While I live so still in this life-space, while I muse and meditate
and analyze everything I touch, while I walk, while I work, while
I change from one plain frock to the other: in quiet hours roiled
tumbling storms of vicarious unhopeful Passion whirl, whirl in me:
Passion of Soul, Passion of Mind, Passion of living, Passion of this
mixed world: in terror, in wild unease, in reasonless mournful joy.
I never knew real Passion, Passion-meanings, till I reached thirty.
It is now I’m at life’s storm-center, youth’s climax, the high-pulsed
orgasmic moment of being alive.
At twenty the woman’s chrysalis soul and aching pulses awaken in
crude chaste Spring-cold beauty. At forty her fires either have
subsided to dim-glowing coals or leaped to too-positive, too-searing,
too-obvious flames--her bones and the filigrees of her spirit may be
alike dry, brittle-ish. But at thirty her Spring has but changed to
midsummer. Poesy still waits upon her Passions.
My Spring has changed, bloomed, burst to midsummer.
Soft electrical heat-currents of being swing and sweep around me.
They touch me and enter my veins. But the liquid essences of youth
still quell and compass them. I am at youth’s climax--a half-sullen,
half-smouldering youth which still is youth.
My rose of life is fragrant and aglow. Its sweet pink petals are
uncurled and conscious in the wavering light.