Classic Poem

At the dim head of the long winding stair
She waited, doubtful; the one gas-light's flare
Left the dusk round her shadowy and astir,
But outlined her
Sharply above him. As that flame
Touched into life her unforgotten face,
He paused, and could not speak her name.
And she from her high place
Looked down, and knew him, — silent a moment's space, —
And then swiftly she cried —
" Why did you ring? Come, wanderer, inside,
And see my wonderful rooms! — wonderful they were to be,
But some inertia has laid hold of me
And I have never done the things I planned.
Here a Thibetan altar was to stand,
And here my giant divan, one foot high,
Broad as the sky,
And covered with stripes of yellow and grey, indeed most marvelously!
But you are here, and nothing yet is done ...
Turn, let me look at you, far-wandering one! "

They sat upon a bare couch in that room
Vast and high-ceilinged, where the tender gloom
Of night was broken only by soft glows
From candle-shades of yellow touched with rose —
Sat and talked swiftly lest some strangeness come
Out of a pause of silence and make them dumb. . . .
With hungry eyes, he watched the quick moods chase
Each other across the sweet curve of her face,
And watched her turn and lift her eyes and smile
And speak and listen and look at him the while
With a bright friendly eagerness that was
Between them like a wall of shining glass.
There she sat, — beautiful, tender, within his grasp, —
And yet, for all his strength, he could not clasp
Her to him. An unsolved remoteness hung
In veils around her; and her eyes, that clung
To him, seemed searching for some difficult art
To thread the maze of his and her own heart.

They took each other's hands. —
" Yes, you are you, " she said;
" And yet one understands
How for a moment strangeness will be shed
Between us as we speak; and only slowly
Shall we regain sense of each other wholly. "
As they talked on
At first some part of her seemed changed or gone;
But then her voice would poise on a certain tone
With the old sweetness,
So that he knew she had not grown
Into another; yet some obscure completeness
Quite unremembered hung around her;
And a year's power had carved her delicate face
More intricately than when he first had found her, —
Shadowing forth out of their secret place
The gods and demons in her spirit furled
That made her her , unmatched in all the world.

" How long, how long it has been, "
She said; and to her questionings, then he told
Of the wide year and what had passed between, —
What labors he had ended, what manifold
New tasks he had begun; and how it seemed
That now at last the fame which he had dreamed
Some day should come to him began to shed
Its grateful warmth around his head
That had so long, lone and unhonored, bent
Over his organ-keys. Her delicate listening lent
To the dull tale a glamor, — made it glow
With more fulfillment than he had dared to know;
And all the long endeavor now seemed sweet
As he laid down the story at her feet.

" And you? " he asked. But she
Only smiled at him softly, silently —
Then said — " I have written you letters! ... No more, just now, of me. "

And then she took
From the low stool beside her a thin book
Saying — " Rest: you are tired " ; and he lay
Upon the divan where she sat, her stray
Hand in his hand; his head was on her knees,
And thus he half embraced her; but wide seas
Lay unexplored between them. As she read
Her hand crept to his head
And idly touched his hair
With as much quietude as the wandering air
Might so have used. The delicate candle-light
Drew round them a small circle, with the night
Empty, tremendous, thunderously astir
Beyond the small oasis where they were, —
Beyond the little isle of glow where he and she
Lay side by side, sundered immeasurably.

And very far away
Seemed that tempestuous day
When they had met. Not at the place where last
They had parted could their spirits now embark,
But from a dark
And unknown spot.
They had come by separate paths to a new land:
Now they must stand
Doubtful in alien regions, and discover
What world this was, — whether of friend or lover
Or utter stranger. And his hopes' bright wings
Sank baffled, beaten, lost amid this mist of shadowings.