. . and if we meet
We shall not care.
Dear . . . not one tear will rise for this . . .
A little while hence
No regret
Will stir for a remembered kiss--
Not even silence,
When we've met,
Will give old ghosts a waste to roam,
Or stir the surface of the sea . . .
If gray shapes drift beneath the foam
We shall not see."
They quarrelled dangerously because Amory maintained that _sea_ and _see_
couldn't possibly be used as a rhyme. And then Eleanor had part of
another verse that she couldn't find a beginning for:
". . . But wisdom passes . . . still the years
Will feed us wisdom. . . . Age will go
Back to the old-- For all our tears
We shall not know."
Eleanor hated Maryland passionately. She belonged to the oldest of the
old families of Ramilly County and lived in a big, gloomy house with her
grandfather. She had been born and brought up in France. . . . I see I
am starting wrong. Let me begin again.
Amory was bored, as he usually was in the country. He used to go for far
walks by himself--and wander along reciting "Ulalume" to the corn-fields,
and congratulating Poe for drinking himself to death in that atmosphere
of smiling complacency.
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