The Woman I Met

A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted     A lamp-lit crowd;     And anon there passed me a soul departed,     Who mutely bowed.     In my far-off youthful years I had met her,     Full-pulsed; but now, no more life's debtor,     Onward she slid     In a shroud that furs half-hid.     "Why do you trouble me, dead woman,     Trouble me;     You whom I knew when warm and human?      How it be     That you quitted earth and are yet upon it     Is, to any who ponder on it,     Past being read!"     "Still, it is so," she said.     "These were my haunts in my olden sprightly     Hours of breath;     Here I went tempting frail youth nightly     To their death;     But you deemed me chaste me, a tinselled sinner!     How thought you one with pureness in her     Could pace this street     Eyeing some man to greet?     "Well; your very simplicity made me love you     Mid such town dross,     Till I set not Heaven itself above you,     Who grew my Cross;     For you'd only nod, despite how I sighed for you;     So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you!      What I suffered then     Would have paid for the sins of ten!     "Thus went the days. I feared you despised me     To fling me a nod     Each time, no more: till love chastised me     As with a rod     That a fresh bland boy of no assurance     Should fire me with passion beyond endurance,     While others all     I hated, and loathed their call.     "I said: 'It is his mother's spirit     Hovering around     To shield him, maybe!' I used to fear it,     As still I found     My beauty left no least impression,     And remnants of pride withheld confession     Of my true trade     By speaking; so I delayed.     "I said: 'Perhaps with a costly flower     He'll be beguiled.'     I held it, in passing you one late hour,     To your face: you smiled,     Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there     A single one that rivalled me there! . . .     Well: it's all past.     I died in the Lock at last."     So walked the dead and I together     The quick among,     Elbowing our kind of every feather     Slowly and long;     Yea, long and slowly. That a phantom should stalk there     With me seemed nothing strange, and talk there     That winter night     By flaming jets of light.     She showed me Juans who feared their call-time,     Guessing their lot;     She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time,     And that did not.     Till suddenly murmured she: "Now, tell me,     Why asked you never, ere death befell me,     To have my love,     Much as I dreamt thereof?"     I could not answer. And she, well weeting     All in my heart,     Said: "God your guardian kept our fleeting     Forms apart!"     Sighing and drawing her furs around her     Over the shroud that tightly bound her,     With wafts as from clay     She turned and thinned away.     LONDON, 1918.