and be over
With pain, loss and trouble for ever and ever.
Henry says, it were well we should all of us go
When life has no aim and no hope; and no doing
Remains to be done; and days are but eating
And drinking and breathing, only these and no more.

But before he went forth he gave me a message.
"I loved her," so his story began. Henry,
You remember the look on his face as he said it,
As he lay with his eyes fixed fast on the Picture?
"She was strong, and she drew me as life draws the young
And as death draws the old. I could not resist her.
She was vital with force, to attract and to hold.
She raced me a race for my life, and she won it.
I was man, not a boy, and I loved as man loves
When the forces of life are in him full-flooded
As rivers in meadows, when they flow to the sedges.
Did she love me? Perhaps. Who can tell? She was woman,
And hence she was dark as the night, and as hidden!
Who could find her? Who the depth of her nature
Might measure? I tried but could not. Then boldly
I spake--spake as man speaks but once unto woman.
True and straight did I say it man fashion.
But she drew back offended; she shrank from my praying,
And with coldness of tone and suspicion dismissed me.
Had a man shown a tithe of that look in his eye,
On his face, he or I would have died on the instant.
But what can a man do, when scorned by a woman?
So I left her.

I need not say more. My life it was ended.
It wasn't worth living;--I am made in that fashion.
So I came to the woods. Where else when in trouble
Can man go and find what he needs, consolation?
Go you down to her house, in the city, John Norton,
To the house where she lives, and give her this message.
Word for word let her hear it,--say where you left me.
There's gold in that box to pay your expenses.
Word for word as I tell you, nor say a word further."
Then he bade us good-by, and marched away bravely,
As a man on a trail that is somewhat uncertain.
And under the pines on the bank of the rapids
We buried the man whom the woods called--Jack Whitcomb,
And the picture he loved we placed on his bosom.

* * * * *

I went down to her house in the city. A cabin
Of stone, brown as tamarack bark, trimmed with olive.
It was high as a pine that stands on a mount