Phantasmagoria and Other Poems/The Three Voices/Second Voice
The Second Voice.
They walked beside the wave-worn beach,
Her tongue was very apt to teach,
And now and then he did beseech
She would abate her dulcet tone,
Because the talk was all her own,
And he was dull as any drone.
She urged "No cheese is made of chalk:"
And ceaseless flowed her dreary talk,
Tuned to the footfall of a walk.
Her voice was very full and rich,
And when at length she asked him "Which?"
It mounted to its highest pitch.
He a bewildered answer gave,
Drowned in the sullen moaning wave,
Lost in the echoes of the cave.
He answered her he knew not what;
Like shaft from bow at random shot:
He spoke, but she regarded not.
She waited not for his reply,
But with a downward leaden eye
Went on as if he were not by.
Sound argument and grave defence,
Strange questions raised on "Why?" and "Whence?"
And weighted down with common sense.
"Shall Man be Man? And shall he miss
Of other thoughts no thought but this,
Harmonious dews of sober bliss?
"What boots it? Shall his fevered eye
Through towering nothingness descry
The grisly phantom hurry by?
"And hear dumb shrieks that fill the air;
See mouths that gape, and eyes that stare
And redden in the dusky glare?
"The meadows breathing amber light,
The darkness toppling from the height,
The feathery train of granite Night?
"Shall he, grown gray among his peers,
Through the thick curtain of his tears
Catch glimpses of his earlier years,
"And hear the sounds he knew of yore,
Old shufflings on the sanded floor,
Old knuckles tapping at the door?
"Yet still before him as he flies
One pallid form shall ever rise,
And, bodying forth in glassy eyes
"The vision of a vanished good,
Low peering through the tangled wood,
Shall freeze the current of his blood."
Still from each fact, with skill uncouth
And savage rapture, like a tooth
She wrenched a slow reluctant truth.
Till, like some silent water-mill,
When summer suns have dried the rill,
She reached a full stop, and was still.
Dead calm succeeded to the fuss,
As when the loaded omnibus
Has reached the railway terminus;
When, for the tumult of the street,
Is heard the engine's stifled beat,
The velvet tread of porters' feet.
With glance that ever sought the ground,
She moved her lips without a sound,
And every now and then she frowned.
He gazed upon the sleeping sea,
And joyed in its tranquillity,
And in that silence dead, but she
To muse a little space did seem,
Then, like the echo of a dream,
Harped back upon her threadbare theme.
Still an attentive ear he lent,
But could not fathom what she meant:
She was not deep, nor eloquent.
He marked the ripple on the sand:
The even swaying of her hand
Was all that he could understand.
He left her, and he turned aside:
He sat and watched the coming tide
Across the shores so newly dried.
He wondered at the waters clear,
The breeze that whispered in his ear,
The billows heaving far and near;
And why he had so long preferred
To hang upon her every word;
"In truth," he said, "it was absurd."