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.