Hisshoulder did I holdToo high that I, o’erboldWeak one,Should lean thereon.
But He a little hathDeclined His stately pathAnd myFeet set more high;
That the slack arm may reachHis shoulder, and faint speechStirHis unwithering hair.
And bolder now and bolderI lean upon that shoulderSo dearHe is and near:
And with His aureoleThe tresses of my soulAre blentIn wished content.
Yes, this too gentle LoverHath flattering words to move herTo prideBy His sweet side.
Ah, Love! somewhat let be!Lest my humilityGrow weakWhen thou dost speak!
Rebate thy tender suit,Lest to herself imputeSome worthThy bride of earth!
A maid too easilyConceits herself to beThose thingsHer lover sings;
And being straitly wooed,Believes herself the GoodAnd FairHe seeks in her.
Turn something of Thy look,And fear me with rebuke,That IMay timorously
Take tremors in Thy arms,And with contrivèd charmsAllureA love unsure.
Not to me, not to me,Builded so flawfully,O God,Thy humbling laud!
Not to this man, but Man,—Universe in a span;PointOf the spheres conjoint;
In whom eternallyThou, Light, dost focus Thee!—Didst paveThe way o’ the wave;
Rivet with stars the Heaven,For causeways to Thy drivenCarIn its coming far
Unto him, only him;In Thy deific whimDidst boundThy works’ great round
In this small ring of flesh;The sky’s gold-knotted meshThy wristDid only twist
To take him in that net.—Man! swinging-wicket setBetweenThe Unseen and Seen;
Lo, God’s two worlds immense,Of spirit and of sense,WedIn this narrow bed;
Yea, and the midge’s hymnAnswers the seraphimAthwartThy body’s court!
Great arm-fellow of God!To the ancestral clodKin,And to cherubin;
Bread predilectedlyO’ the worm and Deity!Hark,O God’s clay-sealed Ark,
To praise that fits thee, clearTo the ear within the ear,But denseTo clay-sealed sense.
All the Omnific madeWhen in a word he said,(Mystery!)He utteredthee;
Thee His great utterance bore,O secret metaphorOf whatThou dream’st no jot!
Cosmic metonymy!Weak world-unshuttering key!OneSeal of Solomon!
Trope that itself not scansIts huge significance,Which triesCherubic eyes.
Primer where the angels allGod’s grammar spell in small,Nor spellThe highest too well.
Point for the great descantsOf starry disputants;EquationOf creation.
Thou meaning, couldst thou see,Of all which dafteth thee;So plain,It mocks thy pain;
Stone of the Law indeed,Thine own self couldst thou read;Thy blissWithin thee is.
Compost of Heaven and mire,Slow foot and swift desire!Lo,To have Yes, choose No;
Gird, and thou shalt unbind;Seek not, and thou shalt find;To eat,Deny thy meat;
And thou shalt be fulfilledWith all sweet things unwilled:So bestGod loves to jest
With children small—a freakOf heavenly hide-and-seekFitFor thy wayward wit,
Who art thyself a thingOf whim and wavering;FreeWhen His wings pen thee;
Sole fully blest, to feelGod whistle thee at heel;Drunk upAs a dew-drop,
When He bends down, sun-wise,Intemperable eyes;Most proud,When utterly bowed.
To feel thyself and beHis dear nonentity—CaughtBeyond human thought
In the thunder-spout of Him,Until thy being dim,And beDead deathlessly.
Stoop, stoop; for thou dost fearThe nettle’s wrathful spear,So slightArt thou of might!
Rise; for Heaven hath no frownWhen thou to thee pluck’st down,Strong clod!The neck of God.
‘Thou needst not sing new songs,but say the old.’—Cowley.
‘Thou needst not sing new songs,but say the old.’—Cowley.
Mortals,that behold a Woman,Rising ’twixt the Moon and Sun;Who am I the heavens assume?anAll am I,and I am one.
Multitudinous ascend I,Dreadful as a battle arrayed,For I bear you whither tend I;Ye are I: be undismayed!I, the Ark that for the gravenTables of the Law was made;Man’s own heart was one, one Heaven,Both within my womb were laid.For there Anteros with ErosHeaven with man conjoinèd was,—Twin-stone of the Law,Ischyros,Agios Athanatos.
I, the flesh-girt ParadisesGardenered by the Adam new,Daintied o’er with sweet devicesWhich He loveth, for He grew.I, the boundless strict savannahWhich God’s leaping feet go through;I, the heaven whence the Manna,Weary Israel, slid on you!He the Anteros and Eros,I the body, He the Cross;He upbeareth me,Ischyros,Agios Athanatos!
I am Daniel’s mystic Mountain,Whence the mighty stone was rolled;I am the four Rivers’ fountain,Watering Paradise of old;Cloud down-raining the Just One am,Danae of the Shower of Gold;I the Hostel of the Sun am;He the Lamb, and I the Fold.He the Anteros and Eros,I the body, He the Cross;He is fast to me,Ischyros,Agios Athanatos!
I, the presence-hall where AngelsDo enwheel their placèd King—Even my thoughts which, without change else,Cyclic burn and cyclic sing.To the hollow of Heaven transplanted,I a breathing Eden spring,Where with venom all outpantedLies the slimed Curse shrivelling.For the brazen Serpent clear onThat old fangèd knowledge shone;I to Wisdom rise,Ischyron,Agion Athanaton!
See in highest heaven pavilionedNow the maiden Heaven rest,The many-breasted sky out-millionedBy the splendours of her vest.Lo, the Ark this holy tide isThe un-handmade Temple’s guest,And the dark Egyptian bride isWhitely to the Spouse-Heart prest!He the Anteros and Eros,Nail me to Thee, sweetest Cross!He is fast to me,Ischyros,Agios Athanatos!
‘Tell me, tell me, O Belovèd,Where Thou dost in mid-day feed!For my wanderings are reprovèd,And my heart is salt with need.’‘Thine own self not spellest God in,Nor the lisping papyrus reed?Follow where the flocks have trodden,Follow where the shepherds lead.’He, the Anteros and Eros,Mounts me in Ægyptic car,Twin-yoked; leading me,Ischyros,Trembling to the untempted Far.
‘Make me chainlets, silvern, golden,I that sow shall surely reap;While as yet my Spouse is holdenLike a Lion in mountained sleep.’‘Make her chainlets, silvern, golden,She hath sown and she shall reap;Look up to the mountains olden,Whence help comes with lioned leap.’By what gushed the bitter Spear on,Pain, which sundered, maketh one;Crucified to Him,Ischyron,Agion Athanaton!
Then commanded and spake to meHe who framed all things that be;And my Maker entered through me,In my tent His rest took He.Lo! He standeth, Spouse and Brother;I to Him, and He to me,Who upraised me where my motherFell, beneath the apple-tree.Risen ’twixt Anteros and Eros,Blood and Water, Moon and Sun,He upbears me, HeIschyros,I bear Him, theAthanaton!
Where is laid the Lord arisen?In the light we walk in gloom;Though the sun has burst his prison,We know not his biding-room.Tell us where the Lord sojourneth,For we find an empty tomb.‘Whence He sprung, there He returneth,Mystic Sun,—the Virgin’s Womb.’Hidden Sun, His beams so near us,Cloud enpillared as He wasFrom of old, there He,Ischyros,Waits our search,Athanatos.
Who will give Him me for brother,Counted of my family,Sucking the sweet breasts of my Mother?—I His flesh, and mine is He;To my Bread myself the bread is,And my Wine doth drink me: see,His left hand beneath my head is,His right hand embraceth me!Sweetest Anteros and Eros,Lo, her arms He leans across;Dead that we die not, stooped to rear us,Thanatos Athanatos.
Who is She, in candid vesture,Rushing up from out the brine?Treading with resilient gestureAir, and with that Cup divine?She in us and we in her are,Beating Godward: all that pine,Lo, a wonder and a terror!The Sun hath blushed the Sea to Wine!He the Anteros and Eros,She the Bride and Spirit; forNow the days of promise near us,And the Sea shall be no more.
Open wide thy gates, O Virgin,That the King may enter thee!At all gates the clangours gurge in,God’s paludament lightens, see!Camp of Angels! Well we evenOf this thing may doubtful be,—If thou art assumed to Heaven,Or is Heaven assumed to thee!Consummatum. Christ the promised,Thy maiden realm is won, O Strong!Since to such sweet Kingdom comest,Remember me, poor Thief of Song!
Cadent fails the stars along:—Mortals,that behold a womanRising ’twixt the Moon and Sun;Who am I the heavens assume?anAll am I,and I am one.
Daughterof the ancient Eve,We know the gifts ye gave—and give.Who knows the gifts whichyoushall give,Daughter of the newer Eve?You, if my soul be augur, youShall—O what shall you not, Sweet, do?The celestial traitress play,And all mankind to bliss betray;With sacrosanct cajoleriesAnd starry treachery of your eyes,Tempt us back to Paradise!Make heavenly trespass;—ay, press inWhere faint the fledge-foot seraphin,Blest Fool! Be ensign of our wars,And shame us all to warriors!Unbanner your bright locks,—advanceGirl, their gilded puissance,I’ the mystic vaward, and draw onAfter the lovely gonfalonUs to out-folly the excessOf your sweet foolhardiness;To adventure like intenseAssault against Omnipotence!
Give me song, as She is, new,Earth should turn in time thereto!New, and new, and thrice so new,All old sweets, New Sweet, meant you!Fair, I had a dream of thee,When my young heart beat prophecy,And in apparition elateThy little breasts knew waxèd great,Sister of the Canticle,And thee for God grown marriageable.How my desire desired your day,That, wheeled in rumour on its way,Shook me thus with presentience! ThenEden’s lopped tree shall shoot again:For who Christ’s eyes shall miss, with thoseEyes for evident nuncios?Or who be tardy to His callIn your accents augural?
Who shall not feel the Heavens hidImpend, at tremble of your lid,And divine advent shine avowedUnder that dim and lucid cloud;Yea, ’fore the silver apocalypseFail, at the unsealing of your lips?When to loveyouis (O Christ’s Spouse!)To love the beauty of His house;Then come the Isaian days; the oldShall dream; and our young men beholdVision—yea, the vision of Thabor mount,Which none to other shall recount,Because in all men’s hearts shall beThe seeing and the prophecy.For ended is the Mystery Play,When Christ is life, and you the way;When Egypt’s spoils are Israel’s right,And Day fulfils the married arms of Night.But here my lips are still.UntilYou and the hour shall be revealed,This song is sung and sung not, and its words are sealed.
‘Mybrother!’ spake she to the sun;The kindred kisses of the starsWere hers; her feet were set uponThe moon. If slumber solved the bars
Of sense, or sense transpicuous grownFulfillèd seeing unto sight,I know not; nor if ’twas my ownIngathered self that made her night.
The windy trammel of her dress,Her blown locks, took my soul in mesh;God’s breath they spake, with visiblenessThat stirred the raiment of her flesh:
And sensible, as her blown were,Beyond the precincts of her formI felt the woman flow from her—A calm of intempestuous storm.
I failed against the affluent tide;Out of this abject earth of meI was translated and enskiedInto the heavenly-regioned She.
Now of that vision I bereavenThis knowledge keep, that may not dim:—Short arm needs man to reach to Heaven,So ready is Heaven to stoop to him.
Which sets, to measure of man’s feet,No alien Tree for trysting-place;And who can read, may read the sweetDirection in his Lady’s face.
And pass and pass the daily crowd,Unwares, occulted Paradise;Love the lost plot cries silver-loud,Nor any know the tongue he cries.
The light is in the darkness, andThe darkness doth not comprehend:God hath no haste; and God’s sons standYet a Day, tarrying for the end.
Dishonoured Rahab still hath hid,Yea still, within her house of shame,The messengers by Jesus bidForerun the coming of His Name.
The Word was flesh, and crucified,From the beginning, and blasphemed:Its profaned raiment men divide,Damned by what, reverenced, had redeemed.
Thy Lady, was thy heart not blind,One hour gave to thy witless trustThe key thou go’st about to find;And thou hast dropped it in the dust.
Of her, the Way’s one mortal grace,Own, save thy seeing be all forgot,That truly, God was in this place,And thou, unblessèd, knew’st it not.
But some have eyes, and will not see;And some would see, and have not eyes;And fail the tryst, yet find the Tree,And take the lesson for the prize.
Alas, and I have sungMuch song of matters vain,And a heaven-sweetened tongueTurned to unprofiting strainOf vacant things, which thoughEven so they be, and throughly so,It is no boot at all for thee to know,But babble and false pain.
What profit if the sunPut forth his radiant thews,And on his circuit run,Even after my device, to this and to that use;And the true Orient, Christ,Make not His cloud of thee?I have sung vanity,And nothing well devised.
And though the cry of starsGive tongue before his wayGoldenly as I say,And each from wide Saturnus to hot MarsHe calleth by its name,Lest that its bright feet stray;And thou have lore of all,But to thine own Sun’s callThy path disorbed hast never wit to tame;It profits not withal,And my rede is but lame.
Only that, ’mid vain vauntOf wisdom ignorant,A little kiss upon the feet of LoveMy hasty verse has stayedSometimes a space to plant:It has not wholly strayed,Not wholly missed near sweet, fanning proud plumes above.
Therefore I do repentThat with religion vain,And misconceivèd pain,I have my music bentTo waste on bootless things its skiey-gendered rain:Yet shall a wiser dayFulfil more heavenly way,And with approvèd music clear this slipI trust in God most sweet;Meantime the silent lip,Meantime the climbing feet.
BEING A LITTLE DRAMATIC SEQUENCE ON THEASPECT OF PRIMITIVE GIRL-NATURETOWARDS A LOVE BEYONDITS CAPACITIES.
Crosschild! red, and frowning so?‘I, the day just over,Gave a lock of hair to—no!Howdareyou say, my lover?’
He asked you?—Let me understand;Come, child, let me sound it!‘Of course, hewouldhave asked it, and—And so—somehow—he—found it.
‘He told it out with great loud eyes—Men have such little wit!His sin I ever will chastiseBecause I gave him it.
‘Shameless in me the gift, alas!In him his open bliss:But for the privilege he hasA thousand he shall miss!
‘His eyes, where once I dreadless laughed,Call up a burning blot:I hate him, for his shameful craftThat asked by asking not!’
Luckless boy! and all for hairHe never asked, you said?‘Not just—but then he gazed—I swearHe gazed it from my head!
‘His silence on my cheek like breathI felt in subtle way;More sweet than aught another saithWas what he did not say.
‘He’ll think me vanquished, for this lapse,Who should be above him;Perhaps he’ll think me light; perhaps—Perhaps he’ll think I—love him!
‘Are his eyes conscious and elate,I hate him that I blush;Or are they innocent, still I hate—They mean a thing’s to hush.
‘Before he nought amiss could do,Now all things show amiss;’Twas all my fault, I know that true,But all my fault was his.
‘I hate him for his mute distress,’Tis insult he should care!Because my heart’s all humbleness,All pride is in my air.
‘With him, each favour that I doIs bold suit’s hallowing text;Each gift a bastion levelled, toThe next one and the next.
‘Each wish whose grant may him befallIs clogged by those withstood;He trembles, hoping one means all,And I, lest perhaps it should.
‘Behind me piecemeal gifts I cast,My fleeing self to save;And that’s the thing must go at last,For that’s the thing he’d have.
‘My lock the enforcèd steel did grateTo cut; its root-thrills cameDown to my bosom. It might sateHis lust for my poor shame!
‘His sifted dainty this should beFor a score ambrosial years!But his too much humilityAlarums me with fears.
‘My gracious grace a breach he countsFor graceless escalade;And, though he’s silent ere he mounts,My watch is not betrayed.
‘My heart hides from my soul he’s sweet:Ah dread, if he divine!One touch, I might fall at his feet,And he might rise from mine.
‘To hear him praise my eyes’ brown gleamsWas native, safe delight;But now it usurpation seems,Because I’ve given him right.
‘Before I’d have him not remove,Now would not have him near;With sacrifice I called on Love,And the apparition’s Fear.’
Foolish to give it!—‘’Twas my whim,When he might parted be,To think that I should stay by himIn a little piece of me.
‘He always said my hair was soft—What touches he will steal!Each touch and look (and he’ll look oft)I almost thought I’d feel.
‘And then, when first he saw the hair,To think his dear amazement!As if he wished from skies a star,And found it in his casement.
‘He’s kiss the lock—and I had toyedWith dreamed delight of this:But ah, in proof, delight was void—I could notseehis kiss!’
So, fond one, half this agonyWere spared, which my hand hushes,Could you have played, Sweet, the sweet spy,And blushed not for your blushes!
CanI forget her crueltyWho, brown miracle, gave you me?Or with unmoisted eyes think onThe proud surrender overgone,(Lowlihead in haughty dress),Of the tender tyranness?And ere thou for my joy was given,How rough the road to that blest heaven!With what pangs I fore-expiatedThy cold outlawry from her head;How was I trampled and brought low,Because her virgin neck was so;How thralled beneath the jealous stateShe stood at point to abdicate;How sacrificed, before to meShe sacrificed her pride and thee;How did she, struggling to abaseHerself to do me strange, sweet grace,Enforce unwitting me to shareHer throes and abjectness with her;Thence heightening that hour when her loverHer grace, with trembling, should discover,And in adoring trouble beHumbled at her humility!And with what pitilessness was IAfter slain, to pacifyThe uneasy manes of her shame,Her haunting blushes!—Mine the blame:What fair injustice did I rueFor what I—did not tempt her to?Nor aught the judging maid might winMe to assoil fromhersweet sin.But nought were extreme punishmentFor that beyond-divine content,When my with-thee-first-giddied eyesStooped ere their due on Paradise!O hour of consternating blissWhen I heavened me in thy kiss;Thy softness (daring overmuch!)Profaned with my licensed touch;Worshipped, with tears, on happy knee,Her doubt, her trust, her shyness free,Her timorous audacity!
Ilooked, she drooped, and neither spake, and cold,We stood, how unlike all forecasted thoughtOf that desirèd minute! Then I leanedDoubting; whereat she lifted—oh, brave eyesUnfrighted:—forward like a wind-blown flameCame bosom and mouth to mine!That falling kissTouching long-laid expectance, all went upSuddenly into passion; yea, the nightCaught, blazed, and wrapt us round in vibrant fire.
Time’s beating wing subsided, and the windsCaught up their breathing, and the world’s great pulseStayed in mid-throb, and the wild train of lifeReeled by, and left us stranded on a hush.This moment is a statue unto LoveCarved from a fair white silence.Lo, he standsWithin us—are we not one now, one, one roof,His roof, and the partition of weak fleshGone down before him, and no more, for ever?—Stands like a bird new-lit, and as he lit,Poised in our quiet being; only, onlyWithin our shaken hearts the air of passion,Cleft by his sudden coming, eddies stillAnd whirs round his enchanted movelessness.
A film of trance between two stirrings! Lo,It bursts; yet dream’s snapped links cling round the limbsOf waking: like a running evening streamWhich no man hears, or sees, or knows to run,(Glazed with dim quiet), save that there the moonIs shattered to a creamy flicker of flame,Our eyes’ sweet trouble were hid, save that the loveTrembles a little on their impassioned calms.
Thelover whose soul shaken isIn some decuman billow of bliss,Who feels his gradual-wading feetSink in some sudden hollow of sweet,And ’mid love’s usèd converse comesSharp on a mood which all joy sums—An instant’s fine compendium ofThe liberal-leavèd writ of love;His abashed pulses beating thickAt the exigent joy and quick,Is dumbed, by aiming utterance greatUp to the miracle of his fate.The wise girl, such Icarian fallSaved by her confidence that she’s small,—As what no kindred word will fitIs uttered best by opposite,Love in the tongue of hate exprest,And deepest anguish in a jest,—Feeling the infinite must beBest said by triviality,Speaks, where expression bates its wings,Just happy, alien, little things;What of all words is in excessImplies in a sweet nothingness,With dailiest babble shows her senseThat full speech were full impotence;And while she feels the heavens lie bare,She only talks about her hair.
Shewas aweary of the hoveringOf Love’s incessant tumultuous wing;Her lover’s tokens she would answer not—’Twere well she should be strange with him somewhat:A pretty babe, this Love,—but fie on it,That would not suffer her lay it down a whit!Appointed tryst defiantly she balked,And with her lightest comrade lightly walked,Who scared the chidden Love to hide apart,And peep from some unnoticed corner of her heart.She thought not of her lover, deem it not(There yonder, in the hollow, that’shiscot),But she forgot not that he was forgot.She saw him at his gate, yet stilled her tongue—So weak she felt her, that she would feel strong,And she must punish him for doing him wrong:Passed, unoblivious of oblivion still;And if she turned upon the brow o’ the hill,It was so openly, so lightly done,You saw she thought he was not thought upon.He through the gate went back in bitterness;She that night woke and stirred, with no distress,Glad of her doing,—sedulous to be glad,Lest perhaps her foolish heart suspect that it was sad.
Love, like a wind, shook wide your blosmy eyes,You trembled, and your breath came sobbing-wiseFor that you loved me.
You were so kind, so sweet, none could withholdTo adore, but that you were so strange, so cold;For that you loved me.
Like to a box of spikenard did you breakYour heart about my feet. What words you spake!For that you loved me.
Life fell to dust without me; so you triedAll carefullest ways to drive me from your side,For that you loved me.
You gave yourself as children give, that weepAnd snatch back, with—‘I meant you not to keep!’For that you loved me.
I am no woman, girl, nor ever knewThat love could teach all ways that hate could doTo her that loved me.
Have less of love, or less of woman inYour love, or loss may even from this begin—That you so love me.
For, wild Penelope, the web you woveYou still unweave, unloving all your love;Is this to love me,
Or what rights have I that scorn could deny?Even of your love, alas, poor Love must die,If so you love me!
Shedid not love to love; but hated himFor making her to love, and so her whimFrom passion taught misprision to begin;And all this sinWas because love to cast out had no skillSelf, which was regent still.Her own self-will made void her own self’s will
IfI have studied here in partA tale as old as maiden’s heart,’Tis that I do see hereinShadow of more piteous sin.
She, that but giving part, not whole,Took even the part back, is the Soul:And that so disdainèd Lover—Best unthought, since Love is over.
Love to invite, desire, and fear,And Love’s exactions cost too dearCount for Love’s possession,—ah,Thy way, misera Anima!
To give the pledge, and yet be pinedThat a pledge should have force to bind,This, O Soul, too often stillIs the recreance of thy will!
Out of Love’s arms to make fond chain,And, because struggle bringeth pain,Hate Love for Love’s sweet constraint,Is the way of Souls that faint.
Such a Soul, for saddest end,Finds Love the foe in Love the friend;And—ah, grief incredible!—Treads the way of Heaven, to Hell.
PRELUDE.
Thewailful sweetness of the violinFloats down the hushèd waters of the wind,The heart-strings of the throbbing harp beginTo long in aching music. Spirit-pined,
In wafts that poignant sweetness drifts, untilThe wounded soul ooze sadness. The red sun,A bubble of fire, drops slowly toward the hill,While one bird prattles that the day is done.
O setting Sun, that as in reverent daysSinkest in music to thy smoothèd sleep,Discrowned of homage, though yet crowned with rays,Hymned not at harvest more, though reapers reap:
For thee this music wakes not. O deceived,If thou hear in these thoughtless harmoniesA pious phantom of adorings reaved,And echo of fair ancient flatteries!
Yet, in this field where the Cross planted reigns,I know not what strange passion bows my headTo thee, whose great command upon my veinsProves thee a god for me not dead, not dead!
For worship it is too incredulous,For doubt—oh, too believing-passionate!What wild divinity makes my heart thusA fount of most baptismal tears?—Thy straight
Long beam lies steady on the Cross. Ah me!What secret would thy radiant finger show?Of thy bright mastership is this the key?Isthisthy secret, then? And is it woe?
Fling from thine ear the burning curls, and harkA song thou hast not heard in Northern day;For Rome too daring, and for Greece too dark,Sweet with wild wings that pass, that pass away!
ODE.
Alpha and Omega, sadness and mirth,The springing music, and its wasting breath—The fairest things in life are Death and Birth,And of these two the fairer thing is Death.Mystical twins of Time inseparable,The younger hath the holier array,And hath the awfuller sway:It is the falling star that trails the light,It is the breaking wave that hath the might,The passing shower that rainbows maniple.Is it not so, O thou down-stricken Day,That draw’st thy splendours round thee in thy fall?High was thine Eastern pomp inaugural;But thou dost set in statelier pageantry,Lauded with tumults of a firmament:Thy visible music-blasts make deaf the sky,Thy cymbals clang to fire the Occident,Thou dost thy dying so triumphally:Iseethe crimson blaring of thy shawms!Why do those lucent palmsStrew thy feet’s failing thicklier than their might,Who dost but hood thy glorious eyes with night,And vex the heels of all the yesterdays?Lo! this loud, lackeying praiseWill stay behind to greet the usurping moon,When they have cloud-barred over thee the West.Oh, shake the bright dust from thy parting shoon!The earth not pæans thee, nor serves thy hest,Be godded not by Heaven! avert thy face,And leave to blank disgraceThe oblivious world! unsceptre thee of state and place!
Ha! but bethink thee what thou gazedst on,Ere yet the snake Decay had venomed tooth;The name thou bar’st in those vast seasons gone—Candid Hyperion,Clad in the light of thine immortal youth!Ere Dionysus bled thy vines,Or Artemis drave her clamours through the wood,Thou saw’st how once against Olympus’ heightThe brawny Titans stood,And shook the gods’ world ’bout their ears, and howEnceladus (whom Etna cumbers now)Shouldered me Pelion with its swinging pines,The river unrecked, that did its broken floodSpurt on his back: before the mountainous shockThe rankèd gods dislock,Scared to their skies; wide o’er rout-trampled nightFlew spurned the pebbled stars: those splendours thenHad tempested on earth, star upon starMounded in ruin, if a longer warHad quaked Olympus and cold-fearing men.Then did the ample margeAnd circuit of thy targeSullenly redden all the vaward fight,Above the blusterous clashWheeled thy swung falchion’s flashAnd hewed their forces into splintered flight.
Yet ere Olympus thou wast, and a god!Though we deny thy nod,We cannot spoil thee of thy divinity.What know we elder than thee?When thou didst, bursting from the great void’s husk,Leap like a lion on the throat o’ the dusk;When the angels rose-chapletedSang each to other,The vaulted blaze overheadOf their vast pinions spread,Hailing thee brother;How chaos rolled back from the wonder,And the First Morn knelt down to thy visage of thunder!Thou didst draw to thy sideThy young Auroral bride,And lift her veil of night and mystery;Tellus with baby handsShook off her swaddling-bands,And from the unswathèd vapours laughed to thee.
Thou twi-form deity, nurse at once and sire!Thou genitor that all things nourishest!The earth was suckled at thy shining breast,And in her veins is quick thy milky fire.Who scarfed her with the morning? and who setUpon her brow the day-fall’s carcanet?Who queened her front with the enrondured moon?Who dug night’s jewels from their vaulty mineTo dower her, past an eastern wizard’s dreams,When hovering on him through his haschish-swoon,All the rained gems of the old Tartarian lineShiver in lustrous throbbings of tinged flame?Whereof a moiety in the Paolis’ seamsStatelily builded their Venetian name.Thou hast enwoofèd herAn empress of the air,And all her births are propertied by thee:Her teeming centuriesDrew being from thine eyes:Thou fatt’st the marrow of all quality.
Who lit the furnace of the mammoth’s heart?Who shagged him like Pilatus’ ribbèd flanks?Who raised the columned ranksOf that old pre-diluvian forestry,Which like a continent torn oppressed the sea,When the ancient heavens did in rains depart,While the high-dancèd whirlsOf the tossed scud made hiss thy drenchèd curls?Thou rear’dst the enormous brood;Who hast with life imbuedThe lion maned in tawny majesty,The tiger velvet-barred,The stealthy-stepping pard,And the lithe panther’s flexuous symmetry.
How came the entombèd tree a light-bearer,Though sunk in lightless lair?Friend of the forgers of earth,Mate of the earthquake and thunders volcanic,Clasped in the arms of the forces TitanicWhich rock like a cradle the girthOf the ether-hung world;Swart son of the swarthy mine,When flame on the breath of his nostrils feedsHow is his countenance half-divine,Like thee in thy sanguine weeds?Thou gavest him his light,Though sepultured in nightBeneath the dead bones of a perished world;Over his prostrate formThough cold, and heat, and storm,The mountainous wrack of a creation hurled.Who made the splendid roseSaturate with purple glows;Cupped to the marge with beauty; a perfume-pressWhence the wind vintagesGushes of warmèd fragrance richer farThan all the flavorous ooze of Cyprus’ vats?Lo, in yon gale which waves her green cymar,With dusky cheeks burnt redShe sways her heavy head,Drunk with the must of her own odorousness;While in a moted trouble the vexed gnatsMaze, and vibrate, and tease the noontide hush.Who girt dissolvèd lightnings in the grape?Summered the opal with an Irised flush?Is it not thou that dost the tulip drape,And huest the daffodilly,Yet who hast snowed the lily,And her frail sister, whom the waters name,Dost vestal-vesture ’mid the blaze of June,Cold as the new-sprung girlhood of the moonEre Autumn’s kiss sultry her cheek with flame?Thou sway’st thy sceptred beamO’er all delight and dream,Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance:And like a jocund maidIn garland-flowers arrayed,Before thy ark Earth keeps her sacred dance.
And now, O shaken from thine antique throne,And sunken from thy coerule empery,Now that the red glare of thy fall is blownIn smoke and flame about the windy sky,Where are the wailing voices that should meetFrom hill, stream, grove, and all of mortal shapeWho tread thy gifts, in vineyards as stray feetPulp the globed weight of juiced Iberia’s grape?Where is the threne o’ the sea?And why not dirges theeThe wind, that sings to himself as he makes strideLonely and terrible on the Andean height?Where is the Naiad ’mid her sworded sedge?The Nymph wan-glimmering by her wan fount’s verge?The Dryad at timid gaze by the wood-side?The Oread jutting lightOn one up-strainèd sole from the rock-ledge?The Nereid tip-toe on the scud o’ the surge,With whistling tresses dank athwart her face,And all her figure poised in lithe Circean grace?Why withers their lament?Their tresses tear-besprent,Have they sighed hence with trailing garment-gem?O sweet, O sad, O fair!I catch your flying hair,Draw your eyes down to me, and dream on them!
A space, and they fleet from me. Must ye fade—O old, essential candours, ye who madeThe earth a living and a radiant thing—And leave her corpse in our strained, cheated arms?Lo ever thus, when Song with chorded charmsDraws from dull death his lost Eurydice,Lo ever thus, even at consummating,Even in the swooning minute that claims her his,Even as he trembles to the impassioned kissOf reincarnate Beauty, his controlClasps the cold body, and foregoes the soul!Whatso looks lovelilyIs but the rainbow on life’s weeping rain.Why have we longings of immortal pain,And all we long for mortal? Woe is me,And all our chants but chaplet some decay,As mine this vanishing—nay, vanished Day.The low sky-line dusks to a leaden hue,No rift disturbs the heavy shade and chill,Save one, where the charred firmament lets throughThe scorching dazzle of Heaven; ’gainst which the hill,Out-flattened sombrely,Stands black as life against eternity.Against eternity?A rifting light in meBurns through the leaden broodings of the mind:O blessèd Sun, thy stateUprisen or derogateDafts me no more with doubt; I seek and find.
If with exultant treadThou foot the Eastern sea,Or like a golden beeSting the West to angry red,Thou dost image, thou dost followThat King-Maker of Creation,Who, ere Hellas hailed Apollo,Gave thee, angel-god, thy station;Thou art of Him a type memorial.Like Him thou hang’st in dreadful pomp of bloodUpon thy Western rood;And His stained brow did veil like thine to night,Yet lift once more Its light,And, risen, again departed from our ball,But when It set on earth arose in Heaven.Thus hath He unto death His beauty given:And so of all which form inheritethThe fall doth pass the rise in worth;For birth hath in itself the germ of death,But death hath in itself the germ of birth.It is the falling acorn buds the tree,The falling rain that bears the greenery,The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise.For there is nothing lives but something dies,And there is nothing dies but something lives.Till skies be fugitives,Till Time, the hidden root of change, updries,Are Birth and Death inseparable on earth;For they are twain yet one, and Death is Birth.
AFTER-STRAIN.
Now with wan ray that other sun of SongSets in the bleakening waters of my soul:One step, and lo! the Cross stands gaunt and long’Twixt me and yet bright skies, a presaged dole.
Even so, O Cross! thine is the victory.Thy roots are fast within our fairest fields;Brightness may emanate in Heaven from thee,Here thy dread symbol only shadow yields.
Of reapèd joys thou art the heavy sheafWhich must be lifted, though the reaper groan;Yea, we may cry till Heaven’s great ear be deaf,But we must bear thee, and must bear alone.
Vain were a Simon; of the AntipodesOur night not borrows the superfluous day.Yet woe to him that from his burden flees!Crushed in the fall of what he cast away.
Therefore, O tender Lady, Queen Mary,Thou gentleness that dost enmoss and drapeThe Cross’s rigorous austerity,Wipe thou the blood from wounds that needs must gape.
‘Lo, though suns rise and set, but crosses stay,I leave thee ever,’ saith she, ‘light of cheer.’’Tis so: yon sky still thinks upon the Day,And showers aërial blossoms on his bier.
Yon cloud with wrinkled fire is edgèd sharp;And once more welling through the air, ah me!How the sweet viol plains him to the harp,Whose pangèd sobbings throng tumultuously.
Oh, this Medusa-pleasure with her stings!This essence of all suffering, which is joy!I am not thankless for the spell it brings,Though tears must be told down for the charmed toy.
No; while soul, sky, and music bleed together,Let me give thanks even for those griefs in me,The restless windward stirrings of whose featherProve them the brood of immortality.
My soul is quitted of death-neighbouring swoon,Who shall not slake her immitigable scarsUntil she hear ‘My sister!’ from the moon,And take the kindred kisses of the stars.
(ON A PORTRAIT OF COVENTRY PATMOREBY J. S. SARGENT, R.A.)
Lookon him. This is he whose works ye know;Ye have adored, thanked, loved him,—no, not him!But that of him which proud portentous woeTo its own grimPresentment was not potent to subdue,Nor all the reek of Erebus to dim.This, and not him, ye knew.Look on him now. Love, worship if ye can,The very man.Ye may not. He has trod the ways afar,The fatal ways of parting and farewell,Where all the paths of painèd greatness are;Where round and always roundThe abhorrèd words resound,The words accursed of comfortable men,—‘For ever’; and infinite glooms intolerableWith spacious replication give again,And hollow jar,The words abhorred of comfortable men.You the stern pities of the gods debarTo drink where he has drunkThe moonless mere of sighs,And pace the places infamous to tell,Where God wipes not the tears from any eyes,Where-through the ways of dreadful greatness areHe knows the perilous routThat all those ways aboutSink into doom, and sinking, still are sunk.And if his sole and solemn term thereoutHe has attained, to love ye shall not dareOne who has journeyed there;Ye shall mark wellThe mighty cruelties which arm and marThat countenance of control,With minatory warnings of a soulThat hath to its own selfhood been most fell,And is not weak to spare:And lo, that hairIs blanchèd with the travel-heats of hell.
If any beThat shall with rites of reverent pietyApproach this strongSad soul of sovereign Song,Nor fail and falter with the intimidate throng;If such there be,These, these are only theyHave trod the self-same way;The never-twice-revolving portals heardBehind them clang infernal, and that wordAbhorrèd sighed of kind mortality,As he—Ah, even as he!
LoI, Song’s most true lover, plain me soreThat worse than other women she can deceive,For she being goddess, I have given her moreThan mortal ladies from their loves receive;And first of her embraceShe was not coy, and gracious were her ways,That I forgot all virgins to adore;Nor did I greatly grieveTo bear through arid daysThe pretty foil of her divine delays;And one by one to castLife, love, and health,Content, and wealth,Before her, thinking ever on her praise,Until at lastNought had I left she would be gracious for.Now of her cozening I complain me sore,Seeing her uses,That still, more constantly she is pursued,And straitlier wooed,Her only-adorèd favour more refuses,And leaves me to imploreRemembered boon in bitterness of blood.
From mortal woman thou may’st know full well,O poet, that dost deem the fair and tallUrania of her ways not mutable,When things shall thee befallWhat thou art toilèd in her sweet, wild spell.Do they strow for thy feetA little tender favour and deceitOver the sudden mouth of hidden hell?—As more intolerableHer pit, as her first kiss is heavenlier-sweet.Are they, the more thou sigh,Still the more watchful-cruel to deny?—Know this, that in her service thou shalt learnHow harder than the heart of woman isThe immortal crueltyOf the high goddesses.True is his witness who doth witness this,Whose gaze too early fell—Nor thence shall turn,Nor in those fires shall cease to weep and burn—Upon her ruinous eyes and ineludible.
PRŒMION
ImmeasurableEarth!Through the loud vast and populacy of Heaven,Tempested with gold schools of ponderous orbs,That cleav’st with deep-revolting harmoniesPassage perpetual, and behind thee draw’stA furrow sweet, a cometary wakeOf trailing music! What large effluence,Not sole the cloudy sighing of thy seas,Nor thy blue-coifing air, encases theeFrom prying of the stars, and the broad shaftsOf thrusting sunlight tempers? For, dropped nearFrom my removèd tour in the sereneOf utmost contemplation, I scent lives.This is the efflux of thy rocks and fields,And wind-cuffed forestage, and the souls of men,And aura of all treaders over thee;A sentient exhalation, wherein closeThe odorous lives of many-throated flowers,And each thing’s mettle effused; that so thou wear’st,Even like a breather on a frosty morn,Thy proper suspiration. For I know,Albeit, with custom-dulled perceivingness,Nestled against thy breast, my sense not takeThe breathings of thy nostrils, there’s no tree,No grain of dust, nor no cold-seeming stone,But wears a fume of its circumfluous self.Thine own life and the lives of all that live,The issue of thy loins,Is this thy gaberdine,Wherein thou walkest through thy large demesneAnd sphery pleasances,—Amazing the unstalèd eyes of Heaven,And us that still a precious seeing haveBehind this dim and mortal jelly.Ah!If not in all too late and frozen a dayI come in rearward of the throats of song,Unto the deaf sense of the agèd yearSinging with doom upon me; yet give heed!One poet with sick pinion, that still feelsBreath through the Orient gateways closing fast,Fast closing t’ward the undelighted night!
ANTHEM
In nescientness, in nescientness,Mother, we put these fleshly lendings onThou yield’st to thy poor children; took thy giftOf life, which must, in all the after-days,Be craved again with tears,—With fresh and still-petitionary tears.Being once bound thine almsmen for that gift,We are bound to beggary, nor our own can callThe journal dole of customary life,But after suit obsequious for’t to thee.Indeed this flesh, O Mother,A beggar’s gown, a client’s badging,We find, which from thy hands we simply took,Nought dreaming of the after penury,In nescientness.
In a little joy, in a little joy,We wear awhile thy sore insignia,Nor know thy heel o’ the neck. O Mother! Mother!Then what use knew I of thy solemn robes,But as a child, to play with them? I bade theeLeave thy great husbandries, thy grave designs,Thy tedious state which irked my ignorant years,Thy winter-watches, suckling of the grain,Severe premeditation taciturnUpon the brooded Summer, thy chill cares,And all thy ministries majestical,To sport with me, thy darling. Thought I notThou set’st thy seasons forth processionalTo pamper me with pageant,—thou thyselfMy fellow-gamester, appanage of mine arms?Then what wild Dionysia I, young Bacchanal,Danced in thy lap! Ah for thy gravity!Then, O Earth, thou rang’st beneath me,Rocked to Eastward, rocked to Westward,Even with the shiftedPoise and footing of my thought!I brake through thy doors of sunset,Ran before the hooves of sunrise,Shook thy matron tresses down in fanciesWild and wilfulAs a poet’s hand could twine them;Caught in my fantasy’s crystal chaliceThe Bow, as its cataract of coloursPlashed to thee downward;Then when thy circuit swung to nightward,Night the abhorrèd, night was a new dawning,Celestial dawningOver the ultimate marges of the soul;Dusk grew turbulent with fire before me,And like a windy arras waved with dreams.Sleep I took not for my bedfellow,Who could wakenTo a revel, an inexhaustibleWassail of orgiac imageries;Then while I wore thy sore insigniaIn a little joy, O Earth, in a little joy;Loving thy beauty in all creatures born of thee,Children, and the sweet-essenced body of woman;Feeling not yet upon my neck thy foot,But breathing warm of thee as infants breatheNew from their mother’s morning bosom. So I,Risen from thee, restless winnower of the heaven,Most Hermes-like, did keepMy vital and resilient path, and feltThe play of wings about my fledgèd heel—Sure on the verges of precipitous dream,Swift in its springingFrom jut to jut of inaccessible fancies,In a little joy.
In a little thought, in a little thought,We stand and eye thee in a grave dismay,With sad and doubtful questioning, when firstThou speak’st to us as men: like sons who hearNewly their mother’s history, unthoughtBefore, and say—‘She is not as we dreamed:Ah me! we are beguiled!’ What art thou, then,That art not our conceiving? Art thou notToo old for thy young children? Or perchance,Keep’st thou a youth perpetual-burnishableBeyond thy sons decrepit? It is longSince Time was first a fledgling;Yet thou may’st be but as a pendant bullaAgainst his stripling bosom swung. Alack!For that we seem indeedTo have slipped the world’s great leaping-time, and comeUpon thy pinched and dozing days: these weeds,These corporal leavings, thou not cast’st us new,Fresh from thy craftship, like the lilies’ coats,But foist’st us offWith hasty tarnished piecings negligent,Snippets and wasteFrom old ancestral wearings,That have seen sorrier usage; remainder-fleshAfter our father’s surfeits; nay with chinks,Some of us, that if speech may have free leaveOur souls go out at elbows. We are sadWith more than our sires’ heaviness, and withMore than their weakness weak; we shall not beMighty with all their mightiness, nor shall notRejoice with all their joy. Ay, Mother! Mother!What is this Man, thy darling kissed and cuffed,Thou lustingly engender’st,To sweat, and make his brag, and rot,Crowned with all honour and all shamefulness?From nightly towersHe dogs the secret footsteps of the heavens,Sifts in his hands the stars, weighs them as gold-dust,And yet is he successive unto nothingBut patrimony of a little mould,And entail of four planks. Thou hast made his mouthAvid of all dominion and all mightiness,All sorrow, all delight, all topless grandeurs,All beauty, and all starry majesties,And dim transtellar things;—even that it may,Filled in the ending with a puff of dust,Confess—‘It is enough.’ The world left emptyWhat that poor mouthful crams. His heart is buildedFor pride, for potency, infinity,All heights, all deeps, and all immensities,Arrased with purple like the house of kings,—To stall the grey-rat, and the carrion-wormStatelily lodge. Mother of mysteries!Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues,Who bringest forth no saying yet so darkAs we ourselves, thy darkest! We the young,In a little thought, in a little thought,At last confront thee, and ourselves in thee,And wake disgarmented of glory: as oneOn a mount standing, and against him stands,On the mount adverse, crowned with westering rays,The golden sun, and they two brotherlyGaze each on each;He faring downTo the dull vale, his Godhead peels from himTill he can scarcely spurn the pebble—For nothingness of new-found mortality—That mutinies against his gallèd foot.Littly he sets him to the daily way,With all around the valleys growing grave,And known things changed and strange; but he holds on,Though all the land of light be widowèd,In a little thought.
In a little strength, in a little strength,We affront thy unveiled face intolerable,Which yet we do sustain.Though I the Orient never more shall feelBreak like a clash of cymbals, and my heartClang through my shaken body like a gong;Nor ever more with spurted feet shall treadI’ the winepresses of song; nought’s truly lostThat moulds to sprout forth gain: now I have on meThe high Phœbean priesthood, and that cravesAn unrash utterance; not with flaunted hemMay the Muse enter in behind the veil,Nor, though we hold the sacred dances good,Shall the holy Virgins mænadize: ruled lipsBefit a votaress Muse.Thence with no mutable, nor no gelid love,I keep, O Earth, thy worship,Though life slow, and the sobering Genius changeTo a lamp his gusty torch. What though no moreAthwart its roseal glowThy face look forth triumphal? Thou put’st onStrange sanctities of pathos; like this knollMade derelict of day,Couchant and shadowèdUnder dim Vesper’s overloosened hair:This, where embossèd with the half-blown seedThe solemn purple thistle stands in grassGrey as an exhalation, when the bankHolds mist for water in the nights of Fall.Not to the boy, although his eyes be pureAs the prime snowdrop is,Ere the rash Phœbus break her cloisterOf sanctimonious snow;Or Winter fasting sole on HimalaySince those dove-nuncioed daysWhen Asia rose from bathing;Not to such eyes,Uneuphrasied with tears, the hierarchicalVision lies unoccult, rank under rankThrough all create down-wheeling, from the ThroneEven to the bases of the pregnant ooze.This is the enchantment, this the exaltation,The all-compensating wonder,Giving to common things wild kindredWith the gold-tesserate floors of Jove;Linking such heights and such humilitiesHand in hand in ordinal dances,That I do think my tread,Stirring the blossoms in the meadow-grass,Flickers the unwithering stars.This to the shunless fardel of the worldNerves my uncurbèd back; that I endure,The monstrous Temple’s moveless caryatid,With wide eyes calm upon the whole of things,In a little strength.
In a little sight, in a little sight,We learn from what in thee is credibleThe incredible, with bloody clutch and feetClinging the painful juts of jaggèd faith.Science, old noser in its prideful straw,That with anatomising scalpel tentsIts three-inch of thy skin, and brags—‘All’s bare,’The eyeless worm, that boring works the soil,Making it capable for the crops of God;Against its own dull willMinisters poppies to our troublous thought,A Balaam come to prophecy,—parables,Nor of its parable itself is ware,Grossly unwotting; all things has expoundedReflux and influx, counts the sepulchreThe seminary of being, and extinctionThe Ceres of existence: it discoversLife in putridity, vigour in decay;Dissolution even, and disintegration,Which in our dull thoughts symbolise disorder,Finds in God’s thoughts irrefragable order,And admirable the manner of our corruptionAs of our health. It grafts upon the cypressThe tree of Life—Death dies on his own dartPromising to our ashes perpetuity,And to our perishable elementsTheir proper imperishability; extractingMedicaments from out mortalityAgainst too mortal cogitation; tillEven of the caput mortuum we do thusMake a memento vivere. To such usesI put the blinding knowledge of the fool,Who in no order seeth ordinance;Nor thrust my arm in nature shoulder-high,And cry—‘There’s nought beyond!’ How should I so,That cannot with these arms of mine engirdleAll which I am; that am a foreignerIn mine own region? Who the chart shall drawOf the strange courts and vaulty labyrinths,The spacious tenements and wide pleasances,Innumerable corridors far-withdrawn,Where I wander darkling, of myself?Darkling I wander, nor I dare exploreThe long arcane of those dim catacombs,Where the rat memory does its burrows make,Close-seal them as I may, and my stolen treadStarts populace, agens lucifuga;That too strait seems my mind my mind to hold,And I myself incontinent of me.Then go I, my foul-venting ignoranceWith scabby sapience plastered, aye forsooth!Clap my wise foot-rule to the walls o’ the world,And vow—A goodly house,but something ancient,And I can find no Master? Rather, nay,By baffled seeing, something I divineWhich baffles, and a seeing set beyond;And so with strenuous gazes sounding down,Like to the day-long porer on a stream,Whose last look is his deepest, I besideThis slow perpetual Time stand patiently,In a little sight.