Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
The JiltAgnes Lee
About the house he built!
A free girl, a jilted girl—
I’m glad he was a jilt.
Destroyed my breath of life.
He nagged me and bullied me,
As if I’d been his wife.
The more we would explain,
And if we held our tongues
The worse it was again.
I flashed a cruel word,
And neither could forget
The blame the other heard.
Some words he sang are with me the whole day through.
I hang out the linen and burnish the brass and copper,
And they won’t go out of my head, whatever I do.
How they wake me up when the dawn in my room is hazy,
How they drug me asleep when the night has darkened my pillow!
Ah, a song will sing in your head when your heart is crazy!
And let the windows rattle mournfully,
While Sunday brings him never and Monday brings him not,
And winter hides the town away from me?—
Seeming just to hear forevermore
What my heart tells the clock, what the clock tells my heart,
Dreaming back the springtime at my door?
He said the trouble couldn’t be mended,
He said it must be good-by and go;
And he took up his hat, and all was ended.
So all was over. And I’m not dead!
And I’ve shed all the tears I’m going to shed!
Perhaps he’s sorry, perhaps he misses
The hill-top girl. Well, let him come!
But no more love and no more kisses—
Whatever the future, gay or grim,
Why should I curl my hair for him?
I don’t know whether to laugh or pray,
For along the waking paths of spring
Bird calls to bird till the branches ring.
To wander to the edge of the hill,
Where I can see as I look down
Patches of green on the gray old town.