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From “Three Portraits”
THE DANCE was over. There was one last fiddle | |
| Playing a crazy jig, but no one listened. | |
| In couples his young friends walked through the meadow, | |
| And down the lane. He watched their bobbing lanterns | |
| That disappeared into the woods, and thought, | 5 |
| “She will be coming soon, she will be coming.” | |
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| His mare stamped restlessly. In the dull wood-lot, | |
| Two ghostly owls were mating. Bullfrogs groaned | |
| Across the marshes; and in some fence corner, | |
| Over their liquor, farmers were carousing. | 10 |
| But in his ears the shouting and the laughter, | |
| The marsh frogs and the owls formed a wild music, | |
| A chorus that his blood throbbed and repeated: | |
| “She will be coming soon—she will be coming.” | |
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| Why was he waiting? When the month was over, | 15 |
| He would be in the city, and meet people | |
| Finer than these—girls twenty times as lovely. | |
| There he would find the adventures he was seeking. | |
| He would have money, and would hear no longer | |
| The drunken lumber-jacks and backwoods farmers | 20 |
Stupid with beer, and shouting.
If he married, | |
| And farmed, as had his father and his brothers, | |
| Lifelong he would be following the round | |
| Of plowing soggy ground to sow with corn, | |
| Of cultivating, harvesting and husking. | 25 |
| He could not marry her. But still that chorus | |
| Of silly words rang in his ears, insistent: | |
| “She will be coming soon, she will be coming.” | |
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| Out of the shadow she slipped into moonlight, | |
| And stood beside him staring with round eyes | 30 |
Expectantly….
“Why Harry, you’re not angry? | |
What makes you …. you’re so quiet—”
Desperately | |
He bent and kissed her.
Their two shadows lengthened | |
| Across the hayfield, where the dew had turned | |
| The stubble into silver. And the frogs, | 35 |
| And lonely owls that screeched across the woodlot, | |
| The drunken laughter, and the lonely fiddle, | |
| Out of discordance, turned to symphony, | |
| Turned to an intoxicated chorus: | |
| “She came to meet me here, she came to meet me.” | 40 |
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