Pauline Barrett by Edgar Lee Masters — Read

Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon's knife!

And almost a year to creep back into strength, / Till the dawn of our wedding decennial / Found me my seeming self again.

We walked the forest together, / By a path of soundless moss and turf.

But I could not look in your eyes, / And you could not look in my eyes, / For such sorrow was ours -- the beginning of gray in your hair, / And I but a shell of myself.

And what did we talk of? -- sky and water, / Anything, 'most, to hide our thoughts.

And then your gift of wild roses, / Set on the table to grace our dinner.

Poor heart, how bravely you struggled / To imagine and live a remembered rapture!

Then my spirit drooped as the night came on, / And you left me alone in my room for a while, / As you did when I was a bride, poor heart.

And I looked in the mirror and something said:

"One should be all dead when one is half-dead --

Nor ever mock life, nor ever cheat love."

And I did it looking there in the mirror --

Dear, have you ever understood?