But sometimes when her letters came to him, Full of wise tenderness and maiden mind, He felt that he had let his clearness dim; The riot with the cowboys seemed unkind To that far faithful heart; he could not find Peace in the thought of her; he found no spur To instant upright action in his love for her.
She faded to the memory of a kiss, There in the rough life among foreign faces; Love cannot live where leisure never is; He could not write to her from savage places, Where drunken mates were betting on the aces, And rum went round and smutty songs were lifted. He would not raise her banner against that; he drifted,
Ceasing, in time, to write, ceasing to think, But happy in the wild life to the bone; The riding in vast space, the songs, the drink, Some careless heart beside him like his own, The racing and the fights, the ease unknown In older, soberer lands; his young blood thrilled. The pampas seemed his own, his cup of joy was filled.
And one day, riding far after strayed horses, He rode beyond the ranges to a land Broken and made most green by watercourses, Which served as strayline to the neighbouring brand. A house stood near the brook; he stayed his hand, Seeing a woman there, whose great eyes burned, So that he could not choose but follow when she turned.
After that day he often rode to see That woman at the peach farm near the brook, And passionate love between them came to be Ere many days. Their fill of love they took; And even as the blank leaves of a book The days went over Mary, day by day, Blank as the last, was turned, endured, passed, turned away.
Spring came again greening the hawthorn buds; The shaking flowers, new-blossomed, seemed the same, And April put her riot in young bloods; The jays flapped in the larch clump like blue flame. She did not care; his letter never came. Silent she went, nursing the grief that kills, And Lion watched her pass among the daffodils.
Time passed, but still no letter came; she ceased, Almost, to hope, but never to expect. The June moon came which had beheld love's feast, Then waned, like it; the meadow-grass was flecked With moon-daisies, which died; little she recked Of change in outward things, she did not change; Her heart still knew one star, one hope, it did not range,