She fears him, and will always ask
what fated her to choose him
She meets in his engaging mask
all reason to refuse him
But what she meets and what she fears
Are less than are the downward years
Drawn swiftly to the foamless weirs
of age, were she to lose him
Between a blurred sagacity
that once had power to sound him
And love, that will not let him be
the 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 trees
envelopes and allures him
Tradition, touching all he sees
beguiles and reassures him
And what she sees in what he says
Is dimmed with what she knows of days
Till even prejudice delays
and fades, and she secures him
The falling leaf inaugurates
the reign of her confusion
The pounding wave reverberates
the dirge of her illusion
And home, where passion lived and died
Becomes a place where she can hide
While all the town and harborside
vibrate with her seclusion
We tell you, tapping on our brows
the story as it should be
As if the story of a house
were told, or ever could be
We'll have no kindly veil between
Her visions and those we have seen
As if we knew what hers have been,
or what they are, or would be
Meanwhile, we do no harm, for they
that 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 sea
where down the blind are driven
