There are some verses in Susan's notebook of this period, themselves
undated, and never subsequently published, which--from their position on
the page--must have been written about this time and may have been
during the course of the momentous evening on which I met Jimmy Kane at
Phil Farmer's rooms. I give them now, not as a favorable specimen of her
work, since she thought best to exclude them from her first volume, but
because they throw some light at least on the complicated and rather
obscure state of mind that was then hers. They have no title, and need
none. If you should feel they need interpretation--"_guarda e passa_"!
They are not for you.
_Though she rose from the sea
There were stains upon her whiteness;
All earth's waters had not sleeked her clean.
For no tides gave her birth,
Nor the salt, glimmering middle depths;
But slime spawned her, the couch of life,
The sunless ooze,
The green bed of Poseidon,
Where with sordid Chaos he mingles obscurely.
Her flanks were of veined marble;
There were stains upon her._
_But she who passes, lonely,
Through waste places,
Through bog and forest;
Who follows boar and stag
Unwearied;
Who sleeps, fearless, among the hills;
Though she track the wilds,
Though she breast the crags,
Choosing no path--
Her kirtle tears not,
Her ankles gleam,
Her sandals are silver._