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Women
Some woman from her nook shall smile,
Laying her needle down the while,
"Dear, that old dream I told to you?
You smiled . . . I thought you always knew!"
Laying her needle down the while,
"Dear, that old dream I told to you?
You smiled . . . I thought you always knew!"
The thing we tell is no new thing,
A wisdom born of suffering,
That there is pain, and there is love,
And God's great silence still above,
And this is all—though you have hurled
Your strength forever on the world.
Quick, let us speak to you, ere yet
Passed from our silence we forget,
Like you, with crowds made deaf and blind,
With dealing close to humankind:
Be swift, for soon we too shall be
With no more place for memory,
Going unfettered as man goes
And scarcely wounded more—who knows?
And all our Vala-dreams shall lift
Like Tyre-smoke and Atlantis-drift . . .
······
Listen, most dear, the while that we
At once have speech and memory.
A wisdom born of suffering,
That there is pain, and there is love,
And God's great silence still above,
And this is all—though you have hurled
Your strength forever on the world.
Quick, let us speak to you, ere yet
Passed from our silence we forget,
Like you, with crowds made deaf and blind,
With dealing close to humankind:
Be swift, for soon we too shall be
With no more place for memory,
Going unfettered as man goes
And scarcely wounded more—who knows?
And all our Vala-dreams shall lift
Like Tyre-smoke and Atlantis-drift . . .
······
Listen, most dear, the while that we
At once have speech and memory.
