A child myself I watched a woman loll Like to a clot of seaweed thrown ashore; Heavy and limp as cloth soaked in black dye, She glooms the noontide dazzle where a bay Bites into vineyarded flats close-fenced by hills, Over whose tops lap forests of cork and fir And reach in places half down their rough slopes. Lower, some few cleared fields square on the thickets Of junipers and longer thorns than furze So clumped that they are trackless even for goats I know two things about that woman: first She is a slave and I am free, and next As mothers need their sons' love she needs mine. Longings to utter fond compassionate sounds Stir through me, checked by knowing wiser folk Reprobate such indulgence. Ill at ease, Mute, yet her captive, I thrust brown toes through Loose sand no daily large tides overwhelm To cake and roll it firm and smooth and clean As the Atlantic remakes shores, you know. But there, like trailing skirts, long flaws of wind Obliterate the prints feet during calms Track over and over its always lonely stretch, Till some will have, it ghosts must rove at night; For folk by day are rare, yet a still week Leaves hardly ten yards anywhere uncrossed; Tempest spreads all revirginate like snow, Half burying dead wood snapped off from tossed trees, Since right along the foreshore, out of reach Of furious driven waves, three hundred pines Straggle the marches between sand and soil. Like maps of stone-walled fields their branching roots Hold the silt still so that thin grass grows there, Its blades whitened with travelling powdery drift The besom of the lightest breeze sets stirring. That woman's gaze toils worn from remote years, Yet forward yearns through the bright spacious noon, Beyond the farthest isle, whose filmy shape Floats faint on the sea-line. I, scooping grains up with the frail half-shell Pale green and white-lined of sea-urchin, knew What her eyes sought as often children know Of grief or sin they could not name or think of Yet sooth or shrink from, so I saw and longed To heal her tender wound and yet said naught. The energy of bygone joy and pain Had left her listless figure charged with magic That caught and held my idleness near hers. Resentful of her power, my spirit chafed Against its own deep pity, as though it were Raised ghost and she the witch had bid it haunt me. What's more I knew this slave by rights should glean And faggot drift-wood, not lounge there and waste My father's food dreaming his time away. For then as now the common-minded rich Grudged ease to those whose toil brought them in means For every waste of life. At length I spoke, Insulting both my inarticulate soul And her with acted anger: "Lazy wretch, Is it for eyes like yours to watch the sea As though you waited for a homing ship? My father might with reason spend his hours Scanning the far horizon; for his Swan Whose outward lading was full half a vintage Is now months overdue." She turned on me Her languor knit and, through its homespun wrap, Her muscular frame gave hints of rebel will, While those great caves of night, her eyes, faced mine, Dread with the silence of unuttered wrongs: At last she spoke as one who must be heeded. Truly I am not clear Whether her meaning was conveyed in words (She mingled accents of an eastern tongue With deformed phrases of our native Latin) Or whether thought from her gaze poured through mine. The gravity of recollected life Was hers, condensed and, like a vision, flashed Suddenly on the guilty mind, a whole Compact, no longer a mere tedious string Of moments negligible, each so small As they were lived, but stark like a slain man Who would alive have been ourself with twice The skill, the knowledge, the vitality Actually ours. Yea, as a tree may view With fingerless boughs and lorn pole impotent, An elephant gorged upon its leaves depart, Men often have reviewed an unwieldy past, That like a feasted Mammoth, leisured and slow, Turned its back on their warped bones. Even thus, Momentous with reproach, her grave regard Made me feel mean, cashiered of rank and right, My limbs that twelve good years had nursed were numbed And all their fidgety quicksilver grew stiff, Novel and fevering hallucinations Invaded my attention. So daylight When shutters are thrown back spreads through a house; As then the dreams and terrors of the night Decamp, so from my mind were driven All its own thoughts and feelings. Close she leant Propped on a swarthy arm, while the other helped With eloquent gesture potent as wizard wand, Veil the world off as with an airy web, Or flowing tent a-gleam with pictured folds. These tauten and distend--one sea of wheat, Islanded with black cities, borders now The voluminous blue pavilion of day.