Uncompleted Lives

At last we stand again upon the heather here.
Just where we stood five years ago to-day, my dear:
The morning is all round us, — wind and light and scent;
Above us are the high, blue, foreign, summer skies;
That way lie cornfields and rich, pastoral content;
In front the great sea shines, and almost blinds the eyes.
You hear the ripple, stirring shell and pebble, —
A pleasant sound, that delicate, tremulous treble;
The air is warm with the sun, and keen with the sea;

And cliffs and sky and summer are the same:
But we are greatly changed; we twain can never be
As we were when we last this path together came.
That day we let our dreams fly far away like birds;
Fools were we, surely, for a few impatient words
To give up all the joy which had been ours, indeed, —
The perfect spiritual community,
The rapture of a passion naught might supersede.
The unapproachable, divinest ecstasy
Of being wholly one with one you love the best;
For love with sweetness does the simplest things invest.
How fair it looked to us! — that life we cast away;
And yet we are not wretched, neither you nor I.
You have your children and their interests, to-day;
And I paint pictures that find men to praise and buy.
Sometimes I have forgotten you; and yet at hours, —
And mostly when Spring comes with all her birds and

flowers, —
At twilight, when the winds are gathered into rest,

A vision of you, as I saw you last of all,
Fills ray poor lonely room, and leans upon my breast,
Till for passionate self-pity the tears begin to fall.
And I call you from my deep and desolate heart, —
From the life in which you have no longer any part;
But silence only mocks my bitter discontent,

And the cruel darkness sweeps away the vision,
And I sicken at the roses' potent scent,
And the moon and starlight laugh me to derision.
And now we stand together, and I hear your voice.
We had our time for choosing once, — we made our choice;
We chose to part; we twain in Love's sight did this sin.
Has Love forgiven it to us? — consider well:
You know he has not, for we only now begin
To know the meaning of that word — "irreparable."
It is our punishment that we should meet to-day;
And do you bid me help you, find some word to say
To heal our wounded spirits with, and stanch regret?

Too late it is for words our stricken lives to heal;
Deep in your soul, as deep in mine, the pain is set
Which hardly to each other yet we may reveal:
No great despair, — so noble and intense
It elevates the heart, is its own recompense, —
But dull, continuous ache of incompleteness.
Persistent sense of failure in life's highest good.
Echoes of songs, and breaths of parted sweetness.
From lands we may not now re-enter though we would.
Come on, to where the little wind-blown chapel stands,
With all its quaint inscriptions carved by seamen's hands.
Last night, when I came in from wandering by the sea.

And saw you sitting lonely in the salon there,
Your face bent down, and sweet eyes never seeing me,
The lamplight falling on your shining, golden hair,
The knowledge of your actual presence in the place,
The sight, again, of your fair, often-dreamed-of face,
Overcame me; and I stood there, only knowing

In a moment more perchance we should be meeting;
And I ceased to hear the summer sea-wind blowing.
And louder than the seas I heard my own heart beating.
You must have risen, though I did not see you rise,
For, a moment more, I was looking in your eyes.
And I heard your voice, low and sweet and nothing changed, —

The strangely quiet, deeply passionate voice;
And so we met again, whom fate had long estranged.
Who loved, yet in this meeting hardly could rejoice.
Then in the fresh, sweet darkness we sat upon the
beach, —
We twain, and he, your husband, weak of will and speech;
I took your hand, and my eager blood turned fire,

As a great flame that a great wind drives before it;
My heart turned to you with a cry of wild desire.
But my lips kept mute, and I wonder how I bore it.
And all night long I lay awake, and heard the sea
Under the light, dry summer wind sound fitfully, —
Now soft among the pebbles, stirring stone by stone;

Now vehement with hiss and bubble of spray;
Now soft again, in some most tender undertone;
Now loud and very near, then faint and far away, —
And the thought of you so filled me that I could not sleep;
And the moonlight bright and broad lay over shore and

deep;
And I told my passion to the moon and to the sea;

And every way I looked I seemed to see you there,
The head bent back, and sweet eyes never seeing me;
The lamplight falling on your shining, golden hair.
And now we stand alone together, you and I, —
We twain who saw Love come, and let him pass us by, —
Give me your hands, and listen, dearest. We must wait,
And bear the trouble of our days as best we may;
And when we are both older, passion shall abate,
As summer winds that at the sundown fall away.
And leave the earth to feel the moon's pure light, —
The great, compassionate quietude of night.
You say that day seems distant? Yes, but come it will, —
As surely as our death-day it will come to pass, —
When we may meet as friends, without a single thrill,
And smile at all the joy and all the grief that was.
But here is the chapel, smelling damp as any cell;
We have it wholly to ourselves, though; that is well.
Rest here, my dear; you understand now all it meant.

That day you let the scorn break out of lips and heart,
And then the deep, unutterable discontent, —
Your life divorced from mine, of which your life was part.
But now, before we part forever, I and you.
One kiss upon the lips to last my whole life through, —
One draught of joy, one blessed glimpse of paradise,
With sound of shining angels singing round Love's throne.
O lonely place! O moment that Love deifies!
I hold you to my heart now, mine, and mine alone.
O my divided life, my first and only love!
O sweet, pale Northern flower! O fairest, fluttered dove!
Alas! there is no help in life for our great pain;
The winter winds must blow, and summer suns must burn.
The tides obey the moon, all things fulfil their reign.
And we must bear to walk apart, and vainly yearn.