78
ALICE: AN ADULTERY
THE DAY WITHOUT A NUMBER.
‘*© never shall the sun that morrow see.”
Macbeth.
WE lost a day! Nor kisses, nor regret,
Nor fear, nor pain, nor anything at all!
The day was lost, evanished past recall,
That saw no sunrise, never saw sun set—
For East and West invisibly were met
In gateways neither glad nor musical
Nor melancholy nor funereal.
Nought is there to remember nor forget.
Yet in my westward journey many hours
I stole, and now must pay them back
again.
I plucked not one flower, but an hundred
flowers ;
I bore an hundred passions in my brain—
King Solomon had three hundred para-
mours,
I quite agree that everything is vain.
THE THIRTY-FIRST DAY.
“ You whoreson villain ! will you let it fall?”
Taming of the Shrew.
THE inexpiable fate whose shuddering wing
Fear fled from, changed the native deed
of sin
Into a spasmic kiss too salt and keen,
Windless, that ended with a sterile sting
The earlier hour whose heart was full of
spring 3
And the large love grew piteously lean;
Dreadful, like death; withdrawn and
epicene
At the mad crisis of the eventful thing.
O that such tender fondness like a flower’s
Should take such nameless infamy!
That we
Should pluck such bitter bloom, rooted
in fear,
1 On the westward voyage across the Pacific
a day is ‘lost’ on the 180th degree.
Salt with the scurf of some diseaséd sea,
Foul with the curse of God: that we
are here,
Hating the night’s: inexorable hours.
THE THIRTY-SECOND DAY.
‘* Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained
And prayed me oft forbearance.”
Cymbeline,
How sweet the soft looks shot, endearing
shame
With their warm fragrance of love’s
modest eyes !
The secret knowledge of our secrecies
Shone from their distance with a subtle
flame,
And gave to pudency a rosier name
When the long lashes drooped, and
saintlier sighs
Took softer meanings, till my arteries
Throbbed with the glad desire that went
and came.
‘¢ I charge you in the very name of love.”
Quoth she: ‘* We have all day to steal
below
And snatch short kisses out of danger’s
throat.
Why beg you night: is not the day enough?”
But I: ‘‘ The night is panting and aglow
To feel our hair distraught and limbs
afloat.”
THE THIRTY-THIRD DAY.
‘‘Clubs, clubs! These lovers will not keep the
peace.’
Titus Andronicus.
NATHLESS she locked her calbin-door to me.
All lovers guess the piteous night I
passed—
Shuddering phantoms, hideous and
aghast,
Loomed, lust of hate! toward me: how
did she?