The Great Valley

by Edgar Lee Masters

I was pale from fear and pride
As I entered the box with you.
I felt I was wronging my dreams
And apostatizing all I had dreamed
To be in this box with you.
And a sullen hatred of everything:
The mass of color, the faint perfumes,
The lights, the jewels, the dazzling breasts
Of the queens in the boxes angered me.
And everyone was smiling, and everyone was leveling
Opera glasses, sometimes at me,
A translator of Homer
And a dreamer of socialism.
And there like a fool I sat and thought
Of the cold without and the beggar man
Who stood at your carriage as we alighted.

And when the music arose at last
A sort of madness whirled in my brain.
For what was this Carmen thing
But subtle wickedness and cruel lust
And hardest heathenism,
And delight that seeks its own,
In a setting of bloody voluptuousness,
Fiendish caprice and faithlessness,
In music through which a pagan soul
Had sensed and voiced it all?
Till at least (I almost shrieked at this)
Don Jose in his amorous madness
Plunged a knife in the back of the whore he loved
To the growl of horns and moan of viols....

And you sat through it all
Like a firefly on a vine leaf
Suspiring in all your body,
And gazing with calm Egyptian eyes,
Or turning to me as if you would know
If the poison was in my blood....
But I was immune:
Democracy seemed too glorious,
And the cause of the poor too just,
And fair sweet love of men and women
So worth the cost to gain and keep,
And honest bread too sweet—
I was immune....
And I scarcely saw the fair slim girl
To whom you introduced me.
And I scarcely heard what you said in the carriage
About her countless riches.
And I scarcely heard your words of praise
That I looked like a prince,
And that you meant to help me,
And do by me what your husband would do
If he were living,
And lift me along to a place in life
Where power and riches are,
And beauty is and music,
And where struggle and sacrifice are forgotten.

And when I did not answer you thought
I sat abashed by your side.
Instead in my mind were running
The notes to Queen Mab,
And bits of Greek.
I did this to stifle my wrath,
And to forget the cage you were luring me into,
And the poison you were offering me,
And the cause of Truth!
And hiding my wrath in a day or two
I left you saying I would return,
But I never returned.

Instead I went where the youths were thinking,
Painting and writing,
And talking of the revolution,
And the glorious day to come.
And I was happy even though
They sent my great translation back
As poor and amateurish.
For the years of youth were long ahead
There was time to try again....

Then Margaret’s stepmother
Drove her from home, and she came to the city
Crying in her loneliness and destitution,
Suffering from her lame hip.
And even these were happy days,
For I loved her for her sorrows,
I loved her for her lameness.
It was all transfigured through my love
For democracy and sacrifice,
And the sweetness of honest bread.
And it was like taking the sacrament, our marriage.
And there in our little flat far out
On Robey Street I toiled at writing
While she went about so lame,
Trying to keep the house for me,
And to clear away the disorders
Which piled about her constantly
And were never cleared away....

And is it not strange that to-day,
After the lapse of ten years
These two things happen within an hour?
Your letter from Rome arrived—
For though I scorned your life and love,
And went my way,
You write me still it seems,
Not to wound my fallen state,
Nor to show me what my life had been
If I had heeded you.
But just in the continuous sunshine
Of noble friendship to show me
I am sometimes in your thought.
And scarcely had your letter come
When Tom Hall crept up the creaking stairs
Dragging his feet with the help of a cane—
He is rich and came to help me.
And Tom Hall had his way as well:
He hated marriage and went the rounds,
Wherever a pretty face allured.
And now he is sick and dragging his feet.
And here am I at a writing desk:
I’m cap and bells for the Daily Globe
And my grind is a column a day.
You see it comes to this, dear queen:
Can a man or woman alive escape
The granite’s edges or ditch’s mire,
The thorny thickets or marsh’s gas,
Or the traps one thinks would never be set
Except for the fox or wolf?....
And here is Margaret down with a cough
Never to rise from her bed again.
And I sit by at my task of jokes,
And I stop to read your letter again,
And wonder why life has never caught you,
And why you are laughing there in Rome
Where you dine with happy friends;
Or tramp the thickets around the ruins
Of the Baths of Caracalla—
I see the platforms and dizzy arches
Under a sky of Italy.
It’s cloudy here and the elevated
Rattles and roars beneath my window.
You’re picking flowers while it’s winter here.
I read these things in your letter and wonder
Is the asp at your breast in spite of laughter?
Or when is the asp to sting you?

THE ASP

As the train rushed on
The days of our youth swept through me,
As if they were brought to life by a sort of friction.
I thought of how madly you laughed
When we played at blindman’s buff with the Miller girls;
And of the May baskets we made together,
And hung as we rang the bell and ran.
And of our games in the first spring days
When we stole from house to house.
And the children were shouting
And the April moon was new.
And the smell of burning leaves
And the first tulips filled us with such ecstasy.
We laughed, we shouted, we leaped for joy.
We ran like mad through the rooms,
And we went to bed at last
Laughing and gasping,
And lay looking at the moon through the leafless boughs,
And fell to sleep with joyous hearts,
Thinking of to-morrow,
And the days and days to come for play,
And the summer to come,
And all the mad raptures of school at an end,
And no death, and no end
Of the love of father and mother,
And the home we loved.

And here it was spring again—
But such a spring!
At the end of such years and years
And births and births and spheres and spheres of life,
Each like a life or a world of its own
With its friends, its own completeness, its rounded end.
And back of them all
Our old home forgotten,
Our father and mother gone,
And back of this spring that ended world of ours
Wherein we parted
Grown misty too!
And as the train rushed on
And the hour of meeting you neared
I was thrilled with gladness, thrilled with fear.
And now the station was Herkimer,
And now it was Amsterdam,
And now it was Albany,
And then Poughkeepsie on the Hudson.
And I looked from the car to the passing scene,
And back to the car again.
Or I turned in my seat
Or took up my book and laid it down,
Or fastened my bag for the hundredth time,
Or straightened my cloak on the seat,
And waited and waited.
For I had a story to tell you
That I could not wait to tell.
I was traveling a thousand miles to tell you,
And to get your advice, to have your solace,
To look in your eyes again,
And to feel in spite of springs that were gone,
And our old home, and father and mother gone
There was an arm in the world for me to lean on.