Eros Turannos
She fears him, and will always askWhat fated her to choose him;She meets in his engaging maskAll reasons to refuse him;But what she meets and what she fearsAre less than are the downward years,Drawn slowly to the foamless weirsOf age, were she to lose him.
Between a blurred sagacityThat once had power to sound him,And Love, that will not let him beThe Judas that she found him,Her pride assuages her almost,As if it were alone the cost.—He sees that he will not be lost,And waits and looks around him.
A sense of ocean and old treesEnvelops and allures him;Tradition, touching all he sees,Beguiles and reassures him;And all her doubts of what he saysAre dimmed of what she knows of days—Till even prejudice delaysAnd fades, and she secures him.
The falling leaf inauguratesThe reign of her confusion;The pounding wave reverberatesThe dirge of her illusion;And home, where passion lived and died,Becomes a place where she can hide,While all the town and harbor sideVibrate with her seclusion.
We tell you, tapping on our brows,The story as it should be,—As if the story of a houseWere told, or ever could be;We’ll have no kindly veil betweenHer visions and those we have seen,—As if we guessed what hers have been,Or what they are or would be.
Meanwhile we do no harm; for theyThat with a god have striven,Not hearing much of what we say,Take what the god has given;Though like waves breaking it may be,Or like a changed familiar tree,Or like a stairway to the seaWhere down the blind are driven.