A purple blot against the dead white door In my friend's rooms, bathed in their vile pink light, I had not noticed her before She snatched my eyes and threw them back at me: She did not speak till we came out into the night, Paused at this bench beside the kiosk on the quay. God knows precisely what she said -- I left to her the twisted skein, Though here and there I caught a thread, -- Something, at first, about "the lamps along the Seine, And Paris, with that witching card of Spring Kept up her sleeve, -- why you could see The trick done on these freezing winter nights! While half the kisses of the Quay -- Youth, hope, -- the whole enchanted string Of dreams hung on the Seine's long line of lights." Then suddenly she stripped, the very skin Came off her soul, -- a mere girl clings Longer to some last rag, however thin, When she has shown you -- well -- all sorts of things: "If it were daylight -- oh! one keeps one's head -- But fourteen years! -- No one has ever guessed -- The whole thing starts when one gets to bed -- Death? -- If the dead would tell us they had rest! But your eyes held it as I stood there by the door -- One speaks to Christ -- one tries to catch His garment's hem -- One hardly says as much to Him -- no more: It was not you, it was your eyes -- I spoke to them." She stopped like a shot bird that flutters still, And drops, and tries to run again, and swerves. The tale should end in some walled house upon a hill. My eyes, at least, won't play such havoc there, -- Or hers -- But she had hair! -- blood dipped in gold; And here she left me throwing back the first odd stare. Some sort of beauty once, but turning yellow, getting old. Pouah! These women and their nerves! God! but the night @3is@1 cold! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: RICHARD BONE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE RESOLVE by MARY LEE CHUDLEIGH CHURCH-MUSICK [CHURCH MUSIC] by GEORGE HERBERT THE ARGUMENT OF HIS BOOK by ROBERT HERRICK DAUGHTERS OF WAR by ISAAC ROSENBERG WHEN I HEARD AT THE CLOSE OF THE DAY by WALT WHITMAN EXTEMPORE EFFUSION UPON THE DEATH OF JAMES HOGG by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH |