University of Virginia Library

THE DEATH OF EVE

I

At dawn they came to the stream Hiddekel,
Old Eve and her red first-born, who was now
Greyer than she, and bowed with more than years.
Then Cain beneath his level palm looked hard
Across the desert, and turned with outspread hand
As one who says, “Thou seest; we are fooled.”
But Eve, with clutching fingers on his arm,
And pointing eastward where the risen sun
Made a low mist of light, said, “It is there!”

II

For, many, many months, in the great tent
Of Enoch, Eve had pined, and dared not tell
Her longing: not to Irad, Enoch's son,
Masterful like his father, who had held
Harsh rule, and named the tent-place with his name;
Not to mild Seth, given her in Abel's stead;
Not unto angry Lamech, nor his wives,
Usurpers of her honor in the house;
Not to young Jubal, songs-man of the tribe,
Who touched his harp at twilight by her door;
And not to bed-rid Adam, most of all
Not unto Adam. Yet at last, the spring
Being at end, and evening with warm stars
Falling upon them by the camel kraal,
Weary with long desire she spoke to Seth,
Touching her meaning faintly and far off
To try him. With still scrutiny awhile
He looked at her; then, lifting doubtful hands
Of prayer, he led her homeward to the tent,
With tremulous speech of small and week-day things.
Next, as she lay by Adam before dawn,
His big and wasted hand groping for hers
Suddenly made her half-awakened heart
Break back and back across the shadowy years
To Eden, and God calling in the dew,
And all that song of Paradise foredone
Which Jubal made in secret, fearing her
The storied mother; but in secret, too,
Herself had listened, while the maids at toil
Or by the well at evening sang of her
Untruthful things, which, when she once had heard,
Seemed truthful. Now, bowed upon Adam's breast,
In the deep hush that comes before the dawn,
She whispered hints and fragments of her will;
And when the shaggy forehead made no sign,
And the blind face searched still as quietly
In the tent-roof for what, these many months,
It seemed to seek for there, she held him close
And poured her whole wild meaning in his ear.
But as a man upon his death-bed dreams
That he should know a matter, and knows it not,
Nor who they are who fain would have him know,
He turned to hers his dim, disastrous eyes,
Wherein the knowledge of her and the long love
Glimmered through veil on veil of vacancy.
That evening little Jubal, coming home
Singing behind his flock, saw ancient Eve
Crouched by the ruined altar in the glade,
The accursèd place, sown deep each early spring
With stones and salt—the Valley of the Blood;
And that same night Eve fled under the stars
Eastward to Nod, the land of violence,
To Cain, and the strong city he had built
Against all men who hunted for his soul.

III

She gave her message darkly in the gates,
And waited trembling. At day-fall he came.
She knew him not beneath his whitened hair;
But when at length she knew him, and was known,
The whitened hair, the bent and listening frame,
The savage misery of the sidelong eyes,
Fell on her heart with strangling. So it was
That now for many days she held her peace,
Abiding with him till he seemed again
The babe she bare first in the wilderness,
Her maiden fruits to Adam, the new joy
The desert bloomed with, which the desert stars
Whispered concerning. Yet she held her peace,
Until he seemed a young man in the house,
A gold frontlet of pride and a green cedar;
Then, leading him apart, Eve told her wish,
Not faltering now nor uttering it far off,
But as a sovereign mother to her son
Speaks simple destiny. He looked at her
Dimly, as if he saw her not; then stooped,
Sharpening his brows upon her. With a cry
She laid fierce, shaken hands about his breast,
Drew down his neck, and harshly from his brow
Pushing the head-band and the matted locks,
Baring the livid flesh with violence,
She kissed him on the Sign. Cain bowed his head
Upon her shoulder, saying, “I will go!”

IV

Now they had come to the stream Hiddekel,
And passed beyond the stream. There, full in face,
Where the low morning made a mist of light,
The Garden and its gates lay like a flower
Afloat on the still waters of the dawn.
The clicking leap of bright-mailed grasshoppers,
The dropping of sage-beetles from their perch
On the gnawed cactus, even the pulsing drum
Of blood-beats in their ears, merged suddenly
Into ethereal hush. Then Cain made halt,
Held her, and muttered, “'T is enough. Thou sawest!
His Angel stood and threatened in the sun!”
And Eve said, “Yea, and though the day were set
With sworded angels, thou would'st wait for me
Yonder, before the gates; which, look you, child,
Lie open to me as the gates to him,
Thy father, when he entered in his rage,
Calling thee from the dark, where of old days
I kept thee folded, hidden, till he called.”
So grey Cain by the unguarded portal sat,
His arms crossed o'er his forehead, and his face
Hid in his meagre knees; but ancient Eve
Passed on into the vales of Paradise.

V

VI

From carven plinth and thousand-galleried green
Cedars, and all close boughs that over-tower,
The shadows lengthened eastward from the gates,
And still Cain hid his forehead in his knees,
Nor dared to look abroad lest he might find
More watchers in the portals: for he heard
What seemed the rush of wings; from while to while
A pallor grew and faded in his brain,
As if a great light passed him near at hand.
But when above the darkening desert swales
The moon came, shedding white, unlikely day,
Cain rose, and with his back against the stones,
As a keen fighter at the desperate odds,
Glared round him. Cool and silent lay the night,
Empty of any foe. Then, as a man
Who has a thing to do, and makes his fear
An icy wind to freeze his purpose firm,
He stole in through the pillars of the gate,
Down aisles of shadow windowed with the moon,
By meads with the still stars communicant,
Past heaven-bosoming pool and poolèd stream,
Until he saw, through tangled fern and vine,
The Tree, where God had made its habitation:
And crouched above the shape that had been Eve,
With savage, listening frame and sidelong eyes,
Cain waited for the coming of the dawn.