This was the sleepless worm which curled
In my heart’s petals, at the root
Where my heart’s sweetness had its source.
You never saw the worm! My speech
Poised like a bee who knows the loot
Of honey’s gone, and turns his course.
I kept the petals closed, and you
Breathed at their tips, but would have known
All of their fragrance, or of blight.
That’s love—to have no place where light
And understanding have not shone.
Your face reproached me—I who knew
No sweet or bitter essences
Can be withheld from Love that keeps
An onward flight, which ever sees,
Or would see, all in the heart’s deeps.
Then Life came, and with lifted sword
Laid on our souls his dread command;
“Say your farewells, part hand from hand,
You the adorer, and adored.
Duty is seeking you! And Grief
Would have her child return and see
The changeless halls of Misery,
And the bare board and darkened hearth.”
I reeled with anguish as the earth
Sank from my feet. For oh the end
Seemed far as death! And when it came
It was my hope, my soul’s desire
To part as friend may part from friend,
And that you’d keep alive my name
Bright as an altar’s quenchless fire.
It could not be! How could it be?
I was not truth! I was not true—
I kept my soul’s real self from you.
Then I bethought me: “Since his earth
Is Autumn-stricken with a doubt
That I am worth not his love’s worth,
Were it no better he should know
Disloyalty made definite
By a suspected past re-knit,
And see our love a play played out,
Than to live through the soft decline
Of our bright day to solemn eve—
A sunset of remembrance—where
He walks devoured by love and hate—
Love for the love I strove to give,
Hate for a thought intuitive:
Some newer love her heart hath won
Or some first love hath won her back.
No, to my faith, he says, “I’ll cleave,
Believing that I can’t believe.”
“Slow death to love! Exquisite rack!”
Ah me! I had not made this fate—
The warp was stretched, the woof was spun,
The roof-tree laid long years before
You entered at the unbolted door.
“Then what is best? What can be done?
To give him back his pride and strength,
And even his peace of mind at length?
Better a quick blow! Better blood!
To brace the soul and poise the brain
And make him what he was again.”
Just then the Shadow near me stood
Who stepped aside for you. He took
With unabated comradeship
My hand in his. That closed our book.
I woke to hear the water drip
Blown out of heavens low and dim.
He brushed my tears off with his hand—
Nor clouds nor memory trouble him.
And my one thought of you was this:
I’ve cured you with this sacrifice—
The hate has come to you I planned.
The hate that may take form in words,
For scorn like this: “I found a seam
“Right at the contact of our love.
“No recreative fire can warm
“And fuse fine gold with lifeless dross,
“Or worthy metal make thereof.”
This killed your love and wrecked your dream!
This is my soul’s confession. Wait,
A trickster in a hooded form
Stands by as we begin to pull
The weaving beam, and throws between
The warp and woof a ball of wool.
It catches and is woven in
The colors, spoils the conscious blend,
Changes the pattern to the end.
Whatever it be I call it fate.
In misery or in happiness
We must live on awhile no less.
Shall we be master weavers, climb,
Or leave the loom, or waste the time?
Or guide the shuttle till the threads
Weave clear or turn to worthless shreds?
IN THE LOGGIA
There were seven nights of the moon
This August, beloved.
There were nights before the seven
When we scarcely saw the moon,
Or perhaps as we canoed, ere the sun sank,
We saw her as a transparent tissue of white
Against a sky as white.
But when we first saw the moon
She had risen before the sun had sunk.
Then the next night she was brighter
With the evening planet above her,
Despite the tongues of fire in the west
Where the sun had set on fire
Great coils of cloud!
And then there were those nights between
Her growth and her o’erflowing fullness
When hand in hand we walked in your garden
Amid the Chinese balloons and coreopsis,
Hibiscus, marigold, hydrangeas,
Under the rose arches,
And by the hedge of California privet,
And looked at the lake,
And the moon in the sky
And the moon on the lake.
And do you remember what we saw
As we stared at the wake of the moon
On the lake?
The ripples made blacknesses,
And the moon made silver splendors,
And as we stared we saw
In the shadows of waves
Running into the light of the moon on the water
Youths and maids and children
Coming from darkness into the light in a dance,
Joining hands, falling into embraces,
Hurrying to evanishment at the path of light
Where the moon had paved the water.
I shall never see the moon on the water
Without seeing these youths and maids and children,
And without thinking of that night
Of the full moon!
This was the night
We saw the moon rise, from the very first,
Across the lake o’ertopping the forest.
A spire of pine stood up
Against a sky made pale as of the northern lights.
But in a moment a bit of fire lit the spire of the pine
As it were a candle lighted.
And she rose so fast that I took my watch
To time the rising of the moon
Free and clear of the spire.
And she rose so fast that as we gazed
She cleared the spire,
And soared with such silent glory above the forest,
And sailed to the southwest of the spire.
And at that moment the whippoorwills
Began to sing in the woodlands near—
We had not heard them before in all this summer.
And we stood in the loggia
In the silence of our own thoughts,
In the silence of the full moon!
And it was then that the pressure of your hand
Gave me a meaning of sorrow.
It was then that the pressure of your hand
Spoke, as flame which turns in the wind,
Of a change in your heart.
But if not a change, of another’s heart
Toward whom you turned.
And I sit in the loggia to-night
Waiting for the moon to rise,
She will not rise till midnight,
And then she will rise, a poor half wreck of herself.
No whippoorwill has sung to-night,
And none will sing.
And if there are youths and maids and children
Hurrying into the dance on the water,
Embracing and fading in light,
I shall not see.
No, in this darkness where I breathe
The scent of the sweet alyssum
Which you planted and tended
I shall wait for midnight,
And the rise of our ruined moon.
In the darkness of the loggia
Under a sky that hopes for no moon to-night,
Save the wasted moon of midnight,
I am filled with a deep happiness
And a thankfulness to the Power
Behind the sky:
I am filled with a joy as wide and deep as nature
That my love for you
Can live without your love for me,
And asks nothing of you,
And nothing for you
Save that you find what you seek!