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Edwin Arlington Robinson - Rahel to Varnhagen
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NOTE.—Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were married, after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The marriage—so far as he was concerned at any rate—appears to have been satisfactory.


Now you have read them all; or if not all,  
As many as in all conscience I should fancy  
To be enough. There are no more of them—  
Or none to burn your sleep, or to bring dreams  
Of devils. If these are not sufficient, surely
You are a strange young man. I might live on  
Alone, and for another forty years,  
Or not quite forty,—are you happier now?—  
Always to ask if there prevailed elsewhere  
Another like yourself that would have held
These aged hands as long as you have held them,  
Not once observing, for all I can see,  
How they are like your mother’s. Well, you have read  
His letters now, and you have heard me say  
That in them are the cinders of a passion
That was my life; and you have not yet broken  
Your way out of my house, out of my sight,—  
Into the street. You are a strange young man.  
I know as much as that of you, for certain;  
And I’m already praying, for your sake,
That you be not too strange. Too much of that  
May lead you bye and bye through gloomy lanes  
To a sad wilderness, where one may grope  
Alone, and always, or until he feels  
Ferocious and invisible animals
That wait for men and eat them in the dark.  
Why do you sit there on the floor so long,  
Smiling at me while I try to be solemn?  
Do you not hear it said for your salvation,  
When I say truth? Are you, at four and twenty,
So little deceived in us that you interpret  
The humor of a woman to be noticed  
As her choice between you and Acheron?  
Are you so unscathed yet as to infer  
That if a woman worries when a man,
Or a man-child, has wet shoes on his feet  
She may as well commemorate with ashes  
The last eclipse of her tranquillity?  
If you look up at me and blink again,  
I shall not have to make you tell me lies
To know the letters you have not been reading  
I see now that I may have had for nothing  
A most unpleasant shivering in my conscience  
When I laid open for your contemplation  
The wealth of my worn casket. If I did,
The fault was not yours wholly. Search again  
This wreckage we may call for sport a face,  
And you may chance upon the price of havoc  
That I have paid for a few sorry stones  
That shine and have no light—yet once were stars,
And sparkled on a crown. Little and weak  
They seem; and they are cold, I fear, for you.  
But they that once were fire for me may not  
Be cold again for me until I die;  
And only God knows if they may be then.
There is a love that ceases to be love  
In being ourselves. How, then, are we to lose it?  
You that are sure that you know everything  
There is to know of love, answer me that.  
Well?… You are not even interested.
  
Once on a far off time when I was young,  
I felt with your assurance, and all through me,  
That I had undergone the last and worst  
Of love’s inventions. There was a boy who brought  
The sun with him and woke me up with it,
And that was every morning; every night  
I tried to dream of him, but never could,  
More than I might have seen in Adam’s eyes  
Their fond uncertainty when Eve began  
The play that all her tireless progeny
Are not yet weary of. One scene of it  
Was brief, but was eternal while it lasted;  
And that was while I was the happiest  
Of an imaginary six or seven,  
Somewhere in history but not on earth,
For whom the sky had shaken and let stars  
Rain down like diamonds. Then there were clouds,  
And a sad end of diamonds; whereupon  
Despair came, like a blast that would have brought  
Tears to the eyes of all the bears in Finland,
And love was done. That was how much I knew.  
Poor little wretch! I wonder where he is  
This afternoon. Out of this rain, I hope.  
  
At last, when I had seen so many days  
Dressed all alike, and in their marching order,
Go by me that I would not always count them,  
One stopped—shattering the whole file of Time,  
Or so it seemed; and when I looked again,  
There was a man. He struck once with his eyes,  
And then there was a woman. I, who had come
To wisdom, or to vision, or what you like,  
By the old hidden road that has no name,—  
I, who was used to seeing without flying  
So much that others fly from without seeing,  
Still looked, and was afraid, and looked again.
And after that, when I had read the story  
Told in his eyes, and felt within my heart  
The bleeding wound of their necessity,  
I knew the fear was his. If I had failed him  
And flown away from him, I should have lost
Ingloriously my wings in scrambling back,  
And found them arms again. If he had struck me  
Not only with his eyes but with his hands,  
I might have pitied him and hated love,  
And then gone mad. I, who have been so strong—
Why don’t you laugh?—might even have done all that.  
I, who have learned so much, and said so much,  
And had the commendations of the great  
For one who rules herself—why don’t you cry?—  
And own a certain small authority
Among the blind, who see no more than ever,  
But like my voice,—I would have tossed it all  
To Tophet for one man; and he was jealous.  
I would have wound a snake around my neck  
And then have let it bite me till I died,
If my so doing would have made me sure  
That one man might have lived; and he was jealous.  
I would have driven these hands into a cage  
That held a thousand scorpions, and crushed them,  
If only by so poisonous a trial
I could have crushed his doubt. I would have wrung  
My living blood with mediaeval engines  
Out of my screaming flesh, if only that  
Would have made one man sure. I would have paid  
For him the tiresome price of body and soul,
And let the lash of a tongue-weary town  
Fall as it might upon my blistered name;  
And while it fell I could have laughed at it,  
Knowing that he had found out finally  
Where the wrong was. But there was evil in him
That would have made no more of his possession  
Than confirmation of another fault;  
And there was honor—if you call it honor  
That hoods itself with doubt and wears a crown  
Of lead that might as well be gold and fire.
Give it as heavy or as light a name  
As any there is that fits. I see myself  
Without the power to swear to this or that  
That I might be if he had been without it.  
Whatever I might have been that I was not,
It only happened that it wasn’t so.  
Meanwhile, you might seem to be listening:  
If you forget yourself and go to sleep,  
My treasure, I shall not say this again.  
Look up once more into my poor old face,
Where you see beauty, or the Lord knows what,  
And say to me aloud what else there is  
Than ruins in it that you most admire.  
  
No, there was never anything like that;  
Nature has never fastened such a mask
Of radiant and impenetrable merit  
On any woman as you say there is  
On this one. Not a mask? I thank you, sir,  
But you see more with your determination,  
I fear, than with your prudence or your conscience;
And you have never met me with my eyes  
In all the mirrors I’ve made faces at.  
No, I shall never call you strange again:  
You are the young and inconvincible  
Epitome of all blind men since Adam.
May the blind lead the blind, if that be so?  
And we shall need no mirrors? You are saying  
What most I feared you might. But if the blind,  
Or one of them, be not so fortunate  
As to put out the eyes of recollection,
She might at last, without her meaning it,  
Lead on the other, without his knowing it,  
Until the two of them should lose themselves  
Among dead craters in a lava-field  
As empty as a desert on the moon.
I am not speaking in a theatre,  
But in a room so real and so familiar  
That sometimes I would wreck it. Then I pause,  
Remembering there is a King in Weimar—  
A monarch, and a poet, and a shepherd
Of all who are astray and are outside  
The realm where they should rule. I think of him,  
And save the furniture; I think of you,  
And am forlorn, finding in you the one  
To lavish aspirations and illusions
Upon a faded and forsaken house  
Where love, being locked alone, was nigh to burning  
House and himself together. Yes, you are strange,  
To see in such an injured architecture  
Room for new love to live in. Are you laughing?
No? Well, you are not crying, as you should be.  
Tears, even if they told only gratitude  
For your escape, and had no other story,  
Were surely more becoming than a smile  
For my unwomanly straightforwardness
In seeing for you, through my close gate of years  
Your forty ways to freedom. Why do you smile?  
And while I’m trembling at my faith in you  
In giving you to read this book of danger  
That only one man living might have written—
These letters, which have been a part of me  
So long that you may read them all again  
As often as you look into my face,  
And hear them when I speak to you, and feel them  
Whenever you have to touch me with your hand,—
Why are you so unwilling to be spared?  
Why do you still believe in me? But no,  
I’ll find another way to ask you that.  
I wonder if there is another way  
That says it better, and means anything.
There is no other way that could be worse?  
I was not asking you; it was myself  
Alone that I was asking. Why do I dip  
For lies, when there is nothing in my well  
But shining truth, you say? How do you know?
Truth has a lonely life down where she lives;  
And many a time, when she comes up to breathe,  
She sinks before we seize her, and makes ripples.  
Possibly you may know no more of me  
Than a few ripples; and they may soon be gone,
Leaving you then with all my shining truth  
Drowned in a shining water; and when you look  
You may not see me there, but something else  
That never was a woman—being yourself.  
You say to me my truth is past all drowning,
And safe with you for ever? You know all that?  
How do you know all that, and who has told you?  
You know so much that I’m an atom frightened  
Because you know so little. And what is this?  
You know the luxury there is in haunting
The blasted thoroughfares of disillusion—  
If that’s your name for them—with only ghosts  
For company? You know that when a woman  
Is blessed, or cursed, with a divine impatience  
(Another name of yours for a bad temper)
She must have one at hand on whom to wreak it  
(That’s what you mean, whatever the turn you give it),  
Sure of a kindred sympathy, and thereby  
Effect a mutual calm? You know that wisdom,  
Given in vain to make a food for those
Who are without it, will be seen at last,  
And even at last only by those who gave it,  
As one or more of the forgotten crumbs  
That others leave? You know that men’s applause  
And women’s envy savor so much of dust
That I go hungry, having at home no fare  
But the same changeless bread that I may swallow  
Only with tears and prayers? Who told you that?  
You know that if I read, and read alone,  
Too many books that no men yet have written,
I may go blind, or worse? You know yourself,  
Of all insistent and insidious creatures,  
To be the one to save me, and to guard  
For me their flaming language? And you know  
That if I give much headway to the whim
That’s in me never to be quite sure that even  
Through all those years of storm and fire I waited  
For this one rainy day, I may go on,  
And on, and on alone, through smoke and ashes,  
To a cold end? You know so dismal much
As that about me?… Well, I believe you do.
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