IN GEORGE SAND'S GARDEN
To taste its salt, to count the beating of her heart
Against the lips, and knew her action
Had less art in it than the command of mind and will–
Even then, among her "rash
sorties,"
the perversions
Of taste, mind, feeling, a less and more
Than human spirit caused a trembling of the leaves,
Sat for the camera, smoking a cigar,
And at the center of a room, draped in soiled linen,
Advised by unpaid physicians and counselors-at-law,
Remained serene.
Was this, then,
"The Eternal Feminine?" life in short death that "makes us
What we were before?" a metamorphosis
From sex to sex?-so she was read,
Gazed at, applauded, and half, but only half
Forgotten.
And in her garden, serenity
Is in the summer afternoon, in
((nature morte,"
The trimmed lawn, the white and empty marble garden seat,
In skies that open with a blue and vacant stare.
In the sun-dial, in the distant vista through the trees,
Is the lady there?
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