The mind is Beauty's thief, the poet takesThe golden spendthrift's trail among the bloomsWhere she stands tossing silver in the lakes,And twisting bright swift threads on airy looms.Her ring the poppy snatches, and the roseWith laughter plunders all her gusty plumes.He steals behind her, gathering, as she goesHeedless of summer's end certain and soon,—Of winter rattling at the door of June.
When Beauty lies hand-folded, pale and still,Forsaken of her lovers and her lords,And winter keeps cold watch upon the hillThen he lets fall his bale of coloured words.At frosty midnight June shall rise in flame,Move at his magic with her bells and birds;The rose will redden as he speaks her name,He shall release earth's frozen bosom there,And with great words shall cuff the whining air!
Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,Night has gone out beneath the hillMany sweet times; before our eyesDawn makes and unmakes about us stillThe magic that we call the rose.The gentle history of the rainHas been unfolded, traced and lostBy the sharp finger-tips of frost;Birds in the hawthorn build again;The hare makes soft her secret house;The wind at tourney comes and goes,Spurring the green, unharnessed boughs;The moon has waxed fierce and waned dim:He knew the beauty of all thoseLast year, and who remembers him?
Love sometimes walks the waters still,Laughter throws back her radiant head;Utterly beauty is not gone,And wonder is not wholly dead.The starry, mortal world rolls on;Between sweet sounds and silences,With new, strange wines her beakers brimHe lost his heritage with theseLast year, and who remembers him?
None remember him: he liesIn earth of some strange-sounding place,Nameless beneath the nameless skies,The wind his only chant, the rainThe only tears upon his face;Far and forgotten utterlyBy living man. Yet such as heHave made it possible and sureFor other lives to have, to be;For men to sleep content, secure.Lip touches lip and eyes meet eyesBecause his heart beats not again:His rotting, fruitless body liesThat sons may grow from other men.
He gave, as Christ, the life he had—The only life desired or known;The great, sad sacrifice was madeFor strangers; this forgotten deadWent out into the night alone.There was his body broken for you,There was his blood divinely shedThat in the earth lie lost and dim.Eat, drink, and often as you do,For whom he died, remember him.
Unaware of its terror,And but half awareOf the world's beauty near her—Of sunlight on the stones,And trembling birds in the square,Lightly went Madala—A rose blown suddenlyFrom Spring's gay mouth; part of the Spring was she.Warmed to her delicate bones,Cool in its linen her skin,Her hair up-combed and curled,Lightly she flowered on the sinAnd pain of the Spring-struck world.Down the street went crazy men,The winter misery of their bloodBudding in new painWhile beggars whined beside her,While the streets' daughters eyed her,—Poor flowers that kept midsummerWith desperate bloom, and thrustStale rose at each newcomer,And crime and hunger and lustRaged in the noisy dust.Lightly went Madala,Unshaken still of that spell,Coral beads and jade to buy,While her thoughts roamed easily—Thoughts like bees in lavender,—Thoughts gay and fragile as a robin's shell.Till suddenly she had comeTo grim age-stubborned wallBehind whose mask of barsStarts up in shame the Foundlings' Hospital.*At the gates to watch her passA caged thing eyed her dumb,Most mercifully unawareOf its own hurt, but MadalaStopped short of Spring that day.The air grew pinched and wan,A hand came over the sun,Birds huddled, stones went grey.Her lace and linen whiteSeemed but her body's sin,Her flesh unscarred and brightBurnt like a leper's skin.
Her mouth was stale with breadFlung her by strangers, she was fed,Housed, fathered by the State, and she had grownA thing belonging to, and loved by, none.Though the shut mouth said no word,From the caged thing she heard,"Who has wronged me, that this Spring"Gives me nothing and you everything,"Who alike were made,"Who beckon the same dreams?"You buy coral and jade,"I sew long hungry seams"To pay for charity..."Then Madala's heart, afraid,Cried the first selfish cry:"Is it my fault? Can I"Help what the world has done?"Can the flower in the shade"Blame the flower in the sun?"Then quick the caged thing said,As if to ask pardon that its words had madeMadala's spring so spoiled for her that day:"But there's a way, a way!"If flowers would share their Spring"There'd be sunshine enough for all the flowers."Such sunshine you could bring,"Such joy that swings and flies"With posies your hours through,"So just beyond my hours."If I could walk with you—"Not in pitiful two by two"Flayed by free children's eyes,"Your sister for an hour to be,"It would double joy and woo"Spring back to you, and more than Spring to me."
Then something quaked in Madala,Quaked with magic, quaked with awe.Love-quickening, she became a partOf this caged thing, she was awareOf strange lips tugging at her heart.So clear the way was! TendererGrew her eyes, and as they grew,Back to the flowers rushed the dew,The earth filled out with the sun,The cold birds in the squareUnbundled and preened uponTheir twigs in the softening air;The cold wind dwindled and dropped,And love and the world were one.Nearer drew Madala,At the dumb thing she smiled,And Spring that a child had stoppedCame back from the eyes of a child.
* Guilford Street, London, the gates of which face the street.
I will not have roses in my room again,Nor listen to sonnets of Michael AngeloTo-night nor any night, nor fret my brainWith all the trouble of things that I should know.I will be as other women—come and goCareless and free, my own self sure and sane,As I was once ... then suddenly you were thereWith your old power ... roses were everywhereAnd I was listening to Michael Angelo.
Did he forget?... I do not remember,All I had of him once I still have to-day;He was lovely to me as the word "amber,"As the taste of honey and as the smell of hay.
What if he forget if I remember?What more of love have you than I to say?I have and hold him still in the word "amber,"Taste of honey brings him, he comes back with the hay.
This Poem, Dedicated to His Mother.
To twilight heads comes Death as comes a friend,As with the gentle fading of the yearFades rose, folds leaf, falls fruit, and to their endUnquestioning draw near,Their flowering over, and their fruiting done,Fulfilled and finished and going down with the sun.
But for June's heart there is no comfortingWhen her full-throated roseStill quick with buds, still thrilling to the air,By some stray wind is tossed,Her swelling grain that goesHeavy to harvestingIn a black gale is lost,And her round grape that purpled to the wineIs pinched by some chance frost.Ah, then cry out for that lost, lovely rose,For the stricken wheat, and for the finished vine!Such were you who sleep now, who have foregoneSo many of Life's rich secrets almost learned;Winning so much, so much as yet unwon,Yet to be dared, to discover, to reveal.Quick still with ardour, hand still at the wheelOn wide and unsailed seas, eyes turning stillTowards the morning, while the keen brain burnedTo the imperative will.
Upon your summer Death seems to set his heel,Writes on the page "No more,"And brings the sign of sunset, shuts the doorAnd the house is dark and the tired mourners sleep.Yet says he too, "Though quiet at last you lie,"And have done with laughter and strife and joy and care,"You have honour with your peace; and still you keep"Fullness of life and of felicity."You have seen the Grail. What need you of grey hair?"There are those who daily die,"Who have long out lived their welcome in the world,"Who are old and sad and tired and fain to cease"From the crowded earth, and the hours in tumult whirled,"Urgent and vain. You are not such as these"Who have striven for laurels, and never knew the shade"Upon their brows, who would persuade the rose,"And never have come near it; till the head"Bows and the heart breaks, and the spirit knows"Only its failure, dim and featureless,—"Its weariness of all things dreamed and done,"When love and grief alike seem emptiness"And fame and man's unrecognition one."
The full tide took you. You went out with the sun,Not in the cringing ebb, not in the greyAnd tremulous twilight, when each lonely oneTo its last loneliness must creep away.Your genius has won its rich repose,Full laurelled, wearing still the unfaded rose.And as those who bid good-bye at snowdrop timeBear with them broken promises of Spring,So you in triumph,—in the glory men had in you,In Love's full worshipping,—High summer thoughts, untouched of Winter's rime,Went forth with honour, having fulfilled your Spring.The hands that built you felt you flower from her prayer,True to her vision true;Fearless and fine, shaped from her fashioning;Hands empty now, and yet not all unfilled,Having built and fired the generous heart and brain,Of the man you were; whose fervent spirit willedYou to the service and healing and help of men.
These things are hers, not to be lost nor changedWith changes of death; for though the body dieThe golden deed is stamped eternallyWith the head of God. The new and alien yearsLeave it still bright, unaltered, unestranged.Almost too proud, and too profound for tearsIs the high memory that the desolate heartShrines and is dumb, yet may for ever keepUnforbidden, the imperishable part,And what Love held, awake, he holds, asleep.
Give me no coil of dæmon flowers—Pale Messalines that faint and broodThrough the spent secret twilight hoursOn their strange feasts of blood.
Give me wild things of moss and peat—The gipsy flower that bravely goes,The heather's little hard, brown feet,And the black eyes of sloes.
But most of all the cloudberryThat offers in her clean, white cupThe melting snows—the cloudberry!Where the great winds go up
To the hushed peak whose shadow fillsThe air with silence calm and wide—She lives, the Dian of the hills,And the streams course beside.
Between two common days this day was hungWhen Love went to the ending that was his;His seamless robe was rent, his brow was wrung,He took at last the sponge's bitter kiss.
A simple day the dawn had watched unfoldBefore the night had borne the death of love;You took the bread I blessed, and love was soldUpon your lips, and paid the price thereof.
I changed then, as when soul from body slips,And casts its passion and its pain aside;I pledged you with most spiritual lips,And gave you hands that you had crucified.You who betrayed, kissed, crucified, forgot,You walked with Christ, poor fool, and knew it not!
Are you my songs, importunate of praise?Be still, remember for your comfortingThat sweeter birds have had less leave to singBefore men piped them from their lonely ways.
Greener leaves than yours are lost in every springRubies far redder thrust their eager raysInto the blindfold dark for many daysBefore men chose them for a finger-ring.
Sing as you dare, not as men choose, receive notThe passing fashion's prize, for dole or due—Men's summer-sweet unrecognition—grieve not:Oh, stoop not to them! Better far that youShould go unsung than sing as you believe not,Should go uncrowned than to yourselves untrue.
The evening found us whom the day had fled,Once more in bitter anger, you and I,Over some small, some foolish, trivial thingOur anger would not decently let die.But dragged between us, shamed and shivering,Until each other's taunts we scarcely heard,Until we lost the sense of all we said,And knew not who first spoke the fatal word.It seemed that even every kiss we wrungWe killed at birth with shuddering and hate,As if we feared a thing too passionate.However close we clungOne hour, the next hour found us separate,Estranged, and Love most bitter on our tongue.To-night we quarrelled over one small head,Our fruit of last year's maying, the white budBlown from our stormy kisses and the deadFirst rapture of our wild, estranging blood.You clutched him: there was panther in your eyes,We breathed like beasts in thickets; on the wallOur shadows swelled as in huge tyrannies,The room grew dark with anger, yet through allThe shame and hurt and pity of it you wereStill strangely and imperishably dear,As one who loves the wild day none the lessThat turns to naught the lilac's miracle,Breaking the unrecapturable spellOf the first may-tree, magic and mysteryUtterly scattering of earth and sky.Making even the rose's lovelinessA thing for pain to be remembered by.
I said: "My son shall wear his father's sword."You said: "Shall hands once blossoms at my breastBe stained with blood?" I answered with a wordMore bitter, and your own, the bitterest,Stung me to sullen anger, and I said:"My son shall be no coward of his lineBecause his mother choose"; you turned your head,And your eyes grew implacable on mine.And like a trodden snake you turned to meetThe foe with sudden hissing ... then you smiledAnd broke our life in pieces at my feet,"Your child?" you said. "Yourchild?" ...
ANDROMEDA (the spirit of woman).
PERSEUS (the new spirit of man).
CHORUS (1) Women who desire the old thrall.(2) Women who crave the new freedom.
The following poem is not a study of the economic struggle of women, but of the deep-rooted antagonism of spirit which constitutes the eternal sex-problem.
ANDROMEDA.
Chained to the years by the measureless wrong of man,Here I hang, here I suffer, here I cry,Since the light sprang forth from the dark, and the day began;Since the sky was sundered and saved from the sea,And the mouth of the beast was warm on the breast of the sod,And the birds' feet glittered like rings on the blossoming tree,And the rivers ran silver with scales, and the earth was throngedWith creatures lovely and wild and sane and free;Till the Image of God arose from the dust and trodWoman and beast and bird into slavery.Who has wronged me? Man who all earth has wronged:Who has mocked me? Man, who made mock of God.
CHORUS OF FIRST WOMEN.
Nay, what do you seek?If of men we be chained,Our chains be of gold,If the fetters we breakWhat conquest is gained?Shall the hill-top outspread a pavilion more safe than ourpalaces hold?
Without toil we are fed,We have gold to our hire,We have kings at our thrall,And made smooth is our bedFor the fools of desire.We falter the world with our eyelids, at our laughter menscatter and fall.
What is freedom but danger,And death and disaster?We are safe: Fool, to craveThe unknown, the stranger!More fettered the back than the burden; man bows; he is slaveto a slave!
ANDROMEDA.
Yes, in most bitter waters have they drownedMy spirit, and my soul grows grey on sleep!What if with wreaths my empty hands are bound?I am slave for all their roses, and I keepA tryst with cunning, and a troth with tears.Time has kissed out my lips, and I am dumb.I am so long called fool, I am becomeThat fool—of street or shrine. My body bearsBurden of men and children. I have beenAll that man has desired or dreamed of me.I have trodden a double-weary way—with Sin,Or with Sin's pale, cold sister Chastity.I am a thing of twilight. I am afraid.Dull now and tame now; of myself so shamed.Fortressed against redemption; visitedOf the old dream so seldom, as things tamedForget the life that their wild brother leads.I am a hurt beast flinching at the light.I have been palaced from the sun, and nightRuns in my blood, and all night's blushless deeds!
CHORUS OF SECOND WOMEN.
Oh world so blind, so dumb to our desiring,—To the vague cry and clamour of our being!Oh world so dark to our supreme aspiring,—To the pitiful strange travail of our freeing!We weary not for love and lips to love us;These have been ours too often and too long;We have been hived too close; too sweet above usTastes the bee's mouth to our honey-wearied tongue.
Not love, not love! Love was our first undoing,We have lived too long on heart-beats. None can tameThe mind's new hunger, famished and pursuing,Unleashed, and crying its oppressor's name.
All that the world could give man's mind inherits:Two paths were set us. Baffled, weeping, yearning,Tossed between God and Man, rebellious spirits,We wandered, now escaped and unreturning.
We are arming, waking, terribly unfolding,The spent world shudders in a new creation,A dread and pitiless flowering beholding,Burst from the dark root of our long frustration!
ANDROMEDA.
Did God but build this temple for desireThat man defraud my birthright with a kiss?Did he not give me a spirit to aspireBeyond man's fortunes and necessities?
Man chains the thing he fears, who fears the free;No wildest beast was tamed as I was tamed,No prey has been so tracked, no flesh so shamed;Man hunts no quarry as he hunted me.Of all the things created one aloneRose from the earth his equal; only the mightOf his brute strength could bid my soul renounceIts claim—forswear its just, predestined right.To what poor shape of folly am I grown,In whom God breathed an equal spirit once!
CHORUS OF FIRST WOMEN.
Oh sheltering arms that have bound you,Oh hearts you have shaped to your will!The lordliest lovers have crowned you,They have knelt as they kneel to you still.
Why speak you so ill of such lovers,Why question the will of such lords?For your lips, for your laughter, Love offersThe world on a litter of swords,
They have borne for you death and disasters,They have held you with kingdoms at stake.The kings of the earth and the mastersWere poets and fools for your sake!
ANDROMEDA.
Was I made free for all their swords and songs?Do fairest songs sung to caged birds sound sweet?Did their spears hold the door whence came my wrongs?Did they sing my spirit and the hurt of it?There was no battle for my freedom's sake;They never sang for pity of me. Not thoseWho laud it cage the eagle: not those who breakThe delicate stem most deeply love the rose.If we have taken the path towards the hillsThey have noosed our feet, they have kennelled us again.If we have dared for separate minds and wills,We have marched to men's laughter, and the mock of men.Oh, lords, if you be strong why fear to raiseOur groping, pitiful bodies from the dust?If you were pre-ordained to shape our ways,Why has your power shaped that way so ill?Only the hireling master wreaks his willOn slaves, lest rulers they become at last,And his poor hour of pride is waned and passed:The rightful lord fears never to be just.
CHORUS OF SECOND WOMEN.
Stars, you run your course unchidden;Sun, the sky puts forth no handTo constrain you; unforbiddenClouds in aery harness stand;And unchallenged comes the moon up, bright and slow upon the land.
Dew, no shadow moves beside youTo avert your glittering;Wind, your race is undenied you;Lightning, you have room to spring!For the great, free hand of Nature gives sweet leave to everything.
One great law controls their being,—To their utmost bids them rise;From the snowdrop, her bell freeing,To the bow that leaps the skies;For the universal order of the world in freedom lies.
But one lies here lost and drivenFrom the free primeval way,From the rights that she was given,That she asks of man to-day;For her soul has faced her masters, and her spirit stands at bay.
ANDROMEDA.
I am the Last Begotten. I am the RoseFlung for the bed of kings. I am the CauseOf this world's ills, its follies and its woes;I am the unclean, the carnal, I make men pauseFrom God. I am Sex, and all vain bodily LustThat men desire and spit on, and would not loseFor the bribe of Heaven. I am the little DustBlown from their bitter mouths. I am the WayOf death. I am the soiled and spotted OneBidden in silence to the Church's feast;Yea, of all bitterest foes the crafty priestIs mine; no hand has flung a crueller stone;Of all oppressors him I most accuse.I am the Fool that led the world astray,My motherhood the fruits of my first sin.I am the Slave to whom sick masters pray.I am the Mother. I am Magdalen.I am the Dæmon, I drink at dead men's lips.My Grail is blood at midnight. I am burnedIn witchcraft. I am the Weal of the world's whips.No age has risen that has not seen me scorned.I am the Harlot, the Accursed Thing, the Prey;Bartered for bread; like cattle willed away;Sold at the shambles. I am the ChastityMen breed for spoiling. I am the Soul at bay.I am what men have made and marred of me.
CHORUS OF SECOND WOMEN.
Oh, behold, oh, beware,Andromeda! ...A wing on the air,A step on the sands!Oh be silent lest heWho is master prepare,As of old at your plea,A new chain for your hands.
Oh, behold, oh, beware,Andromeda!She hears not, her criesStill tremble the air.O sands, set a snareFor him. Merciful skies,Uncradle your mist!O crag, break your breastIn murdering stone!O lightning, untwistYour fang from the cloud!O winds, shriek aloudTill the sea heave and groan,And unlock its white thunderTill its legions be hurled,And the beach quake thereunder...Oh, Fool of the World!
(PERSEUSappears on the sands nearANDROMEDA.)
PERSEUS.
Who crieth with a cry long heard of me?
ANDROMEDA.
The rebel spirit of woman that would be free.
PERSEUS.
How is she named whose wild lips so crave?
ANDROMEDA.
This is the World's Fool. This is the Slave.
PERSEUS.
Who has wronged her?
ANDROMEDA.
The ancient spirit of man.
PERSEUS.
Long was she chained?
ANDROMEDA.
Since the world began.
PERSEUS.
Who are her masters?
ANDROMEDA.
The lords of pride and of lust.
PERSEUS.
Whence comes she?
ANDROMEDA,
From dust.
PERSEUS.
Where goes she?
ANDROMEDA.
To dust!
CHORUS OF FIRST WOMEN.
Is he fooled by her hair,Is he tranced by her eyes,That he draweth him near,That he speaketh him wise? ...
He has spoken again,He has taken her hands,He has loosened her chain,Unfettered she stands!
PERSEUS.
Stand there! Behold the new, uncharted day—Not as a fool made sweet for fools to kiss;Not as a saint to whom sick masters pray;No more the sad shell singing of men's lust;No more the sum of priests' pale sophistries;But as men stand, unchallenged, equal, free,Each path to take and every race to run.Stand forth, O shining equal in the sun!Unfold, upspring, outblossom from the dust,O divinest playfellow even as we!
ANDROMEDA.
Where is he who chained me? I am weak.I crouch still, whom the years forbade to stand.The chain is still remembered on my neck,There are the marks of slaves still in this hand.
PERSEUS.
No more shall he who chained you forge that chain;He has looked upon Medusa, and has seenWhat he has made of woman. To him turnedIs the last face (who shall never see again)With its hissing, furious hair, the eyelids burnedWith the eyes' hate, slime where the lips have been,That tumbled death upon him like a stone;And in your name Medusa smiled and spurnedA dying face more dreadful than her own.
ANDROMEDA.
The shackled feet of centuries cannot keepPace yet with feet that have outstripped the world.For the maimed even the riven way is steep.I am so strange to greatness, I am hurledUnsceptred to my glory! I am nowAlmost what you have called me, as things takeThe colour of names men give them; as things growFierce if dubbed fierce, and weak if branded weak,And fools if given no name but foolishness.I have been branded fool in life and art,—Always a little lower, always the less,Until the intolerable prompting has grown partOf all I do; my labouring brain and heartBy that self-doubt are shadowed and undone.Let me walk long beside you in the sun,Race, wrestle with you, grow wise and swift and strong.For I shall speak but foolish words at firstWho was hindered of wisdom since the world began.I shall blunder and be so wayward who was nursedOn fear and folly by the laws of man.
PERSEUS.
You shall not be less sweet that you are wise,And not less beautiful that you are strong.
ANDROMEDA.
I shall not see the scorn leap in your eyes?Your wisdom will not do my weakness wrong?
PERSEUS.
To the freed soul of woman I make my vow!Hand in hand we will walk in the sunrise now,No more implacable foes, but face to face,As masters of the world, and it shall beUnder an equal law, with equal grace—A world where life is proud and sane and free.
ANDROMEDA.
Life must be borne. Together let us bear it!There is no other answer to the vexed,Sad problem of the world.
PERSEUS.
Together, free of spirit,Of body free, one minded, equal sexed.
ANDROMEDA.
I claim of man a thousand centuries!Shall one poor decade serve to make me wiseWhen men have knelt so long at wisdom's knees?
PERSEUS.
Till the last day grows dim to the last eyes!
ANDROMEDA.
Let us go forth. Comrade and friend at last.
PERSEUS.
Comrade and friend! For me a new days lies,Splendid and strange. For you the night is passed.
CHORUS OF SECOND WOMEN.
They rise, they go forth, foot by foot, hand in hand.He goes not before, nor she after; together they stand.He is no less though she be the more. Thus they meet,Long sundered whom life made for union, now at rest, now complete.They are separate and free, they are woven and one,And the world has grown quiet between them the battle is done.For this is the dream, the ideal, the designate plan,So slow of fulfilment, so sure,—God's prevision of man.Shared burden, shared wonder, shared wisdom and strife:In their fellowship only is found the perfection, of life.
FINAL CHORUS.
From what clear wells of wonderUpspringing and upspringing,From what rock cleft asunderLeaps this stream cool and bright?What secret joy thereunderMelodiously upflingingIts heart in ceaseless music upon the lyre of light?
To what high aery choiringThis hour her way is winging,Her dewy troth to plight?This golden hour aspiringAbove the glad bells ringing,More sweet than sweet birds' music, more fleet than fleetbirds' flight?
What joy and hope here clinging,With gentle fingers twiningIn wrapt and mystic rite?What love unblind is bringingTwo mortals swift and shining,With faces to the morning, with footsteps from the night?
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