III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
7. The Sage   
     
FOREGUARDED and unfevered and serene,      
Back to the perilous gates of Truth he went—      
Back to fierce wisdom and the Orient,      
To the Dawn that is, that shall be, and has been:      
Previsioned of the madness and the mean,           5   
He stood where Asia, crowned with ravishment,      
The curtain of Love’s inner shrine had rent,      
And after had gone scarred by the Unseen.      
   
There at his touch there was a treasure chest,      
And in it was a gleam, but not of gold;          10   
And on it, like a flame, these words were scrolled:      
“I keep the mintage of Eternity.      
Who comes to take one coin may take the rest,      
And all may come—but not without the key.”

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
8. Erasmus   
     
WHEN he protested, not too solemnly,      
That for a world’s achieving maintenance      
The crust of overdone divinity      
Lacked aliment, they called it recreance;      
And when he chose through his own glass to scan           5   
Sick Europe, and reduced, unyieldingly,      
The monk within the cassock to the man      
Within the monk, they called it heresy.      
   
And when he made so perilously bold      
As to be scattered forth in black and white,          10   
Good fathers looked askance at him and rolled      
Their inward eyes in anguish and affright;      
There were some of them did shake at what was told,      
And they shook best who knew that he was right.

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
9. The Woman and The Wife   
     
I—THE EXPLANATION

“YOU thought we knew,” she said, “but we were wrong.      
This we can say, the rest we do not say;      
Nor do I let you throw yourself away      
Because you love me. Let us both be strong,      
And we shall find in sorrow, before long,           5   
Only the price Love ruled that we should pay:      
The dark is at the end of every day,      
And silence is the end of every song.      
   
“You ask me for one proof that I speak right,      
But I can answer only what I know;          10   
You look for just one lie to make black white,      
But I can tell you only what is true—      
God never made me for the wife of you.      
This we can say,—believe me! … Tell me so!”      
   
II—THE ANNIVERSARY

“GIVE me the truth, whatever it may be.          15   
You thought we knew, now tell me what you miss:      
You are the one to tell me what it is—      
You are a man, and you have married me.      
What is it worth tonight that you can see      
More marriage in the dream of one dead kiss          20   
Than in a thousand years of life like this?      
Passion has turned the lock, Pride keeps the key.      
   
“Whatever I have said or left unsaid,      
Whatever I have done or left undone,—      
Tell me. Tell me the truth.… Are you afraid?          25   
Do you think that Love was ever fed with lies      
But hunger lived thereafter in his eyes?      
Do you ask me to take moonlight for the sun?”

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
10. The Book of Annandale   
     
I

PARTLY to think, more to be left alone,      
George Annandale said something to his friends—      
A word or two, brusque, but yet smoothed enough      
To suit their funeral gaze—and went upstairs;      
And there, in the one room that he could call           5   
His own, he found a sort of meaningless      
Annoyance in the mute familiar things      
That filled it; for the grate’s monotonous gleam      
Was not the gleam that he had known before,      
The books were not the books that used to be,          10   
The place was not the place. There was a lack      
Of something; and the certitude of death      
Itself, as with a furtive questioning,      
Hovered, and he could not yet understand.      
He knew that she was gone—there was no need          15   
Of any argued proof to tell him that,      
For they had buried her that afternoon,      
Under the leaves and snow; and still there was      
A doubt, a pitiless doubt, a plunging doubt,      
That struck him, and upstartled when it struck,          20   
The vision, the old thought in him. There was      
A lack, and one that wrenched him; but it was      
Not that—not that. There was a present sense      
Of something indeterminably near—      
The soul-clutch of a prescient emptiness          25   
That would not be foreboding. And if not,      
What then?—or was it anything at all?      
Yes, it was something—it was everything—      
But what was everything? or anything?      
Tired of time, bewildered, he sat down;          30   
But in his chair he kept on wondering      
That he should feel so desolately strange      
And yet—for all he knew that he had lost      
More of the world than most men ever win—      
So curiously calm. And he was left          35   
Unanswered and unsatisfied: there came      
No clearer meaning to him than had come      
Before; the old abstraction was the best      
That he could find, the farthest he could go;      
To that was no beginning and no end—          40   
No end that he could reach. So he must learn      
To live the surest and the largest life      
Attainable in him, would he divine      
The meaning of the dream and of the words      
That he had written, without knowing why,          45   
On sheets that he had bound up like a book      
And covered with red leather. There it was—      
There in his desk, the record he had made,      
The spiritual plaything of his life:      
There were the words no eyes had ever seen          50   
Save his; there were the words that were not made      
For glory or for gold. The pretty wife      
Whom he had loved and lost had not so much      
As heard of them. They were not made for her.      
His love had been so much the life of her,          55   
And hers had been so much the life of him,      
That any wayward phrasing on his part      
Would have had no moment. Neither had lived enough      
To know the book, albeit one of them      
Had grown enough to write it. There it was,          60   
However, though he knew not why it was:      
There was the book, but it was not for her,      
For she was dead. And yet, there was the book.      
   
Thus would his fancy circle out and out,      
And out and in again, till he would make          65   
As if with a large freedom to crush down      
Those under-thoughts. He covered with his hands      
His tired eyes, and waited: he could hear—      
Or partly feel and hear, mechanically—      
The sound of talk, with now and then the steps          70   
And skirts of some one scudding on the stairs,      
Forgetful of the nerveless funeral feet      
That she had brought with her; and more than once      
There came to him a call as of a voice—      
A voice of love returning—but not hers.          75   
Whose he knew not, nor dreamed; nor did he know,      
Nor did he dream, in his blurred loneliness      
Of thought, what all the rest might think of him.      
   
For it had come at last, and she was gone      
With all the vanished women of old time,—          80   
And she was never coming back again.      
Yes, they had buried her that afternoon,      
Under the frozen leaves and the cold earth,      
Under the leaves and snow. The flickering week,      
The sharp and certain day, and the long drowse          85   
Were over, and the man was left alone.      
He knew the loss—therefore it puzzled him      
That he should sit so long there as he did,      
And bring the whole thing back—the love, the trust,      
The pallor, the poor face, and the faint way          90   
She last had looked at him—and yet not weep,      
Or even choose to look about the room      
To see how sad it was; and once or twice      
He winked and pinched his eyes against the flame      
And hoped there might be tears. But hope was all,          95   
And all to him was nothing: he was lost.      
And yet he was not lost: he was astray—      
Out of his life and in another life;      
And in the stillness of this other life      
He wondered and he drowsed. He wondered when         100   
It was, and wondered if it ever was      
On earth that he had known the other face—      
The searching face, the eloquent, strange face—      
That with a sightless beauty looked at him      
And with a speechless promise uttered words         105   
That were not the world’s words, or any kind      
That he had known before. What was it, then?      
What was it held him—fascinated him?      
Why should he not be human? He could sigh,      
And he could even groan,—but what of that?         110   
There was no grief left in him. Was he glad?      
   
Yet how could he be glad, or reconciled,      
Or anything but wretched and undone?      
How could he be so frigid and inert—      
So like a man with water in his veins         115   
Where blood had been a little while before?      
How could he sit shut in there like a snail?      
What ailed him? What was on him? Was he glad?      
Over and over again the question came,      
Unanswered and unchanged,—and there he was.         120   
But what in heaven’s name did it all mean?      
If he had lived as other men had lived,      
If home had ever shown itself to be      
The counterfeit that others had called home,      
Then to this undivined resource of his         125   
There were some key; but now … Philosophy?      
Yes, he could reason in a kind of way      
That he was glad for Miriam’s release—      
Much as he might be glad to see his friends      
Laid out around him with their grave-clothes on,         130   
And this life done for them; but something else      
There was that foundered reason, overwhelmed it,      
And with a chilled, intuitive rebuff      
Beat back the self-cajoling sophistries      
That his half-tutored thought would half-project.         135   
   
What was it, then? Had he become transformed      
And hardened through long watches and long grief      
Into a loveless, feelingless dead thing      
That brooded like a man, breathed like a man,—      
Did everything but ache? And was a day         140   
To come some time when feeling should return      
Forever to drive off that other face—      
The lineless, indistinguishable face—      
That once had thrilled itself between his own      
And hers there on the pillow,—and again         145   
Between him and the coffin-lid had flashed      
Like fate before it closed,—and at the last      
Had come, as it should seem, to stay with him,      
Bidden or not? He were a stranger then,      
Foredrowsed awhile by some deceiving draught         150   
Of poppied anguish, to the covert grief      
And the stark loneliness that waited him,      
And for the time were cursedly endowed      
With a dull trust that shammed indifference      
To knowing there would be no touch again         155   
Of her small hand on his, no silencing      
Of her quick lips on his, no feminine      
Completeness and love-fragrance in the house,      
No sound of some one singing any more,      
No smoothing of slow fingers on his hair,         160   
No shimmer of pink slippers on brown tiles.      
   
But there was nothing, nothing, in all that:      
He had not fooled himself so much as that;      
He might be dreaming or he might be sick,      
But not like that. There was no place for fear,         165   
No reason for remorse. There was the book      
That he had made, though.… It might be the book;      
Perhaps he might find something in the book;      
But no, there could be nothing there at all—      
He knew it word for word; but what it meant—         170   
He was not sure that he had written it      
For what it meant; and he was not quite sure      
That he had written it;—more likely it      
Was all a paper ghost.… But the dead wife      
Was real: he knew all that, for he had been         175   
To see them bury her; and he had seen      
The flowers and the snow and the stripped limbs      
Of trees; and he had heard the preacher pray;      
And he was back again, and he was glad.      
Was he a brute? No, he was not a brute:         180   
He was a man—like any other man:      
He had loved and married his wife Miriam,      
They had lived a little while in paradise      
And she was gone; and that was all of it.      
   
But no, not all of it—not all of it:         185   
There was the book again; something in that      
Pursued him, overpowered him, put out      
The futile strength of all his whys and wheres,      
And left him unintelligibly numb—      
Too numb to care for anything but rest.         190   
It must have been a curious kind of book      
That he had made it: it was a drowsy book      
At any rate. The very thought of it      
Was like the taste of some impossible drink—      
A taste that had no taste, but for all that         195   
Had mixed with it a strange thought-cordial,      
So potent that it somehow killed in him      
The ultimate need of doubting any more—      
Of asking any more. Did he but live      
The life that he must live, there were no more         200   
To seek.—The rest of it was on the way.      
   
Still there was nothing, nothing, in all this—      
Nothing that he cared now to reconcile      
With reason or with sorrow. All he knew      
For certain was that he was tired out:         205   
His flesh was heavy and his blood beat small;      
Something supreme had been wrenched out of him      
As if to make vague room for something else.      
He had been through too much. Yes, he would stay      
There where he was and rest.—And there he stayed;         210   
The daylight became twilight, and he stayed;      
The flame and the face faded, and he slept.      
And they had buried her that afternoon,      
Under the tight-screwed lid of a long box,      
Under the earth, under the leaves and snow.         215   
   
II

Look where she would, feed conscience how she might,      
There was but one way now for Damaris—      
One straight way that was hers, hers to defend,      
At hand, imperious. But the nearness of it,      
The flesh-bewildering simplicity,         220   
And the plain strangeness of it, thrilled again      
That wretched little quivering single string      
Which yielded not, but held her to the place      
Where now for five triumphant years had slept      
The flameless dust of Argan.—He was gone,         225   
The good man she had married long ago;      
And she had lived, and living she had learned,      
And surely there was nothing to regret:      
Much happiness had been for each of them,      
And they had been like lovers to the last:         230   
And after that, and long, long after that,      
Her tears had washed out more of widowed grief      
Than smiles had ever told of other joy.—      
But could she, looking back, find anything      
That should return to her in the new time,         235   
And with relentless magic uncreate      
This temple of new love where she had thrown      
Dead sorrow on the altar of new life?      
Only one thing, only one thread was left;      
When she broke that, when reason snapped it off,         240   
And once for all, baffled, the grave let go      
The trivial hideous hold it had on her,—      
Then she were free, free to be what she would,      
Free to be what she was.—And yet she stayed,      
Leashed, as it were, and with a cobweb strand,         245   
Close to a tombstone—maybe to starve there.      
   
But why to starve? And why stay there at all?      
Why not make one good leap and then be done      
Forever and at once with Argan’s ghost      
And all such outworn churchyard servitude?         250   
For it was Argan’s ghost that held the string,      
And her sick fancy that held Argan’s ghost—      
Held it and pitied it. She laughed, almost,      
There for the moment; but her strained eyes filled      
With tears, and she was angry for those tears—         255   
Angry at first, then proud, then sorry for them.      
So she grew calm; and after a vain chase      
For thoughts more vain, she questioned of herself      
What measure of primeval doubts and fears      
Were still to be gone through that she might win         260   
Persuasion of her strength and of herself      
To be what she could see that she must be,      
No matter where the ghost was.—And the more      
She lived, the more she came to recognize      
That something out of her thrilled ignorance         265   
Was luminously, proudly being born,      
And thereby proving, thought by forward thought,      
The prowess of its image; and she learned      
At length to look right on to the long days      
Before her without fearing. She could watch         270   
The coming course of them as if they were      
No more than birds, that slowly, silently,      
And irretrievably should wing themselves      
Uncounted out of sight. And when he came      
Again, she might be free—she would be free.         275   
Else, when he looked at her she must look down,      
Defeated, and malignly dispossessed      
Of what was hers to prove and in the proving      
Wisely to consecrate. And if the plague      
Of that perverse defeat should come to be—         280   
If at that sickening end she were to find      
Herself to be the same poor prisoner      
That he had found at first—then she must lose      
All sight and sound of him, she must abjure      
All possible thought of him; for he would go         285   
So far and for so long from her that love—      
Yes, even a love like his, exiled enough,      
Might for another’s touch be born again—      
Born to be lost and starved for and not found;      
Or, at the next, the second wretchedest,         290   
It might go mutely flickering down and out,      
And on some incomplete and piteous day,      
Some perilous day to come, she might at last      
Learn, with a noxious freedom, what it is      
To be at peace with ghosts. Then were the blow         295   
Thrice deadlier than any kind of death      
Could ever be: to know that she had won      
The truth too late—there were the dregs indeed      
Of wisdom, and of love the final thrust      
Unmerciful; and there where now did lie         300   
So plain before her the straight radiance      
Of what was her appointed way to take,      
Were only the bleak ruts of an old road      
That stretched ahead and faded and lay far      
Through deserts of unconscionable years.         305   
   
But vampire thoughts like these confessed the doubt      
That love denied; and once, if never again,      
They should be turned away. They might come back—      
More craftily, perchance, they might come back—      
And with a spirit-thirst insatiable         310   
Finish the strength of her; but now, today      
She would have none of them. She knew that love      
Was true, that he was true, that she was true;      
And should a death-bed snare that she had made      
So long ago be stretched inexorably         315   
Through all her life, only to be unspun      
With her last breathing? And were bats and threads,      
Accursedly devised with watered gules,      
To be Love’s heraldry? What were it worth      
To live and to find out that life were life         320   
But for an unrequited incubus      
Of outlawed shame that would not be thrown down      
Till she had thrown down fear and overcome      
The woman that was yet so much of her      
That she might yet go mad? What were it worth         325   
To live, to linger, and to be condemned      
In her submission to a common thought      
That clogged itself and made of its first faith      
Its last impediment? What augured it,      
Now in this quick beginning of new life,         330   
To clutch the sunlight and be feeling back,      
Back with a scared fantastic fearfulness,      
To touch, not knowing why, the vexed-up ghost      
Of what was gone?      
   
        Yes, there was Argan’s face,         335   
Pallid and pinched and ruinously marked      
With big pathetic bones; there were his eyes,      
Quiet and large, fixed wistfully on hers;      
And there, close-pressed again within her own,      
Quivered his cold thin fingers. And, ah! yes,         340   
There were the words, those dying words again,      
And hers that answered when she promised him.      
Promised him? … yes. And had she known the truth      
Of what she felt that he should ask her that,      
And had she known the love that was to be,         345   
God knew that she could not have told him then.      
But then she knew it not, nor thought of it;      
There was no need of it; nor was there need      
Of any problematical support      
Whereto to cling while she convinced herself         350   
That love’s intuitive utility,      
Inexorably merciful, had proved      
That what was human was unpermanent      
And what was flesh was ashes. She had told      
Him then that she would love no other man,         355   
That there was not another man on earth      
Whom she could ever love, or who could make      
So much as a love thought go through her brain;      
And he had smiled. And just before he died      
His lips had made as if to say something—         360   
Something that passed unwhispered with his breath,      
Out of her reach, out of all quest of it.      
And then, could she have known enough to know      
The meaning of her grief, the folly of it,      
The faithlessness and the proud anguish of it,         365   
There might be now no threads to punish her,      
No vampire thoughts to suck the coward blood,      
The life, the very soul of her.      
   
        Yes, Yes,      
They might come back.… But why should they come back?         370   
Why was it she had suffered? Why had she      
Struggled and grown these years to demonstrate      
That close without those hovering clouds of gloom      
And through them here and there forever gleamed      
The Light itself, the life, the love, the glory,         375   
Which was of its own radiance good proof      
That all the rest was darkness and blind sight?      
And who was she? The woman she had known—      
The woman she had petted and called “I”—      
The woman she had pitied, and at last         380   
Commiserated for the most abject      
And persecuted of all womankind,—      
Could it be she that had sought out the way      
To measure and thereby to quench in her      
The woman’s fear—the fear of her not fearing?         385   
A nervous little laugh that lost itself,      
Like logic in a dream, fluttered her thoughts      
An instant there that ever she should ask      
What she might then have told so easily—      
So easily that Annandale had frowned,         390   
Had he been given wholly to be told      
The truth of what had never been before      
So passionately, so inevitably      
Confessed.      
   
        For she could see from where she sat         395   
The sheets that he had bound up like a book      
And covered with red leather; and her eyes      
Could see between the pages of the book,      
Though her eyes, like them, were closed. And she could read      
As well as if she had them in her hand,         400   
What he had written on them long ago,—      
Six years ago, when he was waiting for her.      
She might as well have said that she could see      
The man himself, as once he would have looked      
Had she been there to watch him while he wrote         405   
Those words, and all for her.… For her whose face      
Had flashed itself, prophetic and unseen,      
But not unspirited, between the life      
That would have been without her and the life      
That he had gathered up like frozen roots         410   
Out of a grave-clod lying at his feet,      
Unconsciously, and as unconsciously      
Transplanted and revived. He did not know      
The kind of life that he had found, nor did      
He doubt, not knowing it; but well he knew         415   
That it was life—new life, and that the old      
Might then with unimprisoned wings go free,      
Onward and all along to its own light,      
Through the appointed shadow.      
   
        While she gazed         420   
Upon it there she felt within herself      
The growing of a newer consciousness—      
The pride of something fairer than her first      
Outclamoring of interdicted thought      
Had ever quite foretold; and all at once         425   
There quivered and requivered through her flesh,      
Like music, like the sound of an old song,      
Triumphant, love-remembered murmurings      
Of what for passion’s innocence had been      
Too mightily, too perilously hers,         430   
Ever to be reclaimed and realized      
Until today. Today she could throw off      
The burden that had held her down so long,      
And she could stand upright, and she could see      
The way to take, with eyes that had in them         435   
No gleam but of the spirit. Day or night,      
No matter; she could see what was to see—      
All that had been till now shut out from her,      
The service, the fulfillment, and the truth,      
And thus the cruel wiseness of it all.         440   
   
So Damaris, more like than anything      
To one long prisoned in a twilight cave      
With hovering bats for all companionship,      
And after time set free to fight the sun,      
Laughed out, so glad she was to recognize         445   
The test of what had been, through all her folly,      
The courage of her conscience; for she knew,      
Now on a late-flushed autumn afternoon      
That else had been too bodeful of dead things      
To be endured with aught but the same old         450   
Inert, self-contradicted martyrdom      
Which she had known so long, that she could look      
Right forward through the years, nor any more      
Shrink with a cringing prescience to behold      
The glitter of dead summer on the grass,         455   
Or the brown-glimmered crimson of still trees      
Across the intervale where flashed along,      
Black-silvered, the cold river. She had found,      
As if by some transcendent freakishness      
Of reason, the glad life that she had sought         460   
Where naught but obvious clouds could ever be—      
Clouds to put out the sunlight from her eyes,      
And to put out the love-light from her soul.      
But they were gone—now they were all gone;      
And with a whimsied pathos, like the mist         465   
Of grief that clings to new-found happiness      
Hard wrought, she might have pity for the small      
Defeated quest of them that brushed her sight      
Like flying lint—lint that had once been thread.…      
Yes, like an anodyne, the voice of him,         470   
There were the words that he had made for her,      
For her alone. The more she thought of them      
The more she lived them, and the more she knew      
The life-grip and the pulse of warm strength in them.      
They were the first and last of words to her,         475   
And there was in them a far questioning      
That had for long been variously at work,      
Divinely and elusively at work,      
With her, and with the grace that had been hers;      
They were eternal words, and they diffused         480   
A flame of meaning that men’s lexicons      
Had never kindled; they were choral words      
That harmonized with love’s enduring chords      
Like wisdom with release; triumphant words      
That rang like elemental orisons         485   
Through ages out of ages; words that fed      
Love’s hunger in the spirit; words that smote;      
Thrilled words that echoed, and barbed words that clung;—      
And every one of them was like a friend      
Whose obstinate fidelity, well tried,         490   
Had found at last and irresistibly      
The way to her close conscience, and thereby      
Revealed the unsubstantial Nemesis      
That she had clutched and shuddered at so long;      
And every one of them was like a real         495   
And ringing voice, clear toned and absolute,      
But of a love-subdued authority      
That uttered thrice the plain significance      
Of what had else been generously vague      
And indolently true. It may have been         500   
The triumph and the magic of the soul,      
Unspeakably revealed, that finally      
Had reconciled the grim probationing      
Of wisdom with unalterable faith,      
But she could feel—not knowing what it was,         505   
For the sheer freedom of it—a new joy      
That humanized the latent wizardry      
Of his prophetic voice and put for it      
The man within the music.      
   
        So it came         510   
To pass, like many a long-compelled emprise      
That with its first accomplishment almost      
Annihilates its own severity,      
That she could find, whenever she might look,      
The certified achievement of a love         515   
That had endured, self-guarded and supreme,      
To the glad end of all that wavering;      
And she could see that now the flickering world      
Of autumn was awake with sudden bloom,      
New-born, perforce, of a slow bourgeoning.         520   
And she had found what more than half had been      
The grave-deluded, flesh-bewildered fear      
Which men and women struggle to call faith,      
To be the paid progression to an end      
Whereat she knew the foresight and the strength         525   
To glorify the gift of what was hers,      
To vindicate the truth of what she was.      
And had it come to her so suddenly?      
There was a pity and a weariness      
In asking that, and a great needlessness;         530   
For now there were no wretched quivering strings      
That held her to the churchyard any more:      
There were no thoughts that flapped themselves like bats      
Around her any more. The shield of love      
Was clean, and she had paid enough to learn         535   
How it had always been so. And the truth,      
Like silence after some far victory,      
Had come to her, and she had found it out      
As if it were a vision, a thing born      
So suddenly!—just as a flower is born,         540   
Or as a world is born—so suddenly.

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
11. Sainte-Nitouche   
     
THOUGH not for common praise of him,      
  Nor yet for pride or charity,      
Still would I make to Vanderberg      
  One tribute for his memory:      
   
One honest warrant of a friend           5   
  Who found with him that flesh was grass—      
Who neither blamed him in defect      
  Nor marveled how it came to pass;      
   
Or why it ever was that he—      
  That Vanderberg, of all good men,          10   
Should lose himself to find himself,      
  Straightway to lose himself again.      
   
For we had buried Sainte-Nitouche,      
  And he had said to me that night:      
“Yes, we have laid her in the earth,          15   
  But what of that?” And he was right.      
   
And he had said: “We have a wife,      
  We have a child, we have a church;      
’T would be a scurrilous way out      
  If we should leave them in the lurch.          20   
   
“That’s why I have you here with me      
  To-night: you know a talk may take      
The place of bromide, cyanide,      
  Et cetera. For heaven’s sake,      
   
“Why do you look at me like that?          25   
  What have I done to freeze you so?      
Dear man, you see where friendship means      
  A few things yet that you don’t know;      
   
“And you see partly why it is      
  That I am glad for what is gone:          30   
For Sainte-Nitouche and for the world      
  In me that followed. What lives on—      
   
“Well, here you have it: here at home—      
  For even home will yet return.      
You know the truth is on my side,          35   
  And that will make the embers burn.      
   
“I see them brighten while I speak,      
  I see them flash,—and they are mine!      
You do not know them, but I do:      
  I know the way they used to shine.          40   
   
“And I know more than I have told      
  Of other life that is to be:      
I shall have earned it when it comes,      
  And when it comes I shall be free.      
   
“Not as I was before she came,          45   
  But farther on for having been      
The servitor, the slave of her—      
  The fool, you think. But there’s your sin—      
   
“Forgive me!—and your ignorance:      
  Could you but have the vision here          50   
That I have, you would understand      
  As I do that all ways are clear      
   
“For those who dare to follow them      
  With earnest eyes and honest feet.      
But Sainte-Nitouche has made the way          55   
  For me, and I shall find it sweet.      
   
“Sweet with a bitter sting left?—Yes,      
  Bitter enough, God knows, at first;      
But there are more steep ways than one      
  To make the best look like the worst;          60   
   
“And here is mine—the dark and hard,      
  For me to follow, trust, and hold:      
And worship, so that I may leave      
  No broken story to be told.      
   
“Therefore I welcome what may come,          65   
  Glad for the days, the nights, the years.”—      
An upward flash of ember-flame      
  Revealed the gladness in his tears.      
   
“You see them, but you know,” said he,      
  “Too much to be incredulous:          70   
You know the day that makes us wise,      
  The moment that makes fools of us.      
   
“So I shall follow from now on      
  The road that she has found for me:      
The dark and starry way that leads          75   
  Right upward, and eternally.      
   
“Stumble at first? I may do that;      
  And I may grope, and hate the night;      
But there’s a guidance for the man      
  Who stumbles upward for the light,          80   
   
“And I shall have it all from her,      
  The foam-born child of innocence.      
I feel you smiling while I speak,      
  But that’s of little consequence;      
   
“For when we learn that we may find          85   
  The truth where others miss the mark,      
What is it worth for us to know      
  That friends are smiling in the dark?      
   
“Could we but share the lonely pride      
  Of knowing, all would then be well;          90   
But knowledge often writes itself      
  In flaming words we cannot spell.      
   
“And I, who have my work to do,      
  Look forward; and I dare to see,      
Far stretching and all mountainous,          95   
  God’s pathway through the gloom for me.”      
   
I found so little to say then      
  That I said nothing.—“Say good-night,”      
Said Vanderberg; “and when we meet      
  To-morrow, tell me I was right.         100   
   
“Forget the dozen other things      
  That you have not the faith to say;      
For now I know as well as you      
  That you are glad to go away.”      
   
I could have blessed the man for that,         105   
  And he could read me with a smile:      
“You doubt,” said he, “but if we live      
  You’ll know me in a little while.”      
   
He lived; and all as he foretold,      
  I knew him—better than he thought:         110   
My fancy did not wholly dig      
  The pit where I believed him caught.      
   
But yet he lived and laughed, and preached,      
  And worked—as only players can:      
He scoured the shrine that once was home         115   
  And kept himself a clergyman.      
   
The clockwork of his cold routine      
  Put friends far off that once were near;      
The five staccatos in his laugh      
  Were too defensive and too clear;         120   
   
The glacial sermons that he preached      
  Were longer than they should have been;      
And, like the man who fashioned them,      
  The best were too divinely thin.      
   
But still he lived, and moved, and had         125   
  The sort of being that was his,      
Till on a day the shrine of home      
  For him was in the Mysteries:—      
   
“My friend, there’s one thing yet,” said he,      
  “And one that I have never shared         130   
With any man that I have met;      
  But you—you know me.” And he stared      
   
For a slow moment at me then      
  With conscious eyes that had the gleam,      
The shine, before the stroke:—“You know         135   
  The ways of us, the way we dream:      
   
“You know the glory we have won,      
  You know the glamour we have lost;      
You see me now, you look at me,—      
  And yes, you pity me, almost;         140   
   
“But never mind the pity—no,      
  Confess the faith you can’t conceal;      
And if you frown, be not like one      
  Of those who frown before they feel.      
   
“For there is truth, and half truth,—yes,         145   
  And there’s a quarter truth, no doubt;      
But mine was more than half.… You smile?      
  You understand? You bear me out?      
   
“You always knew that I was right—      
  You are my friend—and I have tried         150   
Your faith—your love.”—The gleam grew small,      
  The stroke was easy, and he died.      
   
I saw the dim look change itself      
  To one that never will be dim;      
I saw the dead flesh to the grave,         155   
  But that was not the last of him.      
   
For what was his to live lives yet:      
  Truth, quarter truth, death cannot reach;      
Nor is it always what we know      
  That we are fittest here to teach.         160   
   
The fight goes on when fields are still,      
  The triumph clings when arms are down;      
The jewels of all coronets      
  Are pebbles of the unseen crown;      
   
The specious weight of loud reproof         165   
  Sinks where a still conviction floats;      
And on God’s ocean after storm      
  Time’s wreckage is half pilot-boats;      
   
And what wet faces wash to sight      
  Thereafter feed the common moan:—         170   
But Vanderberg no pilot had,      
  Nor could have: he was all alone.      
   
Unchallenged by the larger light      
  The starry quest was his to make;      
And of all ways that are for men,         175   
  The starry way was his to take.      
   
We grant him idle names enough      
  To-day, but even while we frown      
The fight goes on, the triumph clings,      
  And there is yet the unseen crown         180   
   
But was it his? Did Vanderberg      
  Find half truth to be passion’s thrall,      
Or as we met him day by day,      
  Was love triumphant, after all?      
   
I do not know so much as that;         185   
  I only know that he died right:      
Saint Anthony nor Sainte-Nitouche      
  Had ever smiled as he did—quite.

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
12. As a World Would Have It   
     
ALCESTIS

SHALL I never make him look at me again?      
I look at him, I look my life at him,      
I tell him all I know the way to tell,      
  But there he stays the same.      
   
Shall I never make him speak one word to me?           5   
Shall I never make him say enough to show      
My heart if he be glad? Be glad? … ah! God,      
  Why did they bring me back?      
   
I wonder, if I go to him again,      
If I take him by those two cold hands again,          10   
Shall I get one look of him at last, or feel      
  One sign—or anything?      
   
Or will he still sit there in the same way,      
Without an answer for me from his lips,      
Or from his eyes,—or even with a touch          15   
  Of his hand on my hand?…      
   
“Will you look down this once—look down at me?      
Speak once—and if you never speak again,      
Tell me enough—tell me enough to make      
  Me know that you are glad!          20   
   
“You are my King, and once my King would speak:      
You were Admetus once, you loved me once:      
Life was a dream of heaven for us once—      
  And has the dream gone by?      
   
“Do I cling to shadows when I call you Life?          25   
Do you love me still, or are the shadows all?      
Or is it I that love you in the grave,      
  And you that mourn for me?      
   
“If it be that, then do not mourn for me;      
Be glad that I have loved you, and be King.          30   
But if it be not that—if it be true …      
  Tell me if it be true!”      
   
Then with a choking answer the King spoke;      
But never touched his hand on hers, or fixed      
His eyes on hers, or on the face of her:          35   
  “Yes, it is true,” he said.      
   
“You are alive, and you are with me now;      
And you are reaching up to me that I—      
That I may take you—I that am a King—      
  I that was once a man.”          40   
   
So then she knew. She might have known before;      
Truly, she thought, she must have known it long      
Before: she must have known it when she came      
  From that great sleep of hers.      
   
She knew the truth, but not yet all of it:          45   
He loved her, but he would not let his eyes      
Prove that he loved her; and he would not hold      
  His wife there in his arms.      
   
So, like a slave, she waited at his knees,      
And waited. She was not unhappy now.          50   
She quivered, but she knew that he would speak      
  Again—and he did speak.      
   
And while she felt the tremor of his words,      
He told her all there was for him to tell;      
And then he turned his face to meet her face,          55   
  That she might look at him.      
   
She looked; and all her trust was in that look,      
And all her faith was in it, and her love;      
And when his answer to that look came back,      
  It flashed back through his tears.          60   
   
So then she put her arms around his neck,      
And kissed him on his forehead and his lips;      
And there she clung, fast in his arms again,      
  Triumphant, with closed eyes.      
   
At last, half whispering, she spoke once more:          65   
“Why was it that you suffered for so long?      
Why could you not believe me—trust in me?      
  Was I so strange as that?      
   
“We suffer when we do not understand;      
And you have suffered—you that love me now—          70   
Because you are a man.… There is one thing      
  No man can understand.      
   
“I would have given everything?—gone down      
To Tartarus—to silence? Was it that?      
I would have died? I would have let you live?—          75   
  And was it very strange?”

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
13. The Corridor   
     
IT may have been the pride in me for aught      
I know, or just a patronizing whim;      
But call it freak or fancy, or what not,      
I cannot hide that hungry face of him.      
   
I keep a scant half-dozen words he said,           5   
And every now and then I lose his name;      
He may be living or he may be dead,      
But I must have him with me all the same.      
   
I knew it, and I knew it all along,—      
And felt it once or twice, or thought I did;          10   
But only as a glad man feels a song      
That sounds around a stranger’s coffin lid.      
   
I knew it, and he knew it, I believe,      
But silence held us alien to the end;      
And I have now no magic to retrieve          15   
That year, to stop that hunger for a friend.

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
14. Cortège   
     
FOUR o’clock this afternoon,      
Fifteen hundred miles away:      
So it goes, the crazy tune,      
So it pounds and hums all day      
   
Four o’clock this afternoon,           5   
Earth will hide them far away:      
Best they go to go so soon,      
Best for them the grave to-day.      
   
Had she gone but half so soon,      
Half the world had passed away.          10   
Four o’clock this afternoon,      
Best for them they go to-day.      
   
Four o’clock this afternoon      
Love will hide them deep, they say;      
Love that made the grave so soon,          15   
Fifteen hundred miles away.      
   
Four o’clock this afternoon—      
Ah, but they go slow to-day:      
Slow to suit my crazy tune,      
Past the need of all we say.          20   
   
Best it came to come so soon,      
Best for them they go to-day:      
Four o’clock this afternoon,      
Fifteen hundred miles away.

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
15. Partnership   
     
YES, you have it; I can see.      
Beautiful?… Dear, look at me!      
Look and let my shame confess      
Triumph after weariness.      
Beautiful? Ah, yes.           5   
   
Lift it where the beams are bright;      
Hold it where the western light,      
Shining in above my bed,      
Throws a glory on your head.      
Now it is all said.          10   
   
All there was for me to say      
From the first until to-day.      
Long denied and long deferred,      
Now I say it in one word—      
Now; and you have heard.          15   
   
Life would have its way with us,      
And I’ve called it glorious:      
For I know the glory now      
And I read it on your brow.      
You have shown me how.          20   
   
I can feel your cheeks all wet,      
But your eyes will not forget:      
In the frown you cannot hide      
I can read where faith and pride      
Are not satisfied.          25   
   
But the word was, two should live:      
Two should suffer—and forgive:      
By the steep and weary way,      
For the glory of the clay,      
Two should have their day.          30   
   
We have toiled and we have wept      
For the gift the gods have kept:      
Clashing and unreconciled      
When we might as well have smiled,      
We have played the child.          35   
   
But the clashing is all past,      
And the gift is yours at last.      
Lift it—hold it high again!…      
Did I doubt you now and then?      
Well, we are not men.          40   
   
Never mind; we know the way,—      
And I do not need to stay.      
Let us have it well confessed:      
You to triumph, I to rest.      
That will be the best.          45

III. Captain Craig, Etc.   
16. Twilight Song   
     
THROUGH the shine, through the rain      
We have shared the day’s load;      
To the old march again      
We have tramped the long road;      
We have laughed, we have cried,           5   
And we’ve tossed the King’s crown;      
We have fought, we have died,      
And we’ve trod the day down.      
So it’s lift the old song      
Ere the night flies again,          10   
Where the road leads along      
Through the shine, through the rain.      
   
Long ago, far away,      
Came a sign from the skies;      
And we feared then to pray          15   
For the new sun to rise:      
With the King there at hand,      
Not a child stepped or stirred—      
Where the light filled the land      
And the light brought the word;          20   
For we knew then the gleam      
Though we feared then the day,      
And the dawn smote the dream      
Long ago, far away.      
   
But the road leads us all,          25   
For the King now is dead;      
And we know, stand or fall,      
We have shared the day’s bread.      
We may laugh down the dream,      
For the dream breaks and flies;          30   
And we trust now the gleam,      
For the gleam never dies;—      
So it’s off now the load,      
For we know the night’s call,      
And we know now the road          35   
And the road leads us all.      
   
Through the shine, through the rain,      
We have wrought the day’s quest;      
To the old march again      
We have earned the day’s rest;          40   
We have laughed, we have cried,      
And we’ve heard the King’s groans;      
We have fought, we have died,      
And we’ve burned the King’s bones,      
And we lift the old song          45   
Ere the night flies again,      
Where the road leads along      
Through the shine, through the rain.