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In The Cage

by Edgar Lee Masters

The sounds of mid-night trickle into the roar

Of morning over the water growing blue.

At ten o'clock the August sunbeams pour

A blinding flood on Michigan Avenue.

But yet the half-drawn shades of bottle green

Leave the recesses of the room

With misty auras drawn around their gloom

Where things lie undistinguished, scarcely seen.

You, standing between the window and the bed

Are edged with rainbow colors. And I lie

Drowsy with quizzical half-open eye

Musing upon the contour of your head,

Watching you comb your hair,

Clothed in a corset waist and skirt of silk,

Tied with white braid above your slender hips

Which reaches to your knees and makes your bare

And delicate legs by contrast white as milk.

And as you toss your head to comb its tresses

They flash upon me like long strips of sand

Between a moonlit sea, pale as your hand,

And a red sun that on a high dune stresses

Its sanguine heat.

And then at times your lips,

Protruding half unconscious half in scorn

Engage my eyes while looking through the morn

At the clear oval of your brow brought full

Over the sovereign largeness of your eyes;

Or at your breasts that shake not as you pull

The comb through stubborn tangles, only rise

Scarcely perceptible with breath or signs,

Firm unmaternal like a young Bacchante's,

Or at your nose profoundly dipped like Dante's

Over your chin that softly melts away.

Now you seem fully under my heart's sway.

I have slipped through the magic of your mesh

Freed once again and strengthened by your flesh,

You seem a weak thing for a strong man's play.

Yet I know now that we shall scarce have parted

When I shall think of you half heavy hearted.

I know our partings. You will faintly smile

And look at me with eyes that have no guile,

Or have too much, and pass into the sphere

Where you keep independent life meanwhile.

How do you live without me, is the fear?

You do not lean upon me, ask my love, or wonder

Of other loves I may have hidden under

These casual renewals of our love.

And if I loved you I should lie in flame,

Ari, go about re-murmuring your name,

And these are things a man should be above.

And as I lie here on the imminent brink

Of soul's surrender into your soul's power,

And in the white light of the morning hour

I see what life would be if we should link

Our lives together in a marriage pact:

For we would walk along a boundless tract

Of perfect hell; but your disloyalty

Would be of spirit, for I have not won

Mastered and bound your spirit unto me.

And if you had a lover in the way

I have you it would not by half betray

My love as does your vague and chainless thought,

Which wanders, soars or vanishes, returns,

Changes, astonishes, or chills or burns,

Is unresisting, plastic, freely wrought

Under my hands yet to no unison

Of my life and of yours. Upon this brink

I watch you now and think

Of all that has been preached or sung or spoken

Of woman's tragedy in woman's fall;

And all the pictures of a woman broken

By man's superior strength.

And there you stand

Your heart and life as firmly in command

Of your resolve as mine is, knowing all

Of man, the master, and his power to harm,

His rulership of spheres material,

Bread, customs, rules of fair repute -

What are they all against your slender arm?

Which long since plucked the fruit

Of good and evil, and of life at last

And now of Life. For dancing you have cast

Veil after veil of ideals or pretense

With which men clothe the being feminine

To satisfy their lordship or their sense

Of ownership and hide the things of sin,

You have thrown them aside veil after veil;

And there you stand unarmored, weirdly frail,

Yet strong as nature, making comical

The poems and the tales of woman's fall....

You nod your head, you smile, I feel the air

Made by the closing door. I lie and stare

At the closed door. One, two, your tuft'd steps

Die on the velvet of the outer hall.

You have escaped. And I would not pursue.

Though we are but caged creatures, I and you,

A male and female tiger in a zoo.

For I shall wait you. Life himself will track

Your wanderings and bring you back,

And shut you up again with me and cage

Our love and hatred and our silent rage.