Two wives

by D. H. Lawrence

　　

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IINTO the shadow-white chamber silts the whiteFlux of another dawn. The wind that all nightLong has waited restless, suddenly waftsA whirl like snow from the plum-trees and the pear,Till petals heaped between the window-shafts In a drift die there.A nurse in white, at the dawning, flower-foamed paneDraws down the blinds, whose shadows scarcely stainThe white rugs on the floor, nor the silent bedThat rides the room like a frozen berg, its crestFinally ridged with the austere line of the dead Stretched out at rest.Less than a year the fourfold feet had pressedThe peaceful floor, when fell the sword on their rest.Yet soon, too soon, she had him home againWith wounds between them, and suffering like a guestThat will not go. Now suddenly going, the pain Leaves an empty breast.IIA tall woman, with her long white gown aflowAs she strode her limbs amongst it, once moreShe hastened towards the room. Did she knowAs she listened in silence outside the silent door?Entering, she saw him in outline, raised on a pyre Awaiting the fire.Upraised on the bed, with feet erect as a bow,Like the prow of a boat, his head laid back like the sternOf a ship that stands in a shadowy sea of snowWith frozen rigging, she saw him; she drooped like a fernRefolding, she slipped to the floor as a ghost-white peony slips When the thread clips.Soft she lay as a shed flower fallen, nor heardThe ominous entry, nor saw the other love,The dark, the grave-eyed mistress who thus daredAt such an hour to lay her claim, aboveA stricken wife, so sunk in oblivion, bowed With misery, no more proud.IIIThe stranger's hair was shorn like a lad's dark pollAnd pale her ivory face: her eyes would failIn silence when she looked: for all the wholeDarkness of failure was in them, without avail.Dark in indomitable failure, she who had lost Now claimed the host,She softly passed the sorrowful flower shedIn blonde and white on the floor, nor even turnedHer head aside, but straight towards the bedMoved with slow feet, and her eyes' flame steadily burned.She looked at him as he lay with banded cheek, And she started to speakSoftly: "I knew it would come to this," she said,"I knew that some day, soon, I should find you thus.So I did not fight you. You went your way insteadOf coming mine—and of the two of usI died the first, I, in the after-life Am now your wife."IV"'Twas I whose fingers did draw up the youngPlant of your body: to me you looked e'er sprungThe secret of the moon within your eyes!My mouth you met before your fine red mouthWas set to song—and never your song denies My love, till you went south.""'Twas I who placed the bloom of manhood onYour youthful smoothness: I fleeced where fleece was noneYour fervent limbs with flickers and tendrils of newKnowledge; I set your heart to its stronger beat;I put my strength upon you, and I threw My life at your feet.""But I whom the years had reared to be your bride,Who for years was sun for your shivering, shade for your sweat,Who for one strange year was as a bride to you—you set me asideWith all the old, sweet things of our youth;—and never yetHave I ceased to grieve that I was not great enough To defeat your baser stuff."V"But you are given back again to meWho have kept intact for you your virginity.Who for the rest of life walk out of care,Indifferent here of myself, since I am goneWhere you are gone, and you and I out there Walk now as one.""Your widow am I, and only I. I dreamGod bows his head and grants me this supremePure look of your last dead face, whence now is goneThe mobility, the panther's gambolling,And all your being is given to me, so none Can mock my struggling.""And now at last I kiss your perfect face,Perfecting now our unfinished, first embrace.Your young hushed look that then saw God ablazeIn every bush, is given you back, and weAre met at length to finish our rest of days In a unity."

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