Classic Poem

Down the palm-way from Eden in the midnight
Lay dreaming Eve by her outdriven mate,
Pillowed on lilies that still told the sweet
Of birth within the Garden's ecstasy.
Pitiful round her face that could not lose
Its memory of God's perfecting was strewn
Her troubled hair, and sigh grieved after sigh
Along her loveliness in the white moon.
Then sudden her dream, too cruelly impent,
With pain broke and a cry fled shuddering
Into the wounded stillness from her lips—
As, cold, she fearfully felt for his hand,
And tears, that never before had visited
Her lids with anguish, drew from her the moan:
‘Oh, Adam! … What have I dreamed?
Now do I understand His words, so dim
To creatures that had quivered but with bliss!
Since at the dusk your kiss to me, and I
Wept at caresses that were once all joy,
I have slept, seeing through Futurity
The uncreated ages visibly—
Foresuffering phantoms crowded in the womb
Of Time, and all with lamentable mien
Accusing, without mercy, me and thee!
And without pity! for though some were far
From birth, and had no name, others were near—
Sodom and dark Gomorrah—from whose flames
Fleeing one turned … how like her look to mine
When the tree's horror trembled on my taste!
And Babylon upbuilded on our sin;
And Nineveh, a city sinking slow
Under a shroud of sandy centuries
That hid me not from the buried cursing eyes
Of women who too bitterly gave birth!

‘Ah, to be mother of all misery!
To be first-called out of the earth and fail
For a whole world! To shame maternity
For women evermore—women whose tears
Flooding the night, no hope can wipe away!
To see the wings of Death, as, Adam, thou
Hast not, endlessly beating, and to hear
The swooning ages suffer up to God!
And oh, that birth-cry of a guiltless child
In it are sounding of our sin and woe,
With prophecy of ill beyond all years!
Yearning for beauty never to be seen—
Beatitude redeemless evermore!
That birth-cry! soon so sadly to awake
That thou, Adam, dear fallen thought of God,
Thou, when thou too shalt hear humanity
Cry in thy child, wilt groaning wish the world
Back in unsummoned Void, and, woe! wilt fill
God's ear with troubled wonder and unrest!’

Softly he soothed her straying hair, and kissed
The fever from her lips. Over the palms
The sad moon poured her peace into their eyes,
Till Sleep, the angel of forgetfulness,
Folded again dark wings above their rest.