And yet again the two men glared,
Close face to face above that tomb;
Each seemed as jealous of the room
The other eager waiting shared.
Again the man began to say,—
As taking up some broken thread,
As talking to the patient dead,—
The Creole was as still as they:
“That night we burned yon grass-grown town,—
The grasses, vines are reaching up;
The ruins they are reaching down,
As sun-browned soldiers when they sup.
“I knew her,—knew her constancy.
She said, this night of every year
She here would come, and kneeling here,
Would pray the live-long night for me.
“This praying seems a splendid thing!
It drives old Time the other way;
It makes him lose all reckoning
Of years that pagans have to pay.
“This praying seems a splendid thing!
It makes me stronger as she prays—
But oh the bitter, bitter days
When I became a banished thing!
“I fled, took ship,—I fled as far
As far ships drive tow’rd the North-Star;
For I did hate the South, the sun
That made me think what I had done.
“I could not see a fair palm-tree
In foreign land, in pleasant place,
But it would whisper of her face
And shake its keen sharp blades at me.
“Each black-eyed woman would recall
A lone church-door, a face, a name,
A coward’s flight, a soldier’s shame:
I fled from woman’s face, from all.
“I hugged my gold, my precious gold,
Within my strong, stout, buckskin vest.
I wore my bags against my breast
So close I felt my heart grow cold.