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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=413307" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story - Part VI.</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Who curseth Sorrow knows her not at all.<br>Dark matrix she, from which the human soul<br>Has its last birth; whence, with its misty thews,<br>Close-knitted in her blackness, issues out;<br>Strong for immortal toil up such great heights,<br>As crown o'er crown rise through Eternity,<br>Without the loud, deep clamour of her wail,<br>The iron of her hands; the biting brine<br>Of her black tears; the Soul but lightly built<br>of indeterminate spirit, like a mist<br>Would lapse to Chaos in soft, gilded dreams,<br>As mists fade in the gazing of the sun.<br>Sorrow, dark mother of the soul, arise!<br>Be crown'd with spheres where thy bless'd children dwell,<br>Who, but for thee, were not. No lesser seat<br>Be thine, thou Helper of the Universe,<br>Than planet on planet pil'd!--thou instrument,<br>Close-clasp'd within the great Creative Hand!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">* * * * *</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Land had put his ruddy gauntlet on,<br>Of Harvest gold, to dash in Famine's face.<br>And like a vintage wain, deep dy'd with juice,<br>The great moon falter'd up the ripe, blue sky,<br>Drawn by silver stars--like oxen white<br>And horn'd with rays of light--Down the rich land<br>Malcolm's small valleys, fill'd with grain, lip-high,<br>Lay round a lonely hill that fac'd the moon,<br>And caught the wine-kiss of its ruddy light.<br>A cusp'd, dark wood caught in its black embrace<br>The valleys and the hill, and from its wilds,<br>Spic'd with dark cedars, cried the Whip-poor-will.<br>A crane, belated, sail'd across the moon;<br>On the bright, small, close link'd lakes green islets lay,<br>Dusk knots of tangl'd vines, or maple boughs,<br>Or tuft'd cedars, boss'd upon the waves.<br>The gay, enamell'd children of the swamp<br>Roll'd a low bass to treble, tinkling notes<br>Of little streamlets leaping from the woods.<br>Close to old Malcolm's mills, two wooden jaws<br>Bit up the water on a sloping floor;<br>And here, in season, rush'd the great logs down,<br>To seek the river winding on its way.<br>In a green sheen, smooth as a Naiad's locks,<br>The water roll'd between the shudd'ring jaws--<br>Then on the river level roar'd and reel'd--<br>In ivory-arm'd conflict with itself.<br>'Look down,' said Alfred, 'Katie, look and see<br>'How that but pictures my mad heart to you.<br>'It tears itself in fighting that mad love<br>'You swear is hopeless--hopeless--is it so?'<br>'Ah, yes!' said Katie, 'ask me not again.'<br>'But Katie, Max is false; no word has come,<br>'Nor any sign from him for many months,<br>'And--he is happy with his Indian wife.'<br>She lifted eyes fair as the fresh grey dawn<br>with all its dews and promises of sun.<br>'O, Alfred!--saver of my little life--<br>'Look in my eyes and read them honestly.'<br>He laugh'd till all the isles and forests laugh'd.<br>'O simple child! what may the forest flames<br>'See in the woodland ponds but their own fires?<br>'And have you, Katie, neither fears nor doubts?'<br>She, with the flow'r soft pinkness of her palm<br>Cover'd her sudden tears, then quickly said:<br>'Fears--never doubts, for true love never doubts.'<br>Then Alfred paus'd a space, as one who holds<br>A white doe by the throat and searches for<br>The blade to slay her. 'This your answer still--<br>'You doubt not--doubt not this far love of yours,<br>'Tho' sworn a false young recreant, Kate, by me?'<br>'He is as true as I am,' Katie said;<br>'And did I seek for stronger simile,<br>'I could not find such in the universe!'<br>'And were he dead? what, Katie, were he dead--<br>'A handful of brown dust, a flame blown out--<br>'What then would love be strongly, true to--Naught?'<br>'Still, true to love my love would be,' she said,<br>And faintly smiling, pointed to the stars.<br>'O fool!' said Alfred, stirr'd--as craters rock<br>'To their own throes--and over his pale lips<br>Roll'd flaming stone, his molten heart. 'Then, fool--<br>'Be true to what thou wilt--for he is dead.<br>'And there have grown this gilded summer past<br>'Grasses and buds from his unburied flesh.<br>'I saw him dead. I heard his last, loud cry:<br>''O Kate!' ring thro' the woods; in truth I did.'<br>She half-raised up a piteous, pleading hand,<br>Then fell along the mosses at his feet.<br>'Now will I show I love you, Kate,' he said,<br>'And give you gift of love; you shall not wake<br>'To feel the arrow, feather-deep, within<br>'Your constant heart. For me, I never meant<br>'To crawl an hour beyond what time I felt<br>'The strange, fang'd monster that they call Remorse<br>'Fold found my waken'd heart. The hour has come;<br>'And as Love grew, the welded folds of steel<br>'Slipp'd round in horrid zones. In Love's flaming eyes<br>'Stared its fell eyeballs, and with Hydra head<br>'It sank hot fangs in breast, and brow and thigh.<br>'Come, Kate! O Anguish is a simple knave<br>'Whom hucksters could outwit with small trade lies,<br>'When thus so easily his smarting thralls,<br>'May flee his knout! Come, come, my little Kate;<br>'The black porch with its fringe of poppies waits--<br>'A propylaleum hospitably wide.<br>'No lictors with their fasces at its jaws,<br>'Its floor as kindly to my fire-vein'd feet<br>'As to thy silver, lilied, sinless ones.<br>'O you shall slumber soundly, tho' the white,<br>'Wild waters pluck the crocus of your hair;<br>'And scaly spies stare with round, lightless eyes<br>'At your small face laid on my stony breast.<br>'Come, Kate! I must not have you wake, dear heart,<br>'To hear you cry, perchance, on your dead Max.'<br>He turn'd her still, face close upon his breast,<br>And with his lips upon her soft, ring'd hair,<br>Leap'd from the bank, low shelving o'er the knot<br>Of frantic waters at the long slide's foot.<br>And as the sever'd waters crash'd and smote<br>Together once again,--within the wave<br>Stunn'd chamber of his ear there peal'd a cry:<br>'O Kate! stay, madman; traitor, stay! O Kate!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">* * * * *</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Max, gaunt as prairie wolves in famine time,<br>With long drawn sickness, reel'd upon the bank--<br>Katie, new-rescu'd, waking in his arms.<br>On the white riot of the waters gleam'd,<br>The face of Alfred, calm, with close-seal'd eyes,<br>And blood red on his temple where it smote<br>The mossy timbers of the groaning slide.<br>'O God!' said Max, as Katie's opening eyes<br>Looked up to his, slow budding to a smile<br>Of wonder and of bliss, 'My Kate, my Kate!'<br>She saw within his eyes a larger soul<br>Than that light spirit that before she knew,<br>And read the meaning of his glance and words.<br>'Do as you will, my Max. I would not keep<br>'You back with one light-falling finger-tip!'<br>And cast herself from his large arms upon<br>The mosses at his feet, and hid her face<br>That she might not behold what he would do;<br>Or lest the terror in her shining eyes<br>Might bind him to her, and prevent his soul<br>Work out its greatness; and her long, wet hair<br>Drew, mass'd, about her ears, to shut the sound<br>Of the vex'd waters from her anguish'd brain.<br>Max look'd upon her, turning as he look'd.<br>A moment came a voice in Katie's soul:<br>'Arise, be not dismay'd; arise and look;<br>'If he should perish, 'twill be as a God,<br>'For he would die to save his enemy.'<br>But answer'd her torn heart: 'I cannot look--<br>'I cannot look and see him sob and die;<br>'In those pale, angry arms. O, let me rest<br>'Blind, blind and deaf until the swift pac'd end.<br>'My Max! O God--was that his Katie's name?'<br>Like a pale dove, hawk-hunted, Katie ran,<br>Her fear's beak in her shoulder; and below,<br>Where the coil'd waters straighten'd to a stream,<br>Found Max all bruis'd and bleeding on they bank,<br>But smiling with man's triumph in his eyes,<br>When he has on fierce Danger's lion neck<br>Plac'd his right hand and pluck'd the prey away.<br>And at his feet lay Alfred, still and while,<br>A willow's shadow tremb'ling on his face,<br>'There lies the false, fair devil, O my Kate,<br>'Who would have parted us, but could not, Kate!'<br>'But could not, Max,' said Katie. 'Is he dead?'<br>But, swift perusing Max's strange, dear face,<br>Close clasp'd against his breast--forgot him straight<br>And ev'ry other evil thing upon<br>The broad green earth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">* * * * *<br>Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story - Part VII.<br>Again rang out the music of the axe,<br>And on the slope, as in his happy dreams,<br>The home of Max with wealth of drooping vines<br>On the rude walls, and in the trellis'd porch<br>Sat Katie, smiling o'er the rich, fresh fields;<br>And by her side sat Malcolm, hale and strong;<br>Upon his knee a little, smiling child,<br>Nam'd--Alfred, as the seal of pardon set<br>Upon the heart of one who sinn'd and woke<br>to sorrow for his sins--and whom they lov'd<br>With gracious joyousness--nor kept the dusk<br>Of his past deeds between their hearts and his.<br>Malcolm had follow'd with his flocks and herds<br>When Max and Katie, hand in hand, went out<br>From his old home; and now, with slow, grave smile<br>He said to Max, who twisted Katie's hair<br>About his naked arm, bare from his toil:<br>'It minds me of old times, this house of yours;<br>'It stirs my heart to hearken to the axe,<br>'And hear the windy crash of falling trees;<br>'Aye, these fresh forests make an old man young.'<br>'Oh, yes!' said Max, with laughter in his eyes;<br>'And I do truly think that Eden bloom'd<br>'Deep in the heart of tall, green maple groves,<br>'With sudden scents of pine from mountain sides<br>'And prairies with their breasts against the skies.<br>'And Eve was only little Katie's height.'<br>'Hoot, lad! you speak as ev'ry Adam speaks<br>'About his bonnie Eve; but what says Kate?'<br>'O Adam had not Max's soul,' she said;<br>'And these wild woods and plains are fairer far<br>'Than Eden's self. O bounteous mothers they!<br>'Beck'ning pale starvelings with their fresh, green hands,<br>'And with their ashes mellowing the earth,<br>'That she may yield her increase willingly.<br>'I would not change these wild and rocking woods,<br>'Dotted by little homes of unbark'd trees,<br>'Where dwell the fleers from the waves of want,--<br>'For the smooth sward of selfish Eden bowers,<br>'Nor--Max for Adam, if I knew my mind!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Isabella+Valancy+Crawford">Isabella Valancy Crawford</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=413307" data-title="Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story - Part VI. de Isabella Valancy Crawford" data-description="'Who curseth Sorrow knows her not at all.
Dark matrix she, from which the human soul
Has its last birth; whence, with its misty thews,
Close-knitted in her blackness, issues out;
Strong for immortal toil up such great heights,
As crown o'er crown ..."></div>
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