THE SLOW EMERGER

I am the Slow Emerger:

Patience and wait for me,

Nor be afraid that I will fail you —

You holder of fair morning heights —

You dancing with the rosy dawn!

It has been long and hard for me,

This task of slow emergence from the clod.

Brute-shapes still prowl about me in the shadows,

Their fangs are sometimes fastened to my feet;

So that I cannot walk from pain of them,

So that I halt and cry out — lonely in the night!

Sometimes I see you, Woman —

You the watchful, waiting one of ages —

You with the dawn and godlike —

You past all torment that I know —

You the understanding.

Sometimes I see you in a shaft of light

Smiting the mists of valleys where I call,

Dividing them as with a two-edged sword

Swung by an angel! In that vision

Rage of tusk and tooth and fang

Falls like the waves in their wind-drifted foam

Upon the scarlet laughter of wild poppies!

I have deceived you;

You in turn have punished me —

Have punished me with a mere semblance of yourself:

A figure, rose-lipped, white fleshed,

With wild witcheries of ample breasts —

Limbs smooth and dimpled as for kisses —

A dear and tender fiction of yourself;

A fiction of yourself that did escape me,

Leaped up to claim those hills remote from me

Until I learned man must not chain a woman's soul!

O Woman, wait for me —

Be patient; for I strive

Out of the shadow

Where the brute

Still fastens with his fang

My bleeding feet —

My weary, stumbling feet:

Nor be afraid that I will fail you —

You holder of far morning heights —

You dancing with the dawn!