The Dover Anthology of American Literature Volume II (83 page)

Old Mrs. Varnum, by this time, had gone up to bed, and her daughter and I were sitting alone, after supper, in the austere seclusion of the horse-hair parlour. Mrs. Hale glanced at me tentatively, as though trying to see how much footing my conjectures gave her; and I guessed that if she had kept silence till now it was because she had been waiting, through all the years, for some one who should see what she alone had seen.

I waited to let her trust in me gather strength before I said: “Yes, it's pretty bad, seeing all three of them there together.”

She drew her mild brows into a frown of pain. “It was just awful from the beginning. I was here in the house when they were carried up—they laid Mattie Silver in the room you're in. She and I were great friends, and she was to have been my bridesmaid in the spring . . . When she came to I went up to her and stayed all night. They gave her things to quiet her, and she didn't know much till to'rd morning, and then all of a sudden she woke up just like herself, and looked straight at me out of her big eyes, and said . . . Oh, I don't know why I'm telling you all this,” Mrs. Hale broke off, crying.

She took off her spectacles, wiped the moisture from them, and put them on again with an unsteady hand. “It got about the next day,” she went on, “that Zeena Frome had sent Mattie off in a hurry because she had a hired girl coming, and the folks here could never rightly tell what she and Ethan were doing that night coasting, when they'd ought to have been on their way to the Flats to ketch the train . . . I never knew myself what Zeena thought—I don't to this day. Nobody knows Zeena's thoughts. Anyhow, when she heard o' the accident she came right in and stayed with Ethan over to the minister's, where they'd carried him. And as
soon
as the doctors said that Mattie could be moved, Zeena sent for her and took her back to the farm.”

“And there she's been ever since?”

Mrs. Hale answered simply: “There was nowhere else for her to go”; and my heart tightened at the thought of the hard compulsions of the poor.

“Yes, there she's been,” Mrs. Hale continued, “and Zeena's done for her, and done for Ethan, as good as she could. It was a miracle, considering how sick she was—but she seemed to be raised right up just when the call came to her. Not as she's ever given up doctoring, and she's had sick spells right along; but she's had the strength given her to care for those two for over twenty years, and before the accident came she thought she couldn't even care for herself.”

Mrs. Hale paused a moment, and I remained silent, plunged in the vision of what her words evoked. “It's horrible for them all,” I murmured.

“Yes: it's pretty bad. And they ain't any of 'em easy people either. Mattie
was,
before the accident; I never knew a sweeter nature. But she's suffered too much—that's what I always say when folks tell me how she's soured. And Zeena, she was always cranky. Not but what she bears with Mattie wonderful—I've seen that myself. But sometimes the two of them get going at each other, and then Ethan's face'd break your heart . . . When I see that, I think it's
him
that suffers most . . . anyhow it ain't Zeena, because she ain't got the time . . . It's a pity, though,” Mrs. Hale ended, sighing, “that they're all shut up there'n that one kitchen. In the summertime, on pleasant days, they move Mattie into the parlour, or out in the door-yard, and that makes it easier . . . but winters there's the fires to be thought of; and there ain't a dime to spare up at the Fromes'.”

Mrs. Hale drew a deep breath, as though her memory were eased of its long burden, and she had no more to say; but suddenly an impulse of complete avowal seized her.

She took off her spectacles again, leaned toward me across the bead-work table-cover, and went on with lowered voice: “There was one day, about a week after the accident, when they all thought Mattie couldn't live. Well, I say it's a pity she
did.
I said it right out to our minister once, and he was shocked at me. Only he wasn't with me that morning when she first came to . . . And I say, if she'd ha' died, Ethan might ha' lived; and the way they are
now,
I don't see's there's much difference between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard; 'cept that down there they're all quiet, and the women have got to hold their tongues.”

S
OURCE:
Edith Wharton.
Ethan Frome.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911.

1.
Hermione Lee.
Edith Wharton: A Biography
. New York: Knopf, 2007.

CARL
SANDBURG

In the mode of Walt Whitman, the popular poet Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) celebrated Chicago and American places.

Chicago
(1914)

        
Hog Butcher for the World,

        
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

        
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;

        
Stormy, husky, brawling,

        
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,

        
Bareheaded,

        
Shoveling,

        
Wrecking,

        
Planning,

        
Building, breaking, rebuilding,

Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,

Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,

Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,

Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,

Laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

S
OURCE:
Poetry
(March 1914).

Fog
(1916)

                            
The fog comes

                            
on little cat feet.

                            
It sits looking

                            
over harbor and city

                            
on silent haunches

                            
and then moves on.

S
OURCE:
Carl Sandburg.
Chicago Poems
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916.

Window
(1916)

                        
Night from a railroad car window

                        
Is a great, dark, soft thing

                        
Broken across with slashes of light.

S
OURCE:
Carl Sandburg.
Chicago Poems
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916.

H.
D. (HILDA DOOLITTLE)

Under the pen-name H.D., Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961) wrote these Imagistic and classical Greek-inspired poems. Born in Pennsylvania, she spent most of her adult life in Europe.

The
Garden
(1915)

I.

                        
You are clear,

                        
O rose, cut in rock,

                        
hard as the descent of hail.

                        
I could scrape the colour

                        
from the petal,

                        
like spilt dye from a rock.

                        
If I could break you

                        
I could break a tree.

                        
If I could stir

                        
I could break a tree,

                        
I could break you.

II.

                        
O wind,

                        
rend open the heat,

                        
cut apart the heat,

                        
rend it sideways.

                        
Fruit
can not drop

                        
through this thick air:

                        
fruit can not fall into heat

                        
that presses up and blunts

                        
the points of pears

                        
and rounds the grapes.

                        
Cut the heat,

                        
plough through it,

                        
turning it on either side

                        
of your path.

S
OURCE:
Poetry
(March 1915).

The
Pool
(1915)

                        
Are you alive?

                        
I touch you.

                        
You quiver like a sea-fish.

                        
I cover you with my net.

                        
What are you—banded one?

S
OURCE:
Poetry
(March 1915).

Fragment
XXXVI
(1921)

I know not what to do:

My mind is divided.

—Sappho

                
I know not what to do—

                
My mind is reft.

                
Is song's gift best?

                
Is love's gift loveliest?

                
I know not what to do,

                
Now sleep has pressed

                
Weight on your eyelids.

                
Shall I break your rest,

                
Devouring, eager?

                
Is love's gift best?—

                
Nay,
song's the loveliest.

                
Yet, were you lost,

                
What rapture could I take from song?—

                
What song were left?

                
I know not what to do:

                
To turn and slake

                
The rage that burns,

                
With my breath burn

                
And trouble your cool breath—

                
So shall I turn and take

                
Snow in my arms,

                
(Is love's gift best?)

                
Yet flake on flake

                
Of snow were comfortless,

                
Did you lie wondering,

                
Wakened yet unawake.

                
Shall I turn and take

                
Comfortless snow within my arms,

                
Press lips to lips that answer not,