University of Virginia Library

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.