Chapter I: Before Light

Among the first to wake. What wakes with me?
A blind wind and a few birds and a star.
With tremor of darkened flowers and whisper of birds,
Oh, with a tremor, with a tremor of heart—
Begins the day i’ the dark. I, newly waked,
Grope backwards for my dreams, thinking to slide
Back unawares to dreams, in vain, in vain.
There is a sorrow for me in this day.
It watched me from afar the livelong night,
And now draws near, but has not touched me yet.
In from my garden flits the secret wind,—
My garden.—This great day with all its hours
(Its hours, my soul!) will be like other days
Among my flowers. The morning will awake,
Like to the lonely waking of a child
Who grows uneasily to a sense of tears,
Because his mother had come and wept and gone;
The morning grass and lilies will be wet,
In all their happiness, with mysterious dews.
And I shall leave the high noon in my garden,
The sun enthroned and all his court my flowers,
And go my journey as I live,—alone.
Then in the ripe rays of the later day
All the small blades of thin grass one by one,
Looked through with sun, will make each a long shade,
And daisies’ heads will bend with butterflies.
And one will come with secrets at her heart,
Evening, whose darkening eyes hide all her heart,
And poppy-crowned move ’mid my lonely flowers.
And shall another, I wonder, come with her,—
I, with a heavy secret at my heart,
Uncrowned of all crowns to my garden and flowers?
Thou little home of mine, fair be thy day.
These things will be, but oh, across the hills,
Behind me in the dark, what things will be?
—Well, even if sorrow fills me through and through
Until my life be pain and pain my life,
Shall I not bear myself and my own life?
—A little life, O Lord, a little sorrow.
And I remember once when I was ill
That the whole world seemed breaking through with me,
Who lay so light and still; stillness availed not,
My weakness being a thing of power, I thought.

“Come to the Port to-morrow,” says the letter,
And little more, except a few calm words,
Intended to prepare me (and I guess,
I guess for what). He never was too kind,
This man, the one i’ the world, kin to my son,
Who knew my crime, who watched me with cold eyes,
And stayed me with calm hands, and hid the thing,
For horror more than pity; and took my son;
And mercifully let me ebb away
In this grey town of undesigned grey lives,
Five years already. To-day he sends for me.
And now I will prevent the dawn with prayers.