The Necklace which God long ago hung round the white neck of my Soul
is composed of little-seeming curses, like precious and semi-precious
gems. They are polished smooth as if by age, as if by wear, as if by
fingering and as if by brisk industrious rubbing.
The Necklace is at once beautiful and ugly. The gems are in color
chiefly blues and greens--with grays, lavenders, drabs and mauves.
But mostly blues and greens. They make a circlet of small stones
strung at short intervals as if on a strong thin gold wire, with
two large tawdry pretty pendants hung in front. One of the pendants
is my fertile phase of Weakness and the other my odd encompassing
Folly. The smaller stones are seventeen in number and their names and
natures are these:
the first is Dishonesty which makes ghosts of half my life.
the second is Pretense, hard and genuine stone, which keeps me from
being all-ways sincere even to anyone who knows me and whom I know:
who loves me and whom I love.
the third is Fear which makes me who scorn all leonine dangers cringe
and crawl for Trifles of life incredibly little.
the fourth is Sensuality which burns and bursts across my Mind,
half-missing my Body.
the fifth is Anxiety, strange flawed green stone--by it I worry,
tortured and wildly wavering, about the passing hours of my life:
where they are going, where they are taking me.
the sixth is Amativeness, extraordinary deep-tinted warm false
gem--it makes me love someway amorously some person I meet and fancy:
an intimate tragedy, crucial and trivial.
the seventh is Fatigue of the spirit itself, gray sad stone, meaning
terrible sensations of age in my young flesh.
the eighth is Incongruity, the sense and feeling of it, round blue
stone--it kills what might be art and constructiveness and excellence
in me.
the ninth is Acquiescence, worn dull stone--it has kept me all the
ages from the salvation of heated luminous strife.
the tenth is Sensitiveness, pale-toned stone--by it the fingers of
life touch me too suddenly, too sharply, too tensely to do me the
good they might.
the eleventh is Doubt, frail opalescent stone--by it my delight in
the sunny Spring wind against my cheek is qualified with dubious
surprise: by it I half-disbelieve in moon and stars and in long
country roads stretched out solitary, lovely, drenched in sunset.
the twelfth is Self-consciousness, blue-and-green stone--it robs me
of the comfort and self-respect of feeling any motive in me to be
un-ulterior.
the thirteenth is Introspection, beautiful-beautiful blue-green
stone--it pays for its place in beauty but by it I lose the building,
the substance, the _matter_ of living.
the fourteenth is Intensity--too vivid vision, too vivid taste for
some details of life--little hot-looking cool-feeling stone--by it
I undervalue and overvalue, dwell upon surfaces, missing the serene
feel and possession of precious solidness.
the fifteenth is Isolation, pale purple stone--it makes me feel
_never_ at home, _never_ at ease, _never_ belonging--a subtle
insulation--in this sheltered peopled world.
the sixteenth is Bewilderment, mixed-tinted stone--by it I wonder
_what_ is truth with truth seeming that moment fluttering soft-plumed
wings at my throat.
the seventeenth is--it has no name--the _Feel-of-Me_, bright
blue-green stone, lovely and loathesome--by it I’ve lost my way, I’ve
felt all and only Me when I might have groped outward, hand and foot,
and found a wind-swept path to go in: I was always blurred by Me.
A small Necklace, all dull gleams and unusual tints, strung finely
and strongly and beautifully on shining gold. The sweet Soul droops
like a wilted lily under even its slight weight. Strong fine rivets
hold it firm-clasped and the weight of the two charming imitation
pendant-stones keep it gracefully in place. My loved and lovely Soul
has worn it through the ages: manacle, shackle.
How long more--God may know but does not tell me.
It’s only a Necklace. And my Soul is a Soul!
Even under the frail galling burden of the flesh the Soul of me
to-morrow could tear off that Necklace and crumble it to airless
nothing.
It does not: but _could_.
_Slyly garbling and cross-purposing_