THE SLOW EMERGER

I am the Slow Emerger: Patience and wait for me, Nor be afraid that I will fail you — You holder of fair morning heights —

You dancing with the rosy dawn! It has been long and hard for me, This task of slow emergence from the clod. Brute-shapes still prowl about me in the shadows,

Their fangs are sometimes fastened to my feet; So that I cannot walk from pain of them, So that I halt and cry out — lonely in the night! Sometimes I see you, Woman —

You the watchful, waiting one of ages — You with the dawn and godlike — You past all torment that I know — You the understanding.

Sometimes I see you in a shaft of light Smiting the mists of valleys where I call, Dividing them as with a two-edged sword Swung by an angel! In that vision

Rage of tusk and tooth and fang Falls like the waves in their wind-drifted foam Upon the scarlet laughter of wild poppies! I have deceived you;

You in turn have punished me — Have punished me with a mere semblance of yourself: A figure, rose-lipped, white fleshed, With wild witcheries of ample breasts —

Limbs smooth and dimpled as for kisses — A dear and tender fiction of yourself; A fiction of yourself that did escape me, Leaped up to claim those hills remote from me

Until I learned man must not chain a woman's soul! O Woman, wait for me — Be patient; for I strive Out of the shadow

Where the brute Still fastens with his fang My bleeding feet — My weary, stumbling feet:

Nor be afraid that I will fail you — You holder of far morning heights — You dancing with the dawn!