WIDOW LA RUE
I
What will happen, Widow La Rue?
For last night at three o'clock
You woke and saw by your window again
Amid the shadowy locust grove
The phantom of the old soldier:
A shadow of blue, like mercury light—
What will happen, Widow La Rue?
What may not happen
In this place of summer loneliness?
For neither the sunlight of July,
Nor the blue of the lake,
Nor the green boundaries of cool woodlands,
Nor the song of larks and thrushes,
Nor the bravuras of bobolinks,
Nor scents of hay new mown,
Nor the ox-blood sumach cones,
Nor the snow of nodding yarrow,
Nor clover blossoms on the dizzy crest
Of the bluff by the lake
Can take away the loneliness
Of this July by the lake!
Last night you saw the old soldier
By your window, Widow La Rue!
Or was it your husband you saw,
As he lay by the gate so long ago?
With the iris of his eyes so black,
And the white of his eyes so china-blue,
And specks of blood on his face,
Like a wall specked by a shake a brush;
And something like blubber or pinkish wax,
Hiding the gash in his throat——
The serum and blood blown up by the breath
From emptied lungs.
II
So Widow La Rue has gone to a friend
For the afternoon and the night,
Where the phantom will not come,
Where the phantom may be forgotten.
And scarcely has she turned the road,
Round the water-mill by the creek,
When the telephone rings and daughter Flora
Springs up from a drowsy chair
And the ennui of a book,
And runs to answer the call.
And her heart gives a bound,
And her heart stops still,
As she hears the voice, and a faintness courses
Quick as poison through all her frame.
And something like bees swarming in her breast
Comes to her throat in a surge of fear,
Rapture, passion, for what is the voice
But the voice of her lover?
And just because she is here alone
In this desolate summer-house by the lake;
And just because this man is forbidden
To cross her way, for a taint in his blood
Of drink, from a father who died of drink;
And just because he is in her thought
By night and day,
The voice of him heats her through like fire.
She sways from dizziness,
The telephone falls from her shaking hand. ...
He is in the village, is walking out,
He will be at the door in an hour.
III
The sun is half a hand above the lake
In a sky of lemon-dust down to the purple vastness.
On the dizzy crest of the bluff the balls of clover
Bow in the warm wind blowing across a meadow
Where hay-cocks stand new-piled by the harvesters
Clear to the forest of pine and beech at the meadow's end.
A robin on the tip of a poplar's spire
Sings to the sinking sun and the evening planet.
Over the olive green of the darkening forest
A thin moon slits the sky and down the road
Two lovers walk.
It is night when they reappear
From the forest, walking the hay-field over.
And the sky is so full of stars it seems
Like a field of buckwheat. And the lovers look up,
Then stand entranced under the silence of stars,
And in the silence of the scented hay-field
Blurred only by a lisp of the listless water
A hundred feet below.
And at last they sit by a cock of hay,
As warm as the nest of a bird,
Hand clasped in hand and silent,
Large-eyed and silent.
O, daughter Flora!
Delicious weakness is on you now,
With your lover's face above you.
You can scarcely lift your hand,
Or turn your head
Pillowed upon the fragrant hay.
You dare not open your moistened eyes
For fear of this sky of stars,
For fear of your lover's eyes.
The trance of nature has taken you
Rocked on creation's tide.
And the kinship you feel for this man,
Confessed this night—so often confessed
And wondered at—
Has coiled its final sorcery about you.
You do not know what it is,
Nor care what it is,
Nor care what fate is to come,—
The night has you.
You only move white, fainting hands
Against his strength, then let them fall.
Your lips are parted over set teeth;
A dewy moisture with the aroma of a woman's body
Maddens your lover,
And in a swift and terrible moment
The mystery of love is unveiled to you. ...
Then your lover sits up with a sigh.
But you lie there so still with closed eyes.
So content, scarcely breathing under that ocean of stars.
A night bird calls, and a vagrant zephyr
Stirs your uncoiled hair on your bare bosom,
But you do not move.
And the sun comes up at last
Finding you asleep in his arms,
There by the hay cock.
And he kisses your tears away,
And redeems his word of last night,
For down to the village you go
And take your vows before the Pastor there,
And then return to the summer house. ...
All is well.