"Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark,
Tekel, found wanting, set aside,
Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the dark
Till comfort come, and the last be bled:
He? He is tagging your epitaph."
And now sounds that cry of the girl of In a Year.
"If it could only come over again!"
She must have loved him best. If there had been time. . . . She would have probed his heart and found what blood is; then would have twitched the robe from her lay-figure of a poet, and pricked that leathern heart, to find that only verses could spurt from it. . . .
"And late it was easy; late, you walked
Where a friend might meet you; Edith's name
Arose to one's lip if one laughed or talked;
If I heard good news, you heard the same;
When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped;
I could bide my time, keep alive, alert."
Now she is dead: "no doubting more." . . . But somehow he will get his good of it! He will keep alive—and long, she shall see; but not like the others; there shall be no turning aside, and he will begin at once as he means to end. Those others may go on with the world—get gold, get women, betray their wives and their husbands and their friends.
"There are two who decline, a woman and I,
And enjoy our death in the darkness here."[301:1]
And he recurs to her cherished, her dwelt-on, adored defects. Only he could have loved her so, in despite of them. The most complex mood of lovers, this! Humility and pride are mingled; one knows not which is which—the pride of love, humility of self. Only so could the loved one have declined to our level; only so could our love acquire value in those eyes—and yet "the others" did not love so, the defects were valid: there should be some recognition: "I loved, quand même!" Why, it was almost the defects that brought the thrill:
"I liked that way you had with your curls,
Wound to a ball in a net behind:
Your cheek was chaste as a quaker-girl's,
And your mouth—there was never, to my mind,
Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut;
And the dented chin, too—what a chin!
There were certain ways when you spoke, some words
That you know you never could pronounce:
You were thin, however; like a bird's
Your hand seemed—some would say, the pounce
Of a scaly-footed hawk—all but!
The world was right when it called you thin.
But I turn my back on the world: I take
Your hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.
Bid me live, Edith!"