Inside And Outside

I

Now twenty-four or maybe twenty-five

Was the woman's age, and her white brow was sleek;

Lips parted in surprise, the flawless cheek;

The long brown hair coiled sullenly alive;

Her hands, dropt in her lap, could not arrive

At the novel on the table, being weak;

Nor breath, expunger of the mortal streak

Of nature, its own tenement contrive;

For look you how her body stiffly lies

Just as she left it, unprepared to stay,

The posture waiting on the sleeping eyes,

While the body's life, deep as a covered well,

Instinctive as the wind, busy as May,

Burns out a secret passageway to hell.

II

There is not anything to say to those

Speechless, who have stood up white to the eye

All night-till day, harrying the game too close,

Quarries the perils that at midnight lie

Waiting for those who hope to mortify

With foolish daylight their most anxious fear,

A bloodless and white fear that she may die

In the hushed room, and leave them soundless here:

There is no word that death can find to say

Deeper than life, savager than their time.

When Gabriel's trumpet ends all life's delay,

Will crash the beams of firmamental woe:

Not nature will sustain the even crime

Of death, though death sustains all nature, so.