I TILT my hollowed life and look within:
The wine it held has left a purple trace—
Behold, a stain where happiness had been.
If I should shatter down this empty vase,
Through what abysses would my soul be tossed
To meet its judge in undiscovered lands?
What sentence meted me, alone and lost,
Before him with the fragments in my hands?
Better the patient earth that loves me still
Should drip her clearness on this purple stain;
Better my life upheld to her should fill
With limpid dew, and gradual gift of rain.
VIII
SOME whim of Marta’s shields me from the night,
And fretted that my curtain should be kept
Close drawn, and wakeful candles over bright,
I welcomed in the quiet moon and slept;
Then woke again in fear—the night was old,
The witching tide of silver shut away,
And Marta’s shaking hand on mine was cold,
Her bending face above me strange and grey.
“Who sleeps beneath the moon,” she whispered low,
“Must pale with her, nor wind nor noon-day sky
Be his again whose pulses beat more slow,
More faint, till with the waning moon ... they die.”
THE END