University of Virginia Library

THE WOMAN WITH THE DEAD SOUL

Allured by the disastrous tavern-light
Unhappy things flew in out of the night;
And ever the sad human swarm returned,
Some crazy-fluttering, and some half-burned.
Among the labourers, gnarled, and splashed with mire,
The disillusioned women sipping fire,
Slow tasting bargainers amid the flare,
And lurid ruminators,—I was 'ware
Of that cold face from which I may not run,
Which even now doth stab me in the sun.
That face was of a woman that alone
Sat sewing; a white liquor by her shone;
From which at moments warily and slow
She sipped; then bent above her sewing low.
A sober dress of decent serge she wore
Uplifted nicely from the smirching floor;
And with a bunch of grapes her hat was crowned,
Which trembled together if she glanced around.
Speckless, arranged; and with no braid awry,
All smoothed and combed she sewed incessantly.
She turned her eyes on me; they had no ray;
But stared like windows in the peer of day.
So cold her gaze that I bowed down my head
Trembling; it seemed to me that she was dead;
And that those hands mechanically went,
As though the original force not yet was spent.
You that have wailed above the quiet clay,
That on the pillow without stirring lay;
Yet think how I stood mourning by the side
Of her who sat, but seemed as she had died;
Cold, yet so busy; though so nimble, dead;
Whose fingers ever at the sewing sped.
I spoke with her, and in slow terror guessed
How she, so ready for perpetual rest,
So smoothly combed and for the ground prepared,
Whose eyes already fixed beyond me stared,
Could sidle unobserved and safely glide
Amid the crowd that wist not she had died.
Gently she spoke; not once her cheek grew pale
And I translate the dreadful placid tale.
She with a soul was born: she felt it leap
Within her: it could wonder, laugh, and weep.
But dismally as rain on ocean blear,
The days upon that human spirit dear
Fell; and existence lean, in sky dead-grey,
Withholding steadily, starved it away:
London ignored it with deliberate stare,
Until the delicate thing began to wear.
She felt it ailing for she knew not what;
Feebly she wept; but she could aid it not.
Ah, not the stirring child within the womb
Hath such an urgent need of light and room!
Then hungry grew her soul: she looked around,
But nothing to allay that famine found;
She felt it die a little every day,
Flutter less wildly, and more feebly pray.
Stiller it grew; at times she felt it pull
Imploring thinly something beautiful,
And in the night was painfully awake,
And struggled in the darkness till day-break.
For not at once; not without any strife,
It died; at times it started back to life,
Now at some angel evening after rain,
Builded like early Paradise again,
Now at some flower, or human face, or sky
With silent tremble of infinity,
Or at some waft of fields in midnight sweet,
Or soul of summer dawn in the dark street.
Slowly she was aware her soul had died
Within her body: for no more it cried,
Vexed her no more; and now monotonous life
Easily passed; she was exempt from strife;
And from her soul was willing to be freed,
She could not keep what she could never feed;
And she was well; above or bliss or care;
Hunger and thirst were her emotions bare.
For the great stars consented, and withdrew,
And music, and the moon, greenness and dew.
Yet for a time more heavily and slow
She walked, and indolently worked, as though
About with her she could not help but bring
Within her busy body the dead thing.
When I had heard her tell without one tear
What now I have translated, in great fear
Toward her I leaned, and “O my sister!” cried,
“My sister!” but my hand she put aside,
Lest I her decent dress might disarray,
And so smiled on me that I might not stay.
And I remembered that to one long dead
I spoke: “No sound shall rouse her now,” I said,
“Not Orpheus touching in that gloom his chord,
Nor even the special whisper that restored
Pale Lazarus; yet will she seem to run,
And hurry eager in the noonday sun,
Industrious, timed, and kempt; till she at last,
Run down, inaccurate, aside is cast.”
While thus I whispered and in wonder wild
Could not unfix my gaze from her, a child
Plucked at her dress, and the dead woman rose;
On to the mirror silently she goes,
Lightly a loose tress touches at her ear;
She gazes in her own eyes without fear.
Deliberately then with fingers light
She smoothed her dress, and stole into the night.