The Rating of Poets • The Rating of Poems
Poem by Edgar Lee Masters
St. Deseret
You wonder at my bright round eyes, my lips
Pressed tightly like a venomous rosette.
Thus do me honor by so much, fond wretch,
And praise my Persian beauty, dulcet voice.
But oh you know me, read me, passion blinds
Your vision not at all, and you have passion
For me and what I am. How can you be so?
Hold me so bear-like, take my lips with yours,
Bury your face in these my russet tresses,
And yet not lose your vision? So I love you,
And fear you too. How idle to deny it
To you who know I fear you.
Here am I
Who answer you what e'er you choose to ask.
You stride about my rooms and open books,
And say when did he give you this? You pick
His photograph from mantels, dressers, drawl
Out of ironic strength, and smile the while:
"You did not love this man." You probe my soul
About his courtship, how I ran away,
How he pursued with gifts from city to city,
Threw bouquets to me from the pit, or stood
Like Cleopatra's Giant negro guard,
Watchful and waiting at the green-room door.
So, devil, that you are, with needle pricks,
One little question at a time, you've inked
The story in my flesh. And now at last
You smile and say I killed him. Well, it's true.
But what a death he had! Envy him that.
Your frigid soul can never win the death
I gave him.
Listen since you know already
All but the subtlest matters. How you laugh!
You know these too? Well, only I can tell them.
First 'twas a piteous thing to see a man
So love a woman, see a living thing
So love another. Why he could not touch
My hand but that his heart went up ten beats.
His eyes would grow as bright as flames, his breath
Come short when speaking. When he felt my breast
Crush soft around him he would reel and walk
Away from me, while I stood like a snake
Poised for the strike, as quiet and possessed
As a dead breeze. And you can have me wholly,
And pet and pat me like a favored child,
And let me go my way, while you turn back
To what you left for me.
Not so with him:
I was all through his blood, had made his flesh
My flesh, his nerves, brain, soul all mine at last,
Dreams, thoughts, emotions, hungers all my own.
So that he lived two lives, his own and mine,
With one poor body, which he gave to me.
Save that he could not give what I pushed back
Into his hands to use for me and live
My pities, hatreds, loves and passions with.
I loved all this and thrived upon it, still
I did not love him. Then why marry him?
Why don't you see? It meant so much to him.
And 'twas a little thing for me to do.
His loneliness, his hunger, his great passion
That showed in his poor eyes, his broken breath,
His chivalry, his gifts, his poignant letters,
His failing health, why even woman's cruelty
Cannot deny such passion. Woman's cruelty
Takes other means for finding its expression.
And mine found its expression--you have guessed
And so I tell you all.
We were married then.
He made a sacrament of our nuptials,
Knelt with closed eyes beside the bed, my lips
Pressed to his brow and throat. Unveiled my breast
And looked, then closed his eyes. He did not take me
As man takes his possession, nature's way,
In triumph of life, in lightning, no, he came
A suppliant, a worshipper, and whispered:
"What angel child may lie upon the breast
Of this it's angel mother."
Well, you see
The tears came in my eyes, for pity of him,
Who made so much of what I had to give,
And could give easily whether 'twas my rapture
To give or to withhold. And in that moment
Contempt of which I had been scarcely conscious
Lying diffused like dew around my heart
Drained down itself into my heart's dark cup
To one bright drop of vital power, where
He could not see it, scarcely knew that something
Gradually drugged the potion that he drank
In life with me.
So we were wed a year,
And he was with me hourly, till at last
I could not breathe for him, while he could breathe
No where but where I was. Then the bazaar
Was coming on where I was to dance, and he
Had long postponed a trip to England where
Great interests waited for him, and with kisses
I pushed him to his duty, and he went
Shame stricken for a duty long postponed,
Unable to retort against my words
When I said "You must go;" for well he knew
He should have gone before. And as for going
I pleaded the bazaar and hate of travel,
And got him off, and freed myself to breathe.
His life had been too fast, his years too many
To stand the strain that came. There was the worry
About the business, and the labor over it.
There was the war, and all the fear and turmoil
In London for the war. But most of all
There was the separation. And his letters!
You've read them, wretch. Such letters never were
Of aching loneliness and pining love
And hope that lives across three thousand miles,
And waits the day to travel them, and fear
Of something which may bar the way forever:
A storm, a wreck, a submarine and no day
Without a letter or a cablegram.
And look at the endearments--oh you fiend
To pick their words to pieces like a botanist
Who cuts a flower up for his microscope.
And oh myself who let you see these letters.
Why did I do it? Rather why is it
You master me, even as I mastered him?
At last he finished, got his passage back.
He had been gone three months. And all these letters
Showed how he starved for me, and scarce could wait
To take me in his arms again, would choke
With fast and heavy feeding.
Well, you see
The contempt I spoke of which lay long diffused
Like dew around my heart, and which at once
Drained down itself into my heart's dark cup
Grew brighter, bitterer, for this obvious hunger,
This thirst which could not wait, the piteous trembling.
And all the while it seemed he thought his love
Grew sacreder as it grew uncontrolled,
And marked by trembling, choking, tears and sighs.
This is not love which should be, has no use
In this or any world. And as for me
I could not stand it longer. And I thought
Of what was best to do: if 'twas not best
To kill him as the queen bee kills the mate
In rapture's own excess.
Then he arrived.
I went to meet him in the car, pretended
The feed pipe broke while I was on the way.
I was not at the station when he came.
I got back to the house and found him gone.
He had run through the rooms calling my name,
So Mary told me. Then he went around
From place to place, wherever in the village
He thought to find me.
Soon I heard his steps,
The key in the door, his winded breath, his call,
His running, stumbling up the stairs, while I
Stood silent as a shadow in our room,
My round bright eyes grown brighter for the light
His life was feeding them. And then he stood
Breathless and trembling in the door-way, stood
Transfixed with ecstacy, then rushed and caught me
And broke into loud tears.
It had to end.
One or the other of us had to die.
I could not die but by a violence,
And he could die by love alone, and love
I gave him to his death.
Why tell you details
And ways with which I maddened him, and whipped
The energies of love? You have extracted
The secret in the main, that 'twas from love
He came to death. His life had been too fast,
His years too many for the daily rapture
I gave him after three months' separation.
And so he died one morning, made me free
Of nothing but his presence in the flesh.
His love is on me yet, and its effect.
And now you're here to slave me differently--
No soul is ever free.Edgar Lee Masters
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