The Old Poet and His Wife

AROUND her fell the evening glow,
Her old hands lying on her knee,
As if the years had bent her low.
“ When I was young and fair,” sighed she,
“ Oh, long, so very long, ago ”—
“ Nay, nay, my love, you still are so;
You always will be fair to me,
You always will be fair! ” said he.

“ But I was fairer when a bride;
Ah, mock not these gray hairs that know —
So swift, so swift the seasons slide,”
She murmured — “seventy winters’ snow.”
“ Nay, there,” said he, “ the lights still hide
In gilded shadows where divide
The locks in hyacinthine flow,
While in this mask of age you go.”

“ Alas! and were it so, unseen
Even the mask lies soon. How soon,
How soon,” she sighed, “my grave is green!
The thrush without me trills his tune,
Without me twilight is serene;
All things forget that I have been,
And still on balanced wings the moon
Pursues the purple darks of June! ”

“Nay, summer comes,” he said, “and goes
By you, as in some desert spot
Sands fan the porphyry Pharaohs,
Unnoting, and divinely hot.
Let the bird build, and let the rose
Flower as the star flowers at the close
Of day, — you will not be forgot,
For you remain when these are not.

“ They pass, like chaff the loose winds thresh;
But you are sealed within my verse,
With all your blushes ever fresh
As those bright figures men unhearse,
The bloom upon the fruity flesh,
The ribbon in the ringlet’s mesh,
Through sunny centuries nothing worse
For gray Pompeii’s ashen curse!

“ If Phidias’ self had carved you, dear,
In ivory, enriched with gold,
Some blithe barbarian with his spear,
Climbing the rampart, bare and bold,
Had thrust you downward with a jeer;
Gaunt roots had wreathed for many a year
Your beauty; and some boor had rolled
A broken antique from the mold.

“ Or if on Titian’s canvas you
Had mixed your colors with the sun,
And from the gates of morning drew
The splendors that your shape puts on,
Some envious ray, some blistering dew,
One day would blot the wondrous view,
When all the spells that Venice spun
O’er her wan waters were undone!

“ But in the compass of a song,
Sweetheart, you breathe diviner air,
While music beats its pulse along
The happy lines that hold you there.
Still when old Homer clear and strong
Lifts up his voice, what echoes throng
From fierce kings’ voices, sounding where
Great Helen lives forever fair!

“ And so, far down the years that yearn
For light and blossom, hid in doom,
Some eve when skyey fires burn
To ashes, one in some dim room
The strain of an old book shall learn,
And thumb a yellowing leaf, and turn
To see you stand there and illume
With sudden shining all the gloom.

“ Just as on that dear day I first
Drew out, with tender artifice,
The length of the thick curls that pursed
Their clinging, clasping shapes to miss
None of the sunshine, all athirst,
Like globes of Shiraz grapes that burst
Gold from the shade. And one bold kiss
Rapt me, — like this, old wife, and this!

“ Ay, though a thousand years be fled,
The sight denied me he shall have:
The quick throbs kindling rosy red
The dimpled damask that they gave,
The darkling glow the soft eyes shed,
The trembling smile,—though I be dead,
Mine, mine, not his, the power to save, —
A dead old man within my grave!

“Yet should you cease from off the face
Of the sweet earth, and I be blest
With no man’s memory for the space
Of a song’s singing, that is best.
Laid side by side in some green place
Asleep —Fate grants a further grace
To none. And sweeter, for the rest,
The earth that holds you in her breast! ”