The Great Valley

by Edgar Lee Masters

But if love be free
And if you love though only for an hour
Why not the cup of love? Her former friend
Piqued to an interest by my love for her
Came back to see if he had overlooked
A beauty he would have. Well, she confessed
Their night together. It was at the time
My poor canzones which sang our stormy love
Had just been finished. Every artist fool
Writes sonnets or canzones once in his life.
And so I had to add a verse to tell
Her faithlessness—or was it faithlessness?
Since she declared she loved me, did not love
This older friend. But if she did not love him
What was this act? She called it just a trial
Of our love which had stood the test, O God
Such mazes for my soul!

Flushed then with wrath
And drink I beat her cruelly. She stood
With scarce a cry of pain and let me strike,
And said if I considered it was just
To beat her so, she wished to bear the pain.
Then with a cry I ceased. We fell asleep
Stretched on the bed together. When we woke
She kissed me her forgiveness. I returned
The kiss, ah me!

So now the story turns.
There was a woman critic who pursued
My work with hateful words. Before I knew
The cockatrice I found it best to fold
This critic’s column under, never read.
And in a day or two from that on which
I beat my mistress, what should I behold?—
A letter from her—she had left the town
Without my knowing, she was visiting
This critic enemy at her summer home.
And in this mail I found my poor canzones
Returned to me, and in the letter this:
“My friend says for some reason you would try
To compromise me by this wretched verse,
So I return it to you, go and burn.
I shall not see you more—so she advises,
And so I think. I wish you well no less.
You are a little old to rise to fame,
Or excellence in acting, yet go on.
Perhaps there is not aught beside to do,
And it will occupy your mind, good-bye.”

So shortly everywhere I seemed to sense
The feeling that they deemed me foul and base.
While we were friends I made her known to artists,
And writers in the city. With this start
She had gone on and multiplied her friends
Among this folk. I saw it all at once
As one sees dawn from darkness. Then
The social standard melted, gave away
To all that had been written for some years.
Free love had won at last. And we who kept
Our love in hiding, she who lied to keep
Her name as one who lived a maiden’s life,
And I who doubted, hated her because
She was not freshly mine, we, she and I,
Stepped to a world all new, she to enjoy
And I to perish. I was weak from loss
Of blood from wounds she gave me, spent for love
Poured for her sorrow, for she grieved and wept
That I was not her early love, her love
At love’s beginning. I went here and there
To build her life up, make it rich, repair
The injuries of her youth, retrieve the days
Which had brought loneliness. Forbear with me—
I thought I could tell all in just a word—
Yes, this is it—She learned what was my strength
And took it for her own, found out my faults
And struck me there. She gave me confidence
And trust, I fancied. On analysis
She had concealed herself, there had not been
Clear understanding with us. So she took
My friends, and friends are never wholly friends,
And made them hers, through these made other friends,
Explored my havens, my alliances,
My secret powers of prestige in the world.
And I awoke to find the world my foe!
And every desk of every editor
Silent for knowledge of me, breaking silence
In just a word of hate. You see she loosed
This story like a mist which creeps through cracks
That I had compromised her. Then behold
I who had helped to bring this era in
Of sex equality, yes, in spite of all,
My ingrained feelings I have spoken of,
Found myself robbed of her by just the creed
I had upheld, and saw her live with him
Who was her friend, before I knew her, yes,
And justified by those whom she had feared,
Because they hated me, and pitied him
Bound to a woman in a loveless life
Who would not free him, let him marry her.

Then the last atom of my strength I summoned
To play Othello. It was death or life!
Soul triumph or soul ruin. But you see
The cockatrice had sent the word around
And sharpened every critic eye. I faced
An audience of one mind, could sense it all
Where hatred, mild amusement were well mixed
To poison, paralyze creative power,
And even break my memory. But I said
Show now your genius, drink the hatred in
Till all your spirit sparkles as a star
When the north wind of winter blows at night.
Nothing opposes but a woman’s hate.
Rise on its wreckage. So I spurred myself.
And even when I saw her critic friend
Limned from the mass of faces, lost my clue
And waited for the prompter, then my rage
Upheld me—yes, but wait—the rest is brief.

I had not acted through the strangle scene
When I heard calls and bells, the curtain fell,
My understudy led me from the stage.
Out in the night we went—I knew not where—
It was a night of drink, and I awoke
To strange surroundings in a scented room,
A woman with light hair lay by my side
“How did I get here”—then the woman laughed—
She was a Fury, for the Furies had me.
Out of the house I ran, from place to place,
All day went wandering in the city, thus
My wanderings of ten years began, they seem
Ten centuries. What do you think of this?
I’m fifty-seven, with a bad complex,
Can you unravel it and make me well?

THE LAST CONFESSION

Dear, if you knew how my poor heart
Aches for your heart by day and night—
Forever lost to life’s delight,
As seasons pass and years depart,
You would not let the invisible flame
Of hatred sear and scar your soul,
Where once in living light my name
Was lettered like an aureole!

You, who lost faith in me, will not
Believe this last confession, made
To lift your spirit from the shade
Wherein it walks and views the spot
Of my offense. But when I saw
That our love’s life must have an end,
I looked back o’er our path with awe
And traced it toward us to the sign
Where our ways severed, yours and mine.
There stood Remorse’s dreaded shape!
Your Disbelief! Your Self-Contempt!
I saw our love was not exempt
From ruin and could not escape.
We could not separate and smile,
And keep a faithful thought the while
Of understanding (like a spring
Hidden, refreshing, murmuring)
As friend sometimes takes leave of friend.
Then what was left? It was this thought
That at the last came forth to slay
Your love, without a warning brought
Ere my lips tightened to betray!

For as our love found depths too deep;
As absence almost deadened sense;
As often I awoke from sleep
And looked for hours at you, all tense,
Lest you awake and see my eyes,
Where the one thought of purest love
Shone like a fixed star’s paradise,
I learned to know that Self above—
Making the heart’s hierarchy pure—
Stands the archangel Truth, preferred—
Throned over Love which can endure
Only where Truth has stood, unstirred.
Watchful and with his torch of stars
Held o’er Love’s face, although it shows
The forehead’s pain, the bosom’s scars,
The cheeks bleached out from secret tears
In memory of impalpable blows,
Shed in the night’s long solitude.
You see I could not give you truth!
There was the Shadow in my life
Cast by the fierce Sun of my youth.
And as our day fell to the west
The Shadow lengthened and the strife
’Twixt Love and Truth within my breast
Waxed fiercer. Heaven’s deathless blue
Leaned on my hungering soul and pained
Its wings, as if a joy were lost,
Or never had been quite attained,
Or captured at too great a cost.
I could not give you truth all true.
My love for you and then the thirst
For all your love, made me accursed
Of fear that if you knew me first,
Just as I am, your heart would cease
To cherish mine. And then much more
Was this fear venom to my peace
When all the world spread out before
Our astonished eyes, as our own world,
And we its children, each for each.