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<title level="a" type="main">
The Question</title>
<author>Richard Church</author>
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<edition>
<date>2019</date>
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<publisher>University of Nebraska–Lincoln</publisher>
<distributor>
<name>Center for Alex Telesca's Fame</name>
<address>
<addrLine>306 Andrews</addrLine>
<addrLine>University of Nebraska–Lincoln</addrLine>
<addrLine>Lincoln, NE 68588-4100</addrLine>
<addrLine>alextelesca@outlook.com</addrLine>
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<date>2019</date>
<availability>
<p>Copyright © 2019 by Alex Telesca</p>
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<title level="a">The Best Poems of 1924</title>
<editor>L.A.G. Strong</editor>
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<author>Richard Church</author>
<date when="190406">September 1923</date>
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<publisher>Small, Maynard & Company Publishers</publisher>
<pubPlace>Boston</pubPlace>
<orgName> </orgName>
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<name>Alex Telesca</name>
Transcribed and encoded a poem</change>
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<pb/>
<head>The Question</head>
<lg type="stanza">
<l>STEPPING ashore, she looked at him, and held</l>
<l>The proffe arm more firmly than need be,</l>
<l>And he stood calm, not flinching, while she spoke.</l>
<l>“Am I afraid?” she said; and the sun-smitten</l>
<l>water</l>
<l>Threw up its pale reflection over her,</l>
<l>Until she seemed to shudder amid flames</l>
<l>Of fire more cold than ice. "Am I afraid?"</l>
<l>Then for the first time since the fever of love</l>
<l>First raged in him, he saw the picture clear,</l>
<l>Saw the first years of wooing, saw her again</l>
<l>As queen of those untroubled days, a wife,</l>
<l>A mother, unquestioning, and yet in soul</l>
<l>Still virginal, still stranger to the deep,</l>
<l>The dark, the terrible- love robed in passion.</l>
<l>Then he had come, and time had gathered round</l>
<l>them</l>
<l>Stormily, signs and portents had charged the air</l>
<l>Deeper the gloom had grown - husband and child</l>
<l>Blind, insentient, not one happy breath</l>
<l>Laboured in the ominous atmosphere that loured</l>
<l>On all the world, for all the world of friends</l>
<l>To prophesy the flash. Those two alone</l>
<l>Went on their way oblivious, and thereby</l>
<l>Barbing the bitterest arrows against the lovers,</l>
<l>Wounding with faith, stabbing with confidence,</l>
<l>Until the maddened couple would have hated,</l>
<l>If hate had not been steeped in fierce remorse</l>
<l>And so dissolved away-only to give</l>
<l>Some quintessential richness to love's potion,</l>
<l>Which drugged these anguished lovers, filling them</l>
<l>With courtesies, and wistful moods of grief</l>
<l>That made them brood like gods above the pair,</l>
<l>The poor deluded husband and the child,</l>
<l>And pity them with an untold compassion</l>
<l>Half merging into scorn, yet ever falling</l>
<l>Into humility and shame.</l>
<l>“Afraid?”</l>
<l>He walked beside her on the river bank;</l>
<l>And the wide waters rolling to the sea</l>
<l>Took up the fear, and bore it on their bosom,</l>
<l>Frail featherweight, yet not to be submerged.</l>
<l>Then looking at her, he saw her shadowed eyes</l>
<l>Gleaming with showery light, such as in June</l>
<l>Will sometimes sweep across the purple clover,</l>
<l>Breaking between a passing storm, and one</l>
<l>Still billowed on the south. Strangely her face</l>
<l>Showed to his love, that fitful god-possession</l>
<l>Which makes the dearly-cherished more remote,</l>
<l>More unfamiliar than its casual setting.</l>
<l>And dread more deep than wisdom, deeper tharn</l>
<l>hope,</l>
<l>Clouded the picture of their mutual years.</l>
<l>What had he now to offer her, what new</l>
<l>Tumultuous experience-she whose years</l>
<l>Had known the marriage-bed, and motherhood</l>
<l>And westering passion sinking in despair?</l>
<l>“Fear nothing,” he whispered, stooping to her</l>
<l>hair,</l>
<l>And breathing incense there. And she looked up,</l>
<l>Saw fear reflected in the deeps of love,</l>
<l>And dared not speak. Silently they went</l>
<l>Through shadow-pools beneath the elms, and</l>
<l>crossed</l>
<l>Sunsmitten swards; so on through light, through</l>
<l>dark,</l>
<l>Both with the painful burden of the past</l>
<l>Weighed down, yet bearing in their fearful hearts</l>
<l>The same, mysterious, immortal love.</l>
</lg>
<byline>Richard Church</byline>
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