| |
| I DIDN’T make you know how glad I was | |
| To have you come and camp here on our land. | |
| I promised myself to get down some day | |
| And see the way you lived, but I don’t know! | |
| With a houseful of hungry men to feed | 5 |
| I guess you’d find…. It seems to me | |
| I can’t express my feelings any more | |
| Than I can raise my voice or want to lift | |
| My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to). | |
| Did ever you feel so? I hope you never. | 10 |
| It’s got so I don’t even know for sure | |
| Whether I am glad, sorry, or anything. | |
| There’s nothing but a voice-like left inside | |
| That seems to tell me how I ought to feel, | |
| And would feel if I wasn’t all gone wrong. | 15 |
| You take the lake. I look and look at it. | |
| I see it’s a fair, pretty sheet of water. | |
| I stand and make myself repeat out loud | |
| The advantages it has, so long and narrow, | |
| Like a deep piece of some old running river | 20 |
| Cut short off at both ends. It lies five miles | |
| Straight away through the mountain notch | |
| From the sink window where I wash the plates, | |
| And all our storms come up toward the house, | |
| Drawing the slow waves whiter and whiter and whiter. | 25 |
| It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuit | |
| To step outdoors and take the water dazzle | |
| A sunny morning, or take the rising wind | |
| About my face and body and through my wrapper, | |
| When a storm threatened from the Dragon’s Den, | 30 |
| And a cold chill shivered across the lake. | |
| I see it’s a fair, pretty sheet of water, | |
| Our Willoughby! How did you hear of it? | |
| I expect, though, everyone’s heard of it. | |
| In a book about ferns? Listen to that! | 35 |
| You let things more like feathers regulate | |
| Your going and coming. And you like it here? | |
| I can see how you might. But I don’t know! | |
| It would be different if more people came, | |
| For then there would be business. As it is, | 40 |
| The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them, | |
| Sometimes we don’t. We’ve a good piece of shore | |
| That ought to be worth something, and may yet. | |
| But I don’t count on it as much as Len. | |
| He looks on the bright side of everything, | 45 |
| Including me. He thinks I’ll be all right | |
| With doctoring. But it’s not medicine— | |
| Lowe is the only doctor’s dared to say so— | |
| It’s rest I want—there, I have said it out— | |
| From cooking meals for hungry hired men | 50 |
| And washing dishes after them—from doing | |
| Things over and over that just won’t stay done. | |
| By good rights I ought not to have so much | |
| Put on me, but there seems no other way. | |
| Len says one steady pull more ought to do it. | 55 |
| He says the best way out is always through. | |
| And I agree to that, or in so far | |
| As that I can see no way out but through— | |
| Leastways for me—and then they’ll be convinced. | |
| It’s not that Len don’t want the best for me. | 60 |
| It was his plan our moving over in | |
| Beside the lake from where that day I showed you | |
| We used to live—ten miles from anywhere. | |
| We didn’t change without some sacrifice, | |
| But Len went at it to make up the loss. | 65 |
| His work’s a man’s, of course, from sun to sun, | |
| But he works when he works as hard as I do— | |
| Though there’s small profit in comparisons. | |
| (Women and men will make them all the same.) | |
| But work ain’t all. Len undertakes too much. | 70 |
| He’s into everything in town. This year | |
| It’s highways, and he’s got too many men | |
| Around him to look after that make waste. | |
| They take advantage of him shamefully, | |
| And proud, too, of themselves for doing so. | 75 |
| We have four here to board, great good-for-nothings, | |
| Sprawling about the kitchen with their talk | |
| While I fry their bacon. Much they care! | |
| No more put out in what they do or say | |
| Than if I wasn’t in the room at all. | 80 |
| Coming and going all the time, they are: | |
| I don’t learn what their names are, let alone | |
| Their characters, or whether they are safe | |
| To have inside the house with doors unlocked. | |
| I’m not afraid of them, though, if they’re not | 85 |
| Afraid of me. There’s two can play at that. | |
| I have my fancies: it runs in the family. | |
| My father’s brother wasn’t right. They kept him | |
| Locked up for years back there at the old farm. | |
| I’ve been away once—yes, I’ve been away. | 90 |
| The State Asylum. I was prejudiced; | |
| I wouldn’t have sent anyone of mine there; | |
| You know the old idea—the only asylum | |
| Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford, | |
| Rather than send their folks to such a place, | 95 |
| Kept them at home; and it does seem more human. | |
| But it’s not so: the place is the asylum. | |
| There they have every means proper to do with, | |
| And you aren’t darkening other people’s lives— | |
| Worse than no good to them, and they no good | 100 |
| To you in your condition; you can’t know | |
| Affection or the want of it in that state. | |
| I’ve heard too much of the old-fashioned way. | |
| My father’s brother, he went mad quite young. | |
| Some thought he had been bitten by a dog, | 105 |
| Because his violence took on the form | |
| Of carrying his pillow in his teeth; | |
| But it’s more likely he was crossed in love, | |
| Or so the story goes. It was some girl. | |
| Anyway all he talked about was love. | 110 |
| They soon saw he would do someone a mischief | |
| If he wa’n’t kept strict watch of, and it ended | |
| In father’s building him a sort of cage, | |
| Or room within a room, of hickory poles, | |
| Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling,— | 115 |
| A narrow passage all the way around. | |
| Anything they put in for furniture | |
| He’d tear to pieces, even a bed to lie on. | |
| So they made the place comfortable with straw, | |
| Like a beast’s stall, to ease their consciences. | 120 |
| Of course they had to feed him without dishes. | |
| They tried to keep him clothed, but he paraded | |
| With his clothes on his arm—all of his clothes. | |
| Cruel—it sounds. I ’spose they did the best | |
| They knew. And just when he was at the height, | 125 |
| Father and mother married, and mother came, | |
| A bride, to help take care of such a creature, | |
| And accommodate her young life to his. | |
| That was what marrying father meant to her. | |
| She had to lie and hear love things made dreadful | 130 |
| By his shouts in the night. He’d shout and shout | |
| Until the strength was shouted out of him, | |
| And his voice died down slowly from exhaustion. | |
| He’d pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string, | |
| And let them go and make them twang until | 135 |
| His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow. | |
| And then he’d crow as if he thought that child’s play— | |
| The only fun he had. I’ve heard them say, though, | |
| They found a way to put a stop to it. | |
| He was before my time—I never saw him; | 140 |
| But the pen stayed exactly as it was | |
| There in the upper chamber in the ell, | |
| A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter. | |
| I often think of the smooth hickory bars. | |
| It got so I would say—you know, half fooling— | 145 |
| “It’s time I took my turn upstairs in jail”— | |
| Just as you will till it becomes a habit. | |
| No wonder I was glad to get away. | |
| Mind you, I waited till Len said the word. | |
| I didn’t want the blame if things went wrong. | 150 |
| I was glad though, no end, when we moved out, | |
| And I looked to be happy, and I was, | |
| As I said, for a while—but I don’t know! | |
| Somehow the change wore out like a prescription. | |
| And there’s more to it than just window-views | 155 |
| And living by a lake. I’m past such help— | |
| Unless Len took the notion, which he won’t, | |
| And I won’t ask him—it’s not sure enough. | |
| I ’spose I’ve got to go the road I’m going: | |
| Other folks have to, and why shouldn’t I? | 160 |
| I almost think if I could do like you, | |
| Drop everything and live out on the ground— | |
| But it might be, come night, I shouldn’t like it, | |
| Or a long rain. I should soon get enough, | |
| And be glad of a good roof overhead. | 165 |
| I’ve lain awake thinking of you, I’ll warrant, | |
| More than you have yourself, some of these nights. | |
| The wonder was the tents weren’t snatched away | |
| From over you as you lay in your beds. | |
| I haven’t courage for a risk like that. | 170 |
| Bless you, of course, you’re keeping me from work, | |
| But the thing of it is, I need to be kept. | |
| There’s work enough to do—there’s always that; | |
| But behind’s behind. The worst that you can do | |
| Is set me back a little more behind. | 175 |
| I sha’n’t catch up in this world, anyway. | |
| I’d rather you’d not go unless you must. | |
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