Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

RED PEARLS by AGNES LEE

First Line: THAT YOU SHOULD BE HERE! WHO COULD EVER GUESS!
Last Line: FOR THEY MUST CLING ABOUT YOUR NECK FOREVER.
Subject(s): PEARLS;
FIRST VOICE
That you should be here! Who could ever guess!

SECOND VOICE
Then you remember me, Columbia?

FIRST VOICE
Yes --
Our friendship, long ago, beside the sea!
But tell me, by what sudden conjury
Do you appear before me like a flame,
You, from the land of war?

SECOND VOICE
Your message came.

FIRST VOICE
Mine?

SECOND VOICE
Yours. It reached me in a bit of shell.

FIRST VOICE
I sent no message.

SECOND VOICE
I recall it well.
@3Come look upon my pearls@1 is what it said.

FIRST VOICE
Strange! When I clasped them on to-night, they shed
Such a soft lustre over me that I
Down in my deepest heart said mistily:
"If @3he@1 might see them, see them perfect, white,
And know me beautiful! Oh, if he might!"

SECOND VOICE
And I have come. And you are beautiful.

FIRST VOICE
See my long rope of pearls, delight as cool
As after-kisses of wild fluttering wings!
You -- man of space -- who seem to know all things,
Do you, then, know its story?

SECOND VOICE
Yes, I know.

FIRST VOICE
How it is but my own elation's glow?
How fortune upon fortune comes to me?

SECOND VOICE
I know. And they are beautiful to see!
Pearls! Pearls! And how they shimmer, gem on gem!
Now let me have a closer look at them:
This round perfection is a shattered jaw,
And this a mangled brain. Two eyes that saw
Are these two pearls, the eyes of one I brothered,
Now living in eternal darkness smothered.
This was a forehead. These were powerful forms,
These, sturdy limbs. And this, that glows and warms,
This is the bright supremacy of pain.
A noble story, -- gold and gold again
For blood and blood and blood!

FIRST VOICE
I cannot listen!

SECOND VOICE
These three that with your breathing glance and glisten,
These are three tortured women.

FIRST VOICE
Hush, O hush!

SECOND VOICE
But look, they change, they seem to overflush.

FIRST VOICE
My pearls! My lovely pearls! They are turning red!
They weigh, they press! I snatch at stinging lead!

SECOND VOICE
Snatch, -- but they will not move.

FIRST VOICE
What awful ban,
What spell, is on my fingers? Help, help, man, --
O take them off!

SECOND VOICE
I cannot.

FIRST VOICE
Help!

SECOND VOICE
The dawn
Is breaking in your house. The guests are gone.
And the last servant sleeps with sodden ears.

FIRST VOICE
Help, some one, help me!

SECOND VOICE
Call, -- but no one hears.

FIRST VOICE
Ah, man or ghost, they are fire on fire! They bite!
Have pity, -- tear them off!

SECOND VOICE
Not any might
May lift them, neither ghost's nor man's endeavour.
For they must cling about your neck forever.



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