Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Second Book of Modern Verse. 1922.

The Hill Wife

ONE ought not to have to care

So much as you and I

Care when the birds come round the house

To seem to say good-bye;

Or care so much when they come back

With whatever it is they sing;

The truth being we are as much

Too glad for the one thing

As we are too sad for the other here—

With birds that fill their breasts

But with each other and themselves

And their built or driven nests.

ALWAYS—I tell you this they learned—

Always at night when they returned

To the lonely house from far away,

To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,

They learned to rattle the lock and key

To give whatever might chance to be

Warning and time to be off in flight:

And preferring the out- to the in-door night,

They learned to leave the house-door wide

Until they had lit the lamp inside.

SHE had no saying dark enough

For the dark pine that kept

Forever trying the window-latch

Of the room where they slept.

The tireless but ineffectual hands

That with every futile pass

Made the great tree seem as a little bird

Before the mystery of glass!

It never had been inside the room,

And only one of the two

Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream

Of what the tree might do.

IT was too lonely for her there,

And too wild,

And since there were but two of them,

And no child,

And work was little in the house,

She was free,

And followed where he furrowed field,

Or felled tree.

She rested on a log and tossed

The fresh chips,

With a song only to herself

On her lips.

And once she went to break a bough

Of black alder.

She strayed so far she scarcely heard

When he called her—

And didn’t answer—didn’t speak—

Or return.

She stood, and then she ran and hid

In the fern.

He never found her, though he looked

Everywhere,

And he asked at her mother’s house

Was she there.

Sudden and swift and light as that

The ties gave,

And he learned of finalities

Besides the grave.