My grand-dame, vigorous at eighty-one,
Delights in talking of her only son,
My gallant father, long since dead and gone.
‘Ah, but he was the lad!’
She says, and sighs, and looks at me askance.
How well I read the meaning of that glance—
‘Poor son of such a dad;
Poor weakling, dull and sad.’
I could, but would not tell her bitter truth
About my father’s youth.
She says: ‘Your father laughed his way through earth:
He laughed right in the doctor’s face at birth,
Such joy of life he had, such founts of mirth.
Ah, what a lad was he!’
And then she sighs. I feel her silent blame,
Because I brought her nothing but his name.
Because she does not see
Her worshipped son in me.
I could, but would not, speak in my defence,
Anent the difference.
She says: ‘He won all prizes in his time:
He overworked, and died before his prime.
At high ambition’s door I lay the crime.
Ah, what a lad he was!’
Well, let her rest in that deceiving thought,
Of what avail to say, ‘His death was brought
By broken sexual laws,
The ancient sinful cause.’
I could, but would not, tell the good old dame
The story of his shame.
I could say: ‘I am crippled, weak, and pale,
Because my father was an unleashed male.
Because he ran so fast, I halt and fail
(Ah, yes, he was the lad),
Because he drained each cup of sense-delight
I must go thirsting, thirsting, day and night.
Because he was joy-mad,
I must be always sad.
Because he learned no law of self-control,
I am a blighted soul.’
Of what avail to speak and spoil her joy.
Better to see her disapproving eyes,
And silent, hear her say, between her sighs,
‘Ah, but he was the boy!’
HUSKS
She looked at her neighbour’s house in the light of the waning day—
A shower of rice on the steps, and the shreds of a bride’s bouquet.
And then she drew the shade, to shut out the growing gloom,
But she shut it into her heart instead. (Was that a voice in the room?)
‘My neighbour is sad,’ she sighed, ‘like the mother bird who sees
The last of her brood fly out of the nest to make its home in the trees’—
And then in a passion of tears—‘But, oh, to be sad like her:
Sad for a joy that has come and gone!’ (Did some one speak, or stir?)
She looked at her faded hands, all burdened with costly rings;
She looked on her widowed home, all burdened with priceless things.
She thought of the dead years gone, of the empty years ahead—
(Yes, something stirred and something spake, and this was what it said:)
‘The voice of the Might Have Been speaks here through the lonely dusk;
Life offered the fruits of love; you gathered only the husk.
There are jewels ablaze on your breast where never a child has slept.’
She covered her face with her ringed old hands, and wept and wept and wept.