October earth, with scarlet maple-leaf,
With oak-leaves brown, with flaming leaves and pale;
Mysterious autumn, symbol of all grief,
Symbol of lives that die and hopes that fail:
Now on the threshing-floor has fallen the flail,
The hands are elsewhere that have stored the grain;
Now comes the season of snows and bitter rain.
Weeks passed.... And then one day there came a note
To New York for this youth ... he tore and read.
It was that girl he played with on the boat....
Scarcely three shaky lines ... in which she said,
That she was sick with typhoid, nearly dead,--
Wanted to say she loved him; then she cried,
O God, if he would come before she died!--
Loved him!... a blackness fell; and in his eyes,
So long unused, and even now ashamed,
He felt the warm tears quickening to rise....
Loved him!--he had not known.... Could he be blamed?--
Then a great light of sorrow in him flamed,--
And bitterness, his sight swam quickly dim,--
Thinking how little it had meant to him!
Scarce knowing why, he packed his things and went....
He was surprised, on seeing her, to find how lovely she had been,
though pale and spent....
He sat beside her, striving to be kind,
Stroking her forehead.... Yet, she had divined,
And known too bitterly, before she died,
This man had never loved her, but had lied....
And he knew this: he knew that she had known;
In her dark eyes he saw the mastered yearning,
All the unspoken love that died in moan,
Shrunk on itself, through all her body burning....
And many days the memory came returning
Of her last kiss,--quivering, wet with tears,--
Her clinging hands, her brimmed eyes dark with fears....
Until at times a sudden terror came
Lest, through great pity, he should love one dead,--
So burning sweet recurred in him this shame,
So haunted him those eyes, that fallen head;
The lips that pleaded so, the words she said,--
Pathetic words!--these haunted him a space;
Then, in the dark of time he lost her face....
O Autumn! bringing to old adventures death,
Sadness at all things past, things passing still,--
You touched this love with strange and dreadful breath;
Easy as leaf is human love to chill,--
Easy as leaf is human to kill;
Yet beautiful is that death with sudden flame,
Ere it goes down to darkness, whence it came!...
_The Poetry Journal_ _Conrad Aiken_
“IF YOU SHOULD CEASE TO LOVE ME”
If you should cease to love me, tell me so!
I could not bear to feel your ardent hand
That waked the chords of life to understand,
Hold mine less closely; no, belovèd, no;
If you should cease to love me, tell me so!
If you should cease to love me, do not dare
To meet me with a masque of tenderness;
I could not stoop to suffer one caress
That any other had the right to share,--
If you should cease to love me, do not dare!
If you should cease to love me, do not fear--
I would not have you think I made one claim.
If your great love should pass, there is no blame;
For love grown cold, I would not shed a tear;--
If you should cease to love me, do not fear!
If you should cease to love me, let us part,
As friends who part for all eternity;
Let us make grave the reverent obsequy
For what was once our very soul and heart--
If you should cease to love me, let us part!
But while you love me, keep our hearts’ deep faith
As some High Priest would guard the holy place;
Let me not see the shame upon your face
Of one unworthy of Love’s vital breath,
So while you love me, keep our hearts’ high faith!
Thus, if you cease to love me, save my soul
By having kept our love so pure and high
That if the time must come when it shall die,
I may retain my treasure fair and whole,--
If you should cease to love me,--save my soul!
_Scribner’s_ _Corinne Roosevelt Robinson_