Before Light.
Among the first to wake. What wakes with me?
A blind wind, and a few birds, and a star.
With tremor of darkened flowers and whisper of birds,
O, with a tremor, with a tremor of heart
Begins the day in the dark. Like other days
Among my flowers, the morning will awake;
And I shall leave the high noon in my garden
And go my journey, as I live, alone.
“Come to the Port to-morrow,” says the letter,
And little more. He never was too kind,
This man, the one in the world kin to my son,
Who knew my sin, who watched me with cold eyes,
And stayed me with calm hands, and hid the thing
From horror more than pity; and took my son;
And mercifully let me ebb away
In this grey town of undesigned grey lives,
Five years already. To-day he sends for me.
And now I will prevent the dawn with prayers.
About Noon.
And towards the noon she lifted up her eyes,
Looked to the gentle hills; smiled, as she could,
A difficult smile that hurt half of her mouth,
Until she passed the streets and all sharp looks.
Sharp looks, and, since I was a child, sharp looks!
They knew not, certainly, who scan me so,
That not a girl of all their brightest girls
Has such an eager heart for smiles as I.
If they but knew what a poor child I am—
O, born of all the past, what a poor child!
I could waste golden days and showers of words,
And laugh for nothing, and read my poets again,—
I would not if I might. I would not cease,
No, if I might, the penance and the pain
For that lost soul down somewhere in the past,
That soul of mine; and yet I wish, I wish,
Such little wishes, and so longingly,—
Who would believe me, knowing what I am?
And I, being what I am, and having done
What I have done, look back upon my youth—
Before my sin I mean—and testify:
It was not happy, no, it was not white,
It was not innocent, no, the young fair time.
And now begins my one true white child-time,
This time of desolate altars and all ruins.
The world is full of endings for me, I find,
Emotions lost, and words and thoughts forgotten.
Yet, amid all these last things, there is one,
But one Beginning, a seed within my soul:
And I become a child with a world to learn,
Timorous, with another world to learn,
Timorous, younger, whiter towards my death.
Down the hills came she to the town and sea,
And met her child’s friend where he waited her.
“I sent for you, mind, for your sake alone,—
No, my dear ward is well. But he has learnt,
What I had faithfully kept, your life, your past,
Your secret. Well, we hope that you repent,
Your son, and I.” “God bless my son!
My little son hopes I repent at least.”
“When he had read the papers by mischance—
Beside himself at first, though the young heart
Recovered, and is calm now, he resolved
On the completest parting; he gives up
His hopes in England, his career, and sails
To-night to make a new life in the States.
As to the question of your seeing him—
He is in the town here—I persuaded him
To let you choose—this last time in the world.”
“Save me from the sick eyes of my one child,
But let me see my one child once, I pray.”
At Twilight.
Gone, O my child, forsaking me, my flower!—
Yet I, forsaken, pity you with tears.
Gone, gone into the West; not you alone,
My son who are leaving me, but he, the child
Of five years back. That is the worst farewell—
I had not thought him lost until to-day.
For he had kept with me until to-day;—
Never seen, never heard; but he was there,
Behind the door on which I laid my hand,
Out in the garden when I sat within.
As others greet a presence, I did greet
An absence, O my sweet, my sweet surprise!
How will it be now? For he is so changed
I hardly knew the face I saw pass by.
And yet it is the one that must of needs
Grow from that long ago face innocent,
Grave with the presage of a human life.
So, child, giving again in thought my kiss,
My last long since, I kiss you tall and changed
In that one kiss, and kiss you a man and old,
And so I kiss you dead. And yet, O child,
O child, a certain soul goes from my days;
They fall together like a rosary told,
Not Aves now, but beads,—you being gone.
I was not worthy to be comfortless,
I find; and feasts broke in upon my fasts;
And innocent distractions and desires
Surprised me in my penitential tears.
For my absent child, God gives me a child in Spring;
New seasons, and the fresh and innocent earth,
Ever new years, and children of the years
Kin to the young thoughts of my weary heart,
My kin in all the world. And He Himself
Is young in the quiet time of cold and snows:
Mary, who fled’st to Egypt with Him; Joseph;
And thou whose tomb I kissed in Padua,
Protect this perilous childhood in my heart!
It’s well I never guessed this thing before,—
I mean the weakness and the littleness
Of that which by God’s grace begins in me.
O earthly hopes and wishes, stay with me—
(He will be patient): linger, O my loves
And phases of myself, and play with this
New life of grace, as He Whose gift it is
With children played, a Child....
Less than I knew, less than I know, am I,
Returning childless, but, O Father, a child.
Footnote 2: