Lilith

"It was a magnificent Persian−−so wet and draggled, though, as to look what she was−−worse than
disreputable!"
"What do you mean, Mr. Raven?" I cried, a fresh horror taking me by the throat. "−−There was a beautiful
blue Persian about the house, but she fled at the very sound of water!−−Could she have been after the
goldfish?"
"We shall see!" returned the librarian. "I know a little about cats of several sorts, and there is that in the room
which will unmask this one, or I am mistaken in her."
He rose, went to the door of the closet, brought from it the mutilated volume, and sat down again beside me. I
stared at the book in his hand: it was a whole book, entire and sound!
"Where was the other half of it?" I gasped.
"Sticking through into my library," he answered.
I held my peace. A single question more would have been a plunge into a bottomless sea, and there might be
no time!
"Listen," he said: "I am going to read a stanza or two. There is one present who, I imagine, will hardly enjoy
the reading!"
He opened the vellum cover, and turned a leaf or two. The parchment was discoloured with age, and one leaf
showed a dark stain over two−thirds of it. He slowly turned this also, and seemed looking for a certain
passage in what appeared a continuous poem. Somewhere about the middle of the book he began to read.
But what follows represents−−not what he read, only the impression it made upon me. The poem seemed in a
language I had never before heard, which yet I understood perfectly, although I could not write the words, or
give their meaning save in poor approximation. These fragments, then, are the shapes which those he read
have finally taken in passing again through my brain:−−
"But if I found a man that could believe In what he saw not, felt not, and yet knew, From him I should take
substance, and receive Firmness and form relate to touch and view; Then should I clothe me in the likeness
true Of that idea where his soul did cleave!"
He turned a leaf and read again:−−
"In me was every woman. I had power Over the soul of every living man, Such as no woman ever had in
dower−− Could what no woman ever could, or can; All women, I, the woman, still outran, Outsoared,
outsank, outreigned, in hall or bower.
"For I, though me he neither saw nor heard, Nor with his hand could touch finger of mine, Although not once
my breath had ever stirred A hair of him, could trammel brain and spine With rooted bonds which Death
could not untwine−− Or life, though hope were evermore deferred."
Again he paused, again turned a leaf, and again began:−−
"For by his side I lay, a bodiless thing; I breathed not, saw not, felt not, only thought, And made him love
me−−with a hungering After he knew not what−−if it was aught Or but a nameless something that was
wrought By him out of himself; for I did sing
Lilith
Lilith 92