POETRY.
THE QUESTION.
STEPPING ashore, she looked at him, and held
The proffered arm more firmly than need be, And he stood calm, not flinching, while she spoke.
" Am I afraid ? " she said ; and the sun-smitten water Threw up its pale reflection over her, So that she seemed to shudder amid flames Of fire more cold than ice. " Am I afraid ? "
Then for the first time since the fever of love First raged in him, he saw the picture clear, Saw the first years of wooing, saw her again As queen of those untroubled days, a wife, A mother, unquestioning, and yet in soul Still virginal, still stranger to the deep, The dark, the terrible—love robed in passion.
Then he had come, and time had gathered round them Stormily, signs and portents had charged the air, Deeper the gloom had grown—husband and child Blind, insentient, not one happy breath Laboured in the ominous atmosphere that loured On all the world, for all the world of friends To prophesy the flash. Those two alone Went on their way oblivious, and thereby Barbing the bitterest arrows against the lovers, Wounding with faith, stabbing with confidence, Until the maddened couple would have hated, If hate had not been steeped in fierce remorse And so dissolved away—only to give Some quintessential richness to lave's potion, Which drugged these anguished lovers, filling them With courtesies, and wistful moods of grief That made them brood like gods above the pair, The poor deluded husband and the child, And pity them with an untold compassion Half merging into scorn, yet ever falling Into -humility and shame. " Afraid ?
He walked beside her on the river bank ; And the wide waters rolling to the sea Took up the fear, and bore it on their bosom, Frail featherweight, yet not to be submerged.
Then looking at her, he saw her shadowed eyes Gleaming with showery light, such as in June Will sometimes sweep across the purple clover, Breaking between a passing storm, and one Still billowed on the south. Strangely her face Showed to his love, that fitful god-possession.
VVhich makes the dearly-cherished more remote, More unfamiliar than its casual setting.
And dread more deep than wisdom, deeper than hope, Clouded the picture of their mutual years.
What had he now to offer her, what new
Tumultuous experience—she whose years .Had known the marriage-bed, and motherhood,,
And westering passion sinking in despair ? " Fear nothing," he whispered, stooping to her hair, And breathing incense there. And she looked up, Saw fear reflected in the deeps of love,
And dared not speak. Silently they went Through shadow-pools beneath the elms, and crossed Sunsmitten swards ; so on through light, through dark, Both with the painful burden of the past Weighed down, yet bearing in their fearful hearts The same, mysterious, immortal love.
RICHARD Cillaccu.
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