I look through the leaf-blowsed window, And start as a gazer who, passing a death-vault, Sees Life sitting hopeful within. She is young, but a woman, round-breasted, Waiting the peril of Eve; And she makes the shadows about her sweet As the glooms that play in a pine-wood. She sits at a harpsichord (old as the walls are), And longing flows in the trickling, fairy notes Like a hidden brook in a forest Seeking and seeking the sun. I have watched a young tree on the edge of a wood When the mist is weaving and drifting; Slowly the boughs disappear, and the leaves reach out Like the drowning hands of children, Till a grey blur quivers cold Where the green grace drank of the sun. So now, as I gaze, the morrows Creep weaving and winding their mist Round the beauty of her who sings. They hide the soft rings of her hair, Dear as a child’s curling fingers; They shut out the trembling sun of eyes That are deep as a bending mother’s; And her bridal body is scarfed with their chill. For old, and old, is the story; Over and over I hear it, Over and over I listen to murmurs That are always the same in these towns that sleep; Where, grey and unwed, a woman passes, Her cramped, drab gown the bounds of a world She holds with grief and silence; And a gossip whose tongue alone is unwithered Mumbles the tale by her affable gate; How the lad must go, and the girl must stay, Singing alone to the years and a dream; Then a letter, a rumor, a word, From the land that reaches for lovers And gives them not back; And the maiden looks up with a face that is old; Her smile, as her body, is evermore barren; Her cheek like the bark of the beech-tree Where climbs the grey winter. Now have I seen her young, The lone girl singing, With the full, round breast and the berry lip, And heart that runs to a dawn-rise On new-world mountains. The weeping ash in the dooryard Gathers the song in its boughs, And the gown of dawn she will never wear. I can listen no more; good-by, little town, old Fairingdown. I climb the long, dark hillside, But the ache I have found here I cannot outclimb. O Heart, if we had not heard, if we did not know There is that in the village that never will sleep! Hampshire, England. _Scribner’s_ _Olive Tilford Dargan_ IN THE ROMAN FORUM