77 RETRACTIONS

YOU ASK A SONNET?—WELL, IT IS YOUR RIGHT. I GRANT IT, LAUGH, SHRUG, SET ABOUT THE TASK, AND MAKE A SEQUENCE, SINCE IT IS MY RIGHT NO MORE TO GIVE YOU ONLY WHAT YOU ASK.

Although as yet my cure be incomplete, Yet love of you, time-lulled and vigorless, Engenders now no more unhappiness, Not even discontent. And now we meet Unmoved—half-waggish,—and my pulses beat Quite calmly as I wonder now, Is he As proud as I was? and—as once to me— To him is her love lovely and very sweet? Nor do I grudge him any joy of his Who follows on a road that I have trod, And sues for love where I was wont to sue; I am contented by remembrances, And know that neither fate nor time, nor God, Robs me of that first mastery of you.

I am contented by remembrances,— Dreams of dead passions, wraiths of vanished times, Fragments of vows, and by-ends of old rhymes,— Flotsam and jetsam tumbling in the seas Whereon, long since, put forth our argosies Which, launched for traffic in the Isles of Love, Lie foundered somewhere in some firth thereof, Encradled by eternal silences. Thus, having come to naked bankruptcy, Let us part friends, as thrifty tradesmen do When common ventures fail; for it may be These battered oaths and rhymes may yet ring true To some fair woman’s hearing, so that she Will listen and think of love, and I of you.

You have chosen the love “that lives sans murmurings, Sans passion,” and incuriously endures The gradual lapse of time. You have chosen as yours A level life of little happenings; And through the long autumnal evenings Lord Love, no doubt, is of the company, And hugs your ingleside contentedly, Smiles at old griefs, and rustles needless wings. And yet I think that sometimes memories Of divers trysts, of blood that urged like wine On moonlit nights, and of that first long kiss Whereby your lips were first made one with mine, Awake and trouble you, and loving is Once more important and perhaps divine.

You have chosen; and I cry content thereto, And cry your pardon also, and am reproved In that I took you for a woman I loved Odd centuries ago, and would undo That curious error. Nay, your eyes are blue, Your speech is gracious, but you are not she; And I am older,—and changed how utterly!— I am no longer I, you are not you. Time, destined as we thought but to befriend And guerdon love like ours, finds you beset With joys and griefs I neither share nor mend Who am a stranger; and we two are met Nor wholly glad nor sorry, and the end Of too much laughter is a faint regret.

It is in many ways made plain to us That love must grow like any common thing, Root, bud, and leaf, ere ripe for garnering The mellow fruitage front us; even thus Must Helena encounter Thesëus Ere Paris come, and every century Spawn divers queens who die with Antony But live a great while first with Julius. Thus I have spoken the prologue of a play Wherein I have no part, and laugh, and sit Contented in the wings, whilst you portray An amorous maid with gestures that befit This lovely rôle,—as who knows better, pray. Than I that helped you in rehearsing it?

With Love I garnered mirth, and dreams, and shame; And half his playmate, half his worshipper, I flouted him, and yet might not demur To do his bidding, or in aught defame Love’s tutorage,—not even when you came, And at the portal of Love’s golden house We hazarded stray kisses, sighs and vows, And lightly staked them in a hackneyed game. And now the game is ended, dear; and we May not re-enter that august domain Which we, encoasting, lost eternally; And now, although beloved by many men, You may love no man as you have loved me, Who have loved you as I may not love again.

Unto how many futures I was heir In those old talks, which fixed what must be done When we at last should rule (in Babylon Perhaps, or in Caer-Is, or Kennaquhair), And must do this or that, and bravely share Fantastic fates, whose frolic freakishness Seems how less quaint than this is,—to confess That I have lost you, and do not greatly care! Well! had we never cared, in all that fleet Sweet time which passed so swiftly and is gone— And gone eternally!—yet it was sweet To play at loving, for all that every groan, And gainless grieving, was in counterfeit And parody of love, ungained, unknown.

And so we played at loving. So we played With love as venturous children in the sea Wade ankle-deep, and laugh, and wistfully Peer at the world’s far rim, being half-afraid. Half-wistful. So we laughed, and we obeyed That changeless law which sways the cosmic plan, And ever draws the maid unto the man, And ever draws the man unto the maid. The sea hides deep our fragile argosy, And idle doubts quest fruitlessly above Those shattered hulks, too frail to brave the sea, Too frail to brave the wrath and mirth thereof: I had not heart to love you heartily, You were too shrewd to be befooled by love.

Time was I coveted the woes they rued Whose love commemorates them—I that meant To get like grace of love then!—and intent To win, as they had done, love’s plenitude, Rapture and havoc, vauntingly I sued That love like theirs might make a toy of me, At will caressed, at will (if publicly) Demolished, as Love found or found not good. To-day I am no longer overbrave. I have a fever—I that always knew This hour was certain!—and am too weak to rave, Too tired to seek (as later I must do) Tried remedies—time, manhood and the grave,— To drug, abate and banish love of you.

Time was I loved you.... And indeed I came To love you so time hardly washes out The scars of an old moment which, as flame Leaps toward chaff, bereft me even of doubt: And then indeed I knew you had deceived me— You, even you!—and counterfeiting truth So cunningly that you and I believed me, I cried, I will forget! ... This was in youth. Now, being older and less over-nice, I estimate these follies, breed of them My little books,—shift, polish and re-price The jewels of a battered diadem,— And cry, What hope of heaven for those who sell What I am vending? and what need of hell?

We are as time moulds us, lacking wherewithal To shape out nobler fortunes or contend Against all-patient Fates, who may not mend The allotted pattern of things temporal, Or alter it a thread’s-width, or let fall A single stitch thereof, until at last The web and its drear weavers be overcast, And predetermined darkness swallow all. They have ordained for us a time to sing, A time to love, a time wherein to tire Of all spent songs and kisses; carolling Such elegies as buried dreams require, Love now departs, and leaves us shivering Beside the embers of a burned-out fire.

Cry Kismet! and take heart. Erôs is gone, Nor may we follow to that loftier air Olympians breathe. Take heart, and enter where A lighter love-lord takes a heatless sun, Oblivious of tangled webs ill-spun By ancient wearied weavers, for it may be His guidance leads to lovers of such as we And hearts so credulous as to be won. Cry Kismet! Put away vain memories Of all old sorrows and of all old joys, And learn that life is never quite amiss So long as unreflective girls and boys Remember that young lips were meant to kiss, And hold that laughter is a seemly noise.

So, let us laugh.... How quaint that even I Was once a fool such as each fool bemocks, Burlesques and shames! how droll a paradox It is that we meet calmly! nor deny That I in an old time dared to be I, And you in that same season dared be you, When commonly we wooed (as others do, And we do not, now) dreams which do not die,— But take new life, with new idolaters. Among our juniors; and in naught are kin To our time-tempered blood which, drowsing, stirs A little, recollecting with what din And ardor we assailed stark barriers Proved obdurate ere we were locked therein.

So, let us laugh,—lest vain rememberings Breed, as of old, some rude bucolic cry Of awkward anguishes, of dreams that die Without decorum, of Love lacking wings Yet striving you-ward in his flounderings Eternally,—as now, even when I lie As I lie now, who know that you and I Exist and heed not lesser happenings. I was. I am. I will be. Eh, no doubt For some sufficient cause, I drift, defer, Equivocate, dream, hazard, grow more stout, Age, am no longer Love’s idolater,— And yet I could and would not live without Your faith that heartens and your doubts which spur.

Nightly I mark and praise, or great or small. Such stars as proudly struggle one by one To heaven’s highest place, as Procyon, Antares, Naös, Tejat and Nibal Attain supremacy, and proudly fall, Still glorious, and glitter, and are gone So very soon;—whilst steadfast and alone Polaris gleams, and is not changed at all. Daily I find some gallant dream that ranges The heights of heaven; and as others do, I serve my dream until my dream estranges Its errant bondage, and I note anew That nothing dims, nor shakes, nor mars, nor changes. Fond faith in you and in my love of you. AND THEREFORE PRAISE I EVEN THE MOST HIGH LORD CHANCE,—THAT, BEING OF KIN WITH SETEBOS, IN ORDERING LIFE’S LABOR, STRIFE AND LOSS, ORDAINED THAT YOU BE YOU, AND I BE I.