Two Wives

I     Into the shadow-white chamber silts the white     Flux of another dawn. The wind that all night     Long has waited restless, suddenly wafts     A whirl like snow from the plum-trees and the pear,     Till petals heaped between the window-shafts         In a drift die there.     A nurse in white, at the dawning, flower-foamed pane     Draws down the blinds, whose shadows scarcely stain     The white rugs on the floor, nor the silent bed     That rides the room like a frozen berg, its crest     Finally ridged with the austere line of the dead         Stretched out at rest.     Less than a year the fourfold feet had pressed     The peaceful floor, when fell the sword on their rest.     Yet soon, too soon, she had him home again     With wounds between them, and suffering like a guest     That will not go. Now suddenly going, the pain         Leaves an empty breast.     II     A tall woman, with her long white gown aflow     As she strode her limbs amongst it, once more     She hastened towards the room. Did she know     As she listened in silence outside the silent door?     Entering, she saw him in outline, raised on a pyre         Awaiting the fire.     Upraised on the bed, with feet erect as a bow,     Like the prow of a boat, his head laid back like the stern     Of a ship that stands in a shadowy sea of snow     With frozen rigging, she saw him; she drooped like a fern     Refolding, she slipped to the floor as a ghost-white peony slips         When the thread clips.     Soft she lay as a shed flower fallen, nor heard     The ominous entry, nor saw the other love,     The dark, the grave-eyed mistress who thus dared     At such an hour to lay her claim, above     A stricken wife, so sunk in oblivion, bowed         With misery, no more proud.     III     The stranger's hair was shorn like a lad's dark poll     And pale her ivory face: her eyes would fail     In silence when she looked: for all the whole     Darkness of failure was in them, without avail.     Dark in indomitable failure, she who had lost         Now claimed the host,     She softly passed the sorrowful flower shed     In blonde and white on the floor, nor even turned     Her head aside, but straight towards the bed     Moved with slow feet, and her eyes' flame steadily burned.     She looked at him as he lay with banded cheek,         And she started to speak     Softly: "I knew it would come to this," she said,     "I knew that some day, soon, I should find you thus.     So I did not fight you. You went your way instead     Of coming mine - and of the two of us     I died the first, I, in the after-life         Am now your wife."     IV     "'Twas I whose fingers did draw up the young     Plant of your body: to me you looked e'er sprung     The secret of the moon within your eyes!     My mouth you met before your fine red mouth     Was set to song - and never your song denies         My love, till you went south."     "'Twas I who placed the bloom of manhood on     Your youthful smoothness: I fleeced where fleece was none     Your fervent limbs with flickers and tendrils of new     Knowledge; I set your heart to its stronger beat;     I put my strength upon you, and I threw         My life at your feet."     "But I whom the years had reared to be your bride,     Who for years was sun for your shivering, shade for your sweat,     Who for one strange year was as a bride to you - you set me aside     With all the old, sweet things of our youth; - and never yet     Have I ceased to grieve that I was not great enough         To defeat your baser stuff."     V     "But you are given back again to me     Who have kept intact for you your virginity.     Who for the rest of life walk out of care,     Indifferent here of myself, since I am gone     Where you are gone, and you and I out there         Walk now as one."     "Your widow am I, and only I. I dream     God bows his head and grants me this supreme     Pure look of your last dead face, whence now is gone     The mobility, the panther's gambolling,     And all your being is given to me, so none         Can mock my struggling."     "And now at last I kiss your perfect face,     Perfecting now our unfinished, first embrace.     Your young hushed look that then saw God ablaze     In every bush, is given you back, and we     Are met at length to finish our rest of days         In a unity."