COLLECTED POEMS
That looked across the fields; and Imogen
Gazed out with a girl's gladness in her eyes,
Happy to know that she- was back once more
Where there were those who knew her, and at last
Had gloriously got away again
From cabs and clattered asphalt for a "while;
And there she sat and talked and looked- and laughed
And made the mother and the children laugh.
Aunt Imogen made everybody laugh.
There was the feminine paradox that she
Who had so little sunshine for herself
Should have so much for others. How it was.
That she could make, and feel for making it,
So much of joy for them, and all along
Be covering, like a scar, and while she smiled,
That hungering incompleteness and regret
That passionate ache for something of her own,
For something of herself she never knew.
She knew that she could seem to make them all
Believe there was no other part of her
Than her persistent happiness; but the why
And how she did not know. Still none of them
Could have a thought that she was living down
Almost as if regret were criminal,
So proud it was and yet so profitless
The penance of a dream, and that was good.
Her sister Jane the mother of little Jane,
Sylvester, and Young George might make herself
Believe she knew, for she well, she was Jane.
Young George, however, did not yield himself
To nourish the false hunger of a ghost
That made no good return. He saw too much:
The accumulated wisdom of his years
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