Two Ways of Love.
55
And fled like lepers from a face we knew,
Or might be known by, and in silence kept
Our secrets in the graveyards of our hearts.
I never used your name. Oh! bitter years
When by degrees I woke to life and saw
With comprehending eyes my own a wreck.
What need to tell you this? My Mother died,
The deadly silence that between us lay
Unbroken. Oh, the bitter years! Of you—
And of that empty marriage form that lay
Unknown and unacknowledged in the past—
I never thought. It was too poor a thing
To claim my mind that ever circled round
The plague spot in my life, and found such deeps
Of fruitless agony, as may, God grant,
No other woman plumb. Ten years had passed
Before I knew a moment's interlude
From this brain torture. Suddenly my heart
Sprang up among its ashes and I saw
Myself, a woman young and beautiful,
And very rich, and of a blameless fame.
And, lifting my bowed head again, I vowed
To live, and let my dead and sheeted past
Bury its dead.
Or might be known by, and in silence kept
Our secrets in the graveyards of our hearts.
I never used your name. Oh! bitter years
When by degrees I woke to life and saw
With comprehending eyes my own a wreck.
What need to tell you this? My Mother died,
The deadly silence that between us lay
Unbroken. Oh, the bitter years! Of you—
And of that empty marriage form that lay
Unknown and unacknowledged in the past—
I never thought. It was too poor a thing
To claim my mind that ever circled round
The plague spot in my life, and found such deeps
Of fruitless agony, as may, God grant,
No other woman plumb. Ten years had passed
Before I knew a moment's interlude
From this brain torture. Suddenly my heart
Sprang up among its ashes and I saw
Myself, a woman young and beautiful,
And very rich, and of a blameless fame.
And, lifting my bowed head again, I vowed
To live, and let my dead and sheeted past
Bury its dead.
