Bathsheba

Robert Calvin Whitford

The place was evil. Carelessly I gazed
Upon the shameless three, while one-the eyes
Of her who seemed the youngest searched my heart.
Pretty she was and wicked, but her eyes
Were more than half divine, blue more than gray,
And infinitely sad and desperate
Of all old virtue, like the flickering orbs
Of some lean wolf that haunts the misty glow
Of hunter's fire, and howls and moans for food-
Incarnate yearning. True, the girl was not
Honest or clean or good, and yet those eyes,
A thin blue-gray, stick in my memory.
A woman with such eyes I could have loved
Had love meant more to her and less to me.