Elizabeth Stuart Phelps - Since I Died

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
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(00:24):
Since I Died by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. How very still
you sit? If the shadow of an eyelash stirred upon
your cheek, If that gray line about your mouth should
snap its tension at this quivering end, if the pallor
of your profile warmed a little, if that tiny muscle

(00:46):
on your forehead, just at the left eyebell's curve should
start and twitch. If you would but grow a trifle
restless sitting there beneath my steady gaze, if you moved
a finger of your folded hands, if you should turn
and look behind your chair, or lift your face, half

(01:07):
lingering and half longing, half loving and half loathe to
ponder on the annoyed and thwarted cry which the wind
is making. Where I stand between it and yourself against
the half closed window. Ah, there you sigh and stir.

(01:28):
I think you lift your head. The little muscle is
a captive Still the line about your mouth is tense
and hard. The deepening hollow in your cheek has no
warmer tint. I see than the great doric column which
the moonlight builds against the wall. I lean against it.

(01:50):
I hold out my arms. You lift your head and
look me in the eye. If a shudder crept across
your figure, If your arms laid out upon the table
leapt but once above your head, if you named my name,
if you held your breath with terror, or sobbed aloud

(02:11):
for love, or sprang or cried, but you only lift
your head and look me in the eye. If I
dared step near or nearer, if it were permitted that
I should cross the current of your living breath, If
it were willed that I should leap the leap of
human blood within your veins, If I should touch your hands,

(02:36):
your cheeks, your lips. If I dropped an arm as
lightly as a snowflake round your shoulder. The fear which
no heart is fathomed, the fate which no fancy has faced,
the riddle which no soul has read, steps between your
substance and my soul. I dropped my arms. I sink

(03:01):
into the heart of the pillared light upon the wall,
I will not wonder what would happen if my outlines
defined upon it to your view. I will not think
of that which could be, would be if I struck
across your still set vision, face to face. Ah me,

(03:23):
How still she sits? With what a fixed incurious stare?
She looks me in the eye. The wind, now that
I stand no longer between it and yourself, comes enviously in.
It lifts the curtain and whirls about the room. It
bruises the surface of the great pearled pillar where I lean,

(03:46):
I am caught within it. Speech and language struggle over me.
Mute articulations fill the air. Tears and laughter, and the
sounding of soft lips and the of low cries possessed me.
Will she listen? Will she bend her head? Will her

(04:07):
lips part in recognition? Is there an alphabet between us?
Or have the winds of night of vocabulary to lift
before her? Holden eyes? We sat many times together and
talked of this. Do you remember, dear, you held my hand.
Tears that I could not see fell on it. We

(04:29):
sat by the great hall window upstairs, where the maple
shadow goes to sleep, face down across the floor upon
a lighted night, the old green curtain waved its hands
upon us like a mesmerist. I thought, like a priest.
You said, when we are parted, you shall go, you said,

(04:49):
And when I shook my head, you smiled. You always
smiled when you said that, But you said it always
quite the same. I think I hardly understood you then,
now that I hold your eyes in mine and you
see me. Not now when I stretch my hand and
you touch me. Not now that I cry your name

(05:14):
and you hear it. Not I comprehend you, tender one,
A wisdom not of earth was in your words. To
live is dying, I will die. To die is life,
and you shall live. Now, when the fever turned, I

(05:35):
thought of this. That must have been. Ah, how long
ago I missed the conception of that for which how
long stands index? Yet I perfectly remember that, I perfectly
understood it to be at three o'clock on a rainy
Sunday morning that I died. Your little watch stood in

(05:57):
its case of olive wood upon the table, and drops
were on the window. I noticed both, though you did
not know it. I see the watch now in your pocket.
I cannot tell if the hands move or only pulsate
like a heart, throb to and fro. They stand and point, mute,

(06:19):
gold fingers, paralyzed and pleading forever at the hour of three.
At this I wonder when first you said I was
sinking fast. The words sounded as old and familiar as
a nursery tale. I heard you in the hall. The

(06:41):
doctor had just left, and you went to mother and
took her face in your two arms, and laid your
hand across her mouth, as if it were she who
had spoken. She cried out and threw up her thin
old hands, but you stood as still as eternity. Then
I thought, again, is it she who dies? I shall

(07:03):
live so often and so anxiously we have talked of
this thing called death. Now that it is all over
between us, I cannot understand why it's such a source
of distress. It bewilders me. I am often bewildered. Here things,
in the fancies of things, possess a relation which as

(07:25):
yet is new and strange to me. Here is a mystery. Now.
In truth, it seems a simple matter for me to
tell you how it has been with me since your
lips last touched me, and your arms held me to
the vanishing air, oh drawn, pale lips, nerveless, dropping arms.

(07:50):
I told you I would come. Did ever promise fail?
I spoke to you, come and show me death? You said,
I have come to show you death. I could show
you the fairest sight and sweetest that ever blessed your eyes.
Why look? Is it not fair? Am I terrible? Do

(08:13):
you shrink or shiver? Would you turn from me? Or
hide your strained expectant face? Would she does? She will? She? Ah?
How the room widened? I could tell you that it
grew great and luminous day by day. At night the

(08:34):
walls throbbed. Lights of rose ran round them, and blew
fire and a traceury as of the shadows of little leaves.
As the walls expanded, the air fled. But I tried
to tell you how little pain I knew or feared.
Your haggard face bent over me. I could not speak.

(08:55):
When I would, I struggled, And you said, she suffers, dear,
it was so very little. Listen till I tell you
how that night came on the sun fell and the
dew slid down. It seemed to me that it slid
into my heart. But still I felt no pain where

(09:17):
the walls pulsed and receded. The hills came in, where
the old Breau stood above the glass. I saw a
single mountain with a face of fire and purple hair.
I tried to tell you this, but you said, she wanders.
I laughed in my heart at that, for it was
such a blessed wandering. As the night locked the sun

(09:39):
below the mountain's solemn watching face, the gates of space
were lifted up before me, The everlasting doors of matter
swung for me upon their rusty hinges, and the king
of glories entered in and out all the kingdoms of
the earth, and the power of them beckoned to me
across the mist my face senses made ruins and roses,

(10:03):
and the brows of Jura, and the singing of the rhine,
a shaft of red light on the sphinx's smile, and
caravans in sandstorms and an icy wind at sea, and gold,
a dream in minds that no man knew, and mothers
sitting at their doors and valleys singing babes to sleep,

(10:24):
and women in dank cellars selling souls for bread, and
the whir of wheels and giant factories, and a single
prayer somewhere in a den of death. I could not
find it, though I searched, and the smoke of battle,
and broken music, and a sense of lilies alone beside

(10:46):
a stream at the rising of the sun, and at
last your face, dear all alone. I discovered then that
the walls and roof of the room had vanished. Quite
the night wind blew in the maple in the yard
almost brushed my cheek. Stars were about me, and I

(11:10):
thought the rain had stopped, yet seemed to hear it
up on the seeming of a window which I could
not find. One thing only hung between me in immensity.
It was your single, awful, haggard face. I looked my
last into your eyes. Stronger than death, they held and

(11:32):
claimed my soul. I feebly raised my hand to find
your own, more cruel than the grave. Your wild grasp
chained me. Then I struggled, and you cried out, and
your face slipped, and I stood free. I stood upon
the floor beside the bed that which had been I

(11:54):
lay there at rest, but terrible before me, you hid
your face, and I saw you slide upon your knees.
I laid my hand upon your head. You did not stir.
I spoke to you, dear, look around a minute, but
you knelt quite still. I walked to and fro about

(12:16):
the room, and, meeting my mother, touched her on the elbow.
She only said she's gone, and sobbed aloud. I have
not gone, I cried, but she sat sobbing on the
walls of the room had settled now, and the ceiling
stood in its solid place. The window was shut, but

(12:39):
the door stood open. Suddenly I was restless and I ran.
I brushed you, and hurrying by, and hit the little
light stand where the tumbler stood. I looked to see
if it would fall, but it only shivered, as if
a breath of wind had struck at once. But I
was restless, and I ran in the hall I met

(13:02):
the doctor. This amused me, and I stopped to think
it over. Ah doctor said, I, you need not trouble
yourself to go up. I'm quite well to night, you see.
But he made me no answer, He gave me no glance.
He hung up his hat and laid his hand upon

(13:22):
the banister against which I leaned, and went ponderously up.
It was not until he had nearly reached the landing
that it occurred to me still leaning on the banisters
that his heavy arm must have swept against and threw
me where I stood against the oaken moldings which he grasped.
I saw his feet fall on the stairs above me,

(13:44):
but they made no sound which reached my ear. You
will not disturb me now with your big boots, sir,
said I, nodding, never fear. But he disappeared from sight
above me, and still I heard no sound. Now the
doctor had left the front door unlatched. As I touched it,

(14:06):
it blew open wide and solemnly. I passed out and
down the steps. I could see that it was chilly,
yet I felt no chill. Frost was on the grass,
and in the east a pallid streak, like the cheek
of one who had watched all night. The flowers in
the little square plots hung their heads and drew their
shoulders up. There was a lonely late lily which I

(14:29):
broke and gathered to my heart, where I breathed upon it,
and it warmed and looked me kindly in the eye. This,
I remember, gave me pleasure. I wandered in and out
about the garden in the scattering rain. My feet left
no trace upon the dripping grass, and I saw with
interest that the garment which I wore gathered no moisture

(14:50):
and no cold. I sat musing for a while upon
the piazza in the garden chair, not caring to go in.
It was so many months since I had felt able
to sit upon the piazza in the open air. By
and by, I thought I would go in and upstairs
to see you once again. The curtains were drawn from

(15:12):
the parlor windows, and I passed and repassed, looking in
all this while the cheek of the east was waning,
and the air gathering faint heats and lights about me.
I remembered presently the old arbor at the garden foot,
where before I was sick we sat so much together,
and thinking she will be surprised to know that I

(15:34):
have been down alone, I was restless, and I ran again.
I meant to come back and see you, dear once more.
I saw the lights in the room where I had
lain sick, overhead, and your shadow on the curtain, and
I blessed it with all the love of life and death.
As I bounded by, the air was thick with sweetness

(15:58):
from the dying flowers, the birds woke, and the zenith lighted,
and the leap of health was in my limbs. The
old arbor held out its soft arms to me, but
I was restless, and I ran. The field opened before me,
and meadows with broad bossoms, and a river flashed before

(16:18):
me like a cimeter, and woods interlocked their hands to
stay me. But being restless on I ran. The house
dwindled behind me, and the light in my sick room,
and your shadow on the curtain. But yet I was restless,
and I ran. In the twinkling of an eye, I

(16:42):
fell into a solitary place. Sand and rocks were in it,
and a falling wind. I paused and knelt upon the
sand and mused a little. In this place, I mused
of you and life and death, and love and agony.
But these had departed from me, as dim and distant

(17:03):
as the fainting wind. A sense of solemn expectation filled
the air. A tremor and a trouble wrapped my soul.
I must be dead, I said aloud. I had no
sooner spoken than I learned that I was not alone.
The sun had risen, and on a ledge of ancient rock,

(17:25):
weather stained and red, there had fallen over against me,
the outline of a presence lifted up against the sky
and turning suddenly. I saw lawful to utter, But utterance
has fled lawful to utter. But a greater than law
restrains me. Am, I blotted from your desolate fixed eyes,

(17:49):
lips that my mortal lips have pressed. Can you not
quiver when I cry, soul that my eternal soul has loved?
Can you stand enveloped in my presence not spring like
a fountain to me? Would you not know how it
has been with me since your perishable eyes beheld my
perished face. What my eyes have seen, or my ears

(18:10):
have heard, or my heart conceived without you? If I
have missed or mourned for you, if I have watched
or longed for you, marked your solitary days, in sleepless
nights and tearless eyes and monotonous slow echo of my
unanswered name, Would you not know? Alas would she? Would

(18:33):
she not? My soul misgives me with a matchless solitary fear.
I am called, and I slip from her. I am beckoned,
and lose her. Her face dims, and her folded lonely
hands fade from my sight. Time to tell her a

(18:54):
guarded thing, time to whisper, a treasured word, A moment
to tell her that death is dumb, for life is death.
A moment to tell her and of Since I died
By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps