Classic Poem

PART VI.

Who curseth Sorrow knows her not at all.
Dark matrix she, from which the human soul
Has its last birth; whence it, with misty thews
Close knitted in her blackness, issues out
Strong for immortal toil up such great heights
As crown o'er crown rise through Eternity.
Without the loud, deep clamour of her wail,

The iron of her hands, the biting brine
Of her black tears, the soul, but lightly built
Of indeterminate spirit, like a mist
Would lapse to chaos in soft, gilded dreams,
As mists fade in the gazing of the sun.
Sorrow, dark mother of the soul, arise!
Be crowned with spheres where thy blest children dwell,
Who, but for thee, were not. No lesser seat
Be thine, thou Helper of the Universe,
Than planet on planet piled — thou instrument
Close clasped within the great Creative Hand!

The Land had put his ruddy gauntlet on,
Of harvest gold, to dash in Famine's face;
And like a vintage wain deep dyed with juice
The great moon faltered up the ripe, blue sky,
Drawn by silver stars — like oxen white
And horned with rays of light. Down the rich land
Malcolm's small valleys, filled with grain lip high,
Lay round a lonely hill that faced the moon
And caught the wine kiss of its ruddy light.
A cusped, dark wood caught in its black embrace
The valleys and the hill, and from its wilds,
Spiced with dark cedars, cried the whippoorwill.
A crane, belated, sailed across the moon.
On the bright, small, close linked lakes green islets lay —
Dusk knots of tangled vines, or maple boughs,
Or tufted cedars, bossed upon the waves.
The gay, enamelled children of the swamp
Rolled a low bass to treble, tinkling notes
Of little streamlets leaping from the woods.
Close to old Malcolm's mills two wooden jaws

Bit up the water on a sloping floor;
And here, in season, rushed the great logs down
To seek the river winding on its way.
In a green sheen, smooth as a naiad's locks,
The water rolled between the shuddering jaws,
Then on the river level roared and reeled
In ivory-armed conflict with itself.

" Look down, " said Alfred, " Katie, look and see
How that but pictures my mad heart to you.
It tears itself in fighting that mad love
You swear is hopeless. Hopeless — is it so? "
" Ah, yes, " said Katie, " ask me not again! "
" But Katie, Max is false; no word has come,
Nor any sign from him for many months,
And — he is happy with his Indian wife. "

She lifted eyes fair as the fresh, grey dawn
With all its dews and promises of sun.
" O Alfred, saver of my little life,
Look in my eyes and read them honestly! "
He laughed till all the isles and forests laughed.
" O simple child! what may the forest flames
See in the woodland ponds but their own fires?
And have you, Katie, neither fears nor doubts? "
She with the flower-soft pinkness of her palm
Covered her sudden tears, then quickly said,
" Fears — never doubts, for true love never doubts. "

Then Alfred paused a space, as one who holds
A white doe by the throat and searches for
The blade to slay her. " This your answer still?
You doubt not — doubt not this far love of yours,
Tho' sworn a false young recreant, Kate, by me? "
" He is as true as I am, " Katie said,
" And did I seek for stronger simile
I could not find such in the universe. "
" And were he dead? what, Katie, were he dead —
A handful of brown dust, a flame blown out —
What then? would love be strongly true to — naught? "
" Still true to love my love would be, " she said,
And, faintly smiling, pointed to the stars.

" O fool! " said Alfred, stirred as craters rock
To their own throes, while over his pale lips
Rolled flaming stone — his molten heart. " Then, fool,
Be true to what thou wilt, for he is dead,
And there have grown this gilded summer past
Grasses and buds from his unburied flesh!
I saw him dead. I heard his last, loud cry,
" O Kate!" ring thro' the woods; in truth I did! "
She half raised up a piteous, pleading hand,
Then fell along the mosses at his feet.

" Now will I show I love you, Kate, " he said,
" And give you gift of love; you shall not wake
To feel the arrow feather-deep within
Your constant heart. For me, I never meant
To crawl an hour beyond what time I felt
The strange fanged monster that they call Remorse
Fold round my wakened heart. The hour has come;
And as Love grew the welded folds of steel
Slipped round in horrid zones. In Love's flaming eyes
Stared its fell eyeballs, and with hydra head
It sank hot fangs in breast and brow and thigh.
Come, Kate! O Anguish is a simple knave
Whom hucksters could outwit with small trade lies,
When thus so easily his smarting thralls
May flee his knout! Come, come, my little Kate;
The black porch with its fringe of poppies waits, —
A propylaeum hospitably wide, —
No lictors with their fasces at its jaws,
Its floor as kindly to my fire-veined feet
As to thy silver-lilied, sinless ones!
O you shall slumber soundly, tho' the white,
Wild waters pluck the crocus of your hair,
And scaly spies stare with round, lightless eyes
At your small face laid on my stony breast!
Come, Kate; I must not have you wake, dear heart,
To hear you cry, perchance, on your dead Max! "

He turned her still face close upon his breast,
And with his lips upon her soft-ringed hair
Leaped from the bank, low shelving o'er the knot
Of frantic waters at the long slide's foot.
And as the severed waters crashed and smote
Together once again, within the wave-
Stunned chamber of his ear there pealed a cry,
" O Kate! Stay, madman, traitor, stay! O Kate! "

Max, gaunt as prairie wolves in famine time
With long-drawn sickness, reeled upon the bank,
Katie, new rescued, waking in his arms.
On the white riot of the waters gleamed
The face of Alfred, calm, with close sealed eyes,
And blood red on his temple where it smote
The mossy timbers of the groaning slide.

" O God! " cried Max, as Katie's opening eyes
Looked up to his, slow budding to a smile
Of wonder and of bliss, " my Kate, my Kate! "
She saw within his eyes a larger soul
Than that light spirit that before she knew,
And read the meaning of his glance and words.
" Do as you will, my Max; I would not keep
You back with one light falling finger-tip! "
And cast herself from his large arms upon
The mosses at his feet, and hid her face
That she might not behold what he would do;
Or lest the terror in her shining eyes
Might bind him to her, and prevent his soul
Work out its greatness; and her long, wet hair
Drew massed about her ears, to shut the sound
Of the vexed waters from her anguished brain.

Max looked upon her, turning as he looked.
A moment came a voice in Katie's soul:
" Arise, be not dismayed, arise and look;
If he shall perish, 'twill be as a god,
For he will die to save his enemy. "
But answered her torn heart: " I cannot look —
I cannot look and see him sob and die
In those pale, angry arms. O let me rest
Blind, blind and deaf until the swift-paced end.
My Max! O God! was that his Katie's name? "
Like a pale dove, hawk-hunted, Katie ran,
Her fear's beak in her shoulder; and below,
Where the coiled waters straightened to a stream,
Found Max all bruised and bleeding on the bank,
But smiling with man's triumph in his eyes
When he has on fierce Danger's lion neck
Placed his right hand and plucked the prey away.
And at his feet lay Alfred, still and white,
A willow's shadow trembling on his face.
" There lies the false, fair devil, O my Kate,
Who would have parted us, but could not, Kate! "
" But could not, Max, " said Katie. " Is he dead? "
But, swift perusing Max's strange, dear face,
Close clasped against his breast, forgot him straight
And every other evil thing upon
The broad green earth.