My Virtual Reading Room

The Puritan's Ballad

MY love came up from Barnegat,

The sea was in his eyes;

He trod as softly as a cat

And told me terrible lies.

His hair was yellow as new-cut pine

In shavings curled and feathered;

I thought how silver it would shine

By cruel winters weathered.

But he was in his twentieth year,

The time I'm speaking of;

We were head over heels in love with fear

And half a-feared of love.

My hair was piled in a copper crown --

A devilish living thing --

And the tortoise-shell pins fell down, fell down,

When that snake uncoiled to spring.

His feet were used to treading a gale

And balancing thereon;

His face was as brown as a foreign sail

Threadbare against the sun.

His arms were thick as hickory logs

Whittled to little wrists;

Strong as the teeth of a terrier dog

Were the fingers of his fists.

Within his arms I feared to sink

Where lions shook their manes,

And dragons drawn in azure ink

Leapt quickened by his veins.

Dreadful his strength and length of limb

As the sea to foundering ships;

I dipped my hands in love for him

No deeper than the tips.

But our palms were welded by a flame

The moment we came to part,

And on his knuckles I read my name

Enscrolled with a heart.

And something made our wills to bend,

As wild as trees blown over;

We were no longer friend and friend,

But only lover and lover.

"In seven weeks or seventy years --

God grant it may be sooner! --

I'll make a hankerchief for you

From the sails of my captain's schooner.

We'll wear our loves like wedding rings

Long polished to our touch;

We shall be busy with other things

And they cannot bother us much.

When you are skimming the wrinkled cream

And your ring clinks on the pan,

You'll say to yourself in a pensive dream,

'How wonderful a man!'

When I am slitting a fish's head

And my ring clanks on the knife,

I'll say with thanks as a prayer is said,

'How beautiful a wife!'

And I shall fold my decorous paws

In velvet smooth and deep,

Like a kitten that covers up its claws

To sleep and sleep and sleep.

Like a little blue pigeon you shall bow

Your bright alarming crest;

In the crook of my arm you'll lay your brow

To rest and rest and rest.

Will he never come back from Barnegat

With thunder in his eyes,

Treading as soft as a tiger cat,

To tell me terrible lies?

Elinor Wylie