Verses from Maoriland/After the Honeymoon
AFTER THE HONEYMOON
Wake from thy sleep, O Husband! I am here Who am the Soul of her thou callest Wife: Look thou upon me, Husband! have no fear, I am thy Chosen, bound to thee for life.
Thou hast the right to look on me unveiled By that fair covering of warm white flesh; Gaze on me calmly, Husband! unassailed By glance of eye, or gleam of silken mesh
Of hair, or bosom, or rose-red mouth, or cheek,— See! I have laid my loveliness aside, And here, my Self, I stand before thee, weak, Ay, weak as water, I who am thy Bride!
Yet long ago,—when, I remember not,— There was no whiter soul the whole world round, And I was free as any; but the lot Fell unto me in artificial ground.
They weighed me down with iron bonds of rule, They bade me bow to Custom’s slightest nod, Until I learned to love the gilded fool And hailed Conventionality as God.
They set my feet upon a beaten way And bade me wander not to right or left, “Thus far, no farther, shall thy footsteps stray,” Early was I of liberty bereft.
Time was when I rebelled against my fate And would have thrown my fetishes aside; Cut mine own path, but for my irons’ weight, And, crushed at birth, my new-born longings died.
And now I cannot move without these stays And props; since wish for Freedom’s dead, I care not now to walk untrodden ways, Nor have I strength to walk unfetteréd.
Nature sets bounds, but Nature I defied, And Nature hath revenged herself on me; For all her laws I learned to lay aside, Poor slave to artificiality!
Dost thou still wonder I am weak and small, Deform’d, diseas’d, beyond physician’s skill? Wonder that I had strength to live at all, Wonder that any life is in me still!
I am thy Wife: flesh of thy flesh,—that’s well, Since flesh is flesh, and I, if foul, am fair; Soul of thy soul! Ah Husband, what if Hell Were sweeter to thee than thy Life’s despair?
For thou shalt live, and I shall still endure, A loathsome thing that hath no member whole, Until the friction of a mind impure Create a canker in thy healthy soul.
Wouldst thou soar upwards? I shall drag thee back To mine own footing on Gehenna’s slope, Killing thy finer fancies as the black And nipping frost cuts down the heliotrope.
Pity me,—loathe me,—still my place is here, Beside thee, with thee, close to thee for life, Look thou upon me, Husband! have no fear, I am the Soul of her thou madest Wife!