Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Her Going
By Agnes Lee
The Wife
C
None shall hear you now if you knock or clamor.
All is dark, hidden in heaviest leafage.
None shall behold you.
Gone, gone, the dear, the beautiful lady!
I, her comrade, tarry but to lament her.
Ah, the day of her vanishing all things lovely
Shared in her fleetness!
Tell me her going.
You are a child. How tell you?
I am a child, yet old as the earliest sorrow.
Talk to me as you would to an old, old woman.
I own the ages.
Voices, they say, gossipped around her dwelling.
She awoke, departing, they say, in silence.
I am glad she is gone. The old hurt fastens.
Hate is upon me.
Wonder why the tears were forever welling,
Wonder if on his lips her kiss I tasted
Turning to claim him.
Jealousy, mad, brooding blind and unfettered,
Takes its terrible leap over lie and malice.
Who shall question her now in the land of shadow?
Who shall uphold her?
It was hard to know that peace had forsaken
All my house, to greet with a dull endeavor
Babe or book, so to forget a moment
I was forgotten.
Who shall question her now in the land of shadow,
Question the mute pale lips, and the marble fingers,
Eyelids fallen on eyes grown dim as the autumn?
Ah, the beloved!
Go, go, bringer of ache and discord!
Go I may not. Some, they think to inter me.
Out of the mold and clay my visible raiment
Rises forever.
Hers the sin that lured the light from our threshold,
Hers the sin that I lost his love and grew bitter.
Lost his love? You never possessed it, woman.
Sharp tongue, have pity!…
I said in my heart: “Time shall bring buds to blossom.”
I almost saw the flower of the flame descending.
Then—she came toying.
Mine, mine, mine—yes, body and spirit!
I am glad she has gone her way to the shadow.
Hate is upon me.
All that eludes my soul, while he remembers!
You, dispel if you can my avenging passion—
Clouds are before me!