Spoon River Anthology - Penn State University
Spoon River Anthology - Penn State University
Spoon River Anthology - Penn State University
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Edgar Lee Masters<br />
Caroline Branson<br />
WITH our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,<br />
As often before, the April fields till star—light<br />
Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness<br />
Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,<br />
Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing<br />
Like notes of music that run together, into winning,<br />
In the inspired improvisation of love!<br />
But to put back of us as a canticle ended<br />
The rapt enchantment of the flesh,<br />
In which our souls swooned, down, down,<br />
Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves—<br />
Annihilated in love!<br />
To leave these behind for a room with lamps:<br />
And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,<br />
And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,<br />
Stared at by all between salad and coffee.<br />
And to see him tremble, and feel myself<br />
Prescient, as one who signs a bond—<br />
Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped<br />
With rosy hands over his brow.<br />
And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely!<br />
With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning,<br />
In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all!<br />
Next day he sat so listless, almost cold<br />
So strangely changed, wondering why I wept,<br />
Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness<br />
Seized us to make the pact of death.<br />
A stalk of the earth-sphere,<br />
Frail as star-light;<br />
Waiting to be drawn once again Into creation’s stream.<br />
But next time to be given birth<br />
Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis<br />
Sometimes as they pass.<br />
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