  No one may say what time elapsed, or when The slumberous shadow lifted over Hugh: But some globose immensity of blue Enfolded him at last, within whose light He seemed to float, as some faint swimmer might, A deep beneath and overhead a deep. So one late plunged into the lethal sleep, A spirit diver fighting for his breath, Swoops through the many-fathomed glooms of death, Emerging in a daylight strange and new. Rousing a languid wonder, came on Hugh The quiet, steep-arched splendor of the day. Agrope for some dim memory, he lay Upon his back, and watched a lucent fleece Fade in the blue profundity of peace As did the memory he sought in vain. Then with a stirring of mysterious pain, But when he would obey, the hollow skies Broke as a bubble punctured, and went out. Again he woke, and with a drowsy doubt, Remote unto his horizontal gaze He saw the world’s end kindle to a blaze And up the smoky steep pale heralds run. And when at length he knew it for the sun, Dawn found the darkling reaches of his mind, Where in the twilight he began to find Strewn shards and torsos of familiar things. As from the rubble in a place of kings Men school the dream to build the past anew, So out of dream and fragment builded Hugh, And came upon the reason of his plight: The bear’s attack—the shot—and then the night Wherein men talked as ghosts above a grave. Some consciousness of will the memory gave: He would get up. The painful effort spent Made the wide heavens billow as a tent Wind-struck, the shaken prairie sag and roll. Some moments with an effort at control He swayed, half raised upon his arms, until The dizzy cosmos righted, and was still. The man he was: an overwhelming pain Smote him to earth, and one unruly limb Refused the weight and crumpled under him. Sickened with torture he lay huddled there, Gazing about him with a great despair Proportioned to the might that felt the chain. Far-flung as dawn, collusive sky and plain Stared bleak denial back. Why strive at all?— That vacancy about him like a wall, Yielding as light, a granite scarp to climb! Some little waiting on the creep of time, Abandonment to circumstance; and then— Here flashed a sudden thought of Henry’s men Into his mind and drove the gloom away. They would be riding westward with the day! How strange he had forgot! That battered leg Or some scalp wound, had set his wits a-beg! Was this Hugh Glass to whimper like a squaw? Grimly amused, he raised his head and saw— The empty distance: listened long and heard— Naught but the twitter of a lonely bird That emphasized the hush. Was something wrong? And surely they had camped not far behind. Now woke a query in his troubled mind— Where was his horse? Again came creeping back The circumstances of the bear’s attack. He had dismounted, thinking at the spring To spend the night—and then the grisly thing— Of course the horse had bolted; plain enough! But why was all the soil about so rough As though a herd of horses had been there? The riddle vexed him till his vacant stare Fell on a heap of earth beside a pit. What did that mean? He wormed his way to it, The newly wakened wonder dulling pain. No paw of beast had scooped it—that was plain. ‘Twas squared; indeed, ‘twas like a grave, he thought. A grave—a grave—the mental echo wrought Sick fancies! Who had risen from the dead? Who, lying there, had heard above his head The ghostly talkers deaf unto his shout? Now searching all the region round about, As though the answer were a lurking thing, He saw along the margin of the spring An ash-heap and the litter of a camp. Suspicion, like a little smoky lamp Flung blear grotesques before his groping wit. Had Rees been there? And he alive? Who then? And were he dead, it might be Henry’s men! How many suns had risen while he slept? The smoky glow flared wildly, and he crept, The dragged limb throbbing, till at length he found The trail of many horses westward bound; And in one breath the groping light became A gloom-devouring ecstasy of flame, A dazing conflagration of belief! Plunged deeper than the seats of hate and grief, He gazed about for aught that might deny Such baseness: saw the non-committal sky, The prairie apathetic in a shroud, The bland complacence of a vagrant cloud— World-wide connivance! Smilingly the sun Approved a land wherein such deeds were done; And careless breezes, like a troop of youth, Unawed before the presence of such truth, Went scampering amid the tousled brush. Then bye and bye came on him with a rush His weakness and the consciousness of pain, While, with the chill insistence of a rain His manifest betrayal by a friend Beat in upon him. Jamie had been there; And Jamie—Jamie—Jamie did not care! What no man yet had witnessed, the wide sky Looked down and saw; a light wind idling by Heard what no ear of mortal yet had heard: For he—whose name was like a magic word To conjure the remote heroic mood Of valiant deed and splendid fortitude, Wherever two that shared a fire might be,— Gave way to grief and wept unmanfully. Yet not as they for whom tears fall like dew To green a frosted heart again, wept Hugh. So thewed to strive, so engined to prevail And make harsh fate the zany of a tale, His own might shook and tore him. For a span He lay, a gray old ruin of a man With all his years upon him like a snow. And then at length, as from the long ago, Remote beyond the other side of wrong, The old love came like some remembered song Whereof the strain is sweet, the burden sad. A retrospective vision of the lad Grew up in him, as in a foggy
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