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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SCAR, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: So, you are back
Last Line: Margaret. Only time will tell.


Persons:

ABEL FORSTER, a shepherd.
MARGARET FORSTER, his wife.

Scene: The Scar, a shepherd's cottage on the fells. ABEL
FORSTER is seated with his back to the open door,
gazing with unseeing eyes into a smouldering
peat-fire, the dull glow from which is the only light
in the room. The pendulum of the hanging-clock is
silent and motionless, and the choral voi

ABEL. So, you are back!
MARGARET. Yes, I am back.
ABEL. I knew,
Sooner or later, you would come again.
I have expected you these many nights,
But thought to see you sooner, lass.
MARGARET. And yet,
You could not know: I did not know myself;
And even at the door I almost turned.
ABEL. Yet, you are here.
MARGARET. Yes, I am here to-night;
But where the dawn shall find me I don't know.
ABEL. You would not go again! Lass, do you think
My door shall ever stand ajar for you
To come and go when it may please your whim?
MARGARET. No; if I go again, I don't come back.
ABEL. You shall not go.
MARGARET. Ah! have you not learned aught
From the long months that taught so much to me?
ABEL. Ay, lass, I have learned something. Do not leave me.
You, too, have learned, you say; and have come home.
Why go again into the world to starve
While there is food and shelter for you here?
But you will bide. We shall forget the past.
Let us forgive each other....
MARGARET. I don't come
To crave forgiveness -- nor would I forget.
ABEL. Why have you come then? Were you hunger-driven?
O lass, I hoped...
MARGARET. No, I don't come to beg;
Nor would I starve while I have hands to work.
I lacked nor food nor shelter since I left.
ABEL. Then, why have you returned?
MARGARET. I have come back
Because I am the mother of your son.

[She rises from her seat and throws back her shawl,
revealing a baby at her breast.]

ABEL [looking up]. My son! Ah, Margaret! Now I understand.
To think I didn't know!
MARGARET. The boy was born
A month ago.
ABEL. Your babe has brought you home.
You will not go again. You have come back
Because you could not quite forget!
MARGARET. I've come
Because the babe is yours. I would not keep
Your own from you; nor would I rob the child
Of home and father.
ABEL. Had you no other thought?
Had you forgotten in so brief a while
How we had loved, lass?
MARGARET. We knew naught of love.
ABEL. Did we not know love when we wedded?
MARGARET. No!
It was not love, but passion wedded us;
And passion parted us as easily.
ABEL. Ay, passion parted us. Yet, surely, love
Brings us again together. We were young
And hasty, maybe, when we wed; but, lass,
I have awaited these seven weary months
For your return; and with the sheep by day,
Or brooding every night beside the hearth,
I have thought long on many things. The months
Have brought me wisdom; and I love. I knew
You would return; for you, too, have found love.
MARGARET. Is this your wisdom? Little have you learned.
You are as hasty as the day we wed!
I, too, have brooded long on many things.
Maybe, my wisdom is no more than yours,
But only time will tell. Who knows! I've lived
And laboured in the city these long months;
And though I found friends even there, and folk
Were good to me; and, when the boy was born,
A neighbour tended me -- yet, to my heart,
The city was a solitude; I lived
Alone in all that teeming throng of folk.
Yet, I was not afraid to be alone;
Nor, in my loneliness, did I regret
That we had parted; for the solitude
Revealed so much that else I had not learned
Of my own heart to me. But, when, at length
I knew another life within me stirred,
My thoughts turned homewards to the hills; it seemed
So pitiful that a baby should be born
Amid that stifling squalor. As I watched
The little children, starved and pinched and white,
Already old in evil ere their time,
Who swarmed in those foul alleys, and who played
In every gutter of the reeking courts,
I vowed no child of mine should draw its breath
In that dark city, by our waywardness
Robbed of the air and sun, ay, and the hills,
And the wide playground of the windy heath:
And yet, I lingered till the boy was born.
But, as he nestled at my breast, he drew
The angry pride from me; and, as I looked
Upon him I remembered you. He brought
Me understanding; and his wide, blue eyes
Told me that he was yours; and, while he slept,
I often lay awake and thought of you;
And wondered what life held for this wee babe.
And sometimes in the night...
ABEL. Have you, too, known
The long night-watches? Since you went away,
Each morning, as I left the lonely house,
My heart said: surely she will come to-day;
And when each evening I returned from work,
I looked to meet you on the threshold; yet,
By night alone within the silent house
I longed for you the sorest. Through lone hours
My heart has listened for your step, until
I trembled at the noises of the night.
I am no craven, yet, the moor-owl's shriek
At midnight, or the barking of a fox,
Or even the drumming of the snipe ere dawn
Has set me quaking. Ay, night long, for you
The door was left ajar. And, hour by hour,
I've listened to the singing of the burn
Until I had each tinkling note by heart.
Though I have lived my life among the hills,
I never listened to a stream before.
Yet, little comfort all its melody
Could bring my heart; but now that you are back
It seems to sing you welcome to your home.
You have come home. You could not quite forget.
MARGARET. I have forgotten naught; and naught I rue:
Yet, when the weakness left me, I arose
To bring your babe to you.
ABEL. Naught but the babe?
MARGARET. Lad, shut the door; for I am cold; and fetch
Some peats to mend the fire; it's almost out.
You need a woman's hand to tend you, lad.
See, you have let the clock run down!
ABEL. My heart
Kept bitter count of all those lonely hours.
Margaret, your wisdom is no less than mine;
And mine is love, lass.
MARGARET. Only time will tell.





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