University of Virginia Library

I'll not bear this any longer. I know that his heart is mine;
But in my house no girl shall make my life sicken and pine.
When dead—which may soon be— they may do what they list; I shall be
With my sweet baby, who now smiles out of the darkness on me;
My baby, whose soft little hands pull steadily at my heart,
To think of the better land, and cleave to the better part.
But this is my home while I live, and none shall bring trouble to it;
And he is my own while I live, and she, with her saucy wit,
Shall not come between him and me. He cares not for her in the least;
If she respected herself she might see that the west and the east
Are not more sundered than he from a woman who stings and pricks;
He laughs at her sallies of wit, but he sees through all of her tricks.
I know what is due to a wife; she thinks me a poor, silly fool,
But I can be dignified too, and I don't mean to sit down and pule.
Only last evening my ring slipped from my finger, and ran
Under her chair—my finger is thin and wasted and wan—
And picking it up, she put it, before my eyes, on her own,
Bidding him look how it fitted her, tight to the joint and the bone,
Just as if meant for her hand. And this was my marriage ring!
How can she sit by my fire, and smile in my face and sting?
Oh it is dreadful, a woman who has innuendoes and arts,
And looks so simple and sweet, while she is breaking hearts.
Yet I heed not her sneering; but oh to be once more alone,
To lay my head on his shoulder, and thrill at the old true tone
Of love that cherished me once, ever petting his fond little wife,
And, making a nest for me, rounded off all the angles of life.
Not that I care for petting—I'm not of the March-blossom kind,
Best in its velvet-sheath wrapt up from the blustering wind;
Rough weather I could bear, if only his heart were true
Unto the love he once bore me, and unto the God he once knew.

That is what troubles me most. The time was I prayed him to read
Daily the Book where my soul found help in my sorest need,
Light when my day was dark, and strength to my fainting will,
Comfort in time of trouble, and healing from every ill.
Now there is nothing dread so much as a text from him,
It is as if all the old stars of heaven were changed and dim,
Were not in their old places, and had not the same clear sense,
Nor dropt on my spirit the dews which gave it a gladness intense.
Changed is the meaning of all, though he keeps to the words and names;
They are new pictures that look now out of the antique frames;
They are new words that he sings now to the old tunes I know;
And strange is the taste of the streams now that in the old channels flow.
“Lo! as the rod of Aaron,” he says, “to minds perplexed
The critical art brings water e'en out of the flintiest text,
Clears a way through the desert, and gives to us angels' bread,
And quickens anew to life the faith that was well-nigh dead.”
But when I'm fain to learn the faith he is fain to boast,
Oh but it seems like another God speaking to men not lost;
No more the gate is strait, nor heaven is hard to win,
No more the world is fallen, nor death the wages of sin—
No more is there a curse now crucified on the tree—
No more any Redeemer, nor ransom paid for me.
Nothing is as it used to be; nothing is what it seems;
Nothing says what it used to say; and the old Faiths are all dreams;
Blindly the saints read the Scriptures, and like dotards obeyed them—
They've taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him
Now when I say this to him, he laughs in his good-humoured way,
Putting me off with a jest, as one with a child might play,
Which is not fair to his wife, however silly I be,
And I am no fool, although I be not so clever as he.
But Winnie, seeing me vexed thus, silently smiles where she sits,
Turning her eyebrows up, and sharpening her scornful wits,
Adding perhaps, by and by, “Ye buried your Lord in a creed,
Dark as the Golgotha tomb, and there He lay dead, indeed;
Should you complain that He is not there for you still to embalm
With unguents and spices, the while ye praise your dead Christ in a psalm?
If there's a chance for your gospel to live, which I very much doubt,
It is in this new resurrection the critics would fain bring about,
Laying aside the grave-clothes,—dogma, miracle, myth,
All the dust that the ages have covered His glory with,—
That we may look on the simple man as He lived and died,
Loved and loving and worshipped, and hated and crucified.”
So does she cap his wild words with others more wild, and a sneer
Hardens her voice as she speaks, and grates on my heart while I hear.