smile, as if in doubt. Well, smile again.Now come into his house, along with me:The four square sombre things that you see firstAround you are four walls that go as highAs to the ceiling. Norcross knew them well,And he knew others like them. Fasten to thatWith all the claws of your intelligence;And hold the man before you in his houseAs if he were a white rat in a box,And one that knew himself to be no other.I tell you twice that he knew all about it,That you may not forget the worst of allOur tragedies begin with what we know.Could Norcross only not have known, I wonderHow many would have blessed and envied him!Could he have had the usual eye for spotsOn others, and for none upon himself,I smile to ponder on the carriagesThat might as well as not have clogged the townIn honor of his end. For there was gold,You see, though all he needed was a little,And what he gave said nothing of who gave it.He would have given it all if in returnThere might have been a more sufficient faceTo greet him when he shaved. Though you insistIt is the dower, and always, of our degreeNot to be cursed with such invidious insight,Remember that you stand, you and your fancy,Now in his house; and since we are together,See for yourself and tell me what you see.Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noiseOf recognition when you find a bookThat you would not as lief read upside downAs otherwise, for example. If there you fail,Observe the walls and lead me to the place,Where you are led. If there you meet a pictureThat holds you near it for a longer timeThan you are sorry, you may call it yours,And hang it in the dark of your remembrance,Where Norcross never sees. How can he seeThat has no eyes to see? And as for music,He paid with empty wonder for the pangsOf his infrequent forced endurance of it;And having had no pleasure, paid no moreFor needless immolation, or for the sightOf those who heard what he was never to hear.To see them listening was itself enoughTo make him suffer; and to watch worn eyes,On other days, of strangers who forgotTheir sorrows and their failures and themselvesBefore a few mysterious odds and endsOf marble carted from the Parthenon —And all for seeing what he was never to see,Because it was alive and he was dead —Here was a wonder that was more profoundThan any that was in fiddles and brass horns.
"He knew, and in his knowledge there was death.He knew there was a region all around himThat lay outside man's havoc and affairs,And yet was not all hostile to their tumult,Where poets would have served and honored him,And saved him, had there been anything to save.But there was nothing, and his tethered rangeWas only a small desert. Kings of songAre not for thrones in deserts. Towers of soundAnd flowers of sense are but a waste of heavenWhere there is none to know them from the rocksAnd sand-grass of his own monotonyThat makes earth less than earth. He could see that,And he could see no more. The captured lightThat may have been or not, for all he cared,The song that is in sculpture was not his,But only, to his God-forgotten eyes,One more immortal nonsense in a worldWhere all was mortal, or had best be so,And so be done with. `Art,' he would have said,`Is not life, and must therefore be a lie;'And with a few profundities like thatHe would have controverted and dismissedThe benefit of the Greeks. He had heard of them,As he had heard of his aspiring soul —Never to the perceptible advantage,In his esteem, of either. `Faith,' he said,Or would have said if he had thought of it,`Lives in the same house with Philosophy,Where the two feed on scraps and are forlornAs orphans after war. He could see stars,On a clear night, but he had not an eyeTo see beyond them. He could hear spoken words,But had no ear for silence when alone.He could eat food of which he knew the savor,But had no palate for the Bread of Life,That human desperation, to his thinking,Made famous long ago, having no other.Now do you see? Do you begin to see?"
I told him that I did begin to see;And I was nearer than I should have beenTo laughing at his malign inclusiveness,When I considered that, with all our speed,We are not laughing yet at funerals.I see him now as I could see him then,And I see now that it was good for me,As it was good for him, that I was quiet;For Time's eye was on Ferguson, and the shaftOf its inquiring hesitancy had touched him,Or so I chose to fancy more than onceBefore he told of Norcross. When the wordOf his release (he would have called it so)Made half an inch of news, there were no tearsThat are recorded. Women there may have beenTo wish him back, though I should say, not knowing,The few there were to mourn were not for love,And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least,Was in the meagre legend that I gatheredYears after, when a chance of travel took meSo near the region of his nativityThat a few miles of leisure brought me there;For there I found a friendly citizenWho led me to his house among the treesThat were above a railroad and a river.Square as a box and chillier than a tombIt was indeed, to look at or to live in —All which had I been told. "Ferguson died,"The stranger said, "and then there was an auction.I live here, but I've never yet been warm.Remember him? Yes, I remember him.I knew him — as a man may know a tree —For twenty years. He may have held himselfA little high when he was here, but now . . .Yes, I remember Ferguson. Oh, yes."Others, I found, remembered Ferguson,But none of them had heard of Tasker Norcross.
Two men came out of Shannon's having knownThe faces of each other for as longAs they had listened there to an old song,Sung thinly in a wastrel monotoneBy some unhappy night-bird, who had flownToo many times and with a wing too strongTo save himself, and so done heavy wrongTo more frail elements than his alone.
Slowly away they went, leaving behindMore light than was before them. Neither metThe other's eyes again or said a word.Each to his loneliness or to his kind,Went his own way, and with his own regret,Not knowing what the other may have heard.
A vanished house that for an hour I knewBy some forgotten chance when I was youngHad once a glimmering window overhungWith honeysuckle wet with evening dew.Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew,And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swungFerociously; and over me, amongThe moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew.
Somewhere within there were dim presencesOf days that hovered and of years gone by.I waited, and between their silencesThere was an evanescent faded noise;And though a child, I knew it was the voiceOf one whose occupation was to die.
We told of him as one who should have soaredAnd seen for us the devastating lightWhereof there is not either day or night,And shared with us the glamour of the WordThat fell once upon Amos to recordFor men at ease in Zion, when the sightOf ills obscured aggrieved him and the mightOf Hamath was a warning of the Lord.
Assured somehow that he would make us wise,Our pleasure was to wait; and our surpriseWas hard when we confessed the dry returnOf his regret. For we were still to learnThat earth has not a school where we may goFor wisdom, or for more than we may know.
Ten years together without yet a cloud,They seek each other's eyes at intervalsOf gratefulness to firelight and four wallsFor love's obliteration of the crowd.Serenely and perennially endowedAnd bowered as few may be, their joy recallsNo snake, no sword; and over them there fallsThe blessing of what neither says aloud.
Wiser for silence, they were not so gladWere she to read the graven tale of linesOn the wan face of one somewhere alone;Nor were they more content could he have hadHer thoughts a moment since of one who shinesApart, and would be hers if he had known.
The day was here when it was his to knowHow fared the barriers he had built betweenHis triumph and his enemies unseen,For them to undermine and overthrow;And it was his no longer to foregoThe sight of them, insidious and serene,Where they were delving always and had beenLeft always to be vicious and to grow.
And there were the new tenants who had come,By doors that were left open unawares,Into his house, and were so much at homeThere now that he would hardly have to guess,By the slow guile of their vindictiveness,What ultimate insolence would soon be theirs.
Although I saw before me there the faceOf one whom I had honored among menThe least, and on regarding him againWould not have had him in another place,He fitted with an unfamiliar graceThe coffin where I could not see him thenAs I had seen him and appraised him whenI deemed him unessential to the race.
For there was more of him than what I saw.And there was on me more than the old aweThat is the common genius of the dead.I might as well have heard him: "Never mind;If some of us were not so far behind,The rest of us were not so far ahead."
As often as he let himself be seenWe pitied him, or scorned him, or deploredThe inscrutable profusion of the LordWho shaped as one of us a thing so mean —Who made him human when he might have beenA rat, and so been wholly in accordWith any other creature we abhorredAs always useless and not always clean.
Now he is hiding all alone somewhere,And in a final hole not ready then;For now he is among those over thereWho are not coming back to us again.And we who do the fiction of our shareSay less of rats and rather more of men.
Note. — Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were married, after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The marriage — so far as he was concerned, at any rate — appears to have been satisfactory.
Now you have read them all; or if not all,As many as in all conscience I should fancyTo be enough. There are no more of them —Or none to burn your sleep, or to bring dreamsOf devils. If these are not sufficient, surelyYou are a strange young man. I might live onAlone, and for another forty years,Or not quite forty, — are you happier now? —Always to ask if there prevailed elsewhereAnother like yourself that would have heldThese aged hands as long as you have held them,Not once observing, for all I can see,How they are like your mother's. Well, you have readHis letters now, and you have heard me sayThat in them are the cinders of a passionThat was my life; and you have not yet brokenYour way out of my house, out of my sight, —Into the street. You are a strange young man.I know as much as that of you, for certain;And I'm already praying, for your sake,That you be not too strange. Too much of thatMay lead you bye and bye through gloomy lanesTo a sad wilderness, where one may gropeAlone, and always, or until he feelsFerocious and invisible animalsThat wait for men and eat them in the dark.Why do you sit there on the floor so long,Smiling at me while I try to be solemn?Do you not hear it said for your salvation,When I say truth? Are you, at four and twenty,So little deceived in us that you interpretThe humor of a woman to be noticedAs her choice between you and Acheron?Are you so unscathed yet as to inferThat if a woman worries when a man,Or a man-child, has wet shoes on his feetShe may as well commemorate with ashesThe last eclipse of her tranquillity?If you look up at me and blink again,I shall not have to make you tell me liesTo know the letters you have not been reading.I see now that I may have had for nothingA most unpleasant shivering in my conscienceWhen I laid open for your contemplationThe wealth of my worn casket. If I did,The fault was not yours wholly. Search againThis wreckage we may call for sport a face,And you may chance upon the price of havocThat I have paid for a few sorry stonesThat shine and have no light — yet once were stars,And sparkled on a crown. Little and weakThey seem; and they are cold, I fear, for you.But they that once were fire for me may notBe cold again for me until I die;And only God knows if they may be then.There is a love that ceases to be loveIn being ourselves. How, then, are we to lose it?You that are sure that you know everythingThere is to know of love, answer me that.Well? . . . You are not even interested.
Once on a far off time when I was young,I felt with your assurance, and all through me,That I had undergone the last and worstOf love's inventions. There was a boy who broughtThe sun with him and woke me up with it,And that was every morning; every nightI tried to dream of him, but never could,More than I might have seen in Adam's eyesTheir fond uncertainty when Eve beganThe play that all her tireless progenyAre not yet weary of. One scene of itWas brief, but was eternal while it lasted;And that was while I was the happiestOf an imaginary six or seven,Somewhere in history but not on earth,For whom the sky had shaken and let starsRain down like diamonds. Then there were clouds,And a sad end of diamonds; whereuponDespair came, like a blast that would have broughtTears to the eyes of all the bears in Finland,And love was done. That was how much I knew.Poor little wretch! I wonder where he isThis afternoon. Out of this rain, I hope.
At last, when I had seen so many daysDressed all alike, and in their marching order,Go by me that I would not always count them,One stopped — shattering the whole file of Time,Or so it seemed; and when I looked again,There was a man. He struck once with his eyes,And then there was a woman. I, who had comeTo wisdom, or to vision, or what you like,By the old hidden road that has no name, —I, who was used to seeing without flyingSo much that others fly from without seeing,Still looked, and was afraid, and looked again.And after that, when I had read the storyTold in his eyes, and felt within my heartThe bleeding wound of their necessity,I knew the fear was his. If I had failed himAnd flown away from him, I should have lostIngloriously my wings in scrambling back,And found them arms again. If he had struck meNot only with his eyes but with his hands,I might have pitied him and hated love,And then gone mad. I, who have been so strong —Why don't you laugh? — might even have done all that.I, who have learned so much, and said so much,And had the commendations of the greatFor one who rules herself — why don't you cry? —And own a certain small authorityAmong the blind, who see no more than ever,But like my voice, — I would have tossed it allTo Tophet for one man; and he was jealous.I would have wound a snake around my neckAnd then have let it bite me till I died,If my so doing would have made me sureThat one man might have lived; and he was jealous.I would have driven these hands into a cageThat held a thousand scorpions, and crushed them,If only by so poisonous a trialI could have crushed his doubt. I would have wrungMy living blood with mediaeval enginesOut of my screaming flesh, if only thatWould have made one man sure. I would have paidFor him the tiresome price of body and soul,And let the lash of a tongue-weary townFall as it might upon my blistered name;And while it fell I could have laughed at it,Knowing that he had found out finallyWhere the wrong was. But there was evil in himThat would have made no more of his possessionThan confirmation of another fault;And there was honor — if you call it honorThat hoods itself with doubt and wears a crownOf lead that might as well be gold and fire.Give it as heavy or as light a nameAs any there is that fits. I see myselfWithout the power to swear to this or thatThat I might be if he had been without it.Whatever I might have been that I was not,It only happened that it wasn't so.Meanwhile, you might seem to be listening:If you forget yourself and go to sleep,My treasure, I shall not say this again.Look up once more into my poor old face,Where you see beauty, or the Lord knows what,And say to me aloud what else there isThan ruins in it that you most admire.
No, there was never anything like that;Nature has never fastened such a maskOf radiant and impenetrable meritOn any woman as you say there isOn this one. Not a mask? I thank you, sir,But you see more with your determination,I fear, than with your prudence or your conscience;And you have never met me with my eyesIn all the mirrors I've made faces at.No, I shall never call you strange again:You are the young and inconvincibleEpitome of all blind men since Adam.May the blind lead the blind, if that be so?And we shall need no mirrors? You are sayingWhat most I feared you might. But if the blind,Or one of them, be not so fortunateAs to put out the eyes of recollection,She might at last, without her meaning it,Lead on the other, without his knowing it,Until the two of them should lose themselvesAmong dead craters in a lava-fieldAs empty as a desert on the moon.I am not speaking in a theatre,But in a room so real and so familiarThat sometimes I would wreck it. Then I pause,Remembering there is a King in Weimar —A monarch, and a poet, and a shepherdOf all who are astray and are outsideThe realm where they should rule. I think of him,And save the furniture; I think of you,And am forlorn, finding in you the oneTo lavish aspirations and illusionsUpon a faded and forsaken houseWhere love, being locked alone, was nigh to burningHouse and himself together. Yes, you are strange,To see in such an injured architectureRoom for new love to live in. Are you laughing?No? Well, you are not crying, as you should be.Tears, even if they told only gratitudeFor your escape, and had no other story,Were surely more becoming than a smileFor my unwomanly straightforwardnessIn seeing for you, through my close gate of yearsYour forty ways to freedom. Why do you smile?And while I'm trembling at my faith in youIn giving you to read this book of dangerThat only one man living might have written —These letters, which have been a part of meSo long that you may read them all againAs often as you look into my face,And hear them when I speak to you, and feel themWhenever you have to touch me with your hand, —Why are you so unwilling to be spared?Why do you still believe in me? But no,I'll find another way to ask you that.I wonder if there is another wayThat says it better, and means anything.There is no other way that could be worse?I was not asking you; it was myselfAlone that I was asking. Why do I dipFor lies, when there is nothing in my wellBut shining truth, you say? How do you know?Truth has a lonely life down where she lives;And many a time, when she comes up to breathe,She sinks before we seize her, and makes ripples.Possibly you may know no more of meThan a few ripples; and they may soon be gone,Leaving you then with all my shining truthDrowned in a shining water; and when you lookYou may not see me there, but something elseThat never was a woman — being yourself.You say to me my truth is past all drowning,And safe with you for ever? You know all that?How do you know all that, and who has told you?You know so much that I'm an atom frightenedBecause you know so little. And what is this?You know the luxury there is in hauntingThe blasted thoroughfares of disillusion —If that's your name for them — with only ghostsFor company? You know that when a womanIs blessed, or cursed, with a divine impatience(Another name of yours for a bad temper)She must have one at hand on whom to wreak it(That's what you mean, whatever the turn you give it),Sure of a kindred sympathy, and therebyEffect a mutual calm? You know that wisdom,Given in vain to make a food for thoseWho are without it, will be seen at last,And even at last only by those who gave it,As one or more of the forgotten crumbsThat others leave? You know that men's applauseAnd women's envy savor so much of dustThat I go hungry, having at home no fareBut the same changeless bread that I may swallowOnly with tears and prayers? Who told you that?You know that if I read, and read alone,Too many books that no men yet have written,I may go blind, or worse? You know yourself,Of all insistent and insidious creatures,To be the one to save me, and to guardFor me their flaming language? And you knowThat if I give much headway to the whimThat's in me never to be quite sure that evenThrough all those years of storm and fire I waitedFor this one rainy day, I may go on,And on, and on alone, through smoke and ashes,To a cold end? You know so dismal muchAs that about me? . . . Well, I believe you do.
Since you remember Nimmo, and arriveAt such a false and florid and far drawnConfusion of odd nonsense, I conniveNo longer, though I may have led you on.
So much is told and heard and told again,So many with his legend are engrossed,That I, more sorry now than I was then,May live on to be sorry for his ghost.
You knew him, and you must have known his eyes, —How deep they were, and what a velvet lightCame out of them when anger or surprise,Or laughter, or Francesca, made them bright.
No, you will not forget such eyes, I think, —And you say nothing of them. Very well.I wonder if all history's worth a wink,Sometimes, or if my tale be one to tell.
For they began to lose their velvet light;Their fire grew dead without and small within;And many of you deplored the needless fightThat somewhere in the dark there must have been.
All fights are needless, when they're not our own,But Nimmo and Francesca never fought.Remember that; and when you are alone,Remember me — and think what I have thought.
Now, mind you, I say nothing of what was,Or never was, or could or could not be:Bring not suspicion's candle to the glassThat mirrors a friend's face to memory.
Of what you see, see all, — but see no more;For what I show you here will not be there.The devil has had his way with paint before,And he's an artist, — and you needn't stare.
There was a painter and he painted well:He'd paint you Daniel in the lions' den,Beelzebub, Elaine, or William Tell.I'm coming back to Nimmo's eyes again.
The painter put the devil in those eyes,Unless the devil did, and there he stayed;And then the lady fled from paradise,And there's your fact. The lady was afraid.
She must have been afraid, or may have been,Of evil in their velvet all the while;But sure as I'm a sinner with a skin,I'll trust the man as long as he can smile.
I trust him who can smile and then may liveIn my heart's house, where Nimmo is today.God knows if I have more than men forgiveTo tell him; but I played, and I shall pay.
I knew him then, and if I know him yet,I know in him, defeated and estranged,The calm of men forbidden to forgetThe calm of women who have loved and changed.
But there are ways that are beyond our ways,Or he would not be calm and she be mute,As one by one their lost and empty daysPass without even the warmth of a dispute.
God help us all when women think they see;God save us when they do. I'm fair; but thoughI know him only as he looks to me,I know him, — and I tell Francesca so.
And what of Nimmo? Little would you askOf him, could you but see him as I can,At his bewildered and unfruitful taskOf being what he was born to be — a man.
Better forget that I said anythingOf what your tortured memory may disclose;I know him, and your worst rememberingWould count as much as nothing, I suppose.
Meanwhile, I trust him; and I know his wayOf trusting me, as always in his youth.I'm painting here a better man, you say,Than I, the painter; and you say the truth.
He took a frayed hat from his head,And "Peace on Earth" was what he said."A morsel out of what you're worth,And there we have it: Peace on Earth.Not much, although a little moreThan what there was on earth before.I'm as you see, I'm Ichabod, —But never mind the ways I've trod;I'm sober now, so help me God."
I could not pass the fellow by."Do you believe in God?" said I;"And is there to be Peace on Earth?"
"Tonight we celebrate the birth,"He said, "of One who died for men;The Son of God, we say. What then?Your God, or mine? I'd make you laughWere I to tell you even halfThat I have learned of mine todayWhere yours would hardly seem to stay.Could He but follow in and outSome anthropoids I know about,The God to whom you may have prayedMight see a world He never made."
"Your words are flowing full," said I;"But yet they give me no reply;Your fountain might as well be dry."
"A wiser One than you, my friend,Would wait and hear me to the end;And for His eyes a light would shineThrough this unpleasant shell of mineThat in your fancy makes of meA Christmas curiosity.All right, I might be worse than that;And you might now be lying flat;I might have done it from behind,And taken what there was to find.Don't worry, for I'm not that kind.`Do I believe in God?' Is thatThe price tonight of a new hat?Has He commanded that His nameBe written everywhere the same?Have all who live in every placeIdentified His hidden face?Who knows but He may like as wellMy story as one you may tell?And if He show me there be PeaceOn Earth, as there be fields and treesOutside a jail-yard, am I wrongIf now I sing Him a new song?Your world is in yourself, my friend,For your endurance to the end;And all the Peace there is on EarthIs faith in what your world is worth,And saying, without any lies,Your world could not be otherwise."
"One might say that and then be shot,"I told him; and he said: "Why not?"I ceased, and gave him rather moreThan he was counting of my store."And since I have it, thanks to you,Don't ask me what I mean to do,"Said he. "Believe that even IWould rather tell the truth than lie —On Christmas Eve. No matter why."
His unshaved, educated face,His inextinguishable grace,And his hard smile, are with me still,Deplore the vision as I will;For whatsoever he be at,So droll a derelict as thatShould have at least another hat.
(Alcaics)
Confused, he found her lavishing feminineGold upon clay, and found her inscrutable;And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrorsBe as they were, without end, her playthings?
And why were dead years hungrily telling herLies of the dead, who told them again to her?If now she knew, there might be kindnessClamoring yet where a faith lay stifled.
A little faith in him, and the ruinousPast would be for time to annihilate,And wash out, like a tide that washesOut 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 —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 confirmationsHarder than agates against an egg-shell?
But now the man was dead, and would come againNever, though she might honor ineffablyThe flimsy wraith of him she conjuredOut of a dream with his wand of absence.
And if the truth were now but a mummery,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,Were not amiss when she revealed them.Whether she struggled or not, he saw them.
Also, he saw that while she was hearing himHer eyes had more and more of the past in them;And while he told what cautious honorTold 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.
"If men were not for killing so carelessly,And women were for wiser endurances,"He said, "we might have yet a world hereFitter for Truth to be seen abroad in;
"If Truth were not so strange in her nakedness,And we were less forbidden to look at it,We might not have to look." He stared thenDown at the sand where the tide threw forward
Its cold, unconquered lines, that unceasinglyFoamed against hope, and fell. He was calm enough,Although he knew he might be silencedOut of all calm; and the night was coming.
"I climb for you the peak of his infamyThat you may choose your fall if you cling to it.No more for me unless you say more.All you have left of a dream defends you:
"The truth may be as evil an auguryAs 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:
"What you believe is right for the two of usMakes 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 coveringThe whole cold ocean's healing indifference.No ship was coming. When the darknessFell, she was there, and alone, still gazing.
"Why am I not myself these many days,You ask? And have you nothing more to ask?I do you wrong? I do not hear your praiseTo God for giving you me to share your task?
"Jealous — of Her? Because her cheeks are pink,And she has eyes? No, not if she had seven.If you should only steal an hour to think,Sometime, there might be less to be forgiven.
"No, you are never cruel. If once or twiceI found you so, I could applaud and sing.Jealous of — What? You are not very wise.Does not the good Book tell you anything?
"In David's time poor Michal had to go.Jealous of God? Well, if you like it so."
You that in vain would front the coming orderWith eyes that meet forlornly what they must,And only with a furtive recognitionSee dust where there is dust, —Be sure you like it always in your faces,Obscuring your best graces,Blinding your speech and sight,Before you seek again your dusty placesWhere the old wrong seems right.
Longer ago than cave-men had their changesOur fathers may have slain a son or two,Discouraging a further dialecticRegarding what was new;And after their unstudied admonitionOccasional contritionFor their old-fashioned waysMay have reduced their doubts, and in additionSoftened their final days.
Farther away than feet shall ever travelAre the vague towers of our unbuilded State;But there are mightier things than we to lead us,That will not let us wait.And we go on with none to tell us whetherOr not we've each a tetherDetermining how fast or far we go;And it is well, since we must go together,That we are not to know.
If the old wrong and all its injured glamourHaunts you by day and gives your night no peace,You may as well, agreeably and serenely,Give the new wrong its lease;For should you nourish a too fervid yearningFor what is not returning,The vicious and unfused ingredientMay give you qualms — and one or two concerningThe last of your content.
"No, Mary, there was nothing — not a word.Nothing, and always nothing. Go againYourself, and he may listen — or at leastLook up at you, and let you see his eyes.I might as well have been the sound of rain,A wind among the cedars, or a bird;Or nothing. Mary, make him look at you;And even if he should say that we are nothing,To know that you have heard him will be something.And yet he loved us, and it was for loveThe Master gave him back. Why did He waitSo long before He came? Why did He weep?I thought He would be glad — and Lazarus —To see us all again as He had left us —All as it was, all as it was before."
Mary, who felt her sister's frightened armsLike those of someone drowning who had seized her,Fearing at last they were to fail and sinkTogether in this fog-stricken sea of strangeness,Fought sadly, with bereaved indignant eyes,To find again the fading shores of homeThat she had seen but now could see no longer.Now she could only gaze into the twilight,And in the dimness know that he was there,Like someone that was not. He who had beenTheir brother, and was dead, now seemed aliveOnly in death again — or worse than death;For tombs at least, always until today,Though sad were certain. There was nothing certainFor man or God in such a day as this;For there they were alone, and there was he —Alone; and somewhere out of Bethany,The Master — who had come to them so late,Only for love of them and then so slowly,And was for their sake hunted now by menWho feared Him as they feared no other prey —For the world's sake was hidden. "Better the tombFor Lazarus than life, if this be life,"She thought; and then to Martha, "No, my dear,"She said aloud; "not as it was before.Nothing is ever as it was before,Where Time has been. Here there is more than Time;And we that are so lonely and so farFrom home, since he is with us here again,Are farther now from him and from ourselvesThan we are from the stars. He will not speakUntil the spirit that is in him speaks;And we must wait for all we are to know,Or even to learn that we are not to know.Martha, we are too near to this for knowledge,And that is why it is that we must wait.Our friends are coming if we call for them,And there are covers we'll put over himTo make him warmer. We are too young, perhaps,To say that we know better what is bestThan he. We do not know how old he is.If you remember what the Master said,Try to believe that we need have no fear.Let me, the selfish and the careless one,Be housewife and a mother for tonight;For I am not so fearful as you are,And I was not so eager."
Martha sankDown at her sister's feet and there sat watchingA flower that had a small familiar nameThat was as old as memory, but was notThe name of what she saw now in its briefAnd infinite mystery that so frightened herThat life became a terror. Tears againFlooded her eyes and overflowed. "No, Mary,"She murmured slowly, hating her own wordsBefore she heard them, "you are not so eagerTo see our brother as we see him now;Neither is He who gave him back to us.I was to be the simple one, as always,And this was all for me." She stared againOver among the trees where Lazarus,Who seemed to be a man who was not there,Might have been one more shadow among shadows,If she had not remembered. Then she feltThe cool calm hands of Mary on her face,And shivered, wondering if such hands were real.
"The Master loved you as He loved us all,Martha; and you are saying only thingsThat children say when they have had no sleep.Try somehow now to rest a little while;You know that I am here, and that our friendsAre coming if I call."
Martha at lastArose, and went with Mary to the door,Where they stood looking off at the same place,And at the same shape that was always thereAs if it would not ever move or speak,And always would be there. "Mary, go now,Before the dark that will be coming hides him.I am afraid of him out there alone,Unless I see him; and I have forgottenWhat sleep is. Go now — make him look at you —And I shall hear him if he stirs or whispers.Go! — or I'll scream and bring all BethanyTo come and make him speak. Make him say onceThat he is glad, and God may say the rest.Though He say I shall sleep, and sleep for ever,I shall not care for that . . . Go!"
Mary, movingAlmost as if an angry child had pushed her,Went forward a few steps; and having waitedAs long as Martha's eyes would look at hers,Went forward a few more, and a few more;And so, until she came to Lazarus,Who crouched with his face hidden in his hands,Like one that had no face. Before she spoke,Feeling her sister's eyes that were behind herAs if the door where Martha stood were nowAs far from her as Egypt, Mary turnedOnce more to see that she was there. Then, softly,Fearing him not so much as wonderingWhat his first word might be, said, "Lazarus,Forgive us if we seemed afraid of you;"And having spoken, pitied her poor speechThat had so little seeming gladness in it,So little comfort, and so little love.
There was no sign from him that he had heard,Or that he knew that she was there, or caredWhether she spoke to him again or diedThere at his feet. "We love you, Lazarus,And we are not afraid. The Master saidWe need not be afraid. Will you not sayTo me that you are glad? Look, Lazarus!Look at my face, and see me. This is Mary."
She found his hands and held them. They were cool,Like hers, but they were not so calm as hers.Through the white robes in which his friends had wrapped himWhen he had groped out of that awful sleep,She felt him trembling and she was afraid.At last he sighed; and she prayed hungrilyTo God that she might have again the voiceOf Lazarus, whose hands were giving her nowThe recognition of a living pressureThat was almost a language. When he spoke,Only one word that she had waited forCame from his lips, and that word was her name.
"I heard them saying, Mary, that He weptBefore I woke." The words were low and shaken,Yet Mary knew that he who uttered themWas Lazarus; and that would be enoughUntil there should be more . . . "Who made Him come,That He should weep for me? . . . Was it you, Mary?"The questions held in his incredulous eyesWere more than she would see. She looked away;But she had felt them and should feel for ever,She thought, their cold and lonely desperationThat had the bitterness of all cold thingsThat were not cruel. "I should have wept," he said,"If I had been the Master. . . ."
Now she could feelHis hands above her hair — the same black hairThat once he made a jest of, praising it,While Martha's busy eyes had left their workTo flash with laughing envy. Nothing of thatWas to be theirs again; and such a thoughtWas like the flying by of a quick birdSeen through a shadowy doorway in the twilight.For now she felt his hands upon her head,Like weights of kindness: "I forgive you, Mary. . . .You did not know — Martha could not have known —Only the Master knew. . . . Where is He now?Yes, I remember. They came after Him.May the good God forgive Him. . . . I forgive Him.I must; and I may know only from HimThe burden of all this. . . . Martha was here —But I was not yet here. She was afraid. . . .Why did He do it, Mary? Was it — you?Was it for you? . . . Where are the friends I saw?Yes, I remember. They all went away.I made them go away. . . . Where is He now? . . .What do I see down there? Do I see Martha —Down by the door? . . . I must have time for this."
Lazarus looked about him fearfully,And then again at Mary, who discoveredAwakening apprehension in his eyes,And shivered at his feet. All she had fearedWas here; and only in the slow reproachOf his forgiveness lived his gratitude.Why had he asked if it was all for herThat he was here? And what had Martha meant?Why had the Master waited? What was comingTo Lazarus, and to them, that had not come?What had the Master seen before He came,That He had come so late?
"Where is He, Mary?"Lazarus asked again. "Where did He go?"Once more he gazed about him, and once moreAt Mary for an answer. "Have they found Him?Or did He go away because He wishedNever to look into my eyes again? . . .That, I could understand. . . . Where is He, Mary?"
"I do not know," she said. "Yet in my heartI know that He is living, as you are living —Living, and here. He is not far from us.He will come back to us and find us all —Lazarus, Martha, Mary — everything —All as it was before. Martha said that.And He said we were not to be afraid."Lazarus closed his eyes while on his faceA tortured adumbration of a smileFlickered an instant. "All as it was before,"He murmured wearily. "Martha said that;And He said you were not to be afraid . . .Not you . . . Not you . . . Why should you be afraid?Give all your little fears, and Martha's with them,To me; and I will add them unto mine,Like a few rain-drops to Gennesaret."
"If you had frightened me in other ways,Not willing it," Mary said, "I should have knownYou still for Lazarus. But who is this?Tell me again that you are Lazarus;And tell me if the Master gave to youNo sign of a new joy that shall be comingTo this house that He loved. Are you afraid?Are you afraid, who have felt everything —And seen . . . ?"
But Lazarus only shook his head,Staring with his bewildered shining eyesHard into Mary's face. "I do not know,Mary," he said, after a long time."When I came back, I knew the Master's eyesWere looking into mine. I looked at His,And there was more in them than I could see.At first I could see nothing but His eyes;Nothing else anywhere was to be seen —Only His eyes. And they looked into mine —Long into mine, Mary, as if He knew."
Mary began to be afraid of wordsAs she had never been afraid beforeOf loneliness or darkness, or of death,But now she must have more of them or die:"He cannot know that there is worse than death,"She said. "And you . . ."
"Yes, there is worse than death."Said Lazarus; "and that was what He knew;And that is what it was that I could seeThis morning in his eyes. I was afraid,But not as you are. There is worse than death,Mary; and there is nothing that is goodFor you in dying while you are still here.Mary, never go back to that again.You would not hear me if I told you more,For I should say it only in a languageThat you are not to learn by going back.To be a child again is to go forward —And that is much to know. Many grow old,And fade, and go away, not knowing how muchThat is to know. Mary, the night is coming,And there will soon be darkness all around you.Let us go down where Martha waits for us,And let there be light shining in this house."
He rose, but Mary would not let him go:"Martha, when she came back from here, said onlyThat she heard nothing. And have you no moreFor Mary now than you had then for Martha?Is Nothing, Lazarus, all you have for me?Was Nothing all you found where you have been?If that be so, what is there worse than that —Or better — if that be so? And why should you,With even our love, go the same dark road over?"
"I could not answer that, if that were so,"Said Lazarus, — "not even if I were God.Why should He care whether I came or stayed,If that were so? Why should the Master weep —For me, or for the world, — or save HimselfLonger for nothing? And if that were so,Why should a few years' more mortalityMake Him a fugitive where flight were needless,Had He but held his peace and given his nodTo an old Law that would be new as any?I cannot say the answer to all that;Though I may say that He is not afraid,And that it is not for the joy there isIn serving an eternal IgnoranceOf our futility that He is here.Is that what you and Martha mean by Nothing?Is that what you are fearing? If that be so,There are more weeds than lentils in your garden.And one whose weeds are laughing at his harvestMay as well have no garden; for not thereShall he be gleaning the few bits and ortsOf life that are to save him. For my part,I am again with you, here among shadowsThat will not always be so dark as this;Though now I see there's yet an evil in meThat made me let you be afraid of me.No, I was not afraid — not even of life.I thought I was . . . I must have time for this;And all the time there is will not be long.I cannot tell you what the Master sawThis morning in my eyes. I do not know.I cannot yet say how far I have gone,Or why it is that I am here again,Or where the old road leads. I do not know.I know that when I did come back, I sawHis eyes again among the trees and faces —Only His eyes; and they looked into mine —Long into mine — long, long, as if He knew."