ALONE
Evening made a violet darkness in the thickness of the wood,
All was silent, all was still;
And the man of many pleasures felt upon him steal a mood
That was stronger than his will.
In the sky each glowing star assumed a different coloured flame,
But the flames they gave no light.
He was cold at heart and weary and a numbing sense of shame
Made him fearful of the night.
Though alone, he felt that hidden in the bushes and the trees
Many eyes were watching him.
When he tried to move he wavered, and he fell upon his knees,
And his sight with tears was dim.
While he knelt, he knew not how long, in the grass a blue-bell glowed,
Glowed with light amid the dew.
As he watched with straining eyes, from which the tears no longer flowed,
The blue flower grew and grew;
Vaguely human in its outline, half a flower, half a child,
High now as his kneeling self,
And the flower-child bent to him with an impulse strange and wild,
And he felt the little elf
Kiss his lips and heard it softly, softly call him by his name,
In a voice unearthly, sad.
‘I’m your child and I was born of your first love and born in shame;
I am dead and she is mad.’
Something like a shudder shook the stately trees, the plants, the weeds,
As the man rose up again—
In the mystery of this wood the leaves, the blossoms were the deeds,
Living deeds of mortal men.
Pale, he seized the fancy-creature savagely, and hurled it down,
Trampled it into the earth.
Then he heard a woman sobbing and the rustle of a gown....
And he laughed—just sound, no mirth.