She read, wrote, travelled adventurously, and collected friends. While seemingly a conventional Edwardian, often photographed corseted and draped in pearls, furs, and silk, Wharton was quietly rebelling against her family, country, American high society, and empty hours. Wharton fell in love with Europe and the freedom and intellectual stimulation she found there. To the sleeping lips at her side, to drink, as I drank there, oblivion…. Thus may another have thought thus, as I turned may have turned The streets are the grassy paths between the low roofs of the dead Īnd as the train glides in ghosts stand by the doors of the carriages Īnd scarcely the difference is felt–yea, such is the life I return to…” When it halts on the edge of the town, see, the houses have turned into grave-stones, The train from which no one descends till one pale evening of winter, Languid the town-folk glide to stare at the entering train, To a harbourless wind-bitten shore, where a dull town moulders & shrinks,Īnd its roofs fall in, & the sluggish feet of the hoursĪre printed in grass in its streets & between the featureless houses I, by waste lands, & stretches of low-skied marsh You to the wide flare of cities, with windy garlands and shouting,Ĭarrying to populous places the freight of holiday throngs So shall we issue to life, & the rain, & the dull dark dawning Sped down the fixed rail of habit by the hand of implacable fate– Some woman has heard as I heard the farewell shriek of the trainsĬrying good-bye to the city & staggering out into darkness,Īnd shaken at heart has thought: “So must we forth in the darkness, While her lover slept, as I woke & heard the calm stir of your breathing, The black rain of midnight pelted the roof of the station Īnd thus some woman like me, waking alone before dawn, The fiery rain of possession descend on their limbs while outside
Thus, like us they have lain & felt, breast to breast in the dark, The shaking and shrieking of trains, the night-long shudder of traffic, Secret and fast in the heart of the whirlwind of travel, Who perhaps thus had lain and loved for an hour on the brink of the world, I was glad as I thought of those others, the nameless, the many, Must have flowed with the rise & fall of the human unceasing current Īnd lying there hushed in your arms, as the waves of rapture receded,Īnd far down the margin of being we heard the low beat of the soul, Yes, all this through the room, the passive & featureless room, Seeking each other’s souls in the depths of unfathomed caresses,Īnd through the long windings of passion emerging again to the stars… With the pressure of bodies ecstatic, bodies like ours,
The hurried, the restless, the aimless–perchance it has also thrilled That has borne the weight of fagged bodies, dust-stained, averted in sleep, The bed with its soot-sodden chintz, the grime of its brasses, Such smiles, yes, such smiles the mirror perhaps has reflected Īnd the low wide bed, as rutted and worn as a high-road, Here, in this self-same glass, while you helped me to loosen my dress,Īnd the shadow-mouths melted to one, like sea-birds that meet in a wave– Smiles (if such there were ever) like your smile and mine when they met Whirled down the ways of the world like dust-eddies swept through a street,įaces indifferent or weary, frowns of impatience or pain, In the heart of the swinging mirror, the glass that has seenįaces innumerous & vague of the endless travelling automata, With its dull impersonal furniture, kindled a mystic flame The faint red lamp,įlushing with magical shadows the common-place room of the inn Palm to palm breast to breast in the gloom. Wonderful were the long secret nights you gave me, my Lover,
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