The Lord of Death relaxed his iron hold,

And out of the swart shadows, deep and cold,

Stole the lost wife, the fair Eurydice.

He felt her soft arms in the old embrace,

He guessed the smile upon her unseen face,

And joyful turned him from the dreadful place.

A little patience, and all had been well;

A little faith, and bale had changed to bliss:

Was it too much that he should ask for this,

Whose love had dared the steep descent of hell?

Had faced the Furies and the tongues of fire,

The reek of torment, rising high and higher,

Proserpina’s sad woe and Pluto’s ire?

It seemed a little thing to hope and ask

That the glad wife, just rescued from the dead,

Should go unquestioning where her Orpheus led.

But no; for woman’s strength too hard the task.

“Why dost thou turn thine eyes away from me?

Am I grown ugly, then, unfit to see?

Was it because so short a time she stayed

Among the dead that she had not grown wise?

Do petty doubts and fears and jealousies,

Vanity, selfishness, the stain and shade

On mortal love, survive the poignant thrust

Which, winnowing souls from out their hindering dust,

Should wake the eyes to see, the heart to trust?

If we came back to those who love us so,

And fain would plead with Heaven for our recall,

Should we come back having forgotten all

The wisdom which all spirits needs must know?

Would the old faults revive, the old scars sting,

The old capacities for suffering

Quicken to life even in our quickening?

Oh, lovely myth, with just this marring stain!

I will not think that such deep wrong can be.

If ever it were given to one again

Earthward to turn in answer to Love’s plea,

Surely ’twould come in hushed and reverent guise,

With gentlest wisdom in far-seeing eyes,

Ripened for life by knowing Paradise.