PART II — EVE
Meanwhile through lowland, holt, and glade,
Sad Eve her lonely travel made;
Not fierce, or proud, but well content
To own the righteous punishment;
Yet found, as gentle mourners find,
The hearts confession soothe the mind.
“Ye valleys, and ye waters vast,
Who answer all that look on you
With shadows of themselves, that last
As long as they, and are as true —
Where hath he past?
“Oh woods, and heights of rugged stone,
Oh weariness of sky above me,
For ever must I pine and moan,
With none to comfort, none to love me,
Alone, alone?
“Thou bird, that hoverest at heaven's gate,
Or cleavest limpid lines of air,
Return — for thou hast one to care —
Return to thy dear mate.
“For trie, no joy of earth or sky,
No commune with the things I see,
But dreary converse of the eye
With worlds too grand to look at me —
No smile, no sigh!
“In vain I fall Upon my knees,
In vain I weep and sob for ever;
All other miseries have ease,
All other prayers have ruth — but never
Any for these.
“Are we endowed with heavenly breath,
And God's own form, that we should win
A proud priority of sin,
And teach creation death?
“Not, that is too profound for me,
Too lofty for a fallen thing.
More keenly do I feel than see;
Far liefer would I, than take wing,
Beneath it be.
“The night — the dark — will soon be here,
The gloom that doth my heart appal so I
How can I tell what may be near?
My faith is in the Lord — but also
He hath made fear.
“I quail, I cower, I strive to flee;
Though oft I watched without affright,
The stern magnificence of night,
When Adam was with me
“My husband! Ah, I thought sometime
That I could do without him well,
Communing with the heaven at prime,
And in my womanhood could dwell
Calm and sublime.
“Declining, with a playful strife,
All thoughts below my own transcendence,
All common-sense of earth and life,
And counting it a poor dependence
To be his wife,
“But now I know, by trouble's test,
How little my poor strength can bear,
What folly wisdom is, whene'er
The grief is in the breast!
“The grief is in my breast, because
I have not always been as kind
As woman should, by nature's laws,
But showed sometimes a wilful mind,
Carping at straws.
“While he, perhaps, with larger eyne,
Was pleased, instead of vexed, at seeing
Some little petulance in mine,
And loved me all the more, for being;
Not too divine.
“Until the pride became a snare,
The reason a deceit, wherein
I dallied face to face with sinh
And made a mortal pair.
“Dark sin, the deadly foe of love,
All bowers of bliss thou shalt infest,
Implanting thorns the flowers above,
And one black feather in the breast
Of purest dove.
“Almighty Father, once our friend,
And ready even now to love us.
Thy pitying gaze upon us bend,
And through the tempest-clouds above us
Thine arm extend.
“That so thy children may begin
In lieu of bliss, to earn content,
And find that sinful Eve was meant
Not only for a sin.”
Awhile she ceased; for memory's flow
Had drowned the utterance of woe;
Until a young hind crossed the lawn,
And fondly trotted forth her fawn,
Whose frolics of delight made Eve,
As in a weeping vision, grieve.
“For me, poor me, no hope to learn
That sweeter bliss than Paradise,
The joy that makes a mother yearn
O'er that bright message from the skies
Her pains do earn.
She stoops entranced; she fears to stir,
Or think; lest each a thought endanger
( While two enraptured hearts confer )
That wonderful and wondering stranger,
Come home to her,
“He watches her, in solemn style;
A world of love flows to and fro;
He smiles; that he may learn to know
His mother by her smile.
“Oh, bliss, that to all other bliss
Shall be as sunrise unto night,
Or heaven to such a place as this,
Or God's own voice, with angels bright,
To serpent's hiss!
“I have I betrayed thee, or cast by
The pledge in which my soul delighted —
That all this wrong and misery
Should be avenged at last, and righted,
And so should I?
“Belike, they look on me as dead,
Those fiends that found me soft and sweet;
But God hath promised me one treat —
To crush that serpent's head!
“Revenge! Oh, heaven, let some one rise,
Some woman, since revenge is small,—
Who shall not care about its size,
If only she can get it all,
For those black lies!
“Poor Adam is too good and great,
I felt it, though he said so little —
To hate his foes, as I can hate —
And pay them every jot, and tittle,
At their own rate.
“For was there none but I to blame?
God knows that if, instead of me,
There had been any other she,
She would have done the same,
“Poor me! Of course the whole disgrace,
In spite of reason, falls on me:
And so all women of my race,
In pure right, shall be reason-free,
In every case.
“It shall not be in power of man
To bind them to their own contentions;
But each shall speak, as speak she can,
And start anew with fresh inventions,
Where she began.
“And so shall they be dearer still;
For man shall ne'er suspect in them
The plucking of the fatal stem,
That brought him all his ill.
“And when hereafter — as there must,
Since He, that made us, so hath sworn —
From that whereof we are, the dust,
And whereunto we shall return
In higher trust —
“There spring a grand and countless race,
Replenishing this vast possession,
Till life, hath won a larger space
Than death, by quick and fair succession
Of health and grace;
“They too shall find as I have found
The grief, that lifts its head on high,
A dewy bud the sun shall dry —
But not while on the ground.
“Then men shall love their wives again,
Allowing for the frailer kind,
Content to keep the heart's Amen,
Content to own the turns of mind
Beyond their ken.
“And wives shall in their lords be blest,
Their higher sense of right perceiving
( When possible ) with love their test;
Exalting, solacing, believing
All for the test.
“And for the best shall all things be,
If God once more will shine around,
And lift my husband from the ground,
And teach him to lift me.”
New faith inspired the first of wives,
She smiles, and drooping hope revives;
She scorns a hundred years of woe %
And binds her hair, because the breezes blow.