And is it not strange that to-day, After the lapse of ten years These two things happen within an hour? Your letter from Rome arrived-- For though I scorned your life and love, And went my way, You write me still it seems, Not to wound my fallen state, Nor to show me what my life had been If I had heeded you. But just in the continuous sunshine Of noble friendship to show me I am sometimes in your thought. And scarcely had your letter come When Tom Hall crept up the creaking stairs Dragging his feet with the help of a cane-- He is rich and came to help me. And Tom Hall had his way as well: He hated marriage and went the rounds, Wherever a pretty face allured. And now he is sick and dragging his feet. And here am I at a writing desk: I’m cap and bells for the Daily Globe And my grind is a column a day. You see it comes to this, dear queen: Can a man or woman alive escape The granite’s edges or ditch’s mire, The thorny thickets or marsh’s gas, Or the traps one thinks would never be set Except for the fox or wolf?.... And here is Margaret down with a cough Never to rise from her bed again. And I sit by at my task of jokes, And I stop to read your letter again, And wonder why life has never caught you, And why you are laughing there in Rome Where you dine with happy friends; Or tramp the thickets around the ruins Of the Baths of Caracalla-- I see the platforms and dizzy arches Under a sky of Italy. It’s cloudy here and the elevated Rattles and roars beneath my window. You’re picking flowers while it’s winter here. I read these things in your letter and wonder Is the asp at your breast in spite of laughter? Or when is the asp to sting you? THE ASP As the train rushed on The days of our youth swept through me, As if they were brought to life by a sort of friction. I thought of how madly you laughed When we played at blindman’s buff with the Miller girls; And of the May baskets we made together, And hung as we rang the bell and ran. And of our games in the first spring days When we stole from house to house. And the children were shouting And the April moon was new. And the smell of burning leaves And the first tulips filled us with such ecstasy. We laughed, we shouted, we leaped for joy. We ran like mad through the rooms, And we went to bed at last Laughing and gasping, And lay looking at the moon through the leafless boughs, And fell to sleep with joyous hearts, Thinking of to-morrow, And the days and days to come for play, And the summer to come, And all the mad raptures of school at an end, And no death, and no end Of the love of father and mother, And the home we loved.