The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Unknown ErosThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Unknown ErosAuthor: Coventry PatmoreRelease date: October 7, 2004 [eBook #13672]Most recently updated: December 18, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: This eBook was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNKNOWN EROS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Unknown ErosAuthor: Coventry PatmoreRelease date: October 7, 2004 [eBook #13672]Most recently updated: December 18, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: This eBook was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset
Title: The Unknown Eros
Author: Coventry Patmore
Author: Coventry Patmore
Release date: October 7, 2004 [eBook #13672]Most recently updated: December 18, 2020
Language: English
Credits: This eBook was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNKNOWN EROS ***
This eBook was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
To this edition of “The Unknown Eros” are added all the other poems I have written, in what I venture—because it has no other name—to call “catalectic verse.” Nearly all English metres owe their existence as metres to “catalexis,” or pause, for the time of one or more feet, and, as a rule, the position and amount of catalexis are fixed. But the verse in which this volume is written is catalecticpar excellence, employing the pause (as it does the rhyme) with freedom only limited by the exigencies of poetic passion. From the time of Drummond of Hawthornden to our own, some of the noblest flights of English poetry have been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive of its character.
Some persons, unlearned in the subject of metre, have objected to this kind of verse that it is “lawless.” But it has its laws as truly as any other. In its highest order, the lyric or “ode,” it is a tetrameter, the line having the time of eight iambics. When it descends to narrative, or the expression of a less-exalted strain of thought, it becomes a trimeter, having the time of six iambics, or even a dimeter, with the time of four; and it is allowable to vary the tetrameter “ode” by the occasional introduction of passages in either or both of these inferior measures, but not, I think, by the use of any other. The license to rhyme at indefinite intervals is counterbalanced, in the writing of all poets who have employed this metre successfully, by unusual frequency in the recurrence of the same rhyme. For information on the generally overlooked but primarily important function of catalexis in English verse I refer such readers as may be curious about the subject to the Essay printed as an appendix to the later editions of my collected poems.
I do not pretend to have done more than very moderate justice to the exceeding grace and dignity and the inexhaustible expressiveness of which this kind of metre is capable; but I can say that I have never attempted to write in it in the absence of that one justification of and prime qualification for its use, namely, the impulse of some thought that “voluntary moved harmonious numbers.”
COVENTRY PATMORE.HASTINGS, 1890.
PROEM.
I. SAINT VALENTINE’S DAYII. WIND AND WAVEIII. WINTERIV. BEATAV. THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROWVI. TRISTITIAVII. THE AZALEAVIII. DEPARTUREIX. EURYDICEX. THE TOYSXI. TIRED MEMORYXII. MAGNA EST VERITASXIII. 1867XIV. ‘IF I WERE DEAD’XV. PEACEXVI. A FAREWELLXVII. 1880-85.XVIII. THE TWO DESERTSXIX. CREST AND GULFXX. ‘LET BE!’XXI. ‘FAINT YET PURSUING’XXII. VICTORY IN DEFEATXVIII. REMEMBERED GRACEXXIV. VESICA PISCIS
I. TO THE UNKNOWN EROSII. THE CONTRACTIII. ARBOR VITAEIV. THE STANDARDSV. SPONSA DEIVI. LEGEM TUAM DILEXIVII. TO THE BODYVIII. ‘SING US ONE OF THE SONGS OF SION’IX. DELICIAE SAPIENTIAE DE AMOREX. THE CRY AT MIDNIGHTXI. AURAS OF DELIGHTXII. EROS AND PSYCHEXIII. DE NATURA DEORUMXIV. PSYCHE’S DISCONTENTXV. PAINXVI. PROPHETS WHO CANNOT SINGXVII. THE CHILD’S PURCHASEXVIII. DEAD LANGUAGE
AMELIAL’ALLEGROREGINA COELITHE OPEN SECRETVENUS AND DEATHMIGNONNEALEXANDER AND LYCONSEMELE
“Deliciae meae esse cum filiis hominum.”PROV. VIII. 31.
“Deliciae meae esse cum filiis hominum.”PROV. VIII. 31.
‘Many speak wisely, some inerrably:Witness the beast who talk’d that should have bray’d,And Caiaphas that saidExpedient ’twas for all that One should die;But what availsWhen Love’s right accent from their wisdom fails,And the Truth-criers know not what they cry!Say, wherefore thou,As under bondage of some bitter vow,Warblest no word,When all the rest are shouting to be heard?Why leave the fervid running just when Fame’Gan whispering of thy nameAmongst the hard-pleased Judges of the Course?Parch’d is thy crystal-flowing source?Pierce, then, with thought’s steel probe, the trodden ground,Till passion’s buried floods be found;Intend thine eyeInto the dim and undiscover’d skyWhose lustres are the pulsings of the heart,And promptly, as thy trade is, watch to chartThe lonely suns, the mystic hazes and throng’d sparkles brightThat, named and number’d rightIn sweet, transpicuous words, shall glow alwayWith Love’s three-stranded ray,Red wrath, compassion golden, lazuline delight.’Thus, in reproof of my despondency,My Mentor; and thus I:O, season strange for song!And yet some timely power persuades my lips.Is’t England’s parting soul that nerves my tongue,As other Kingdoms, nearing their eclipse,Have, in their latest bards, uplifted strongThe voice that was their voice in earlier days?Is it her sudden, loud and piercing cry,The note which those that seem too weak to sighWill sometimes utter just before they die?Lo, weary of the greatness of her ways,There lies my Land, with hasty pulse and hard,Her ancient beauty marr’d,And, in her cold and aimless roving sight,Horror of light;Sole vigour left in her last lethargy,Save when, at bidding of some dreadful breath,The rising deathRolls up with force;And then the furiously gibbering corseShakes, panglessly convuls’d, and sightless stares,Whilst one Physician pours in rousing wines,One anodynes,And one declaresThat nothing ails it but the pains of growth.My last look lothIs taken; and I turn, with the reliefOf knowing that my life-long hope and griefAre surely vain,To that unshapen time to come, when She,A dim, heroic Nation long since dead,The foulness of her agony forgot,Shall all benignly shedThrough ages vastThe ghostly grace of her transfigured pastOver the present, harass’d and forlorn,Of nations yet unborn;And this shall be the lotOf those who, in the bird-voice and the blastOf her omniloquent tongue,Have truly sungOr greatly said,To shew as oneWith those who have best done,And be as rays,Thro’ the still altering world, around her changeless head.Therefore no ’plaint be mineOf listeners none,No hope of render’d use or proud reward,In hasty times and hard;But chants as of a lonely thrush’s throatAt latest eve,That does in each calm noteBoth joy and grieve;Notes few and strong and fine,Gilt with sweet day’s decline,And sad with promise of a different sun.’Mid the loud concert harshOf this fog-folded marsh,To me, else dumb,Uranian Clearness, come!Give me to breathe in peace and in surpriseThe light-thrill’d ether of your rarest skies,Till inmost absolution startThe welling in the grateful eyes,The heaving in the heart.Winnow with sighsAnd wash awayWith tears the dust and stain of clay,Till all the Song be Thine, as beautiful as Morn,Bedeck’d with shining clouds of scorn;And Thou, Inspirer, deign to broodO’er the delighted words, and call them Very Good.This grant, Clear Spirit; and grant that I remainContent to ask unlikely gifts in vain.
Well dost thou, Love, thy solemn Feast to holdIn vestal February;Not rather choosing out some rosy dayFrom the rich coronet of the coming May,When all things meet to marry!O, quick, praevernal PowerThat signall’st punctual through the sleepy mouldThe Snowdrop’s time to flower,Fair as the rash oath of virginityWhich is first-love’s first cry;O, Baby Spring,That flutter’st sudden ’neath the breast of EarthA month before the birth;Whence is the peaceful poignancy,The joy contrite,Sadder than sorrow, sweeter than delight,That burthens now the breath of everything,Though each one sighs as if to each aloneThe cherish’d pang were known?At dusk of dawn, on his dark spray apart,With it the Blackbird breaks the young Day’s heart;In evening’s hushAbout it talks the heavenly-minded Thrush;The hill with like remorseSmiles to the Sun’s smile in his westering course;The fisher’s drooping skiffIn yonder sheltering bay;The choughs that call about the shining cliff;The children, noisy in the setting ray;Own the sweet season, each thing as it may;Thoughts of strange kindness and forgotten peaceIn me increase;And tears ariseWithin my happy, happy Mistress’ eyes,And, lo, her lips, averted from my kiss,Ask from Love’s bounty, ah, much more than bliss!Is’t the sequester’d and exceeding sweetOf dear Desire electing his defeat?Is’t the waked Earth now to yon purpling copeUttering first-love’s first cry,Vainly renouncing, with a Seraph’s sigh,Love’s natural hope?Fair-meaning Earth, foredoom’d to perjury!Behold, all-amorous May,With roses heap’d upon her laughing brows,Avoids thee of thy vows!Were it for thee, with her warm bosom near,To abide the sharpness of the Seraph’s sphere?Forget thy foolish words;Go to her summons gay,Thy heart with dead, wing’d Innocencies fill’d,Ev’n as a nest with birdsAfter the old ones by the hawk are kill’d.Well dost thou, Love, to celebrateThe noon of thy soft ecstasy,Or e’er it be too late,Or e’er the Snowdrop die!
The wedded light and heat,Winnowing the witless space,Without a let,What are they till they beatAgainst the sleepy sod, and there begetPerchance the violet!Is the One found,Amongst a wilderness of as happy grace,To make Heaven’s bound;So that in HerAll which it hath of sensitively goodIs sought and understoodAfter the narrow mode the mighty Heavens prefer?She, as a little breezeFollowing still Night,Ripples the spirit’s cold, deep seasInto delight;But, in a while,The immeasurable smileIs broke by fresher airs to flashes blentWith darkling discontent;And all the subtle zephyr hurries gay,And all the heaving ocean heaves one way,’Tward the void sky-line and an unguess’d weal;Until the vanward billows feelThe agitating shallows, and divine the goal,And to foam roll,And spread and strayAnd traverse wildly, like delighted hands,The fair and feckless sands;And so the wholeUnfathomable and immenseTriumphing tide comes at the last to reachAnd burst in wind-kiss’d splendours on the deaf’ning beach,Where forms of children in first innocenceLaugh and fling pebbles on the rainbow’d crestOf its untired unrest.
I, singularly movedTo love the lovely that are not beloved,Of all the Seasons, mostLove Winter, and to traceThe sense of the Trophonian pallor on her face.It is not death, but plenitude of peace;And the dim cloud that does the world enfoldHath less the characters of dark and coldThan warmth and light asleep,And correspondent breathing seems to keepWith the infant harvest, breathing soft belowIts eider coverlet of snow.Nor is in field or garden anythingBut, duly look’d into, contains sereneThe substance of things hoped for, in the Spring,And evidence of Summer not yet seen.On every chance-mild dayThat visits the moist shaw,The honeysuckle, ’sdaining to be crostIn urgence of sweet life by sleet or frost,’Voids the time’s lawWith still increaseOf leaflet new, and little, wandering spray;Often, in sheltering brakes,As one from rest disturb’d in the first hour,Primrose or violet bewilder’d wakes,And deems ’tis time to flower;Though not a whisper of her voice he hear,The buried bulb does knowThe signals of the year,And hails far Summer with his lifted spear.The gorse-field dark, by sudden, gold caprice,Turns, here and there, into a Jason’s fleece;Lilies, that soon in Autumn slipp’d their gowns of green,And vanish’d into earth,And came again, ere Autumn died, to birth,Stand full-array’d, amidst the wavering shower,And perfect for the Summer, less the flower;In nook of pale or crevice of crude bark,Thou canst not miss,If close thou spy, to markThe ghostly chrysalis,That, if thou touch it, stirs in its dream dark;And the flush’d Robin, in the evenings hoar,Does of Love’s Day, as if he saw it, sing;But sweeter yet than dream or song of Summer or SpringAre Winter’s sometime smiles, that seem to wellFrom infancy ineffable;Her wandering, languorous gaze,So unfamiliar, so without amaze,On the elemental, chill adversity,The uncomprehended rudeness; and her sighAnd solemn, gathering tear,And look of exile from some great repose, the sphereOf ether, moved by ether only, orBy something still more tranquil.
Of infinite Heaven the rays,Piercing some eyelet in our cavern black,Ended their viewless trackOn thee to smiteSolely, as on a diamond stalactite,And in mid-darkness lit a rainbow’s blaze,Wherein the absolute Reason, Power, and Love,That erst could moveMainly in me but toil and weariness,Renounced their deadening might,Renounced their undistinguishable stressOf withering white,And did with gladdest hues my spirit caress,Nothing of Heaven in thee showing infinite,Save the delight.
Perchance she droops within the hollow gulfWhich the great wave of coming pleasure draws,Not guessing the glad cause!Ye Clouds that on your endless journey go,Ye Winds that westward flow,Thou heaving SeaThat heav’st ’twixt her and me,Tell her I come;Then only sigh your pleasure, and be dumb;For the sweet secret of our either selfWe know.Tell her I come,And let her heart be still’d.One day’s controlled hope, and then one more,And on the third our lives shall be fulfill’d!Yet all has been before:Palm placed in palm, twin smiles, and words astray.What other should we say?But shall I not, with ne’er a sign, perceive,Whilst her sweet hands I hold,The myriad threads and meshes manifoldWhich Love shall round her weave:The pulse in that vein making alien pauseAnd varying beats from this;Down each long finger felt, a differing strandOf silvery welcome bland;And in her breezy palmAnd silken wrist,Beneath the touch of my like numerous blissComplexly kiss’d,A diverse and distinguishable calm?What should we say!It all has been before;And yet our lives shall now be first fulfill’d,And into their summ’d sweetness fall distill’dOne sweet drop more;One sweet drop more, in absolute increaseOf unrelapsing peace.O, heaving Sea,That heav’st as if for bliss of her and me,And separatest not dear heart from heart,Though each ’gainst other beats too far apart,For yet awhileLet it not seem that I behold her smile.O, weary Love, O, folded to her breast,Love in each moment years and years of rest,Be calm, as being not.Ye oceans of intolerable delight,The blazing photosphere of central Night,Be ye forgot.Terror, thou swarthy Groom of Bride-bliss coy,Let me not see thee toy.O, Death, too tardy with thy hope intenseOf kisses close beyond conceit of sense;O, Life, too liberal, while to take her handIs more of hope than heart can understand;Perturb my golden patience not with joy,Nor, through a wish, profaneThe peace that should pertainTo him who does by her attraction move.Has all not been before?One day’s controlled hope, and one again,And then the third, and ye shall have the rein,O Life, Death, Terror, Love!But soon let your unrestful rapture cease,Ye flaming Ethers thin,Condensing till the abiding sweetness winOne sweet drop more;One sweet drop more in the measureless increaseOf honied peace.
Darling, with hearts conjoin’d in such a peaceThat Hope, so not to cease,Must still gaze back,And count, along our love’s most happy track,The landmarks of like inconceiv’d increase,Promise me this:If thou alone should’st winGod’s perfect bliss,And I, beguiled by gracious-seeming sin,Say, loving too much thee,Love’s last goal miss,And any vows may then have memory,Never, by grief for what I bear or lack,To mar thy joyance of heav’n’s jubilee.Promise me this;For else I should be hurl’d,Beyond just doomAnd by thy deed, to Death’s interior gloom,From the mild borders of the banish’d worldWherein they dwellWho builded not unalterable fateOn pride, fraud, envy, cruel lust, or hate;Yet loved too laxly sweetness and heart’s ease,And strove the creature more than God to please.For such as theseLoss without measure, sadness without end!Yet not for this do thou disheaven’d beWith thinking upon me.Though black, when scann’d from heaven’s surpassing bright,This might mean light,Foil’d with the dim days of mortality.For God is everywhere.Go down to deepest Hell, and He is there,And, as a true but quite estranged Friend,He works, ’gainst gnashing teeth of devilish ire,With love deep hidden lest it be blasphemed,If possible, to blendEase with the pangs of its inveterate fire;Yea, in the worstAnd from His Face most wilfully accurstOf souls in vain redeem’d,He does with potions of oblivion killRemorse of the lost Love that helps them still.Apart from these,Near the sky-borders of that banish’d world,Wander pale spirits among willow’d leas,Lost beyond measure, sadden’d without end,But since, while erring most, retaining yetSome ineffectual fervour of regret,Retaining still such wealAs spurned Lovers feel,Preferring far to all the world’s delightTheir loss so infinite,Or Poets, when they markIn the clouds dunA loitering flush of the long sunken sun,And turn away with tears into the dark.Know, Dear, these are not mineBut Wisdom’s words, confirmed by divineDoctors and Saints, though fitly seldom heardSave in their own prepense-occulted word,Lest fools be fool’d the further by false hope,And wrest sweet knowledge to their own decline;And (to approve I speak within my scope)The Mistress of that dateless exile grayIs named in surpliced SchoolsTristitia.But, O, my Darling, look in thy heart and seeHow unto me,Secured of my prime care, thy happy state,In the most unclean cellOf sordid Hell,And worried by the most ingenious hate,It never could be anything but well,Nor from my soul, full of thy sanctity,Such pleasure dieAs the poor harlot’s, in whose body stirsThe innocent life that is and is not hers:Unless, alas, this fount of my reliefBy thy unheavenly griefWere closed.So, with a consecrating kissAnd hearts made one in past all previous peace,And on one hope reposed,Promise me this!
There, where the sun shines firstAgainst our room,She train’d the gold Azalea, whose perfumeShe, Spring-like, from her breathing grace dispersed.Last night the delicate crests of saffron bloom,For this their dainty likeness watch’d and nurst,Were just at point to burst.At dawn I dream’d, O God, that she was dead,And groan’d aloud upon my wretched bed,And waked, ah, God, and did not waken her,But lay, with eyes still closed,Perfectly bless’d in the delicious sphereBy which I knew so well that she was near,My heart to speechless thankfulness composed.Till ’gan to stirA dizzy somewhat in my troubled head—Itwasthe azalea’s breath, and shewasdead!The warm night had the lingering buds disclosed,And I had fall’n asleep with to my breastA chance-found letter press’dIn which she said,‘So, till to-morrow eve, my Own, adieu!Parting’s well-paid with soon again to meet,Soon in your arms to feel so small and sweet,Sweet to myself that am so sweet to you!’
It was not like your great and gracious ways!Do you, that have nought other to lament,Never, my Love, repentOf how, that July afternoon,You went,With sudden, unintelligible phrase,And frighten’d eye,Upon your journey of so many days,Without a single kiss, or a good-bye?I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon;And so we sate, within the low sun’s rays,You whispering to me, for your voice was weak,Your harrowing praise.Well, it was well,To hear you such things speak,And I could tellWhat made your eyes a growing gloom of love,As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove.And it was like your great and gracious waysTo turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,Lifting the luminous, pathetic lashTo let the laughter flash,Whilst I drew near,Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.But all at once to leave me at the last,More at the wonder than the loss aghast,With huddled, unintelligible phrase,And frighten’d eye,And go your journey of all daysWith not one kiss, or a good-bye,And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d:’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.
Is this the portent of the day nigh past,And of a restless graveO’er which the eternal sadness gathers fast;Or but the heaped waveOf some chance, wandering tide,Such as that world of aweWhose circuit, listening to a foreign law,Conjunctures ours at unguess’d dates and wide,Does in the Spirit’s tremulous ocean draw,To pass unfateful on, and so subside?Thee, whom ev’n more than Heaven loved I have,And yet have not been trueEven to thee,I, dreaming, night by night, seek now to see,And, in a mortal sorrow, still pursueThro’ sordid streets and lanesAnd houses brown and bareAnd many a haggard stairOchrous with ancient stains,And infamous doors, opening on hapless rooms,In whose unhaunted gloomsDead pauper generations, witless of the sun,Their course have run;And ofttimes my pursuitIs check’d of its dear fruitBy things brimful of hate, my kith and kin,Furious that I should keepTheir forfeit power to weep,And mock, with living fear, their mournful malice thin.But ever, at the last, my way I winTo where, with perfectly sad patience, nurstBy sorry comfort of assured worst,Ingrain’d in fretted cheek and lips that pine,On pallet poorThou lyest, stricken sick,Beyond love’s cure,By all the world’s neglect, but chiefly mine.Then sweetness, sweeter than my tongue can tell,Does in my bosom well,And tears come free and quickAnd more and more aboundFor piteous passion keen at having found,After exceeding ill, a little good;A little goodWhich, for the while,Fleets with the current sorrow of the blood,Though no good here has heart enough to smile.
My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyesAnd moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,Having my law the seventh time disobey’d,I struck him, and dismiss’dWith hard words and unkiss’d,His Mother, who was patient, being dead.Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,I visited his bed,But found him slumbering deep,With darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yetFrom his late sobbing wet.And I, with moan,Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;For, on a table drawn beside his head,He had put, within his reach,A box of counters and a red-vein’d stone,A piece of glass abraded by the beachAnd six or seven shells,A bottle with bluebellsAnd two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,To comfort his sad heart.So when that night I pray’dTo God, I wept, and said:Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,Not vexing Thee in death,And Thou rememberest of what toysWe made our joys,How weakly understood,Thy great commanded good,Then, fatherly not lessThan I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,Thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,‘I will be sorry for their childishness.’
The stony rock of death’s insensibilityWell’d yet awhile with honey of thy loveAnd then was dry;Nor could thy picture, nor thine empty glove,Nor all thy kind, long letters, nor the bandWhich really spann’dThy body chaste and warm,Thenceforward moveUpon the stony rock their wearied charm.At last, then, thou wast dead.Yet would I not despair,But wrought my daily task, and daily saidMany and many a fond, unfeeling prayer,To keep my vows of faith to thee from harm.In vain.‘For ’tis,’ I said, ‘all one,The wilful faith, which has no joy or pain,As if ’twere none.’Then look’d I miserably roundIf aught of duteous love were left undone,And nothing found.But, kneeling in a Church, one Easter-Day,It came to me to say:‘Though there is no intelligible rest,In Earth or Heaven,For me, but on her breast,I yield her up, again to have her given,Or not, as, Lord, Thou wilt, and that for aye.’And the same night, in slumber lying,I, who had dream’d of thee as sad and sick and dying,And only so, nightly for all one year,Did thee, my own most Dear,Possess,In gay, celestial beauty nothing coy,And felt thy soft caressWith heretofore unknown reality of joy.But, in our mortal air,None thrives for long upon the happiest dream,And fresh despairBade me seek round afresh for some extremeOf unconceiv’d, interior sacrificeWhereof the smoke might riseTo God, and ’mind him that one pray’d below.And so,In agony, I cried:‘My Lord, if thy strange will be this,That I should crucify my heart,Because my love has also been my pride,I do submit, if I saw how, to blissWherein She has no part.’And I was heard,And taken at my own remorseless word.O, my most Dear,Was’t treason, as I fear?’Twere that, and worse, to plead thy veiled mind,Kissing thy babes, and murmuring in mine ear,‘Thou canst not beFaithful to God, and faithless unto me!’Ah, prophet kind!I heard, all dumb and blindWith tears of protest; and I cannot seeBut faith was broken. Yet, as I have said,My heart was dead,Dead of devotion and tired memory,When a strange grace of theeIn a fair stranger, as I take it, bredTo her some tender heed,Most innocentOf purpose therewith blent,And pure of faith, I think, to thee; yet suchThat the pale reflex of an alien love,So vaguely, sadly shown,Did her heart touchAboveAll that, till then, had woo’d her for its own.And so the fear, which is love’s chilly dawn,Flush’d faintly upon lids that droop’d like thine,And made me weak,By thy delusive likeness doubly drawn,And Nature’s long suspended breath of flamePersuading soft, and whispering Duty’s name,Awhile to smile and speakWith this thy Sister sweet, and therefore mine;Thy Sister sweet,Who bade the wheels to stirOf sensitive delight in the poor brain,Dead of devotion and tired memory,So that I lived again,And, strange to aver,With no relapse into the void inane,For thee;But (treason was’t?) for thee and also her.
Here, in this little Bay,Full of tumultuous life and great repose,Where, twice a day,The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,I sit me down.For want of me the world’s course will not fail:When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;The truth is great, and shall prevail,When none cares whether it prevail or not.
In the year of the great crime,When the false English Nobles and their Jew,By God demented, slewThe Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong,One said, Take up thy Song,That breathes the mild and almost mythic timeOf England’s prime!But I, Ah, me,The freedom of the fewThat, in our free Land, were indeed the free,Can song renew?Ill singing ’tis with blotting prison-bars,How high soe’er, betwixt us and the stars;Ill singing ’tis when there are none to hear;And days are nearWhen England shall forgetThe fading glow which, for a little while,Illumes her yet,The lovely smileThat grows so faint and wan,Her people shouting in her dying ear,Are not two daws worth two of any swan!Ye outlaw’d Best, who yet are brightWith the sunken light,Whose common styleIs Virtue at her gracious ease,The flower of olden sanctities,Ye haply trust, by love’s benignant guile,To lure the dark and selfish broodTo their own hated good;Ye haply dreamYour lives shall still their charmful sway sustain,Unstifled by the fever’d steamThat rises from the plain.Know, ’twas the force of function high,In corporate exercise, and public aweOf Nature’s, Heaven’s, and England’s LawThat Best, though mix’d with Bad, should reign,Which kept you in your sky!But, when the sordid Trader caughtThe loose-held sceptre from your hands distraught,And soon, to the Mechanic vain,Sold the proud toy for nought,Your charm was broke, your task was sped,Your beauty, with your honour, dead,And though you still are dreaming sweetOf being even now not lessThan Gods and Goddesses, ye shall not long so cheatYour hearts of their due heaviness.Go, get you for your evil watching shriven!Leave to your lawful Master’s itching handsYour unking’d lands,But keep, at least, the dignityOf deigning not, for his smooth use, to be,Voteless, the voted delegatesOf his strange interests, loves and hates.In sackcloth, or in private strifeWith private ill, ye may please Heaven,And soothe the coming pangs of sinking life;And prayer perchance may winA term to God’s indignant moodAnd the orgies of the multitude,Which now begin;But do not hope to wave the silken ragOf your unsanction’d flag,And so to guideThe great ship, helmless on the swelling tideOf that presumptuous Sea,Unlit by sun or moon, yet inly brightWith lights innumerable that give no light,Flames of corrupted will and scorn of right,Rejoicing to be free.And, now, because the dark comes on apaceWhen none can work for fear,And Liberty in every Land lies slain,And the two Tyrannies unchallenged reign,And heavy prophecies, suspended longAt supplication of the righteous few,And so discredited, to fulfilment throng,Restrain’d no more by faithful prayer or tear,And the dread baptism of blood seems nearThat brings to the humbled Earth the Time of Grace,Breathless be song,And let Christ’s own look throughThe darkness, suddenly increased,To the gray secret lingering in the East.
‘If I were dead, you’d sometimes say, Poor Child!’The dear lips quiver’d as they spake,And the tears brakeFrom eyes which, not to grieve me, brightly smiled.Poor Child, poor Child!I seem to hear your laugh, your talk, your song.It is not true that Love will do no wrong.Poor Child!And did you think, when you so cried and smiled,How I, in lonely nights, should lie awake,And of those words your full avengers make?Poor Child, poor Child!And now, unless it beThat sweet amends thrice told are come to thee,O God, have Thounomercy upon me!Poor Child!
O England, how hast thou forgot,In dullard care for undisturb’d increaseOf gold, which profits not,The gain which once thou knew’st was for thy peace!Honour is peace, the peace which does accordAlone with God’s glad word:‘My peace I send you, and I send a sword.’O England, how hast thou forgot,How fear’st the things which make for joy, not fear,Confronted near.Hard days? ’Tis what the pamper’d seek to buyWith their most willing gold in weary lands.Loss and pain risk’d? What sport but understandsThese for incitements! Suddenly to die,With conscience a blurr’d scroll?The sunshine dreaming upon Salmon’s heightIs not so sweet and whiteAs the most heretofore sin-spotted soulThat darts to its delightStraight from the absolution of a faithful fight.Myriads of homes unloosen’d of home’s bond,And fill’d with helpless babes and harmless women fond?Let those whose pleasant chanceTook them, like me, among the German towns,After the war that pluck’d the fangs from France,With me pronounceWhether the frequent black, which then array’dChild, wife, and maid,Did most to magnify the sombreness of grief,Or add the beauty of a staid reliefAnd freshening foilTo cheerful-hearted Honour’s ready smile!Beneath the heroic sunIs there then noneWhose sinewy wings by choice do flyIn the fine mountain-air of public obloquy,To tell the sleepy mongers of false easeThat war’s the ordained way of all alive,And therein with goodwill to dare and thriveIs profit and heart’s peace?But in his heart the fool now saith:‘The thoughts of Heaven were past all finding out,Indeed, if it should rainIntolerable woes upon our Land again,After so long a drought!’‘Will a kind Providence our vessel whelm,With such a pious Pilot at the helm?’‘Or let the throats be cut of pretty sheepThat care for nought but pasture rich and deep?’‘Were ’t Evangelical of God to deal so foul a blowAt people who hate Turks and Papists so?’‘What, make or keepA tax for ship and gun,When ’tis full three to oneYon bully but intendsTo beat our friends?’‘Let’s put asideOur costly pride.Our appetite’s not goneBecause we’ve learn’d to doffOur caps, where we were used to keep them on.’‘If times get worse,We’ve money in our purse,And Patriots that know how, let who will scoff,To buy our perils off.Yea, blessed in our midstArt thou who lately didst,So cheap,The old bargain of the Saxon with the Dane.’{35}Thus in his heart the fool now saith;And, lo, our trusted leaders trust fool’s luck,Which, like the whale’s ’mazed chine,When they thereon were mulling of their wine,Will some day duck.Remnant of Honour, brooding in the darkOver your bitter cark,Staring, as Rispah stared, astonied seven days,Upon the corpses of so many sons,Who loved her once,Dead in the dim and lion-haunted ways,Who could have dreamtThat times should come like these!Prophets, indeed, taught lies when we were young,And people loved to have it so;For they teach well who teach their scholars’ tongue!But that the foolish both should gaze,With feeble, fascinated face,Upon the wan crest of the coming woe,The billow of earthquake underneath the seas,And sit at ease,Or stand agape,Without so much as stepping back to ’scape,Mumbling, ‘Perchance we perish if we stay:’Tis certain wear of shoes to stir away!’Who could have dreamtThat times should come like these!Remnant of Honour, tongue-tied with contempt,Consider; you are strong yet, if you please.A hundred just men up, and arm’d but with a frown,May hoot a hundred thousand false loons down,Or drive them any way like geese.But to sit silent now is to subornThe common villainy you scorn.In the dark hourWhen phrases are in power,And nought’s to choose betweenThe thing which is not and which is not seen,One fool, with lusty lungs,Does what a hundred wise, who hate and hold their tongues,Shall ne’er undo.In such an hour,When eager hands are fetter’d and too few,And hearts alone have leave to bleed,Speak; for a good word then is a good deed.
With all my will, but much against my heart,We two now part.My Very Dear,Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear.It needs no art,With faint, averted feetAnd many a tear,In our opposed paths to persevere.Go thou to East, I West.We will not sayThere’s any hope, it is so far away.But, O, my Best,When the one darling of our widowhead,The nursling Grief,Is dead,And no dews blur our eyesTo see the peach-bloom come in evening skies,Perchance we may,Where now this night is day,And even through faith of still averted feet,Making full circle of our banishment,Amazed meet;The bitter journey to the bourne so sweetSeasoning the termless feast of our contentWith tears of recognition never dry.
Stand by,Ye Wise, by whom Heav’n rules!Your kingly hands suit not the hangman’s tools.When God has doom’d a glorious Past to die,Are there no knaves and fools?For ages yet to come your kind shall count for nought.Smoke of the strife of other PowersThan ours,And tongues inscrutable with fury fraught‘Wilder the sky,Till the far good which none can guess be wrought.Stand by!Since tears are vain, here let us rest and laugh,But not too loudly; for the brave time’s come,When Best may not blaspheme the Bigger Half,And freedom for our sort means freedom to be dumb.Lo, how the dross and draffJeer up at us, and shout,‘The Day is ours, the Night is theirs!’And urge their routWhere the wild dawn of rising Tartarus flares.Yon strives their Leader, lusting to be seen.His leprosy’s so perfect that men call him clean!Listen the long, sincere, and liberal brayOf the earnest Puller at another’s hay’Gainst aught that dares to tug the other way,Quite void of fearsWith all that noise of ruin round his ears!Yonder the people cast their caps o’erhead,And swear the threaten’d doom is ne’er to dreadThat’s come, though not yet past.All front the horror and are none aghast;Brag of their full-blown rights and liberties,Nor once surmiseWhen each man gets his due the Nation dies;Nay, still shout ‘Progress!’ as if seven plaguesShould take the laggard who would stretch his legs.Forward! glad rush of Gergesenian swine;You’ve gain’d the hill-top, but there’s yet the brine.Forward! to meet the welcome of the wavesThat mount to ’whelm the freedom which enslaves.Forward! bad corpses turn into good dung,To feed strange futures beautiful and young.Forward! God speed ye down the damn’d decline,And grant ye the Fool’s true good, in abject ruin’s gulfAs the Wise see him so to see himself!Ah, Land once mine,That seem’d to me too sweetly wise,Too sternly fair for aught that dies,Past is thy proud and pleasant state,That recent dateWhen, strong and single, in thy sovereign heart,The thrones of thinking, hearing, sight,The cunning hand, the knotted thewOf lesser powers that heave and hew,And each the smallest beneficial part,And merest pore of breathing, beat,Full and complete,The great pulse of thy generous might,Equal in inequality,That soul of joy in low and high;When not a churl but felt the Giant’s heat,Albeit he simply call’d it his,Flush in his common labour with delight,And not a village-Maiden’s kissBut was for thisMore sweet,And not a sorrow but did lightlier sigh,And for its private self less greet,The whilst that other so majestic self stood by!Integrity so vast could well affordTo wear in working many a stain,To pillory the cobbler vainAnd license madness in a lord.On that were all men well agreed;And, if they did a thing,Their strength was with them in their deed,And from amongst them came the shout of a king!But, once let traitor coward meet,Not Heaven itself can keep its feet.Come knave who said to dastard, ‘Lo,The Deluge!’ which but needed ‘No!’For all the Atlantic’s threatening roar,If men would bravely understand,Is softly check’d for evermoreBy a firm bar of sand.But, dastard listening knave, who said,‘’Twere juster were the Giant dead,That so yon bawlers may not missTo vote their own pot-belly’d bliss,’All that is past!We saw the slaying, and were not aghast.But ne’er a sun, on village Groom and Bride,Albeit they guess not how it is,At Easter or at Whitsuntide,But shines less gay for this!
Not greatly moved with awe am ITo learn that we may spyFive thousand firmaments beyond our own.The best that’s knownOf the heavenly bodies does them credit small.View’d close, the Moon’s fair ballIs of ill objects worst,A corpse in Night’s highway, naked, fire-scarr’d, accurst;And now they tellThat the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burstToo horribly for hell.So, judging from these two,As we must do,The Universe, outside our living Earth,Was all conceiv’d in the Creator’s mirth,Forecasting at the time Man’s spirit deep,To make dirt cheap.Put by the Telescope!Better without it man may see,Stretch’d awful in the hush’d midnight,The ghost of his eternity.Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eyeThe things which near us lie,Till Science rapturously hails,In the minutest water-drop,A torment of innumerable tails.These at the least do live.But rather giveA mind not much to pryBeyond our royal-fair estateBetwixt these deserts blank of small and great.Wonder and beauty our own courtiers are,Pressing to catch our gaze,And out of obvious waysNe’er wandering far.
Much woe that man befallsWho does not run when sent, nor come when Heaven calls;But whether he serve God, or his own whim,Not matters, in the end, to any one but him;And he as soonShall map the other side of the Moon,As trace what his own deed,In the next chop of the chance gale, shall breed.This he may know:His good or evil seedIs like to grow,For its first harvest, quite to contraries:The father wiseHas still the hare-brain’d brood;’Gainst evil, ill example better works than good;The poet, fanning his mild flightAt a most keen and arduous height,Unveils the tender heavens to horny human eyesAmidst ingenious blasphemies.Wouldst raise the poor, in Capuan luxury sunk?The Nation lives but whilst its Lords are drunk!Or spread Heav’n’s partial gifts o’er all, like dew?The Many’s weedy growth withers the gracious Few!Strange opposites, from those, again, shall rise.Join, then, if thee it please, the bitter jestOf mankind’s progress; all its spectral raceMere impotence of rest,The heaving vain of life which cannot cease from self,Crest altering still to gulfAnd gulf to crestIn endless chace,That leaves the tossing water anchor’d in its place!Ah, well does he who does but stand aside,Sans hope or fear,And marks the crest and gulf in station sink and rear,And prophesies ’gainst trust in such a tide:For he sometimes is prophet, heavenly taught,Whose message is that he sees only nought.Nathless, discern’d may be,By listeners at the doors of destiny,The fly-wheel swift and stillOf God’s incessant will,Mighty to keep in bound, tho’ powerless to quell,The amorous and vehement drift of man’s herd to hell.
Ah, yes; we tell the good and evil treesBy fruits: But how tell these?Who does not knowThat good and illAre done in secret still,And that which shews is verily but show!How high of heart is one, and one how sweet of mood:But not all height is holiness,Nor every sweetness good;And grace will sometimes lurk where who could guess?The Critic of his kind,Dealing to each his share,With easy humour, hard to bear,May not impossibly have in him shrined,As in a gossamer globe or thickly padded pod,Some small seed dear to God.Haply yon wretch, so famous for his falls,Got them beneath the Devil-defended wallsOf some high Virtue he had vow’d to win;And that which you and ICall his besetting sinIs but the fume of his peculiar fireOf inmost contrary desire,And means wild willingness for her to die,Dash’d with despondence of her favour sweet;He fiercer fighting, in his worst defeat,Than I or you,That only courteous greetWhere he does hotly woo,Did ever fight, in our best victory.Another is mistookThrough his deceitful likeness to his look!Let be, let be:Why should I clear myself, why answer thou for me?That shaft of slander shotMiss’d only the right blot.I see the shameThey cannot see:’Tis very just they blameThe thing that’s not.
Heroic Good, target for which the youngDream in their dreams that every bow is strung,And, missing, sighUnfruitful, or as disbelievers die,Thee having miss’d, I will not so revolt,But lowlier shoot my bolt,And lowlier still, if still I may not reach,And my proud stomach teachThat less than highest is good, and may be high.An even walk in life’s uneven way,Though to have dreamt of flight and not to flyBe strange and sad,Is not a boon that’s given to all who pray.If this I hadI’d envy none!Nay, trod I straight for oneYear, month or week,Should Heaven withdraw, and Satan me amerceOf power and joy, still would I seekAnother victory with a like reverse;Because the good of victory does not die,As dies the failure’s curse,And what we have to gainIs, not one battle, but a weary life’s campaign.Yet meaner lot being sentShould more than me content;Yea, if I lieAmong vile shards, though born for silver wings,In the strong flight and feathers goldOf whatsoever heavenward mounts and singsI must by admiration so complyThat there I should my own delight behold.Yea, though I sin each day times seven,And dare not lift the fearfullest eyes to Heaven,Thanks must I giveBecause that seven times are not eight or nine,And that my darkness is all mine,And that I liveWithin this oak-shade one more minute even,Hearing the winds their Maker magnify.
Ah, God, alas,How soon it came to passThe sweetness melted from thy barbed hookWhich I so simply took;And I lay bleeding on the bitter land,Afraid to stir against thy least command,But losing all my pleasant life-blood, whenceForce should have been heart’s frailty to withstand.Life is not life at all without delight,Nor has it any might;And better than the insentient heart and brainIs sharpest pain;And better for the moment seems it to rebel,If the great Master, from his lifted seat,Ne’er whispers to the wearied servant ‘Well!’Yet what returns of love did I endure,When to be pardon’d seem’d almost more sweetThan aye to have been pure!But day still faded to disastrous night,And thicker darkness changed to feebler light,Until forgiveness, without stint renew’d,Was now no more with loving tears imbued,Vowing no more offence.Not less to thine Unfaithful didst thou cry,‘Come back, poor Child; be all as ’twas before.’But I,‘No, no; I will not promise any more!Yet, when I feel my hour is come to die,And so I am secured of continence,Then may I say, though haply then in vain,“My only, only Love, O, take me back again!”‘Thereafter didst thou smiteSo hard that, for a space,Uplifted seem’d Heav’n’s everlasting door,And I indeed the darling of thy grace.But, in some dozen changes of the moon,A bitter mockery seem’d thy bitter boon.The broken pinion was no longer sore.Again, indeed, I wokeUnder so dread a strokeThat all the strength it left within my heartWas just to ache and turn, and then to turn and ache,And some weak sign of war unceasingly to make.And here I lie,With no one near to mark,Thrusting Hell’s phantoms feebly in the dark,And still at point more utterly to die.O God, how long!Put forth indeed thy powerful right hand,While time is yet,Or never shall I see the blissful land!Thus I: then God, in pleasant speech and strong,(Which soon I shall forget):‘The man who, though his fights be all defeats,Still fights,Enters at lastThe heavenly Jerusalem’s rejoicing streetsWith glory more, and more triumphant ritesThan always-conquering Joshua’s, when his blastThe frighted walls of Jericho down cast;And, lo, the glad surpriseOf peace beyond surmise,More than in common Saints, for ever in his eyes.’
Since succour to the feeblest of the wiseIs charge of nobler weightThan the securityOf many and many a foolish soul’s estate,This I affirm,Though fools will fools more confidently be:Whom God does once with heart to heart befriend,He does so till the end:And having planted life’s miraculous germ,One sweet pulsation of responsive love,He sets him sheer above,Not sin and bitter shameAnd wreck of fame,But Hell’s insidious and more black attempt,The envy, malice, and pride,Which men who share so easily condoneThat few ev’n list such ills as these to hide.From these unalterably exempt,Through the remember’d graceOf that divine embrace,Of his sad errors none,Though gross to blame,Shall cast him lower than the cleansing flame,Nor make him quite departFrom the small flock named ‘after God’s own heart,’And to themselves unknown.Nor can he quailIn faith, nor flush nor paleWhen all the other idiot people spellHow this or that new Prophet’s word beliesTheir last high oracle;But constantly his soulPoints to its poleEv’n as the needle points, and knows not why;And, under the ever-changing clouds of doubt,When others cry,‘The stars, if stars there were,Are quench’d and out!’To him, uplooking t’ward the hills for aid,Appear, at need display’d,Gaps in the low-hung gloom, and, bright in air,Orion or the Bear.
In strenuous hope I wrought,And hope seem’d still betray’d;Lastly I said,‘I have labour’d through the Night, nor yetHave taken aught;But at Thy word I will again cast forth the net!’And, lo, I caught(Oh, quite unlike and quite beyond my thought,)Not the quick, shining harvest of the Sea,For food, my wish,But Thee!Then, hiding even in me,As hid was Simon’s coin within the fish,Thou sigh’d’st, with joy, ‘Be dumb,Or speak but of forgotten things to far-off times to come.’
What rumour’d heavens are theseWhich not a poet sings,O, Unknown Eros? What this breezeOf sudden wingsSpeeding at far returns of time from interstellar spaceTo fan my very face,And gone as fleet,Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat,With ne’er a light plume dropp’d, nor any traceTo speak of whence they came, or whither they depart?And why this palpitating heart,This blind and unrelated joy,This meaningless desire,That moves me like the ChildWho in the flushing darkness troubled lies,Inventing lonely prophecies,Which even to his Mother mildHe dares not tell;To which himself is infidel;His heart not less on fireWith dreams impossible as wildest Arab Tale,(So thinks the boy,)With dreams that turn him red and pale,Yet less impossible and wildThan those which bashful Love, in his own way and hour,Shall duly bring to flower?O, Unknown Eros, sire of awful bliss,What portent and what Delphic word,Such as in form of snake forebodes the bird,Is this?In me life’s even floodWhat eddies thus?What in its ruddy orbit lifts the blood,Like a perturbed moon of Uranus,Reaching to some great world in ungauged darkness hid;And whenceThis rapture of the senseWhich, by thy whisper bid,Reveres with obscure rite and sacramental signA bond I know not of nor dimly can divine;This subject loyalty which longsFor chains and thongsWoven of gossamer and adamant,To bind me to my unguess’d want,And so to lie,Between those quivering plumes that thro’ fine ether pant,For hopeless, sweet eternity?What God unhonour’d hitherto in songs,Or which, that nowForgettest the disguiseThat Gods must wear who visit human eyes,Art Thou?Thou art not Amor; or, if so, yon pyre,That waits the willing victim, flames with vestal fire;Nor mooned Queen of maids; or, if thou’rt she,Ah, then, from TheeLet Bride and Bridegroom learn what kisses be!In what veil’d hymnOr mystic danceWould he that were thy Priest advanceThine earthly praise, thy glory limn?Say, should the feet that feel thy thoughtIn double-center’d circuit run,In that compulsive focus, Nought,In this a furnace like the sun;And might some note of thy renownAnd high behestThus in enigma be expressed:‘There lies the crownWhich all thy longing cures.Refuse it, Mortal, that it may be yours!It is a Spirit, though it seems red gold;And such may no man, but by shunning, hold.Refuse it, till refusing be despair;And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair.’
Twice thirty centuries and more ago,All in a heavenly Abyssinian vale,Man first met woman; and the ruddy snowOn many-ridgëd Abora turn’d pale,And the song choked within the nightingale.A mild white furnace in the thorough blastOf purest spirit seem’d She as she pass’d;And of the Man enough that this be said,He look’d her Head.Towards their bowerTogether as they went,With hearts conceiving torrents of content,And linger’d prologue fit for Paradise,He, gathering powerFrom dear persuasion of the dim-lit hour,And doubted sanction of her sparkling eyes,Thus supplicates her conjugal assent,And thus she makes replies:‘Lo, Eve, the Day burns on the snowy height,But here is mellow night!’‘Here let us rest. The languor of the lightIs in my feet.It is thy strength, my Love, that makes me weak;Thy strength it is that makes my weakness sweet.What would thy kiss’d lips speak?’‘See, what a world of roses I have spreadTo make the bridal bed.Come, Beauty’s self and Love’s, thus to thy throne be led!’‘My Lord, my Wisdom, nay!Does not yon love-delighted Planet run,(Haply against her heart,)A space apartFor ever from her strong-persuading Sun!O say,Shall we no voluntary barsSet to our drift? I, Sister of the Stars,And Thou, my glorious, course-compelling Day!’‘Yea, yea!Was it an echo of her coming wordWhich, ere she spake, I heard?Or through what strange distrust was I, her Head,Not first this thing to have said?AlwaySpeaks not within my breastThe uncompulsive, great and sweet behestOf something bright,Not named, not known, and yet more manifestThan is the morn,The sun being just at point then to be born?O Eve, take back thy “Nay.”Trust me, Beloved, ever in all to meanThy blissful service, sacrificial, keen;But bondless be that service, and let speak—’‘This other world of roses in my cheek,Which hide them in thy breast, and deepening seekThat thou decree if they mean Yea or Nay.’‘Did e’er so sweet a word such sweet gainsay!’‘And when I lean, Love, on you, thus, and smileSo that my Nay seems Yea,You must the whileThence be confirm’d that I deny you still.’‘I will, I will!’‘And when my arms are round your neck, like this,And I, as now,Melt like a golden ingot in your kiss,Then, more than ever, shall your splendid wordBe as Archangel Michael’s severing sword!Speak, speak!Your might, Love, makes me weak,Your might it is that makes my weakness sweet.’‘I vow, I vow!’‘And are you happy, O, my Hero and Lord;And is your joy complete?’‘Yea, with my joyful heart my body rocks,And joy comes down from Heaven in floods and shocks,As from Mount Abora comes the avalanche.’‘My Law, my Light!Then am I yours as your high mind may list.No wile shall lure you, none can I resist!’Thus the first EveWith much enamour’d Adam did enactTheir mutual free contractOf virgin spousals, blissful beyond flightOf modern thought, with great intention staunch,Though unobliged until that binding pact.Whether She kept her word, or He the mindTo hold her, wavering, to his own restraint,Answer, ye pleasures faint,Ye fiery throes, and upturn’d eyeballs blindOf sick-at-heart Mankind,Whom nothing succour can,Until a heaven-caress’d and happier EveBe join’d with some glad SaintIn like espousals, blessed upon Earth,And she her Fruit forth bring;No numb, chill-hearted, shaken-witted thing,‘Plaining his little span,But of proud virgin joy the appropriate birth,The Son of God and Man.
With honeysuckle, over-sweet, festoon’d;With bitter ivy bound;Terraced with funguses unsound;Deform’d with many a bossAnd closed scar, o’ercushion’d deep with moss;Bunch’d all about with pagan mistletoe;And thick with nests of the hoarse birdThat talks, but understands not his own word;Stands, and so stood a thousand years ago,A single tree.Thunder has done its worst among its twigs,Where the great crest yet blackens, never pruned,But in its heart, alwayReady to push new verdurous boughs, whene’erThe rotting saplings near it fall and leave it air,Is all antiquity and no decay.Rich, though rejected by the forest-pigs,Its fruit, beneath whose rough, concealing rindThey that will break it findHeart-succouring savour of each several meat,And kernell’d drink of brain-renewing power,With bitter condiment and sour,And sweet economy of sweet,And odours that remindOf haunts of childhood and a different day.Beside this tree,Praising no Gods nor blaming, sans a wish,Sits, Tartar-like, the Time’s civility,And eats its dead-dog off a golden dish.
That last,Blown from our Sion of the Seven Hills,Was no uncertain blast!Listen: the warning all the champaign fills,And minatory murmurs, answering, marThe Night, both near and far,Perplexing many a drowsy citadelBeneath whose ill-watch’d walls the Powers of Hell,With armed jarAnd angry threat, surceaseTheir long-kept compact of contemptuous peace!Lo, yonder, where our little English band,With peace in heart and wrath in hand,Have dimly ta’en their stand,Sweetly the lightShines from the solitary peak at Edgbaston,Whence, o’er the dawning Land,Gleam the gold blazonries of Love irate’Gainst the black flag of Hate.{62}Envy not, little band,Your brothers under the Hohenzollern hoofPut to the splendid proof.Your hour is near!The spectre-haunted time of idle Night,Your only fear,Thank God, is done,And Day and War, Man’s work-time and delight,Begun.Ho, ye of the van there, veterans great of cheer,Look to your footing, when, from yonder verge,The wish’d Sun shall emerge;Lest once again the Flower of Sharon bloomAfter a way the Stalk call heresy.Strange splendour and strange gloomAlike confuse the pathOf customary faith;And when the dim-seen mountains turn to flameAnd every roadside atom is a spark,The dazzled sense, that used was to the dark,May well doubt, ‘Is’t the safe way and the sameBy which we cameFrom Egypt, and to Canaan mean to go?’But know,The clearness then so marvellously increas’d,The light’ning shining Westward from the East,Is the great promised signOf His victorious and divineApproach, whose coming in the clouds shall be,As erst was His humility,A stumbling unto some, the first bid to the Feast.Cry, Ho!Good speed to them that come and them that goFrom either gathering host,And, after feeble, false allegiance, now first knowTheir post.Ho, yeWho loved our FlagOnly because there flapp’d none other ragWhich gentlemen might doff to, and such be,‘Save your gentility!For leagued, alas, are weWith many a faithful rogueDiscrediting bright Truth with dirt and brogue;And flatterers, too,That still would sniff the grassAfter the ’broider’d shoe,And swear it smelt like musk where He did pass,Though he were Borgia or Caiaphas.Ho, yeWho dread the bondage of the boundless fieldsWhich Heaven’s allegiance yields,And, like to house-hatch’d finches, hop not freeUnless ’tween walls of wire,Look, there be many cages: choose to your desire!Ho, ye,Of God the least beloved, of Man the most,That like not leaguing with the lesser host,Behold the invested Mount,And that assaulting Sea with ne’er a coast.You need not stop to count!But come up, yeWho adore, in any way,Our God by His wide-honour’d Name of YEA.Come up; for where ye stand ye cannot stay.Come allThat either mood of heavenly joyance know,And, on the ladder hierarchical,Have seen the order’d Angels to and froDescending with the pride of service sweet,Ascending, with the rapture of receipt!Come who have felt, in soul and heart and sense,The entire obedienceWhich opes the bosom, like a blissful wife,To the Husband of all life!Come ye that find contentment’s very coreIn the light storeAnd daisied pathOf Poverty,And know how moreA small thing that the righteous hathAvaileth than the ungodly’s riches great.Come likewise yeWhich do not yet disown as out of dateThat brightest third of the dead Virtues three,Of Love the crown elateAnd daintiest glee!Come up, come up, and join our little band.Our time is near at hand.The sanction of the world’s undying hateMeans more than flaunted flags in windy air.Be ye of gathering fateNow gladly ware.Now from the matrix, by God’s grinding wrought,The brilliant shall be brought;The white stone mystic set between the eyesOf them that get the prize;Yea, part and parcel of that mighty StoneWhich shall be thrownInto the Sea, and Sea shall be no more.
What is this Maiden fair,The laughing of whose eyeIs in man’s heart renew’d virginity;Who yet sick longing breedsFor marriage which exceedsThe inventive guess of Love to satisfyWith hope of utter binding, and of loosing endless dear despair?What gleams about her shine,More transient than delight and more divine!If she does something but a little sweet,As gaze towards the glass to set her hair,See how his soul falls humbled at her feet!Her gentle step, to go or come,Gains her more merit than a martyrdom;And, if she dance, it doth such grace conferAs opes the heaven of heavens to more than her,And makes a rival of her worshipper.To die unknown for her were little cost!So is she without guile,Her mere refused smileMakes up the sum of that which may be lost!Who is this FairWhom each hath seen,The darkest once in this bewailed dell,Be he not destin’d for the glooms of hell?Whom each hath seenAnd known, with sharp remorse and sweet, as QueenAnd tear-glad Mistress of his hopes of bliss,Too fair for man to kiss?Who is this only happy She,Whom, by a frantic flight of courtesy,Born of despairOf better lodging for his Spirit fair,He adores as Margaret, Maude, or Cecily?And what this sigh,That each one heaves for Earth’s last lowliheadAnd the Heaven highIneffably lock’d in dateless bridal-bed?Are all, then, mad, or is it prophecy?‘Sons now we are of God,’ as we have heard,‘But what we shall be hath not yet appear’d.’O, Heart, remember thee,That Man is none,Save One.What if this Lady be thy Soul, and HeWho claims to enjoy her sacred beauty be,Not thou, but God; and thy sick fireA female vanity,Such as a Bride, viewing her mirror’d charms,Feels when she sighs, ‘All these are for his arms!’A reflex heatFlash’d on thy cheek from His immense desire,Which waits to crown, beyond thy brain’s conceit,Thy nameless, secret, hopeless longing sweet,Not by-and-by, but now,Unless deny Him thou!