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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1471-0.txt b/1471-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..34f2c54 --- /dev/null +++ b/1471-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4990 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, New Poems, by Francis Thompson + + +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 at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: New Poems + + +Author: Francis Thompson + + + +Release Date: February 1, 2015 [eBook #1471] +[This file was first posted on July 26, 1998] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW POEMS*** + + +This etext was prepared by Les Bowler. + + [Picture: Book cover] + + + + + + NEW POEMS + + + BY + FRANCIS THOMPSON. + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + * * * * * + + BURNS AND OATES + 26 ORCHARD STREET, LONDON, W. + 1907 + + * * * * * + + _Third English Edition_ + + * * * * * + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +Dedication vii + SIGHT AND INSIGHT + The Mistress of Vision 3 + Contemplation 14 + ‘By Reason of Thy Law’ 18 + The Dread of Height 21 + Orient Ode 26 + New Year’s Chimes 36 + From the Night of Forebeing 40 + Any Saint 58 + Assumpta Maria 67 + The After Woman 74 + Grace of the Way 77 + Retrospect 80 + A NARROW VESSEL + A Girl’s Sin—in her Eyes 85 + A Girl’s Sin—in his Eyes 91 + Love Declared 94 + The Way of a Maid 96 + Beginning of the End 98 + Penelope 100 + The End of it 102 + Epilogue 103 + MISCELLANEOUS ODES + Ode to the Setting Sun 107 + A Captain of Song 123 + Against Urania 126 + An Anthem of Earth 129 + MISCELLANEOUS POEMS + ‘Ex Ore Infantium’ 151 + A Question 154 + Field-flower 157 + The Cloud’s Swan-Song 159 + To the Sinking Sun 166 + Grief’s Harmonics 169 + Memorat Memoria 171 + July Fugitive 173 + To a Snow-flake 177 + Nocturn 179 + A May Burden 181 + A Dead Astronomer 183 + ‘Chose Vue’ 184 + ‘Whereto art thou come’ 185 + Heaven and Hell 186 + To a Child 187 + Hermes 188 + House of Bondage 189 + The Heart 191 + A Sunset 193 + Heard on the Mountain 197 + ULTIMA + Love’s Almsman Plaineth his 207 + Fare + A Holocaust 209 + Beneath a Photograph 211 + After her Going 212 + My Lady the Tyranness 214 + Unto this Last 218 + Ultimum 221 + Envoy 224 + + + + +DEDICATION + + + TO COVENTRY PATMORE + + LO, my book thinks to look Time’s leaguer down, + Under the banner of your spread renown! + Or if these levies of impuissant rhyme + Fall to the overthrow of assaulting Time, + Yet this one page shall fend oblivious shame, + Armed with your crested and prevailing Name. + +_Note_.—This dedication was written while the dear friend and great Poet +to whom it was addressed yet lived. It is left as he saw it—the last +verses of mine that were ever to pass under his eyes. + + F. T. + + + + +SIGHT AND INSIGHT + + + ‘Wisdom is easily seen by them that love her, and is found by them + that seek her. + To think therefore upon her is perfect understanding.’ + + WISDOM, vi. + + + +THE MISTRESS OF VISION. + + + I + + SECRET was the garden; + Set i’ the pathless awe + Where no star its breath can draw. + Life, that is its warden, + Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw not, and I saw. + + II + + It was a mazeful wonder; + Thrice three times it was enwalled + With an emerald— + Sealèd so asunder. + All its birds in middle air hung a-dream, their music thralled. + + III + + The Lady of fair weeping, + At the garden’s core, + Sang a song of sweet and sore + And the after-sleeping; + In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore. + + IV + + With sweet-panged singing, + Sang she through a dream-night’s day; + That the bowers might stay, + Birds bate their winging, + Nor the wall of emerald float in wreathèd haze away. + + V + + The lily kept its gleaming, + In her tears (divine conservers!) + Washèd with sad art; + And the flowers of dreaming + Palèd not their fervours, + For her blood flowed through their nervures; + And the roses were most red, for she dipt them in her heart. + + VI + + There was never moon, + Save the white sufficing woman: + Light most heavenly-human— + Like the unseen form of sound, + Sensed invisibly in tune,— + With a sun-derivèd stole + Did inaureole + All her lovely body round; + Lovelily her lucid body with that light was interstrewn. + + VII + + The sun which lit that garden wholly, + Low and vibrant visible, + Tempered glory woke; + And it seemèd solely + Like a silver thurible + Solemnly swung, slowly, + Fuming clouds of golden fire, for a cloud of incense-smoke. + + VIII + + But woe’s me, and woe’s me, + For the secrets of her eyes! + In my visions fearfully + They are ever shown to be + As fringèd pools, whereof each lies + Pallid-dark beneath the skies + Of a night that is + But one blear necropolis. + And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her own sighs. + + IX + + Many changes rise on + Their phantasmal mysteries. + They grow to an horizon + Where earth and heaven meet; + And like a wing that dies on + The vague twilight-verges, + Many a sinking dream doth fleet + Lessening down their secrecies. + And, as dusk with day converges, + Their orbs are troublously + Over-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fear of things to be. + + X + + There is a peak on Himalay, + And on the peak undeluged snow, + And on the snow not eagles stray; + There if your strong feet could go,— + Looking over tow’rd Cathay + From the never-deluged snow— + Farthest ken might not survey + Where the peoples underground dwell whom antique fables know. + + XI + + East, ah, east of Himalay, + Dwell the nations underground; + Hiding from the shock of Day, + For the sun’s uprising-sound: + Dare not issue from the ground + At the tumults of the Day, + So fearfully the sun doth sound + Clanging up beyond Cathay; + For the great earthquaking sunrise rolling up beyond Cathay. + + XII + + Lend me, O lend me + The terrors of that sound, + That its music may attend me. + Wrap my chant in thunders round; + While I tell the ancient secrets in that Lady’s singing found. + + XIII + + On Ararat there grew a vine, + When Asia from her bathing rose; + Our first sailor made a twine + Thereof for his prefiguring brows. + Canst divine + Where, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a cluster grows? + + XIV + + On Golgotha there grew a thorn + Round the long-prefigured Brows. + Mourn, O mourn! + For the vine have we the spine? Is this all the Heaven allows? + + XV + + On Calvary was shook a spear; + Press the point into thy heart— + Joy and fear! + All the spines upon the thorn into curling tendrils start. + + XVI + + O, dismay! + I, a wingless mortal, sporting + With the tresses of the sun? + I, that dare my hand to lay + On the thunder in its snorting? + Ere begun, + Falls my singed song down the sky, even the old Icarian way. + + XVII + + From the fall precipitant + These dim snatches of her chant + Only have remainèd mine;— + That from spear and thorn alone + May be grown + For the front of saint or singer any divinizing twine. + + XVIII + + Her song said that no springing + Paradise but evermore + Hangeth on a singing + That has chords of weeping, + And that sings the after-sleeping + To souls which wake too sore. + ‘But woe the singer, woe!’ she said; ‘beyond the dead his + singing-lore, + All its art of sweet and sore, + He learns, in Elenore!’ + + XIX + + Where is the land of Luthany, + Where is the tract of Elenore? + I am bound therefor. + + XX + + ‘Pierce thy heart to find the key; + With thee take + Only what none else would keep; + Learn to dream when thou dost wake, + Learn to wake when thou dost sleep. + Learn to water joy with tears, + Learn from fears to vanquish fears; + To hope, for thou dar’st not despair, + Exult, for that thou dar’st not grieve; + Plough thou the rock until it bear; + Know, for thou else couldst not believe; + Lose, that the lost thou may’st receive; + Die, for none other way canst live. + When earth and heaven lay down their veil, + And that apocalypse turns thee pale; + When thy seeing blindeth thee + To what thy fellow-mortals see; + When their sight to thee is sightless; + Their living, death; their light, most lightless; + Search no more— + Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’ + + XXI + + Where is the land of Luthany, + And where the region Elenore? + I do faint therefor. + ‘When to the new eyes of thee + All things by immortal power, + Near or far, + Hiddenly + To each other linkèd are, + That thou canst not stir a flower + Without troubling of a star; + When thy song is shield and mirror + To the fair snake-curlèd Pain, + Where thou dar’st affront her terror + That on her thou may’st attain + Persean conquest; seek no more, + O seek no more! + Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’ + + XXII + + So sang she, so wept she, + Through a dream-night’s day; + And with her magic singing kept she— + Mystical in music— + That garden of enchanting + In visionary May; + Swayless for my spirit’s haunting, + Thrice-threefold walled with emerald from our mortal mornings grey. + + XXIII + + And as a necromancer + Raises from the rose-ash + The ghost of the rose; + My heart so made answer + To her voice’s silver plash,— + Stirred in reddening flash, + And from out its mortal ruins the purpureal phantom blows. + + XXIV + + Her tears made dulcet fretting, + Her voice had no word, + More than thunder or the bird. + Yet, unforgetting, + The ravished soul her meanings knew. Mine ears heard not, and I + heard. + + XXV + + When she shall unwind + All those wiles she wound about me, + Tears shall break from out me, + That I cannot find + Music in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt me! + + + +CONTEMPLATION + + + THIS morning saw I, fled the shower, + The earth reclining in a lull of power: + The heavens, pursuing not their path, + Lay stretched out naked after bath, + Or so it seemed; field, water, tree, were still, + Nor was there any purpose on the calm-browed hill. + + The hill, which sometimes visibly is + Wrought with unresting energies, + Looked idly; from the musing wood, + And every rock, a life renewed + Exhaled like an unconscious thought + When poets, dreaming unperplexed, + Dream that they dream of nought. + Nature one hour appears a thing unsexed, + Or to such serene balance brought + That her twin natures cease their sweet alarms, + And sleep in one another’s arms. + The sun with resting pulses seems to brood, + And slacken its command upon my unurged blood. + + The river has not any care + Its passionless water to the sea to bear; + The leaves have brown content; + The wall to me has freshness like a scent, + And takes half animate the air, + Making one life with its green moss and stain; + And life with all things seems too perfect blent + For anything of life to be aware. + The very shades on hill, and tree, and plain, + Where they have fallen doze, and where they doze remain. + + No hill can idler be than I; + No stone its inter-particled vibration + Investeth with a stiller lie; + No heaven with a more urgent rest betrays + The eyes that on it gaze. + We are too near akin that thou shouldst cheat + Me, Nature, with thy fair deceit. + + In poets floating like a water-flower + Upon the bosom of the glassy hour, + In skies that no man sees to move, + Lurk untumultuous vortices of power, + For joy too native, and for agitation + Too instant, too entire for sense thereof, + Motion like gnats when autumn suns are low, + Perpetual as the prisoned feet of love + On the heart’s floors with painèd pace that go. + From stones and poets you may know, + Nothing so active is, as that which least seems so. + + For he, that conduit running wine of song, + Then to himself does most belong, + When he his mortal house unbars + To the importunate and thronging feet + That round our corporal walls unheeded beat; + Till, all containing, he exalt + His stature to the stars, or stars + Narrow their heaven to his fleshly vault: + When, like a city under ocean, + To human things he grows a desolation, + And is made a habitation + For the fluctuous universe + To lave with unimpeded motion. + He scarcely frets the atmosphere + With breathing, and his body shares + The immobility of rocks; + His heart’s a drop-well of tranquillity; + His mind more still is than the limbs of fear, + And yet its unperturbed velocity + The spirit of the simoom mocks. + He round the solemn centre of his soul + Wheels like a dervish, while his being is + Streamed with the set of the world’s harmonies, + In the long draft of whatsoever sphere + He lists the sweet and clear + Clangour of his high orbit on to roll, + So gracious is his heavenly grace; + And the bold stars does hear, + Every one in his airy soar, + For evermore + Shout to each other from the peaks of space, + As thwart ravines of azure shouts the mountaineer. + + + +‘BY REASON OF THY LAW’ + + + HERE I make oath— + Although the heart that knows its bitterness + Hear loath, + And credit less— + That he who kens to meet Pain’s kisses fierce + Which hiss against his tears, + Dread, loss, nor love frustrate, + Nor all iniquity of the froward years + Shall his inurèd wing make idly bate, + Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight + To lose observance quite; + Seal from half-sad and all-elate + Sagacious eyes + Ultimate Paradise; + Nor shake his certitude of haughty fate. + + Pacing the burning shares of many dooms, + I with stern tread do the clear-witting stars + To judgment cite, + If I have borne aright + The proving of their pure-willed ordeal. + From food of all delight + The heavenly Falconer my heart debars, + And tames with fearful glooms + The haggard to His call; + Yet sometimes comes a hand, sometimes a voice withal, + And she sits meek now, and expects the light. + + In this Avernian sky, + This sultry and incumbent canopy + Of dull and doomed regret; + Where on the unseen verges yet, O yet, + At intervals, + Trembles, and falls, + Faint lightning of remembered transient sweet— + Ah, far too sweet + But to be sweet a little, a little sweet, and fleet; + Leaving this pallid trace, + This loitering and most fitful light a space, + Still some sad space, + For Grief to see her own poor face:— + + Here where I keep my stand + With all o’er-anguished feet, + And no live comfort near on any hand; + Lo, I proclaim the unavoided term, + When this morass of tears, then drained and firm, + Shall be a land— + Unshaken I affirm— + Where seven-quired psalterings meet; + And all the gods move with calm hand in hand, + And eyes that know not trouble and the worm. + + + +THE DREAD OF HEIGHT + + + If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say: We see: your + sin remaineth. + + JOHN ix. 41. + + NOT the Circean wine + Most perilous is for pain: + Grapes of the heavens’ star-loaden vine, + Whereto the lofty-placed + Thoughts of fair souls attain, + Tempt with a more retributive delight, + And do disrelish all life’s sober taste. + ’Tis to have drunk too well + The drink that is divine, + Maketh the kind earth waste, + And breath intolerable. + + Ah me! + How shall my mouth content it with mortality? + Lo, secret music, sweetest music, + From distances of distance drifting its lone flight, + Down the arcane where Night would perish in night, + Like a god’s loosened locks slips undulously: + Music that is too grievous of the height + For safe and low delight, + Too infinite, + For bounded hearts which yet would girth the sea! + + So let it be, + Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small: + So let it be, + O music, music, though you wake in me + No joy, no joy at all; + Although you only wake + Uttermost sadness, measure of delight, + Which else I could not credit to the height, + Did I not know, + That ill is statured to its opposite; + Did I not know, + And even of sadness so, + Of utter sadness make, + Of extreme sad a rod to mete + The incredible excess of unsensed sweet, + And mystic wall of strange felicity. + So let it be, + Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small, + And bitter meat + The food of gods for men to eat; + Yea, John ate daintier, and did tread + Less ways of heat, + Than whom to their wind-carpeted + High banquet-hall, + And golden love-feasts, the fair stars entreat. + + But ah withal, + Some hold, some stay, + O difficult Joy, I pray, + Some arms of thine, + Not only, only arms of mine! + Lest like a weary girl I fall + From clasping love so high, + And lacking thus thine arms, then may + Most hapless I + Turn utterly to love of basest rate; + For low they fall whose fall is from the sky. + Yea, who me shall secure + But I of height grown desperate + Surcease my wing, and my lost fate + Be dashed from pure + To broken writhings in the shameful slime: + Lower than man, for I dreamed higher, + Thrust down, by how much I aspire, + And damned with drink of immortality? + For such things be, + Yea, and the lowest reach of reeky Hell + Is but made possible + By forta’en breath of Heaven’s austerest clime. + + These tidings from the vast to bring + Needeth not doctor nor divine, + Too well, too well + My flesh doth know the heart-perturbing thing; + That dread theology alone + Is mine, + Most native and my own; + And ever with victorious toil + When I have made + Of the deific peaks dim escalade, + My soul with anguish and recoil + Doth like a city in an earthquake rock, + As at my feet the abyss is cloven then, + With deeper menace than for other men, + Of my potential cousinship with mire; + That all my conquered skies do grow a hollow mock, + My fearful powers retire, + No longer strong, + Reversing the shook banners of their song. + + Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven, + A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint, + Or for a will accipitrine to pursue! + The veil of tutelar flesh to simple livers given, + Or those brave-fledging fervours of the Saint, + Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint, + Nor they in sickest time their ample virtue mew. + + + +ORIENT ODE + + + LO, in the sanctuaried East, + Day, a dedicated priest + In all his robes pontifical exprest, + Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly, + From out its Orient tabernacle drawn, + Yon orbèd sacrament confest + Which sprinkles benediction through the dawn; + And when the grave procession’s ceased, + The earth with due illustrious rite + Blessed,—ere the frail fingers featly + Of twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte, + His sacerdotal stoles unvest— + Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast, + The sun in august exposition meetly + Within the flaming monstrance of the West. + _O salutaris hostia_, + _Quæ coeli pandis ostium_! + Through breachèd darkness’ rampart, a + Divine assaulter, art thou come! + God whom none may live and mark! + Borne within thy radiant ark, + While the Earth, a joyous David, + Dances before thee from the dawn to dark. + The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve; + Behold her fair and greater daughter {27} + Offers to thee her fruitful water, + Which at thy first white Ave shall conceive! + Thy gazes do on simple her + Desirable allures confer; + What happy comelinesses rise + Beneath thy beautifying eyes! + Who was, indeed, at first a maid + Such as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair, + And secret views herself afraid, + Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear: + Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover, + Make the beauties they discover! + What dainty guiles and treacheries caught + From artful prompting of love’s artless thought + Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn, + When thy plumes shiver against the conscious gates of morn! + + And so the love which is thy dower, + Earth, though her first-frightened breast + Against the exigent boon protest, + (For she, poor maid, of her own power + Has nothing in herself, not even love, + But an unwitting void thereof), + Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower; + And holy odours do her bosom invest, + That sweeter grows for being prest: + Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, + From thine embrace still startles coy, + Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, + The laughing captive from the wishing West. + + Nor the majestic heavens less + Thy formidable sweets approve, + Thy dreads and thy delights confess, + That do draw, and that remove. + Thou as a lion roar’st, O Sun, + Upon thy satellites’ vexèd heels; + Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run; + Each in his frighted orbit wheels, + Each flies through inassuageable chase, + Since the hunt o’ the world begun, + The puissant approaches of thy face, + And yet thy radiant leash he feels. + Since the hunt o’ the world begun, + Lashed with terror, leashed with longing, + The mighty course is ever run; + Pricked with terror, leashed with longing, + Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun. + Since the hunt o’ the world began, + With love that trembleth, fear that loveth, + Thou join’st the woman to the man; + And Life with Death + In obscure nuptials moveth, + Commingling alien, yet affinèd breath. + + Thou art the incarnated Light + Whose Sire is aboriginal, and beyond + Death and resurgence of our day and night; + From him is thy vicegerent wand + With double potence of the black and white. + Giver of Love, and Beauty, and Desire, + The terror, and the loveliness, and purging, + The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire! + Samson’s riddling meanings merging + In thy twofold sceptre meet: + Out of thy minatory might, + Burning Lion, burning Lion, + Comes the honey of all sweet, + And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat. + And though, by thine alternate breath, + Every kiss thou dost inspire + Echoeth + Back from the windy vaultages of death; + Yet thy clear warranty above + Augurs the wings of death too must + Occult reverberations stir of love + Crescent and life incredible; + That even the kisses of the just + Go down not unresurgent to the dust. + Yea, not a kiss which I have given, + But shall triúmph upon my lips in heaven, + Or cling a shameful fungus there in hell. + Know’st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, well + Thou know’st the ancient miracle, + The children know’st of Zeus and May; + And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother, + To incarnate, the antique way, + The truth which is their heritage from their Sire + In sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother. + My fingers thou hast taught to con + Thy flame-chorded psalterion, + Till I can translate into mortal wire— + Till I can translate passing well— + The heavenly harping harmony, + Melodious, sealed, inaudible, + Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world’s desire. + Thou whisperest in the Moon’s white ear, + And she does whisper into mine,— + By night together, I and she— + With her virgin voice divine, + The things I cannot half so sweetly tell + As she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear. + + By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord, + Yet she for Earth, and both in thee. + Light out of Light! + Resplendent and prevailing Word + Of the Unheard! + Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee + Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee; + And in an age of faith grown frore + If I too shall adore, + Be it accounted unto me + A bright sciential idolatry! + God has given thee visible thunders + To utter thine apocalypse of wonders; + And what want I of prophecy, + That at the sounding from thy station + Of thy flagrant trumpet, see + The seals that melt, the open revelation? + Or who a God-persuading angel needs, + That only heeds + The rhetoric of thy burning deeds? + Which but to sing, if it may be, + In worship-warranting moiety, + So I would win + In such a song as hath within + A smouldering core of mystery, + Brimmèd with nimbler meanings up + Than hasty Gideons in their hands may sup;— + Lo, my suit pleads + That thou, Isaian coal of fire, + Touch from yon altar my poor mouth’s desire, + And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds. + + To thine own shape + Thou round’st the chrysolite of the grape, + Bind’st thy gold lightnings in his veins; + Thou storest the white garners of the rains. + Destroyer and preserver, thou + Who medicinest sickness, and to health + Art the unthankèd marrow of its wealth; + To those apparent sovereignties we bow + And bright appurtenances of thy brow! + Thy proper blood dost thou not give, + That Earth, the gusty Mænad, drink and dance? + Art thou not life of them that live? + Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell + Within our body as a tabernacle! + Thou bittest with thine ordinance + The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete + The unsustainable treading of his feet. + Thou to thy spousal universe + Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church; + Who in most dusk and vidual curch, + Her Lord being hence, + Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hearse. + The heavens renew their innocence + And morning state + But by thy sacrament communicate: + Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers, + Our darkened search, + And sinful vigil desolate. + Yea, biune in imploring dumb, + Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await, + The Spirit and the Bride say: Come! + Lo, of thy Magians I the least + Haste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs, + To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced + Regions and odorous of Song’s traded East. + Thou, for the life of all that live + The victim daily born and sacrificed; + To whom the pinion of this longing verse + Beats but with fire which first thyself did give, + To thee, O Sun—or is’t perchance, to Christ? + + Ay, if men say that on all high heaven’s face + The saintly signs I trace + Which round my stolèd altars hold their solemn place, + Amen, amen! For oh, how could it be,— + When I with wingèd feet had run + Through all the windy earth about, + Quested its secret of the sun, + And heard what thing the stars together shout,— + I should not heed thereout + Consenting counsel won:— + ‘By this, O Singer, know we if thou see. + When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is here, + When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is there, + Believe them: yea, and this—then art thou seer, + When all thy crying clear + Is but: Lo here! lo there!—ah me, lo everywhere!’ + + + +NEW YEAR’S CHIMES. + + + WHAT is the song the stars sing? + (_And a million songs are as song of one_.) + This is the song the stars sing: + _Sweeter song’s none_. + + One to set, and many to sing, + (_And a million songs are as song of one_), + One to stand, and many to cling, + The many things, and the one Thing, + The one that runs not, the many that run. + + The ever new weaveth the ever old + (_And a million songs are as song of one_). + Ever telling the never told; + The silver saith, and the said is gold, + And done ever the never done. + + The chase that’s chased is the Lord o’ the chase + (_And a million songs are as song of one_), + And the pursued cries on the race; + And the hounds in leash are the hounds that run. + + Hidden stars by the shown stars’ sheen; + (_And a million suns are but as one_); + Colours unseen by the colours seen, + And sounds unheard heard sounds between, + And a night is in the light of the sun. + + An ambuscade of light in night, + (_And a million secrets are but as one_), + And a night is dark in the sun’s light, + And a world in the world man looks upon. + + Hidden stars by the shown stars’ wings, + (_And a million cycles are but as one_), + And a world with unapparent strings + Knits the simulant world of things; + Behold, and vision thereof is none. + + The world above in the world below + (_And a million worlds are but as one_), + And the One in all; as the sun’s strength so + Strives in all strength, glows in all glow + Of the earth that wits not, and man thereon. + + Braced in its own fourfold embrace + (_And a million strengths are as strength of one_), + And round it all God’s arms of grace, + The world, so as the Vision says, + Doth with great lightning-tramples run. + + And thunder bruiteth into thunder, + (_And a million sounds are as sound of one_), + From stellate peak to peak is tossed a voice of wonder, + And the height stoops down to the depths thereunder, + And sun leans forth to his brother-sun. + + And the more ample years unfold + (_With a million songs as song of one_), + A little new of the ever old, + A little told of the never told, + Added act of the never done. + + Loud the descant, and low the theme, + (_A million songs are as song of one_); + And the dream of the world is dream in dream, + But the one Is is, or nought could seem; + And the song runs round to the song begun. + + This is the song the stars sing, + (_Tonèd all in time_); + Tintinnabulous, tuned to ring + A multitudinous-single thing, + Rung all in rhyme. + + + +FROM THE NIGHT OF FOREBEING +AN ODE AFTER EASTER + + + _In the chaos of preordination_, _and night of our forebeings_.— + + SIR THOMAS BROWNE. + + _Et lux in tenebris erat_, _et tenebræ eam non comprehenderunt_.— + + ST. JOHN. + + CAST wide the folding doorways of the East, + For now is light increased! + And the wind-besomed chambers of the air, + See they be garnished fair; + And look the ways exhale some precious odours, + And set ye all about wild-breathing spice, + Most fit for Paradise. + Now is no time for sober gravity, + Season enough has Nature to be wise; + But now discinct, with raiment glittering free, + Shake she the ringing rafters of the skies + With festal footing and bold joyance sweet, + And let the earth be drunken and carouse! + For lo, into her house + Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet, + And all things are made young with young desires; + And all for her is light increased + In yellow stars and yellow daffodils, + And East to West, and West to East, + Fling answering welcome-fires, + By dawn and day-fall, on the jocund hills. + And ye, winged minstrels of her fair meinie, + Being newly coated in glad livery, + Upon her steps attend, + And round her treading dance and without end + Reel your shrill lutany. + What popular breath her coming does out-tell + The garrulous leaves among! + What little noises stir and pass + From blade to blade along the voluble grass! + O Nature, never-done + Ungaped-at Pentecostal miracle, + We hear thee, each man in his proper tongue! + Break, elemental children, break ye loose + From the strict frosty rule + Of grey-beard Winter’s school. + Vault, O young winds, vault in your tricksome courses + Upon the snowy steeds that reinless use + In coerule pampas of the heaven to run; + Foaled of the white sea-horses, + Washed in the lambent waters of the sun. + Let even the slug-abed snail upon the thorn + Put forth a conscious horn! + Mine elemental co-mates, joy each one; + And ah, my foster-brethren, seem not sad— + No, seem not sad, + That my strange heart and I should be so little glad. + Suffer me at your leafy feast + To sit apart, a somewhat alien guest, + And watch your mirth, + Unsharing in the liberal laugh of earth; + Yet with a sympathy, + Begot of wholly sad and half-sweet memory— + The little sweetness making grief complete; + Faint wind of wings from hours that distant beat, + When I, I too, + Was once, O wild companions, as are you, + Ran with such wilful feet. + Wraith of a recent day and dead, + Risen wanly overhead, + Frail, strengthless as a noon-belated moon, + Or as the glazing eyes of watery heaven, + When the sick night sinks into deathly swoon. + + A higher and a solemn voice + I heard through your gay-hearted noise; + A solemn meaning and a stiller voice + Sounds to me from far days when I too shall rejoice, + Nor more be with your jollity at strife. + O prophecy + Of things that are, and are not, and shall be! + The great-vanned Angel March + Hath trumpeted + His clangorous ‘Sleep no more’ to all the dead— + Beat his strong vans o’er earth, and air, and sea. + And they have heard; + Hark to the Jubilate of the bird + For them that found the dying way to life! + And they have heard, + And quicken to the great precursive word; + Green spray showers lightly down the cascade of the larch; + The graves are riven, + And the Sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven! + Before his way + Went forth the trumpet of the March; + Before his way, before his way + Dances the pennon of the May! + O earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long + Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree + Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy, + Behold how all things are made true! + Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you, + Exceeding glad and strong. + Raise up your eyes, O raise your eyes abroad! + No more shall you sit sole and vidual, + Searching, in servile pall, + Upon the hieratic night the star-sealed sense of all: + Rejoice, O barren, and look forth abroad! + Your children gathered back to your embrace + See with a mother’s face. + Look up, O mortals, and the portent heed; + In very deed, + Washed with new fire to their irradiant birth, + Reintegrated are the heavens and earth! + From sky to sod, + The world’s unfolded blossom smells of God. + + O imagery + Of that which was the first, and is the last! + For as the dark, profound nativity, + God saw the end should be, + When the world’s infant horoscope He cast. + Unshackled from the bright Phoebean awe, + In leaf, flower, mould, and tree, + Resolved into dividual liberty, + Most strengthless, unparticipant, inane, + Or suffered the ill peace of lethargy, + Lo, the Earth eased of rule: + Unsummered, granted to her own worst smart + The dear wish of the fool— + Disintegration, merely which man’s heart + For freedom understands, + Amid the frog-like errors from the damp + And quaking swamp + Of the low popular levels spawned in all the lands. + But thou, O Earth, dost much disdain + The bondage of thy waste and futile reign, + And sweetly to the great compulsion draw + Of God’s alone true-manumitting law, + And Freedom, only which the wise intend, + To work thine innate end. + Over thy vacant counterfeit of death + Broods with soft urgent breath + Love, that is child of Beauty and of Awe: + To intercleavage of sharp warring pain, + As of contending chaos come again, + Thou wak’st, O Earth, + And work’st from change to change and birth to birth + Creation old as hope, and new as sight; + For meed of toil not vain, + Hearing once more the primal fiat toll:— + ‘Let there be light!’ + And there is light! + Light flagrant, manifest; + Light to the zenith, light from pole to pole; + Light from the East that waxeth to the West, + And with its puissant goings-forth + Encroaches on the South and on the North; + And with its great approaches does prevail + Upon the sullen fastness of the height, + And summoning its levied power + Crescent and confident through the crescent hour, + Goes down with laughters on the subject vale. + Light flagrant, manifest; + Light to the sentient closeness of the breast, + Light to the secret chambers of the brain! + And thou up-floatest, warm, and newly-bathed, + Earth, through delicious air, + And with thine own apparent beauties swathed, + Wringing the waters from thine arborous hair; + That all men’s hearts, which do behold and see, + Grow weak with their exceeding much desire, + And turn to thee on fire, + Enamoured with their utter wish of thee, + Anadyomene! + What vine-outquickening life all creatures sup, + Feel, for the air within its sapphire cup + How it does leap, and twinkle headily! + Feel, for Earth’s bosom pants, and heaves her scarfing sea; + And round and round in bacchanal rout reel the swift spheres + intemperably! + + My little-worlded self! the shadows pass + In this thy sister-world, as in a glass, + Of all processions that revolve in thee: + Not only of cyclic Man + Thou here discern’st the plan, + Not only of cyclic Man, but of the cyclic Me. + Not solely of Mortality’s great years + The reflex just appears, + But thine own bosom’s year, still circling round + In ample and in ampler gyre + Toward the far completion, wherewith crowned, + Love unconsumed shall chant in his own furnace-fire. + How many trampled and deciduous joys + Enrich thy soul for joys deciduous still, + Before the distance shall fulfil + Cyclic unrest with solemn equipoise! + Happiness is the shadow of things past, + Which fools still take for that which is to be! + And not all foolishly: + For all the past, read true, is prophecy, + And all the firsts are hauntings of some Last, + And all the springs are flash-lights of one Spring. + Then leaf, and flower, and falless fruit + Shall hang together on the unyellowing bough; + And silence shall be Music mute + For her surchargèd heart. Hush thou! + These things are far too sure that thou should’st dream + Thereof, lest they appear as things that seem. + + Shade within shade! for deeper in the glass + Now other imaged meanings pass; + And as the man, the poet there is read. + Winter with me, alack! + Winter on every hand I find: + Soul, brain, and pulses dead; + The mind no further by the warm sense fed, + The soul weak-stirring in the arid mind, + More tearless-weak to flash itself abroad + Than the earth’s life beneath the frost-scorched sod. + My lips have drought, and crack, + By laving music long unvisited. + Beneath the austere and macerating rime + Draws back constricted in its icy urns + The genial flame of Earth, and there + With torment and with tension does prepare + The lush disclosures of the vernal time. + All joys draw inward to their icy urns, + Tormented by constraining rime, + And there + With undelight and throe prepare + The bounteous efflux of the vernal time. + Nor less beneath compulsive Law + Rebukèd draw + The numbèd musics back upon my heart; + Whose yet-triumphant course I know + And prevalent pulses forth shall start, + Like cataracts that with thunderous hoof charge the disbanding snow. + All power is bound + In quickening refusal so; + And silence is the lair of sound; + In act its impulse to deliver, + With fluctuance and quiver + The endeavouring thew grows rigid; + Strong + From its retracted coil strikes the resilient song. + + Giver of spring, + And song, and every young new thing! + Thou only seest in me, so stripped and bare, + The lyric secret waiting to be born, + The patient term allowed + Before it stretch and flutteringly unfold + Its rumpled webs of amethyst-freaked, diaphanous gold. + And what hard task abstracts me from delight, + Filling with hopeless hope and dear despair + The still-born day and parchèd fields of night, + That my old way of song, no longer fair, + For lack of serene care, + Is grown a stony and a weed-choked plot, + Thou only know’st aright, + Thou only know’st, for I know not. + How many songs must die that this may live! + And shall this most rash hope and fugitive, + Fulfilled with beauty and with might + In days whose feet are rumorous on the air, + Make me forget to grieve + For songs which might have been, nor ever were? + Stern the denial, the travail slow, + The struggling wall will scantly grow: + And though with that dread rite of sacrifice + Ordained for during edifice, + How long, how long ago! + Into that wall which will not thrive + I build myself alive, + Ah, who shall tell me will the wall uprise? + Thou wilt not tell me, who dost only know! + Yet still in mind I keep, + He which observes the wind shall hardly sow, + He which regards the clouds shall hardly reap. + Thine ancient way! I give, + Nor wit if I receive; + Risk all, who all would gain: and blindly. Be it so. + + ‘And blindly,’ said I?—No! + That saying I unsay: the wings + Hear I not in prævenient winnowings + Of coming songs, that lift my hair and stir it? + What winds with music wet do the sweet storm foreshow! + Utter stagnation + Is the solstitial slumber of the spirit, + The blear and blank negation of all life: + But these sharp questionings mean strife, and strife + Is the negation of negation. + The thing from which I turn my troubled look + Fearing the gods’ rebuke; + That perturbation putting glory on, + As is the golden vortex in the West + Over the foundered sun; + That—but low breathe it, lest the Nemesis + Unchild me, vaunting this— + Is bliss, the hid, hugged, swaddled bliss! + O youngling Joy carest! + That on my now first-mothered breast + Pliest the strange wonder of thine infant lip, + What this aghast surprise of keenest panging, + Wherefrom I blench, and cry thy soft mouth rest? + Ah hold, withhold, and let the sweet mouth slip! + So, with such pain, recoils the woolly dam, + Unused, affrighted, from her yeanling lamb: + I, one with her in cruel fellowship, + Marvel what unmaternal thing I am. + + Nature, enough! within thy glass + Too many and too stern the shadows pass. + In this delighted season, flaming + For thy resurrection-feast, + Ah, more I think the long ensepulture cold, + Than stony winter rolled + From the unsealed mouth of the holy East; + The snowdrop’s saintly stoles less heed + Than the snow-cloistered penance of the seed. + ’Tis the weak flesh reclaiming + Against the ordinance + Which yet for just the accepting spirit scans. + Earth waits, and patient heaven, + Self-bonded God doth wait + Thrice-promulgated bans + Of his fair nuptial-date. + And power is man’s, + With that great word of ‘wait,’ + To still the sea of tears, + And shake the iron heart of Fate. + In that one word is strong + An else, alas, much-mortal song; + With sight to pass the frontier of all spheres, + And voice which does my sight such wrong. + + Not without fortitude I wait + The dark majestical ensuit + Of destiny, nor peevish rate + Calm-knowledged Fate. + I, that no part have in the time’s bragged way, + And its loud bruit + I, in this house so rifted, marred, + So ill to live in, hard to leave; + I, so star-weary, over-warred, + That have no joy in this your day— + Rather foul fume englutting, that of day + Confounds all ray— + But only stand aside and grieve; + I yet have sight beyond the smoke, + And kiss the gods’ feet, though they wreak + Upon me stroke and again stroke; + And this my seeing is not weak. + The Woman I behold, whose vision seek + All eyes and know not; t’ward whom climb + The steps o’ the world, and beats all wing of rhyme, + And knows not; ’twixt the sun and moon + Her inexpressible front enstarred + Tempers the wrangling spheres to tune; + Their divergent harmonies + Concluded in the concord of her eyes, + And vestal dances of her glad regard. + I see, which fretteth with surmise + Much heads grown unsagacious-grey, + The slow aim of wise-hearted Time, + Which folded cycles within cycles cloak: + We pass, we pass, we pass; this does not pass away, + But holds the furrowing earth still harnessed to its yoke. + The stars still write their golden purposes + On heaven’s high palimpsest, and no man sees, + Nor any therein Daniel; I do hear + From the revolving year + A voice which cries: + ‘All dies; + Lo, how all dies! O seer, + And all things too arise: + All dies, and all is born; + But each resurgent morn, behold, more near the Perfect Morn.’ + + Firm is the man, and set beyond the cast + Of Fortune’s game, and the iniquitous hour, + Whose falcon soul sits fast, + And not intends her high sagacious tour + Or ere the quarry sighted; who looks past + To slow much sweet from little instant sour, + And in the first does always see the last. + + + +ANY SAINT + + + HIS shoulder did I hold + Too high that I, o’erbold + Weak one, + Should lean thereon. + + But He a little hath + Declined His stately path + And my + Feet set more high; + + That the slack arm may reach + His shoulder, and faint speech + Stir + His unwithering hair. + + And bolder now and bolder + I lean upon that shoulder + So dear + He is and near: + + And with His aureole + The tresses of my soul + Are blent + In wished content. + + Yes, this too gentle Lover + Hath flattering words to move her + To pride + By His sweet side. + + Ah, Love! somewhat let be! + Lest my humility + Grow weak + When thou dost speak! + + Rebate thy tender suit, + Lest to herself impute + Some worth + Thy bride of earth! + + A maid too easily + Conceits herself to be + Those things + Her lover sings; + + And being straitly wooed, + Believes herself the Good + And Fair + He seeks in her. + + Turn something of Thy look, + And fear me with rebuke, + That I + May timorously + + Take tremors in Thy arms, + And with contrivèd charms + Allure + A 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; + Point + Of the spheres conjoint; + + In whom eternally + Thou, Light, dost focus Thee!— + Didst pave + The way o’ the wave; + + Rivet with stars the Heaven, + For causeways to Thy driven + Car + In its coming far + + Unto him, only him; + In Thy deific whim + Didst bound + Thy works’ great round + + In this small ring of flesh; + The sky’s gold-knotted mesh + Thy wrist + Did only twist + + To take him in that net.— + Man! swinging-wicket set + Between + The Unseen and Seen; + + Lo, God’s two worlds immense, + Of spirit and of sense, + Wed + In this narrow bed; + + Yea, and the midge’s hymn + Answers the seraphim + Athwart + Thy body’s court! + + Great arm-fellow of God! + To the ancestral clod + Kin, + And to cherubin; + + Bread predilectedly + O’ the worm and Deity! + Hark, + O God’s clay-sealed Ark, + + To praise that fits thee, clear + To the ear within the ear, + But dense + To clay-sealed sense. + + All the Omnific made + When in a word he said, + (Mystery!) + He uttered _thee_; + + Thee His great utterance bore, + O secret metaphor + Of what + Thou dream’st no jot! + + Cosmic metonymy! + Weak world-unshuttering key! + One + Seal of Solomon! + + Trope that itself not scans + Its huge significance, + Which tries + Cherubic eyes. + + Primer where the angels all + God’s grammar spell in small, + Nor spell + The highest too well. + + Point for the great descants + Of starry disputants; + Equation + Of 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 bliss + Within 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 fulfilled + With all sweet things unwilled: + So best + God loves to jest + + With children small—a freak + Of heavenly hide-and-seek + Fit + For thy wayward wit, + + Who art thyself a thing + Of whim and wavering; + Free + When His wings pen thee; + + Sole fully blest, to feel + God whistle thee at heel; + Drunk up + As a dew-drop, + + When He bends down, sun-wise, + Intemperable eyes; + Most proud, + When utterly bowed. + + To feel thyself and be + His dear nonentity— + Caught + Beyond human thought + + In the thunder-spout of Him, + Until thy being dim, + And be + Dead deathlessly. + + Stoop, stoop; for thou dost fear + The nettle’s wrathful spear, + So slight + Art thou of might! + + Rise; for Heaven hath no frown + When thou to thee pluck’st down, + Strong clod! + The neck of God. + + + +ASSUMPTA MARIA + + + ‘_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_? _an_ + _All 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 graven + Tables of the Law was made; + Man’s own heart was one, one Heaven, + Both within my womb were laid. + For there Anteros with Eros + Heaven with man conjoinèd was,— + Twin-stone of the Law, _Ischyros_, + _Agios Athanatos_. + + I, the flesh-girt Paradises + Gardenered by the Adam new, + Daintied o’er with sweet devices + Which He loveth, for He grew. + I, the boundless strict savannah + Which 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 Angels + Do 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 outpanted + Lies the slimed Curse shrivelling. + For the brazen Serpent clear on + That old fangèd knowledge shone; + I to Wisdom rise, _Ischyron_, + _Agion Athanaton_! + + See in highest heaven pavilioned + Now the maiden Heaven rest, + The many-breasted sky out-millioned + By the splendours of her vest. + Lo, the Ark this holy tide is + The un-handmade Temple’s guest, + And the dark Egyptian bride is + Whitely 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 holden + Like 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 me + He 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 mother + Fell, beneath the apple-tree. + Risen ’twixt Anteros and Eros, + Blood and Water, Moon and Sun, + He upbears me, He _Ischyros_, + I bear Him, the _Athanaton_! + + 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 was + From 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 gesture + Air, 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; for + Now 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 even + Of 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 woman_ + _Rising ’twixt the Moon and Sun_; + _Who am I the heavens assume_? _an_ + _All am I_, _and I am one_. + + + +THE AFTER WOMAN + + + DAUGHTER of the ancient Eve, + We know the gifts ye gave—and give. + Who knows the gifts which _you_ shall give, + Daughter of the newer Eve? + You, if my soul be augur, you + Shall—O what shall you not, Sweet, do? + The celestial traitress play, + And all mankind to bliss betray; + With sacrosanct cajoleries + And starry treachery of your eyes, + Tempt us back to Paradise! + Make heavenly trespass;—ay, press in + Where faint the fledge-foot seraphin, + Blest Fool! Be ensign of our wars, + And shame us all to warriors! + Unbanner your bright locks,—advance + Girl, their gilded puissance, + I’ the mystic vaward, and draw on + After the lovely gonfalon + Us to out-folly the excess + Of your sweet foolhardiness; + To adventure like intense + Assault 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 elate + Thy 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! Then + Eden’s lopped tree shall shoot again: + For who Christ’s eyes shall miss, with those + Eyes for evident nuncios? + Or who be tardy to His call + In your accents augural? + + Who shall not feel the Heavens hid + Impend, at tremble of your lid, + And divine advent shine avowed + Under that dim and lucid cloud; + Yea, ’fore the silver apocalypse + Fail, at the unsealing of your lips? + When to love _you_ is (O Christ’s Spouse!) + To love the beauty of His house; + Then come the Isaian days; the old + Shall dream; and our young men behold + Vision—yea, the vision of Thabor mount, + Which none to other shall recount, + Because in all men’s hearts shall be + The 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. + Until + You and the hour shall be revealed, + This song is sung and sung not, and its words are sealed. + + + +GRACE OF THE WAY + + + ‘MY brother!’ spake she to the sun; + The kindred kisses of the stars + Were hers; her feet were set upon + The moon. If slumber solved the bars + + Of sense, or sense transpicuous grown + Fulfillèd seeing unto sight, + I know not; nor if ’twas my own + Ingathered 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 visibleness + That stirred the raiment of her flesh: + + And sensible, as her blown were, + Beyond the precincts of her form + I felt the woman flow from her— + A calm of intempestuous storm. + + I failed against the affluent tide; + Out of this abject earth of me + I was translated and enskied + Into the heavenly-regioned She. + + Now of that vision I bereaven + This 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 sweet + Direction 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, and + The darkness doth not comprehend: + God hath no haste; and God’s sons stand + Yet a Day, tarrying for the end. + + Dishonoured Rahab still hath hid, + Yea still, within her house of shame, + The messengers by Jesus bid + Forerun 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 trust + The 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. + + + +RETROSPECT + + + ALAS, and I have sung + Much song of matters vain, + And a heaven-sweetened tongue + Turned to unprofiting strain + Of vacant things, which though + Even 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 sun + Put 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 stars + Give tongue before his way + Goldenly as I say, + And each from wide Saturnus to hot Mars + He calleth by its name, + Lest that its bright feet stray; + And thou have lore of all, + But to thine own Sun’s call + Thy path disorbed hast never wit to tame; + It profits not withal, + And my rede is but lame. + + Only that, ’mid vain vaunt + Of wisdom ignorant, + A little kiss upon the feet of Love + My hasty verse has stayed + Sometimes a space to plant: + It has not wholly strayed, + Not wholly missed near sweet, fanning proud plumes above. + + Therefore I do repent + That with religion vain, + And misconceivèd pain, + I have my music bent + To waste on bootless things its skiey-gendered rain: + Yet shall a wiser day + Fulfil more heavenly way, + And with approvèd music clear this slip + I trust in God most sweet; + Meantime the silent lip, + Meantime the climbing feet. + + + + +A NARROW VESSEL. + + + BEING A LITTLE DRAMATIC SEQUENCE ON THE + ASPECT OF PRIMITIVE GIRL-NATURE + TOWARDS A LOVE BEYOND + ITS CAPACITIES. + + + +A GIRL’S SIN +I.—IN HER EYES + + + CROSS child! red, and frowning so? + ‘I, the day just over, + Gave a lock of hair to—no! + How _dare_ you say, my lover?’ + + He asked you?—Let me understand; + Come, child, let me sound it! + ‘Of course, he _would_ have 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 chastise + Because I gave him it. + + ‘Shameless in me the gift, alas! + In him his open bliss: + But for the privilege he has + A thousand he shall miss! + + ‘His eyes, where once I dreadless laughed, + Call up a burning blot: + I hate him, for his shameful craft + That asked by asking not!’ + + Luckless boy! and all for hair + He never asked, you said? + ‘Not just—but then he gazed—I swear + He gazed it from my head! + + ‘His silence on my cheek like breath + I felt in subtle way; + More sweet than aught another saith + Was 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 do + Is bold suit’s hallowing text; + Each gift a bastion levelled, to + The next one and the next. + + ‘Each wish whose grant may him befall + Is 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 grate + To cut; its root-thrills came + Down to my bosom. It might sate + His lust for my poor shame! + + ‘His sifted dainty this should be + For a score ambrosial years! + But his too much humility + Alarums me with fears. + + ‘My gracious grace a breach he counts + For 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 gleams + Was 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 him + In 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 toyed + With dreamed delight of this: + But ah, in proof, delight was void— + I could not _see_ his kiss!’ + + So, fond one, half this agony + Were spared, which my hand hushes, + Could you have played, Sweet, the sweet spy, + And blushed not for your blushes! + + + +A GIRL’S SIN +II.—IN HIS EYES + + + CAN I forget her cruelty + Who, brown miracle, gave you me? + Or with unmoisted eyes think on + The 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-expiated + Thy cold outlawry from her head; + How was I trampled and brought low, + Because her virgin neck was so; + How thralled beneath the jealous state + She stood at point to abdicate; + How sacrificed, before to me + She sacrificed her pride and thee; + How did she, struggling to abase + Herself to do me strange, sweet grace, + Enforce unwitting me to share + Her throes and abjectness with her; + Thence heightening that hour when her lover + Her grace, with trembling, should discover, + And in adoring trouble be + Humbled at her humility! + And with what pitilessness was I + After slain, to pacify + The uneasy manes of her shame, + Her haunting blushes!—Mine the blame: + What fair injustice did I rue + For what I—did not tempt her to? + Nor aught the judging maid might win + Me to assoil from _her_ sweet sin. + But nought were extreme punishment + For that beyond-divine content, + When my with-thee-first-giddied eyes + Stooped ere their due on Paradise! + O hour of consternating bliss + When 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! + + + +LOVE DECLARED + + + I LOOKED, she drooped, and neither spake, and cold, + We stood, how unlike all forecasted thought + Of that desirèd minute! Then I leaned + Doubting; whereat she lifted—oh, brave eyes + Unfrighted:—forward like a wind-blown flame + Came bosom and mouth to mine! + That falling kiss + Touching long-laid expectance, all went up + Suddenly into passion; yea, the night + Caught, blazed, and wrapt us round in vibrant fire. + + Time’s beating wing subsided, and the winds + Caught up their breathing, and the world’s great pulse + Stayed in mid-throb, and the wild train of life + Reeled by, and left us stranded on a hush. + This moment is a statue unto Love + Carved from a fair white silence. + Lo, he stands + Within us—are we not one now, one, one roof, + His roof, and the partition of weak flesh + Gone down before him, and no more, for ever?— + Stands like a bird new-lit, and as he lit, + Poised in our quiet being; only, only + Within our shaken hearts the air of passion, + Cleft by his sudden coming, eddies still + And whirs round his enchanted movelessness. + + A film of trance between two stirrings! Lo, + It bursts; yet dream’s snapped links cling round the limbs + Of waking: like a running evening stream + Which no man hears, or sees, or knows to run, + (Glazed with dim quiet), save that there the moon + Is shattered to a creamy flicker of flame, + Our eyes’ sweet trouble were hid, save that the love + Trembles a little on their impassioned calms. + + + +THE WAY OF A MAID + + + THE lover whose soul shaken is + In some decuman billow of bliss, + Who feels his gradual-wading feet + Sink in some sudden hollow of sweet, + And ’mid love’s usèd converse comes + Sharp on a mood which all joy sums— + An instant’s fine compendium of + The liberal-leavèd writ of love; + His abashed pulses beating thick + At the exigent joy and quick, + Is dumbed, by aiming utterance great + Up to the miracle of his fate. + The wise girl, such Icarian fall + Saved by her confidence that she’s small,— + As what no kindred word will fit + Is uttered best by opposite, + Love in the tongue of hate exprest, + And deepest anguish in a jest,— + Feeling the infinite must be + Best said by triviality, + Speaks, where expression bates its wings, + Just happy, alien, little things; + What of all words is in excess + Implies in a sweet nothingness, + With dailiest babble shows her sense + That full speech were full impotence; + And while she feels the heavens lie bare, + She only talks about her hair. + + + +BEGINNING OF END + + + SHE was aweary of the hovering + Of 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’s _his_ cot), + 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. + + + +PENELOPE + + + LOVE, like a wind, shook wide your blosmy eyes, + You trembled, and your breath came sobbing-wise + For that you loved me. + + You were so kind, so sweet, none could withhold + To adore, but that you were so strange, so cold; + For that you loved me. + + Like to a box of spikenard did you break + Your heart about my feet. What words you spake! + For that you loved me. + + Life fell to dust without me; so you tried + All carefullest ways to drive me from your side, + For that you loved me. + + You gave yourself as children give, that weep + And snatch back, with—‘I meant you not to keep!’ + For that you loved me. + + I am no woman, girl, nor ever knew + That love could teach all ways that hate could do + To her that loved me. + + Have less of love, or less of woman in + Your love, or loss may even from this begin— + That you so love me. + + For, wild Penelope, the web you wove + You 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! + + + +THE END OF IT + + + SHE did not love to love; but hated him + For making her to love, and so her whim + From passion taught misprision to begin; + And all this sin + Was because love to cast out had no skill + Self, which was regent still. + Her own self-will made void her own self’s will + + + +EPILOGUE + + + IF I have studied here in part + A tale as old as maiden’s heart, + ’Tis that I do see herein + Shadow 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 dear + Count for Love’s possession,—ah, + Thy way, misera Anima! + + To give the pledge, and yet be pined + That a pledge should have force to bind, + This, O Soul, too often still + Is 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. + + + + +MISCELLANEOUS ODES + + +ODE TO THE SETTING SUN + + + PRELUDE. + + THE wailful sweetness of the violin + Floats down the hushèd waters of the wind, + The heart-strings of the throbbing harp begin + To long in aching music. Spirit-pined, + + In wafts that poignant sweetness drifts, until + The 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 days + Sinkest 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 harmonies + A 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 head + To thee, whose great command upon my veins + Proves 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 thus + A 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? + Is _this_ thy secret, then? And is it woe? + + Fling from thine ear the burning curls, and hark + A 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: + I _see_ the crimson blaring of thy shawms! + Why do those lucent palms + Strew 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 praise + Will 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 disgrace + The 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’ height + The brawny Titans stood, + And shook the gods’ world ’bout their ears, and how + Enceladus (whom Etna cumbers now) + Shouldered me Pelion with its swinging pines, + The river unrecked, that did its broken flood + Spurt on his back: before the mountainous shock + The rankèd gods dislock, + Scared to their skies; wide o’er rout-trampled night + Flew spurned the pebbled stars: those splendours then + Had tempested on earth, star upon star + Mounded in ruin, if a longer war + Had quaked Olympus and cold-fearing men. + Then did the ample marge + And circuit of thy targe + Sullenly redden all the vaward fight, + Above the blusterous clash + Wheeled thy swung falchion’s flash + And 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-chapleted + Sang each to other, + The vaulted blaze overhead + Of 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 side + Thy young Auroral bride, + And lift her veil of night and mystery; + Tellus with baby hands + Shook 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 set + Upon her brow the day-fall’s carcanet? + Who queened her front with the enrondured moon? + Who dug night’s jewels from their vaulty mine + To dower her, past an eastern wizard’s dreams, + When hovering on him through his haschish-swoon, + All the rained gems of the old Tartarian line + Shiver in lustrous throbbings of tinged flame? + Whereof a moiety in the Paolis’ seams + Statelily builded their Venetian name. + Thou hast enwoofèd her + An empress of the air, + And all her births are propertied by thee: + Her teeming centuries + Drew 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 ranks + Of 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 whirls + Of the tossed scud made hiss thy drenchèd curls? + Thou rear’dst the enormous brood; + Who hast with life imbued + The 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 Titanic + Which rock like a cradle the girth + Of the ether-hung world; + Swart son of the swarthy mine, + When flame on the breath of his nostrils feeds + How is his countenance half-divine, + Like thee in thy sanguine weeds? + Thou gavest him his light, + Though sepultured in night + Beneath the dead bones of a perished world; + Over his prostrate form + Though cold, and heat, and storm, + The mountainous wrack of a creation hurled. + Who made the splendid rose + Saturate with purple glows; + Cupped to the marge with beauty; a perfume-press + Whence the wind vintages + Gushes of warmèd fragrance richer far + Than all the flavorous ooze of Cyprus’ vats? + Lo, in yon gale which waves her green cymar, + With dusky cheeks burnt red + She sways her heavy head, + Drunk with the must of her own odorousness; + While in a moted trouble the vexed gnats + Maze, 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 moon + Ere Autumn’s kiss sultry her cheek with flame? + Thou sway’st thy sceptred beam + O’er all delight and dream, + Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance: + And like a jocund maid + In 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 blown + In smoke and flame about the windy sky, + Where are the wailing voices that should meet + From hill, stream, grove, and all of mortal shape + Who tread thy gifts, in vineyards as stray feet + Pulp the globed weight of juiced Iberia’s grape? + Where is the threne o’ the sea? + And why not dirges thee + The wind, that sings to himself as he makes stride + Lonely 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 light + On 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 made + The earth a living and a radiant thing— + And leave her corpse in our strained, cheated arms? + Lo ever thus, when Song with chorded charms + Draws 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 kiss + Of reincarnate Beauty, his control + Clasps the cold body, and foregoes the soul! + Whatso looks lovelily + Is 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 through + The scorching dazzle of Heaven; ’gainst which the hill, + Out-flattened sombrely, + Stands black as life against eternity. + Against eternity? + A rifting light in me + Burns through the leaden broodings of the mind: + O blessèd Sun, thy state + Uprisen or derogate + Dafts me no more with doubt; I seek and find. + + If with exultant tread + Thou foot the Eastern sea, + Or like a golden bee + Sting the West to angry red, + Thou dost image, thou dost follow + That 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 blood + Upon 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 inheriteth + The 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 Song + Sets 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 sheaf + Which 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 Antipodes + Our 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 drape + The 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 feather + Prove them the brood of immortality. + + My soul is quitted of death-neighbouring swoon, + Who shall not slake her immitigable scars + Until she hear ‘My sister!’ from the moon, + And take the kindred kisses of the stars. + + + +A CAPTAIN OF SONG + + + (ON A PORTRAIT OF COVENTRY PATMORE + BY J. S. SARGENT, R.A.) + + LOOK on him. This is he whose works ye know; + Ye have adored, thanked, loved him,—no, not him! + But that of him which proud portentous woe + To its own grim + Presentment 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 round + The abhorrèd words resound, + The words accursed of comfortable men,— + ‘For ever’; and infinite glooms intolerable + With spacious replication give again, + And hollow jar, + The words abhorred of comfortable men. + You the stern pities of the gods debar + To drink where he has drunk + The 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 are + He knows the perilous rout + That all those ways about + Sink into doom, and sinking, still are sunk. + And if his sole and solemn term thereout + He has attained, to love ye shall not dare + One who has journeyed there; + Ye shall mark well + The mighty cruelties which arm and mar + That countenance of control, + With minatory warnings of a soul + That hath to its own selfhood been most fell, + And is not weak to spare: + And lo, that hair + Is blanchèd with the travel-heats of hell. + + If any be + That shall with rites of reverent piety + Approach this strong + Sad soul of sovereign Song, + Nor fail and falter with the intimidate throng; + If such there be, + These, these are only they + Have trod the self-same way; + The never-twice-revolving portals heard + Behind them clang infernal, and that word + Abhorrèd sighed of kind mortality, + As he— + Ah, even as he! + + + +AGAINST URANIA + + + LO I, Song’s most true lover, plain me sore + That worse than other women she can deceive, + For she being goddess, I have given her more + Than mortal ladies from their loves receive; + And first of her embrace + She was not coy, and gracious were her ways, + That I forgot all virgins to adore; + Nor did I greatly grieve + To bear through arid days + The pretty foil of her divine delays; + And one by one to cast + Life, love, and health, + Content, and wealth, + Before her, thinking ever on her praise, + Until at last + Nought 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 implore + Remembered boon in bitterness of blood. + + From mortal woman thou may’st know full well, + O poet, that dost deem the fair and tall + Urania of her ways not mutable, + When things shall thee befall + What thou art toilèd in her sweet, wild spell. + Do they strow for thy feet + A little tender favour and deceit + Over the sudden mouth of hidden hell?— + As more intolerable + Her 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 learn + How harder than the heart of woman is + The immortal cruelty + Of 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. + + + +AN ANTHEM OF EARTH + + + PRŒMION + + IMMEASURABLE Earth! + Through the loud vast and populacy of Heaven, + Tempested with gold schools of ponderous orbs, + That cleav’st with deep-revolting harmonies + Passage perpetual, and behind thee draw’st + A furrow sweet, a cometary wake + Of trailing music! What large effluence, + Not sole the cloudy sighing of thy seas, + Nor thy blue-coifing air, encases thee + From prying of the stars, and the broad shafts + Of thrusting sunlight tempers? For, dropped near + From my removèd tour in the serene + Of 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 close + The 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 take + The 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 demesne + And sphery pleasances,— + Amazing the unstalèd eyes of Heaven, + And us that still a precious seeing have + Behind this dim and mortal jelly. + Ah! + If not in all too late and frozen a day + I come in rearward of the throats of song, + Unto the deaf sense of the agèd year + Singing with doom upon me; yet give heed! + One poet with sick pinion, that still feels + Breath through the Orient gateways closing fast, + Fast closing t’ward the undelighted night! + + ANTHEM + + In nescientness, in nescientness, + Mother, we put these fleshly lendings on + Thou yield’st to thy poor children; took thy gift + Of 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 call + The 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 thee + Leave thy great husbandries, thy grave designs, + Thy tedious state which irked my ignorant years, + Thy winter-watches, suckling of the grain, + Severe premeditation taciturn + Upon the brooded Summer, thy chill cares, + And all thy ministries majestical, + To sport with me, thy darling. Thought I not + Thou set’st thy seasons forth processional + To pamper me with pageant,—thou thyself + My 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 shifted + Poise and footing of my thought! + I brake through thy doors of sunset, + Ran before the hooves of sunrise, + Shook thy matron tresses down in fancies + Wild and wilful + As a poet’s hand could twine them; + Caught in my fantasy’s crystal chalice + The Bow, as its cataract of colours + Plashed to thee downward; + Then when thy circuit swung to nightward, + Night the abhorrèd, night was a new dawning, + Celestial dawning + Over 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 waken + To a revel, an inexhaustible + Wassail of orgiac imageries; + Then while I wore thy sore insignia + In 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 breathe + New from their mother’s morning bosom. So I, + Risen from thee, restless winnower of the heaven, + Most Hermes-like, did keep + My vital and resilient path, and felt + The play of wings about my fledgèd heel— + Sure on the verges of precipitous dream, + Swift in its springing + From 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 first + Thou speak’st to us as men: like sons who hear + Newly their mother’s history, unthought + Before, and say—‘She is not as we dreamed: + Ah me! we are beguiled!’ What art thou, then, + That art not our conceiving? Art thou not + Too old for thy young children? Or perchance, + Keep’st thou a youth perpetual-burnishable + Beyond thy sons decrepit? It is long + Since Time was first a fledgling; + Yet thou may’st be but as a pendant bulla + Against his stripling bosom swung. Alack! + For that we seem indeed + To have slipped the world’s great leaping-time, and come + Upon 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 off + With hasty tarnished piecings negligent, + Snippets and waste + From old ancestral wearings, + That have seen sorrier usage; remainder-flesh + After our father’s surfeits; nay with chinks, + Some of us, that if speech may have free leave + Our souls go out at elbows. We are sad + With more than our sires’ heaviness, and with + More than their weakness weak; we shall not be + Mighty with all their mightiness, nor shall not + Rejoice 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 towers + He dogs the secret footsteps of the heavens, + Sifts in his hands the stars, weighs them as gold-dust, + And yet is he successive unto nothing + But patrimony of a little mould, + And entail of four planks. Thou hast made his mouth + Avid 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 empty + What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded + For 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-worm + Statelily lodge. Mother of mysteries! + Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues, + Who bringest forth no saying yet so dark + As 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 one + On a mount standing, and against him stands, + On the mount adverse, crowned with westering rays, + The golden sun, and they two brotherly + Gaze each on each; + He faring down + To the dull vale, his Godhead peels from him + Till 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 feel + Break like a clash of cymbals, and my heart + Clang through my shaken body like a gong; + Nor ever more with spurted feet shall tread + I’ the winepresses of song; nought’s truly lost + That moulds to sprout forth gain: now I have on me + The high Phœbean priesthood, and that craves + An unrash utterance; not with flaunted hem + May the Muse enter in behind the veil, + Nor, though we hold the sacred dances good, + Shall the holy Virgins mænadize: ruled lips + Befit a votaress Muse. + Thence with no mutable, nor no gelid love, + I keep, O Earth, thy worship, + Though life slow, and the sobering Genius change + To a lamp his gusty torch. What though no more + Athwart its roseal glow + Thy face look forth triumphal? Thou put’st on + Strange sanctities of pathos; like this knoll + Made derelict of day, + Couchant and shadowèd + Under dim Vesper’s overloosened hair: + This, where embossèd with the half-blown seed + The solemn purple thistle stands in grass + Grey as an exhalation, when the bank + Holds mist for water in the nights of Fall. + Not to the boy, although his eyes be pure + As the prime snowdrop is, + Ere the rash Phœbus break her cloister + Of sanctimonious snow; + Or Winter fasting sole on Himalay + Since those dove-nuncioed days + When Asia rose from bathing; + Not to such eyes, + Uneuphrasied with tears, the hierarchical + Vision lies unoccult, rank under rank + Through all create down-wheeling, from the Throne + Even to the bases of the pregnant ooze. + This is the enchantment, this the exaltation, + The all-compensating wonder, + Giving to common things wild kindred + With the gold-tesserate floors of Jove; + Linking such heights and such humilities + Hand 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 world + Nerves 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 credible + The incredible, with bloody clutch and feet + Clinging the painful juts of jaggèd faith. + Science, old noser in its prideful straw, + That with anatomising scalpel tents + Its 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 will + Ministers poppies to our troublous thought, + A Balaam come to prophecy,—parables, + Nor of its parable itself is ware, + Grossly unwotting; all things has expounded + Reflux and influx, counts the sepulchre + The seminary of being, and extinction + The Ceres of existence: it discovers + Life 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 corruption + As of our health. It grafts upon the cypress + The tree of Life—Death dies on his own dart + Promising to our ashes perpetuity, + And to our perishable elements + Their proper imperishability; extracting + Medicaments from out mortality + Against too mortal cogitation; till + Even of the caput mortuum we do thus + Make a memento vivere. To such uses + I 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 engirdle + All which I am; that am a foreigner + In mine own region? Who the chart shall draw + Of 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 explore + The long arcane of those dim catacombs, + Where the rat memory does its burrows make, + Close-seal them as I may, and my stolen tread + Starts populace, a _gens lucifuga_; + That too strait seems my mind my mind to hold, + And I myself incontinent of me. + Then go I, my foul-venting ignorance + With 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 divine + Which 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 beside + This slow perpetual Time stand patiently, + In a little sight. + + In a little dust, in a little dust, + Earth, thou reclaim’st us, who do all our lives + Find of thee but Egyptian villeinage. + Thou dost this body, this enhavocked realm, + Subject to ancient and ancestral shadows; + Descended passions sway it; it is distraught + With ghostly usurpation, dinned and fretted + With the still-tyrannous dead; a haunted tenement, + Peopled from barrows and outworn ossuaries. + Thou giv’st us life not half so willingly + As thou undost thy giving; thou that teem’st + The stealthy terror of the sinuous pard, + The lion maned with curlèd puissance, + The serpent, and all fair strong beasts of ravin, + Thyself most fair and potent beast of ravin; + And thy great eaters thou, the greatest, eat’st. + Thou hast devoured mammoth and mastodon, + And many a floating bank of fangs, + The scaly scourges of thy primal brine, + And the tower-crested plesiosaure. + Thou fill’st thy mouth with nations, gorgest slow + On purple æons of kings; man’s hulking towers + Are carcase for thee, and to modern sun + Disglutt’st their splintered bones. + Rabble of Pharaohs and Arsacidæ + Keep their cold house within thee; thou hast sucked down + How many Ninevehs and Hecatompyloi, + And perished cities whose great phantasmata + O’erbrow the silent citizens of Dis:— + Hast not thy fill? + Tarry awhile, lean Earth, for thou shalt drink, + Even till thy dull throat sicken, + The draught thou grow’st most fat on; hear’st thou not + The world’s knives bickering in their sheaths? O patience! + Much offal of a foul world comes thy way, + And man’s superfluous cloud shall soon be laid + In a little blood. + + In a little peace, in a little peace, + Thou dost rebate thy rigid purposes + Of imposed being, and relenting, mend’st + Too much, with nought. The westering Phoebus’ horse + Paws i’ the lucent dust as when he shocked + The East with rising; O how may I trace + In this decline that morning when we did + Sport ’twixt the claws of newly-whelped existence, + Which had not yet learned rending? we did then + Divinely stand, not knowing yet against us + Sentence had passed of life, nor commutation + Petitioning into death. What’s he that of + The Free State argues? Tellus! bid him stoop, + Even where the low _hic jacet_ answers him; + Thus low, O Man! there’s freedom’s seignory, + Tellus’ most reverend sole free commonweal, + And model deeply-policied: there none + Stands on precedence, nor ambitiously + Woos the impartial worm, whose favours kiss + With liberal largesse all; there each is free + To be e’en what he must, which here did strive + So much to be he could not; there all do + Their uses just, with no flown questioning. + To be took by the hand of equal earth + They doff her livery, slip to the worm, + Which lacqueys them, their suits of maintenance, + And that soiled workaday apparel cast, + Put on condition: Death’s ungentle buffet + Alone makes ceremonial manumission; + So are the heavenly statutes set, and those + Uranian tables of the primal Law. + In a little peace, in a little peace, + Like fierce beasts that a common thirst makes brothers, + We draw together to one hid dark lake; + In a little peace, in a little peace, + We drain with all our burthens of dishonour + Into the cleansing sands o’ the thirsty grave. + The fiery pomps, brave exhalations, + And all the glistering shows o’ the seeming world, + Which the sight aches at, we unwinking see + Through the smoked glass of Death; Death, wherewith’s fined + The muddy wine of life; that earth doth purge + Of her plethora of man; Death, that doth flush + The cumbered gutters of humanity; + Nothing, of nothing king, with front uncrowned, + Whose hand holds crownets; playmate swart o’ the strong; + Tenebrous moon that flux and refluence draws + Of the high-tided man; skull-housèd asp + That stings the heel of kings; true Fount of Youth, + Where he that dips is deathless; being’s drone-pipe; + Whose nostril turns to blight the shrivelled stars, + And thicks the lusty breathing of the sun; + Pontifical Death, that doth the crevasse bridge + To the steep and trifid God; one mortal birth + That broker is of immortality. + Under this dreadful brother uterine, + This kinsman feared, Tellus, behold me come, + Thy son stern-nursed; who mortal-motherlike, + To turn thy weanlings’ mouth averse, embitter’st + Thine over-childed breast. Now, mortal-sonlike, + I thou hast suckled, Mother, I at last + Shall sustenant be to thee. Here I untrammel, + Here I pluck loose the body’s cerementing, + And break the tomb of life; here I shake off + The bur o’ the world, man’s congregation shun, + And to the antique order of the dead + I take the tongueless vows: my cell is set + Here in thy bosom; my little trouble is ended + In a little peace. + + + + +MISCELLANEOUS POEMS + + +‘EX ORE INFANTIUM’ + + + LITTLE Jesus, wast Thou shy + Once, and just so small as I? + And what did it feel like to be + Out of Heaven, and just like me? + Didst Thou sometimes think of _there_, + And ask where all the angels were? + I should think that I would cry + For my house all made of sky; + I would look about the air, + And wonder where my angels were; + And at waking ’twould distress me— + Not an angel there to dress me! + Hadst Thou ever any toys, + Like us little girls and boys? + And didst Thou play in Heaven with all + The angels that were not too tall, + With stars for marbles? Did the things + Play _Can you see me_? through their wings? + And did Thy Mother let Thee spoil + Thy robes, with playing on _our_ soil? + How nice to have them always new + In Heaven, because ’twas quite clean blue! + + Didst Thou kneel at night to pray, + And didst Thou join Thy hands, this way? + And did they tire sometimes, being young, + And make the prayer seem very long? + And dost Thou like it best, that we + Should join our hands to pray to Thee? + I used to think, before I knew, + The prayer not said unless we do. + And did Thy Mother at the night + Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right? + And didst Thou feel quite good in bed, + Kissed, and sweet, and thy prayers said? + + Thou canst not have forgotten all + That it feels like to be small: + And Thou know’st I cannot pray + To Thee in my father’s way— + When Thou wast so little, say, + Couldst Thou talk Thy Father’s way?— + So, a little Child, come down + And hear a child’s tongue like Thy own; + Take me by the hand and walk, + And listen to my baby-talk. + To Thy Father show my prayer + (He will look, Thou art so fair), + And say: ‘O Father, I, Thy Son, + Bring the prayer of a little one.’ + + And He will smile, that children’s tongue + Has not changed since Thou wast young! + + + +A QUESTION + + + O BIRD with heart of wassail, + That toss the Bacchic branch, + And slip your shaken music, + An elfin avalanche; + + Come tell me, O tell me, + My poet of the blue! + What’s _your_ thought of me, Sweet?— + Here’s _my_ thought of you. + + A small thing, a wee thing, + A brown fleck of nought; + With winging and singing + That who could have thought? + + A small thing, a wee thing, + A brown amaze withal, + That fly a pitch more azure + Because you’re so small. + + Bird, I’m a small thing— + My angel descries; + With winging and singing + That who could surmise? + + Ah, small things, ah, wee things, + Are the poets all, + Whose tour’s the more azure + Because they’re so small. + + The angels hang watching + The tiny men-things:— + ‘The dear speck of flesh, see, + With such daring wings! + + ‘Come, tell us, O tell us, + Thou strange mortality! + What’s _thy_ thought of us, Dear?— + Here’s _our_ thought of thee.’ + + ‘Alack! you tall angels, + I can’t think so high! + I can’t think what it feels like + Not to be I.’ + + Come tell me, O tell me, + My poet of the blue! + What’s _your_ thought of me, Sweet?— + Here’s _my_ thought of you. + + + +FIELD-FLOWER + + + A PHANTASY + + GOD took a fit of Paradise-wind, + A slip of coerule weather, + A thought as simple as Himself, + And ravelled them together. + Unto His eyes He held it there, + To teach it gazing debonair + With memory of what, perdie, + A God’s young innocences were. + His fingers pushed it through the sod— + It came up redolent of God, + Garrulous of the eyes of God + To all the breezes near it; + Musical of the mouth of God + To all had eyes to hear it; + Mystical with the mirth of God, + That glow-like did ensphere it. + _And_—‘_Babble_! _babble_! _babble_!’ _said_; + ‘_I’ll tell the whole world one day_!’ + _There was no blossom half so glad_, + _Since sun of Christ’s first Sunday_. + + A poet took a flaw of pain, + A hap of skiey pleasure, + A thought had in his cradle lain, + And mingled them in measure. + That chrism he laid upon his eyes, + And lips, and heart, for euphrasies, + That he might see, feel, sing, perdie, + The simple things that are the wise. + Beside the flower he held his ways, + And leaned him to it gaze for gaze— + He took its meaning, gaze for gaze, + As baby looks on baby; + Its meaning passed into his gaze, + Native as meaning may be; + He rose with all his shining gaze + As children’s eyes at play be. + _And_—‘_Babble_! _babble_! _babble_!’ _said_; + ‘_I’ll tell the whole world one day_!’ + _There was no poet half so glad_, + _Since man grew God that Sunday_. + + + +THE CLOUD’S SWAN-SONG + + + THERE is a parable in the pathless cloud, + There’s prophecy in heaven,—they did not lie, + The Chaldee shepherds; sealèd from the proud, + To cheer the weighted heart that mates the seeing eye. + + A lonely man, oppressed with lonely ills, + And all the glory fallen from my song, + Here do I walk among the windy hills, + The wind and I keep both one monotoning tongue. + + Like grey clouds one by one my songs upsoar + Over my soul’s cold peaks; and one by one + They loose their little rain, and are no more; + And whether well or ill, to tell me there is none. + + For ’tis an alien tongue, of alien things, + From all men’s care, how miserably apart! + Even my friends say: ‘Of what is this he sings?’ + And barren is my song, and barren is my heart. + + For who can work, unwitting his work’s worth? + Better, meseems, to know the work for naught, + Turn my sick course back to the kindly earth, + And leave to ampler plumes the jetting tops of thought. + + And visitations, that do often use, + Remote, unhappy, inauspicious sense + Of doom, and poets widowed of their muse, + And what dark ’gan, dark ended, in me did commence. + + I thought of spirit wronged by mortal ills, + And my flesh rotting on my fate’s dull stake; + And how self-scornèd they the bounty fills + Of others, and the bread, even of their dearest, take. + + I thought of Keats, that died in perfect time, + In predecease of his just-sickening song; + Of him that set, wrapt in his radiant rhyme, + Sunlike in sea. Life longer had been life too long. + + But I, exanimate of quick Poesy,— + O then, no more but even a soulless corse! + Nay, my Delight dies not; ’tis I should be + Her dead, a stringless harp on which she had no force. + + Of my wild lot I thought; from place to place, + Apollo’s song-bowed Scythian, I go on; + Making in all my home, with pliant ways, + But, provident of change, putting forth root in none. + + Now, with starved brain, sick body, patience galled + With fardels even to wincing; from fair sky + Fell sudden little rain, scarce to be called + A shower, which of the instant was gone wholly by. + + What cloud thus died I saw not; heaven was fair. + Methinks my angel plucked my locks: I bowed + My spirit, shamed; and looking in the air:— + ‘Even so,’ I said, ‘even so, my brother the good Cloud?’ + + It was a pilgrim of the fields of air, + Its home was allwheres the wind left it rest, + And in a little forth again did fare, + And in all places was a stranger and a guest. + + It harked all breaths of heaven, and did obey + With sweet peace their uncomprehended wills; + It knew the eyes of stars which made no stay, + And with the thunder walked upon the lonely hills. + + And from the subject earth it seemed to scorn, + It drew the sustenance whereby it grew + Perfect in bosom for the married Morn, + And of his life and light full as a maid kissed new. + + Its also darkness of the face withdrawn, + And the long waiting for the little light, + So long in life so little. Like a fawn + It fled with tempest breathing hard at heel of flight; + + And having known full East, did not disdain + To sit in shadow and oblivious cold, + Save what all loss doth of its loss retain, + And who hath held hath somewhat that he still must hold. + + Right poet! who thy rightness to approve, + Having all liberty, didst keep all measure, + And with a firmament for ranging, move + But at the heavens’ uncomprehended pleasure. + + With amplitude unchecked, how sweetly thou + Didst wear the ancient custom of the skies, + And yoke of used prescription; and thence how + Find gay variety no license could devise! + + As we the quested beauties better wit + Of the one grove our own than forests great, + Restraint, by the delighted search of it, + Turns to right scope. For lovely moving intricate + + Is put to fair devising in the curb + Of ordered limit; and all-changeful Hermes + Is Terminus as well. Yet we perturb + Our souls for latitude, whose strength in bound and term is. + + How far am I from heavenly liberty, + That play at policy with change and fate, + Who should my soul from foreign broils keep free, + In the fast-guarded frontiers of its single state! + + Could I face firm the Is, and with To-be + Trust Heaven; to Heaven commit the deed, and do; + In power contained, calm in infirmity, + And fit myself to change with virtue ever new; + + Thou hadst not shamed me, cousin of the sky, + Thou wandering kinsman, that didst sweetly live + Unnoted, and unnoted sweetly die, + Weeping more gracious song than any I can weave; + + Which these gross-tissued words do sorely wrong. + Thou hast taught me on powerlessness a power; + To make song wait on life, not life on song; + To hold sweet not too sweet, and bread for bread though sour; + + By law to wander, to be strictly free. + With tears ascended from the heart’s sad sea, + Ah, such a silver song to Death could I + Sing, Pain would list, forgetting Pain to be, + And Death would tarry marvelling, and forget to die! + + + +TO THE SINKING SUN + + + HOW graciously thou wear’st the yoke + Of use that does not fail! + The grasses, like an anchored smoke, + Ride in the bending gale; + This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna, + And fire-dropt as a seraph’s mail. + + Here every eve thou stretchest out + Untarnishable wing, + And marvellously bring’st about + Newly an olden thing; + Nor ever through like-ordered heaven + Moves largely thy grave progressing. + + Here every eve thou goest down + Behind the self-same hill, + Nor ever twice alike go’st down + Behind the self-same hill; + Nor like-ways is one flame-sopped flower + Possessed with glory past its will. + + Not twice alike! I am not blind, + My sight is live to see; + And yet I do complain of thy + Weary variety. + O Sun! I ask thee less or more, + Change not at all, or utterly! + + O give me unprevisioned new, + Or give to change reprieve! + For new in me is olden too, + That I for sameness grieve. + O flowers! O grasses! be but once + The grass and flower of yester-eve! + + Wonder and sadness are the lot + Of change: thou yield’st mine eyes + Grief of vicissitude, but not + Its penetrant surprise. + Immutability mutable + Burthens my spirit and the skies. + + O altered joy, all joyed of yore, + Plodding in unconned ways! + O grief grieved out, and yet once more + A dull, new, staled amaze! + I dream, and all was dreamed before, + Or dream I so? the dreamer says. + + + +GRIEF’S HARMONICS + + + AT evening, when the lank and rigid trees, + To the mere forms of their sweet day-selves drying, + On heaven’s blank leaf seem pressed and flattenèd; + Or rather, to my sombre thoughts replying, + Of plumes funereal the thin effigies; + That hour when all old dead things seem most dead, + And their death instant most and most undying, + That the flesh aches at them; there stirred in me + The babe of an unborn calamity, + Ere its due time to be deliverèd. + Dead sorrow and sorrow unborn so blent their pain, + That which more present was were hardly said, + But both more _now_ than any Now can be. + My soul like sackcloth did her body rend, + And thus with Heaven contend:— + ‘Let pass the chalice of this coming dread, + Or that fore-drained O bid me not re-drain!’ + So have I asked, who know my asking vain, + Woe against woe in antiphon set over, + That grief’s soul transmigrates, and lives again, + And in new pang old pang’s incarnated. + + + +MEMORAT MEMORIA + + + COME you living or dead to me, out of the silt of the Past, + With the sweet of the piteous first, and the shame of the shameful + last? + Come with your dear and dreadful face through the passes of Sleep, + The terrible mask, and the face it masked—the face you did not keep? + You are neither two nor one—I would you were one or two, + For your awful self is embalmed in the fragrant self I knew: + And Above may ken, and Beneath may ken, what I mean by these words of + whirl, + But by my sleep that sleepeth not,—O Shadow of a Girl!— + Nought here but I and my dreams shall know the secret of this thing:— + For ever the songs I sing are sad with the songs I never sing, + Sad are sung songs, but how more sad the songs we dare not sing! + + Ah, the ill that we do in tenderness, and the hateful horror of love! + It has sent more souls to the unslaked Pit than it ever will draw + above. + I damned you, girl, with my pity, who had better by far been thwart, + And drave you hard on the track to hell, because I was gentle of + heart. + I shall have no comfort now in scent, no ease in dew, for this; + I shall be afraid of daffodils, and rose-buds are amiss; + You have made a thing of innocence as shameful as a sin, + I shall never feel a girl’s soft arms without horror of the skin. + My child! what was it that I sowed, that I so ill should reap? + You have done this to me. And I, what I to you?—It lies with Sleep. + + + +JULY FUGITIVE + + + CAN you tell me where has hid her + Pretty Maid July? + I would swear one day ago + She passed by, + I would swear that I do know + The blue bliss of her eye: + ‘Tarry, maid, maid,’ I bid her; + But she hastened by. + Do you know where she has hid her, + Maid July? + + Yet in truth it needs must be + The flight of her is old; + Yet in truth it needs must be, + For her nest, the earth, is cold. + No more in the poolèd Even + Wade her rosy feet, + Dawn-flakes no more plash from them + To poppies ’mid the wheat. + She has muddied the day’s oozes + With her petulant feet; + Scared the clouds that floated, + As sea-birds they were, + Slow on the coerule + Lulls of the air, + Lulled on the luminous + Levels of air: + She has chidden in a pet + All her stars from her; + Now they wander loose and sigh + Through the turbid blue, + Now they wander, weep, and cry— + Yea, and I too— + ‘Where are you, sweet July, + Where are you?’ + + Who hath beheld her footprints, + Or the pathway she goes? + Tell me, wind, tell me, wheat, + Which of you knows? + Sleeps she swathed in the flushed Arctic + Night of the rose? + Or lie her limbs like Alp-glow + On the lily’s snows? + Gales, that are all-visitant, + Find the runaway; + And for him who findeth her + (I do charge you say) + I will throw largesse of broom + Of this summer’s mintage, + I will broach a honey-bag + Of the bee’s best vintage. + Breezes, wheat, flowers sweet, + None of them knows! + How then shall we lure her back + From the way she goes? + For it were a shameful thing, + Saw we not this comer + Ere Autumn camp upon the fields + Red with rout of Summer. + + When the bird quits the cage, + We set the cage outside, + With seed and with water, + And the door wide, + Haply we may win it so + Back to abide. + Hang her cage of earth out + O’er Heaven’s sunward wall, + Its four gates open, winds in watch + By reinèd cars at all; + Relume in hanging hedgerows + The rain-quenched blossom, + And roses sob their tears out + On the gale’s warm heaving bosom; + Shake the lilies till their scent + Over-drip their rims; + That our runaway may see + We do know her whims: + Sleek the tumbled waters out + For her travelled limbs; + Strew and smoothe blue night thereon, + There will—O not doubt her!— + The lovely sleepy lady lie, + With all her stars about her! + + + +TO A SNOW-FLAKE + + + WHAT heart could have thought you?— + Past our devisal + (O filigree petal!) + Fashioned so purely, + Fragilely, surely, + From what Paradisal + Imagineless metal, + Too costly for cost? + Who hammered you, wrought you, + From argentine vapour?— + ‘God was my shaper. + Passing surmisal, + He hammered, He wrought me, + From curled silver vapour, + To lust of His mind:— + Thou could’st not have thought me! + So purely, so palely, + Tinily, surely, + Mightily, frailly, + Insculped and embossed, + With His hammer of wind, + And His graver of frost.’ + + + +NOCTURN + + + I walk, I only, + Not I only wake; + Nothing is, this sweet night, + But doth couch and wake + For its love’s sake; + Everything, this sweet night, + Couches with its mate. + For whom but for the stealthy-visitant sun + Is the naked moon + Tremulous and elate? + The heaven hath the earth + Its own and all apart; + The hushèd pool holdeth + A star to its heart. + You may think the rose sleepeth, + But though she folded is, + The wind doubts her sleeping; + Not all the rose sleeps, + But smiles in her sweet heart + For crafty bliss. + The wind lieth with the rose, + And when he stirs, she stirs in her repose: + The wind hath the rose, + And the rose her kiss. + Ah, mouth of me! + Is it then that this + Seemeth much to thee?— + I wander only. + The rose hath her kiss. + + + +A MAY BURDEN + + + THROUGH meadow-ways as I did tread, + The corn grew in great lustihead, + And hey! the beeches burgeonèd. + By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! + It is the month, the jolly month, + It is the jolly month of May. + + God ripe the wines and corn, I say + And wenches for the marriage-day, + And boys to teach love’s comely play. + By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! + It is the month, the jolly month, + It is the jolly month of May. + + As I went down by lane and lea, + The daisies reddened so, pardie! + ‘Blushets!’ I said, ‘I well do see, + By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! + The thing ye think of in this month, + Heigho! this jolly month of May.’ + + As down I went by rye and oats, + The blossoms smelt of kisses; throats + Of birds turned kisses into notes; + By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! + The kiss it is a growing flower, + I trow, this jolly month of May! + + God send a mouth to every kiss, + Seeing the blossom of this bliss + By gathering doth grow, certes! + By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! + Thy brow-garland pushed all aslant + Tells—but I tell not, wanton May! + +NOTE. The first two stanzas are from a French original—I have forgotten +what. + + + +A DEAD ASTRONOMER + + + (FATHER PERRY, S.J.) + + STARRY amorist, starward gone, + Thou art—what thou didst gaze upon! + Passed through thy golden garden’s bars, + Thou seest the Gardener of the Stars. + + She, about whose moonèd brows + Seven stars make seven glows, + Seven lights for seven woes; + She, like thine own Galaxy, + All lustres in one purity:— + What said’st thou, Astronomer, + When thou did’st discover _her_? + When thy hand its tube let fall, + Thou found’st the fairest Star of all! + + + +‘CHOSE VUE’ + + + A METRICAL CAPRICE + + UP she rose, fair daughter—well she was graced + As a cloud her going, stept from her chair, + As a summer-soft cloud, in her going paced, + Down dropped her riband-band, and all her waving hair + Shook like loosened music cadent to her waist;— + Lapsing like music, wavery as water, + Slid to her waist. + + + +‘WHERETO ART THOU COME?’ + + + ‘FRIEND, whereto art thou come?’ Thus Verity; + Of each that to the world’s sad Olivet + Comes with no multitude, but alone by night, + Lit with the one torch of his lifted soul, + Seeking her that he may lay hands on her; + Thus: and waits answer from the mouth of deed. + Truth is a maid, whom men woo diversely; + This, as a spouse; that, as a light-o’-love, + To know, and having known, to make his brag. + But woe to him that takes the immortal kiss, + And not estates her in his housing life, + Mother of all his seed! So he betrays, + Not Truth, the unbetrayable, but himself: + And with his kiss’s rated traitor-craft, + The Haceldama of a plot of days + He buys, to consummate his Judasry + Therein with Judas’ guerdon of despair. + + + +HEAVEN AND HELL + + + ’TIS said there were no thought of hell, + Save hell were taught; that there should be + A Heaven for all’s self-credible. + Not so the thing appears to me. + ’Tis Heaven that lies beyond our sights, + And hell too possible that proves; + For all can feel the God that smites, + But ah, how few the God that loves! + + + +TO A CHILD + + + WHENAS my life shall time with funeral tread + The heavy death-drum of the beaten hours, + Following, sole mourner, mine own manhood dead, + Poor forgot corse, where not a maid strows flowers; + When I you love am no more I you love, + But go with unsubservient feet, behold + Your dear face through changed eyes, all grim change prove;— + A new man, mockèd with misname of old; + When shamed Love keep his ruined lodging, elf! + When, ceremented in mouldering memory, + Myself is hearsèd underneath myself, + And I am but the monument of me:— + O to that tomb be tender then, which bears + Only the name of him it sepulchres! + + + +HERMES + + + SOOTHSAY. Behold, with rod twy-serpented, + Hermes the prophet, twining in one power + The woman with the man. Upon his head + The cloudy cap, wherewith he hath in dower + The cloud’s own virtue—change and counterchange, + To show in light, and to withdraw in pall, + As mortal eyes best bear. His lineage strange + From Zeus, Truth’s sire, and maiden May—the all- + Illusive Nature. His fledged feet declare + That ’tis the nether self transdeified, + And the thrice-furnaced passions, which do bear + The poet Olympusward. In him allied + Both parents clasp; and from the womb of Nature + Stern Truth takes flesh in shows of lovely feature. + + + +HOUSE OF BONDAGE + + + I + + WHEN I perceive Love’s heavenly reaping still + Regard perforce the clouds’ vicissitude, + That the fixed spirit loves not when it will, + But craves its seasons of the flawful blood; + When I perceive that the high poet doth + Oft voiceless stray beneath the uninfluent stars, + That even Urania of her kiss is loath, + And Song’s brave wings fret on their sensual bars; + When I perceived the fullest-sailèd sprite + Lag at most need upon the lethèd seas, + The provident captainship oft voided quite, + And lamèd lie deep-draughted argosies; + I scorn myself, that put for such strange toys + The wit of man to purposes of boys. + + II + + The spirit’s ark sealed with a little clay, + Was old ere Memphis grew a memory; {190} + The hand pontifical to break away + That seal what shall surrender? Not the sea + Which did englut great Egypt and his war, + Nor all the desert-drownèd sepulchres. + Love’s feet are stained with clay and travel-sore, + And dusty are Song’s lucent wing and hairs. + O Love, that must do courtesy to decay, + Eat hasty bread standing with loins up-girt, + How shall this stead thy feet for their sore way? + Ah, Song, what brief embraces balm thy hurt! + Had Jacob’s toil full guerdon, casting his + Twice-seven heaped years to burn in Rachel’s kiss? + + + +THE HEART + + + TWO SONNETS + + (To my Critic, who had objected to the phrase—‘The heart’s burning + floors.’) + + I + + THE heart you hold too small and local thing, + Such spacious terms of edifice to bear. + And yet, since Poesy first shook out her wing, + The mighty Love has been impalaced there; + That has she given him as his wide demesne, + And for his sceptre ample empery; + Against its door to knock has Beauty been + Content; it has its purple canopy + A dais for the sovereign lady spread + Of many a lover, who the heaven would think + Too low an awning for her sacred head. + The world, from star to sea, cast down its brink— + Yet shall that chasm, till He Who these did build + An awful Curtius make Him, yawn unfilled. + + II + + O nothing, in this corporal earth of man, + That to the imminent heaven of his high soul + Responds with colour and with shadow, can + Lack correlated greatness. If the scroll + Where thoughts lie fast in spell of hieroglyph + Be mighty through its mighty habitants; + If God be in His Name; grave potence if + The sounds unbind of hieratic chants; + All’s vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirm + Nature is whole in her least things exprest, + Nor know we with what scope God builds the worm. + Our towns are copied fragments from our breast; + And all man’s Babylons strive but to impart + The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart. + + + +A SUNSET + + + FROM HUGO’S ‘FEUILLES D’AUTOMNE’ + + I LOVE the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens, + Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens, + In numerous leafage bosomed close; + Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, + Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere + On cloudy archipelagos. + + Oh gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion, + Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds’ commotion, + Their unimagined shapes accord: + Under their waves at intervals flames a pale levin through, + As if some giant of the air amid the vapours drew + A sudden elemental sword. + + The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold; + And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold, + The thatched roof of a cot a-glance; + Or on the blurred horizons joins his battle with the haze; + Or pools the glooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze + Great moveless meres of radiance. + + Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament’s swept track + Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back, + A triple row of pointed teeth? + Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide, + The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds its tenebrous side + With scales of golden mail ensheathe. + + Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates—the vision flees. + Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice + Ruins immense in mounded wrack: + Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone + Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown + When the earthquake heaves its hugy back. + + These vapours with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzèd glows, + Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose, + Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms, + ’Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep, + As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep + His dreadful and resounding arms! + + All vanishes! The sun, from topmost heaven precipitated, + Like to a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red + Into the furnace stirred to fume, + Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire, + Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire + The vaporous and inflamèd spume. + + O contemplate the heavens! whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale, + In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil, + With love that has not speech for need; + Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite: + If winter hue them like a pall; or if the summer night + Fantasy them with starry brede. + + + +HEARD ON THE MOUNTAIN + + + FROM HUGO’S ‘FEUILLES D’AUTOMNE’ + + HAVE you sometimes, calm, silent, let your tread aspirant rise + Up to the mountain’s summit, in the presence of the skies? + Was’t on the borders of the South? or on the Bretagne coast? + And at the basis of the mount had you the Ocean tossed? + And there, leaned o’er the wave and o’er the immeasurableness, + Calm, silent, have you harkened what it says? Lo, what it says! + One day at least, whereon my thought, enlicensèd to muse, + Had drooped its wing above the beachèd margent of the ooze, + And, plunging from the mountain height into the immensity, + Beheld upon one side the land, on the other side the sea. + I harkened, comprehended,—never, as from those abysses, + No, never issued from a mouth, nor moved an ear, such voice as this + is! + + A sound it was, at outset, vast, immeasurable, confused, + Vaguer than is the wind among the tufted trees effused, + Full of magnificent accords, suave murmurs, sweet as is + The evensong, and mighty as the shock of panoplies + When the hoarse melee in its arms the closing squadrons grips, + And pants, in furious breathings, from the clarions’ brazen lips. + Unutterable the harmony, unsearchable its deep, + Whose fluid undulations round the world a girdle keep, + And through the vasty heavens, which by its surges are washed young, + Its infinite volutions roll, enlarging as they throng, + Even to the profound arcane, whose ultimate chasms sombre + Its shattered flood englut with time, with space and form and number. + Like to another atmosphere with thin o’erflowing robe, + The hymn eternal covers all the inundated globe: + And the world, swathed about with this investuring symphony, + Even as it trepidates in the air, so trepidates in the harmony. + + And pensive, I attended the ethereal lutany, + Lost within this containing voice as if within the sea. + + Soon I distinguished, yet as tone which veils confuse and smother, + Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other, + Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire; + Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. + And I distinguished them amid that deep and rumorous sound, + As who beholds two currents thwart amid the fluctuous profound. + + The one was of the waters; a be-radiant hymnal speech! + That was the voice o’ the surges, as they parleyed each with each. + The other, which arose from our abode terranean, + Was sorrowful; and that, alack! the murmur was of man; + And in this mighty quire, whose chantings day and night resound, + Every wave had its utterance, and every man his sound. + + Now, the magnificent Ocean, as I said, unbannering + A voice of joy, a voice of peace, did never stint to sing, + Most like in Sion’s temples to a psaltery psaltering, + And to creation’s beauty reared the great lauds of his song. + Upon the gale, upon the squall, his clamour borne along + Unpausingly arose to God in more triumphal swell; + And every one among his waves, that God alone can quell, + When the other of its song made end, into the singing pressed. + Like that majestic lion whereof Daniel was the guest, + At intervals the Ocean his tremendous murmur awed; + And I, t’ward where the sunset fires fell shaggily and broad, + Under his golden mane, methought, that I saw pass the hand of God. + + Meanwhile, and side by side with that august fan-faronnade, + The other voice, like the sudden scream of a destrier affrayed, + Like an infernal door that grates ajar its rusty throat, + Like to a bow of iron that gnarls upon an iron rote, + Grinded; and tears, and shriekings, the anathema, the lewd taunt, + Refusal of viaticum, refusal of the font, + And clamour, and malediction, and dread blasphemy, among + That hurtling crowd of rumour from the diverse human tongue, + Went by as who beholdeth, when the valleys thick t’ward night, + The long drifts of the birds of dusk pass, blackening flight on + flight. + What was this sound whose thousand echoes vibrated unsleeping? + Alas! the sound was earth’s and man’s, for earth and man were weeping. + + Brothers! of these two voices, strange most unimaginably, + Unceasingly regenerated, dying unceasingly, + Harkenèd of the Eternal throughout His Eternity, + The one voice uttereth: NATURE! and the other voice: HUMANITY! + + Then I alit in reverie; for my ministering sprite + Alack! had never yet deployed a pinion of an ampler flight, + Nor ever had my shadow endured so large a day to burn: + And long I rested dreaming, contemplating turn by turn + Now that abyss obscure which lurked beneath the water’s roll, + And now that other untemptable abyss which opened in my soul. + And I made question of me, to what issues are we here, + Whither should tend the thwarting threads of all this ravelled gear; + What doth the soul; to be or live if better worth it is; + And why the Lord, Who, only, reads within that book of His, + In fatal hymeneals hath eternally entwined + The vintage-chant of nature with the dirging cry of humankind? + +(The metre of the second of these two translations is an experiment. The +splendid fourteen-syllable metre of Chapman I have treated after the +manner of Drydenian rhyming heroics; with the occasional triplet, and +even the occasional Alexandrine, represented by a line of eight accents—a +treatment which can well extend, I believe, the majestic resources of the +metre.) + + + + +ULTIMA + + +LOVE’S ALMSMAN PLAINETH HIS FARE + + + O YOU, love’s mendicancy who never tried, + How little of your almsman me you know! + Your little languid hand in mine you slide, + Like to a child says—‘Kiss me and let me go!’ + And night for this is fretted with my tears, + While I:—‘How soon this heavenly neck doth tire + Bending to me from its transtellar spheres!’ + Ah, heart all kneaded out of honey and fire! + Who bound thee to a body nothing worth, + And shamed thee much with an unlovely soul, + That the most strainedest charity of earth + Distasteth soon to render back the whole + Of thine inflamèd sweets and gentilesse! + Whereat, like an unpastured Titan, thou + Gnaw’st on thyself for famine’s bitterness, + And leap’st against thy chain. Sweet Lady, how + Little a linking of the hand to you! + Though I should touch yours careless for a year, + Not one blue vein would lie divinelier blue + Upon your fragile temple, to unsphere + The seraphim for kisses! Not one curve + Of your sad mouth would droop more sad and sweet. + But little food love’s beggars needs must serve, + That eye your plenteous graces from the street. + A hand-clasp I must feed on for a night, + A noon, although the untasted feast you lay, + To mock me, of your beauty. That you might + Be lover for one space, and make essay + What ’tis to pass unsuppered to your couch, + Keep fast from love all day; and so be taught + The famine which these craving lines avouch! + Ah! miser of good things that cost thee naught, + How know’st thou poor men’s hunger?—Misery! + When I go doleless and unfed by thee! + + + + +A HOLOCAUST + + + ‘_No man ever attained supreme knowledge, unless his heart had been + torn up by the roots_.’ + + WHEN I presage the time shall come—yea, now + Perchance is come, when you shall fail from me, + Because the mighty spirit, to whom you vow + Faith of kin genius unrebukably, + Scourges my sloth, and from your side dismissed + Henceforth this sad and most, most lonely soul + Must, marching fatally through pain and mist, + The God-bid levy of its powers enrol; + When I presage that none shall hear the voice + From the great Mount that clangs my ordained advance, + That sullen envy bade the churlish choice + Yourself shall say, and turn your altered glance; + O God! Thou knowest if this heart of flesh + Quivers like broken entrails, when the wheel + Rolleth some dog in middle street, or fresh + Fruit when ye tear it bleeding from the peel; + If my soul cries the uncomprehended cry + When the red agony oozed on Olivet! + Yet not for this, a caitiff, falter I, + Beloved whom I must lose, nor thence regret + The doubly-vouched and twin allegiance owed + To you in Heaven, and Heaven in you, Lady. + How could you hope, loose dealer with my God, + That I should keep for you my fealty? + For still ’tis thus:—because I am so true, + My Fair, to Heaven, I am so true to you! + + + +BENEATH A PHOTOGRAPH + + + PHŒBUS, who taught me art divine, + Here tried his hand where I did mine; + And his white fingers in this face + Set my Fair’s sigh-suggesting grace. + O sweetness past profaning guess, + Grievous with its own exquisiteness! + Vesper-like face, its shadows bright + With meanings of sequestered light; + Drooped with shamefast sanctities + She purely fears eyes cannot miss, + Yet would blush to know she _is_. + Ah, who can view with passionless glance + This tear-compelling countenance! + He has cozened it to tell + Almost its own miracle. + Yet I, all-viewing though he be, + Methinks saw further here than he; + And, Master gay! I swear I drew + Something the better of the two! + + + +AFTER HER GOING + + + THE after-even! Ah, did I walk, + Indeed, in her or even? + For nothing of me or around + But absent She did leaven, + Felt in my body as its soul, + And in my soul its heaven. + + ‘Ah me! my very flesh turns soul, + Essenced,’ I sighed, ‘with bliss!’ + And the blackbird held his lutany, + All fragrant-through with bliss; + And all things stilled were as a maid + Sweet with a single kiss. + + For grief of perfect fairness, eve + Could nothing do but smile; + The time was far too perfect fair, + Being but for a while; + And ah, in me, too happy grief + Blinded herself with smile! + + The sunset at its radiant heart + Had somewhat unconfest: + The bird was loath of speech, its song + Half-refluent on its breast, + And made melodious toyings with + A note or two at best. + + And she was gone, my sole, my Fair, + Ah, sole my Fair, was gone! + Methinks, throughout the world ’twere right + I had been sad alone; + And yet, such sweet in all things’ heart, + And such sweet in my own! + + + +MY LADY THE TYRANNESS + + + ME since your fair ambition bows + Feodary to those gracious brows, + Is nothing mine will not confess + Your sovran sweet rapaciousness? + Though use to the white yoke inures, + Half-petulant is + Your loving rebel for somewhat his, + Not yours, my love, not yours! + + Behold my skies, which make with me + One passionate tranquillity! + Wrap thyself in them as a robe, + She shares them not; their azures probe, + No countering wings thy flight endures. + Nay, they do stole + Me like an aura of her soul. + I yield them, love, for yours! + + But mine these hills and fields, which put + Not on the sanctity of her foot. + Far off, my dear, far off the sweet + Grave pianissimo of your feet! + My earth, perchance, your sway abjures?— + Your absence broods + O’er all, a subtler presence. Woods, + Fields, hills, all yours, all yours! + + Nay then, I said, I have my thought, + Which never woman’s reaching raught; + Being strong beyond a woman’s might, + And high beyond a woman’s height, + Shaped to my shape in all contours.— + I looked, and knew + No thought but you were garden to. + All yours, my love, all yours! + + Meseemeth still, I have my life; + All-clement Her its resolute strife + Evades; contained, relinquishing + Her mitigating eyes; a thing + Which the whole girth of God secures. + Ah, fool, pause! pause! + I had no life, until it was + All yours, my love, all yours! + + Yet, stern possession! I have my death, + Sole yielding up of my sole breath; + Which all within myself I die, + All in myself must cry the cry + Which the deaf body’s wall immures.— + Thought fashioneth + My death without her.—Ah, even death + All yours, my love, all yours! + + Death, then, he hers. I have my heaven, + For which no arm of hers has striven; + Which solitary I must choose, + And solitary win or lose.— + Ah, but not heaven my own endures! + I must perforce + Taste you, my stream, in God your source,— + So steep my heaven in yours. + + At last I said—I have my God, + Who doth desire me, though a clod, + And from His liberal Heaven shall He + Bar in mine arms His privacy. + Himself for mine Himself assures.— + None shall deny + God to be mine, but He and I + All yours, my love, all yours! + + I have no fear at all lest I + Without her draw felicity. + God for His Heaven will not forego + Her whom I found such heaven below, + And she will train Him to her lures. + Nought, lady, I love + In you but more is loved above; + What made me, makes Him yours. + + ‘I, thy sought own, am I forgot?’ + Ha, thou?—thou liest, I seek thee not. + Why what, thou painted parrot, Fame, + What have I taught thee but her name? + Hear, thou slave Fame, while Time endures, + I give her thee; + Page her triumphal name!—Lady, + Take her, the thrall is yours. + + + +UNTO THIS LAST + + + A BOY’S young fancy taketh love + Most simply, with the rind thereof; + A boy’s young fancy tasteth more + The rind, than the deific core. + Ah, Sweet! to cast away the slips + Of unessential rind, and lips + Fix on the immortal core, is well; + But heard’st thou ever any tell + Of such a fool would take for food + Aspect and scent, however good, + Of sweetest core Love’s orchards grow? + Should such a phantast please him so, + Love where Love’s reverent self denies + Love to feed, but with his eyes, + All the savour, all the touch, + Another’s—was there ever such? + Such were fool, if fool there be; + Such fool was I, and was for thee! + But if the touch and savour too + Of this fruit—say, Sweet, of you— + You unto another give + For sacrosanct prerogative, + Yet even scent and aspect were + Some elected Second’s share; + And one, gone mad, should rest content + With memory of show and scent; + Would not thyself vow, if there sigh + Such a fool—say, Sweet, as I— + Treble frenzy it must be + Still to love, and to love thee? + + Yet had I torn (man knoweth not, + Nor scarce the unweeping angels wot + Of such dread task the lightest part) + Her fingers from about my heart. + Heart, did we not think that she + Had surceased her tyranny? + Heart, we bounded, and were free! + O sacrilegious freedom!—Till + She came, and taught my apostate will + The winnowed sweet mirth cannot guess + And tear-fined peace of hopefulness; + Looked, spake, simply touched, and went. + Now old pain is fresh content, + Proved content is unproved pain. + Pangs fore-tempted, which in vain + I, faithless, have denied, now bud + To untempted fragrance and the mood + Of contrite heavenliness; all days + Joy affrights me in my ways; + Extremities of old delight + Afflict me with new exquisite + Virgin piercings of surprise,— + Stung by those wild brown bees, her eyes! + + + +ULTIMUM + + + NOW in these last spent drops, slow, slower shed, + Love dies, Love dies, Love dies—ah, Love is dead! + Sad Love in life, sore Love in agony, + Pale Love in death; while all his offspring songs, + Like children, versed not in death’s chilly wrongs, + About him flit, frighted to see him lie + So still, who did not know that Love could die. + One lifts his wing, where dulls the vermeil all + Like clotting blood, and shrinks to find it cold, + And when she sees its lapse and nerveless fall + Clasps her fans, while her sobs ooze through the webbèd gold. + Thereat all weep together, and their tears + Make lights like shivered moonlight on long waters. + Have peace, O piteous daughters! + He shall not wake more through the mortal years, + Nor comfort come to my soul widowèd, + Nor breath to your wild wings; for Love is dead! + + I slew, that moan for him: he lifted me + Above myself, and that I might not be + Less than myself, need was that he should die; + Since Love that first did wing, now clogged me from the sky. + Yet lofty Love being dead thus passeth base— + There is a soul of nobleness which stays, + The spectre of the rose: be comforted, + Songs, for the dust that dims his sacred head! + The days draw on too dark for Song or Love; + O peace, my songs, nor stir ye any wing! + For lo, the thunder hushing all the grove, + And did Love live, not even Love could sing. + + And, Lady, thus I dare to say, + Not all with you is passed away! + For your love taught me this:—’tis Love’s true praise + To be, not staff, but writ of worthy days; + And that high worth in love unfortunate + Should still remain it learned in love elate. + Beyond your star, still, still the stars are bright; + Beyond your highness, still I follow height; + Sole I go forth, yet still to my sad view, + Beyond your trueness, Lady, Truth stands true. + This wisdom sings my song with last firm breath, + Caught from the twisted lore of Love and Death, + The strange inwoven harmony that wakes + From Pallas’ straying locks twined with her ægis-snakes. + ‘On him the unpetitioned heavens descend, + Who heaven on earth proposes not for end; + The perilous and celestial excess + Taking with peace, lacking with thankfulness. + Bliss in extreme befits thee not, until + Thou’rt not extreme in bliss; be equal still: + Sweets to be granted think thy self unmeet + Till thou have learned to hold sweet not too sweet.’ + This thing not far is he from wise in art + Who teacheth; nor who doth, from wise in heart. + + + +ENVOY + + + GO, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play; + Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow: + And some are sung, and that was yesterday, + And some unsung, and that may be to-morrow. + + Go forth; and if it be o’er stony way, + Old joy can lend what newer grief must borrow: + And it was sweet, and that was yesterday, + And sweet is sweet, though purchasèd with sorrow. + + Go, songs, and come not back from your far way: + And if men ask you why ye smile and sorrow, + Tell them ye grieve, for your hearts know To-day, + Tell them ye smile, for your eyes know To-morrow. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{27} The earth. + +{190} The Ark of the Egyptian temple was sealed with clay, which the +Pontiff-king broke when he entered the inner shrine to offer worship. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW POEMS*** + + +******* This file should be named 1471-0.txt or 1471-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/7/1471 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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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 at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: New Poems + + +Author: Francis Thompson + + + +Release Date: February 1, 2015 [eBook #1471] +[This file was first posted on July 26, 1998] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW POEMS*** +</pre> +<p>This etext was prepared by Les Bowler.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/coverb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Book cover" +title= +"Book cover" + src="images/covers.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>NEW POEMS</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +FRANCIS THOMPSON.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/tpb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Decorative graphic" +title= +"Decorative graphic" + src="images/tps.jpg" /> +</a></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">BURNS AND OATES<br /> +26 ORCHARD STREET, LONDON, W.<br /> +1907</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pageiv"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. iv</span><i>Third English Edition</i></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2><a name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +v</span>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Dedication</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#pagevii">vii</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center">SIGHT AND +INSIGHT</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">The Mistress of Vision</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page3">3</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Contemplation</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page14">14</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">‘By Reason of Thy Law’</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page18">18</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">The Dread of Height</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page21">21</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Orient Ode</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page26">26</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">New Year’s Chimes</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page36">36</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">From the Night of Forebeing</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page40">40</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Any Saint</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page58">58</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Assumpta Maria</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page67">67</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">The After Woman</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page74">74</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Grace of the Way</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page77">77</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Retrospect</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page80">80</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">A +NARROW VESSEL</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">A Girl’s Sin—in her Eyes</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page85">85</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">A Girl’s Sin—in his Eyes</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page91">91</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Love Declared</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page94">94</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">The Way of a Maid</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page96">96</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Beginning of the End</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page98">98</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Penelope</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page100">100</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">The End of it</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page102">102</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Epilogue</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page103">103</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center" +class="poetry">MISCELLANEOUS ODES</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Ode to the Setting Sun</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page107">107</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">A Captain of Song</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page123">123</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Against Urania</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page126">126</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">An Anthem of Earth</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page129">129</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center" class="poetry"><a +name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. vi</span>MISCELLANEOUS +POEMS</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">‘Ex Ore Infantium’</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page151">151</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">A Question</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page154">154</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Field-flower</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page157">157</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">The Cloud’s Swan-Song</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page159">159</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">To the Sinking Sun</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page166">166</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Grief’s Harmonics</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page169">169</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Memorat Memoria</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page171">171</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">July Fugitive</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page173">173</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">To a Snow-flake</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page177">177</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Nocturn</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page179">179</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">A May Burden</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page181">181</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">A Dead Astronomer</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page183">183</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">‘Chose Vue’</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page184">184</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">‘Whereto art thou come’</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page185">185</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Heaven and Hell</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page186">186</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">To a Child</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page187">187</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Hermes</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page188">188</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">House of Bondage</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page189">189</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">The Heart</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page191">191</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">A Sunset</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page193">193</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Heard on the Mountain</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page197">197</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p style="text-align: center" +class="poetry">ULTIMA</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Love’s Almsman Plaineth his Fare</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page207">207</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">A Holocaust</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page209">209</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Beneath a Photograph</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page211">211</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">After her Going</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page212">212</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">My Lady the Tyranness</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page214">214</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Unto this Last</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page218">218</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Ultimum</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page221">221</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p class="poetry">Envoy</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page224">224</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vii</span>DEDICATION</h2> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">TO COVENTRY +PATMORE</span></p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Lo</span>, my book thinks +to look Time’s leaguer down,<br /> +Under the banner of your spread renown!<br /> +Or if these levies of impuissant rhyme<br /> +Fall to the overthrow of assaulting Time,<br /> +Yet this one page shall fend oblivious shame,<br /> +Armed with your crested and prevailing Name.</p> +<p><i>Note</i>.—This dedication was written while the dear +friend and great Poet to whom it was addressed yet lived. +It is left as he saw it—the last verses of mine that were +ever to pass under his eyes.</p> +<p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="GutSmall">F. T.</span></p> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>SIGHT +AND INSIGHT</h2> +<p class="poetry">‘Wisdom is easily seen by them that love +her, and is found by them that seek her.<br /> +To think therefore upon her is perfect understanding.’</p> +<p style="text-align: right" class="poetry"><span +class="smcap">Wisdom</span>, vi.</p> +<h3><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>THE +MISTRESS OF VISION.</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">Secret</span> was the garden;<br /> + Set i’ the pathless awe<br +/> + Where no star its breath can +draw.<br /> + Life, that is its warden,<br /> +Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw not, and I +saw.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">II</p> +<p class="poetry"> It was a +mazeful wonder;<br /> + Thrice three times it was +enwalled<br /> + With an emerald—<br /> + Sealèd so asunder.<br /> +All its birds in middle air hung a-dream, their music +thralled.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry"><a +name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>III</p> +<p class="poetry"> The Lady of +fair weeping,<br /> + At the garden’s core,<br /> + Sang a song of sweet and sore<br +/> + And the after-sleeping;<br /> +In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">IV</p> +<p class="poetry"> With +sweet-panged singing,<br /> + Sang she through a +dream-night’s day;<br /> + That the bowers might stay,<br /> + Birds bate their winging,<br /> +Nor the wall of emerald float in wreathèd haze away.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">V</p> +<p class="poetry"> The lily +kept its gleaming,<br /> + In her tears (divine +conservers!)<br /> + Washèd with sad art;<br /> + And the flowers of dreaming<br /> + Palèd not their +fervours,<br /> + For her blood flowed through their +nervures;<br /> +And the roses were most red, for she dipt them in her heart.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry"><a +name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>VI</p> +<p class="poetry"> There was +never moon,<br /> + Save the white sufficing woman:<br +/> + Light most +heavenly-human—<br /> + Like the unseen form of sound,<br +/> + Sensed invisibly in +tune,—<br /> + With a sun-derivèd stole<br +/> + Did inaureole<br /> + All her lovely body round;<br /> +Lovelily her lucid body with that light was interstrewn.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">VII</p> +<p class="poetry"> The sun +which lit that garden wholly,<br /> + Low and vibrant visible,<br /> + Tempered glory woke;<br /> + And it seemèd solely<br /> + Like a silver thurible<br /> + Solemnly swung, slowly,<br /> +Fuming clouds of golden fire, for a cloud of incense-smoke.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry"><a +name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>VIII</p> +<p class="poetry"> But +woe’s me, and woe’s me,<br /> + For the secrets of her eyes!<br /> + In my visions fearfully<br /> + They are ever shown to be<br /> + As fringèd pools, whereof +each lies<br /> + Pallid-dark beneath the skies<br +/> + Of a night that is<br /> + But one blear necropolis.<br /> +And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her own sighs.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">IX</p> +<p class="poetry"> Many +changes rise on<br /> + Their phantasmal mysteries.<br /> + They grow to an horizon<br /> + Where earth and heaven meet;<br /> + And like a wing that dies on<br /> + The vague twilight-verges,<br /> + Many a sinking dream doth fleet<br +/> + Lessening down their secrecies.<br +/> + And, as dusk with day +converges,<br /> + Their orbs are troublously<br /> +Over-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fear of things to +be.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry"><a +name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>X</p> +<p class="poetry"> There is a +peak on Himalay,<br /> + And on the peak undeluged snow,<br +/> + And on the snow not eagles +stray;<br /> + There if your strong feet could +go,—<br /> + Looking over tow’rd +Cathay<br /> + From the never-deluged +snow—<br /> + Farthest ken might not survey<br +/> +Where the peoples underground dwell whom antique fables know.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">XI</p> +<p class="poetry"> East, ah, +east of Himalay,<br /> + Dwell the nations underground;<br +/> + Hiding from the shock of Day,<br +/> + For the sun’s +uprising-sound:<br /> + Dare not issue from the ground<br +/> + At the tumults of the Day,<br /> + So fearfully the sun doth sound<br +/> + Clanging up beyond Cathay;<br /> +For the great earthquaking sunrise rolling up beyond Cathay.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry"><a +name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 8</span>XII</p> +<p class="poetry"> Lend me, O +lend me<br /> + The terrors of that sound,<br /> + That its music may attend me.<br +/> + Wrap my chant in thunders +round;<br /> +While I tell the ancient secrets in that Lady’s singing +found.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">XIII</p> +<p class="poetry"> On Ararat +there grew a vine,<br /> + When Asia from her bathing +rose;<br /> + Our first sailor made a twine<br +/> + Thereof for his prefiguring +brows.<br /> + Canst divine<br /> +Where, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a cluster grows?</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">XIV</p> +<p class="poetry"> On Golgotha +there grew a thorn<br /> + Round the long-prefigured +Brows.<br /> + Mourn, O mourn!<br /> +For the vine have we the spine? Is this all the Heaven +allows?</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry"><a +name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>XV</p> +<p class="poetry"> On Calvary +was shook a spear;<br /> + Press the point into thy +heart—<br /> + Joy and fear!<br /> +All the spines upon the thorn into curling tendrils start.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">XVI</p> +<p class="poetry"> O, +dismay!<br /> + I, a wingless mortal, sporting<br +/> + With the tresses of the sun?<br /> + I, that dare my hand to lay<br /> + On the thunder in its snorting?<br +/> + Ere begun,<br /> +Falls my singed song down the sky, even the old Icarian way.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">XVII</p> +<p class="poetry"> From the +fall precipitant<br /> + These dim snatches of her chant<br +/> + Only have remainèd +mine;—<br /> + That from spear and thorn alone<br +/> + May be grown<br /> +For the front of saint or singer any divinizing twine.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry"><a +name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>XVIII</p> +<p class="poetry"> Her song +said that no springing<br /> + Paradise but evermore<br /> + Hangeth on a singing<br /> + That has chords of weeping,<br /> + And that sings the +after-sleeping<br /> + To souls which wake too sore.<br +/> +‘But woe the singer, woe!’ she said; ‘beyond +the dead his singing-lore,<br /> + All its art of sweet and sore,<br +/> + He learns, in Elenore!’</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">XIX</p> +<p class="poetry"> Where is +the land of Luthany,<br /> + Where is the tract of Elenore?<br +/> + I am bound therefor.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">XX</p> +<p +class="poetry"> ‘Pierce +thy heart to find the key;<br /> + With thee take<br /> + Only what none else would keep;<br +/> + Learn to dream when thou dost +wake,<br /> + Learn to wake when thou dost +sleep.<br /> + <a name="page11"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 11</span>Learn to water joy with tears,<br /> + Learn from fears to vanquish +fears;<br /> + To hope, for thou dar’st not +despair,<br /> + Exult, for that thou dar’st +not grieve;<br /> + Plough thou the rock until it +bear;<br /> + Know, for thou else couldst not +believe;<br /> + Lose, that the lost thou +may’st receive;<br /> + Die, for none other way canst +live.<br /> + When earth and heaven lay down +their veil,<br /> + And that apocalypse turns thee +pale;<br /> + When thy seeing blindeth thee<br +/> + To what thy fellow-mortals see;<br +/> + When their sight to thee is +sightless;<br /> + Their living, death; their light, +most lightless;<br /> + Search no more—<br /> +Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">XXI</p> +<p class="poetry"> Where is +the land of Luthany,<br /> + And where the region Elenore?<br +/> + I do faint therefor.<br /> + ‘When to the new eyes of +thee<br /> + <a name="page12"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 12</span>All things by immortal power,<br /> + Near or far,<br /> + Hiddenly<br /> + To each other linkèd +are,<br /> + That thou canst not stir a +flower<br /> + Without troubling of a star;<br /> + When thy song is shield and +mirror<br /> + To the fair snake-curlèd +Pain,<br /> + Where thou dar’st affront +her terror<br /> + That on her thou may’st +attain<br /> + Persean conquest; seek no more,<br +/> + O seek no more!<br /> +Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">XXII</p> +<p class="poetry"> So sang +she, so wept she,<br /> + Through a dream-night’s +day;<br /> + And with her magic singing kept +she—<br /> + Mystical in music—<br /> + That garden of enchanting<br /> + In visionary May;<br /> + Swayless for my spirit’s +haunting,<br /> +Thrice-threefold walled with emerald from our mortal mornings +grey.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry"><a +name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>XXIII</p> +<p class="poetry"> And as a +necromancer<br /> + Raises from the rose-ash<br /> + The ghost of the rose;<br /> + My heart so made answer<br /> + To her voice’s silver +plash,—<br /> + Stirred in reddening flash,<br /> +And from out its mortal ruins the purpureal phantom blows.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">XXIV</p> +<p class="poetry"> Her tears +made dulcet fretting,<br /> + Her voice had no word,<br /> + More than thunder or the bird.<br +/> + Yet, unforgetting,<br /> +The ravished soul her meanings knew. Mine ears heard not, +and I heard.</p> +<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">XXV</p> +<p class="poetry"> When she +shall unwind<br /> + All those wiles she wound about +me,<br /> + Tears shall break from out me,<br +/> + That I cannot find<br /> +Music in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt me!</p> +<h3><a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +14</span>CONTEMPLATION</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">This</span> morning saw I, +fled the shower,<br /> +The earth reclining in a lull of power:<br /> +The heavens, pursuing not their path,<br /> +Lay stretched out naked after bath,<br /> +Or so it seemed; field, water, tree, were still,<br /> +Nor was there any purpose on the calm-browed hill.</p> +<p class="poetry">The hill, which sometimes visibly is<br /> +Wrought with unresting energies,<br /> +Looked idly; from the musing wood,<br /> +And every rock, a life renewed<br /> +Exhaled like an unconscious thought<br /> +When poets, dreaming unperplexed,<br /> +Dream that they dream of nought.<br /> +Nature one hour appears a thing unsexed,<br /> +Or to such serene balance brought<br /> +<a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>That her +twin natures cease their sweet alarms,<br /> +And sleep in one another’s arms.<br /> +The sun with resting pulses seems to brood,<br /> +And slacken its command upon my unurged blood.</p> +<p class="poetry">The river has not any care<br /> +Its passionless water to the sea to bear;<br /> +The leaves have brown content;<br /> +The wall to me has freshness like a scent,<br /> +And takes half animate the air,<br /> +Making one life with its green moss and stain;<br /> +And life with all things seems too perfect blent<br /> +For anything of life to be aware.<br /> +The very shades on hill, and tree, and plain,<br /> +Where they have fallen doze, and where they doze remain.</p> +<p class="poetry">No hill can idler be than I;<br /> +No stone its inter-particled vibration<br /> +Investeth with a stiller lie;<br /> +No heaven with a more urgent rest betrays<br /> +The eyes that on it gaze.<br /> +We are too near akin that thou shouldst cheat<br /> +Me, Nature, with thy fair deceit.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +16</span>In poets floating like a water-flower<br /> +Upon the bosom of the glassy hour,<br /> +In skies that no man sees to move,<br /> +Lurk untumultuous vortices of power,<br /> +For joy too native, and for agitation<br /> +Too instant, too entire for sense thereof,<br /> +Motion like gnats when autumn suns are low,<br /> +Perpetual as the prisoned feet of love<br /> +On the heart’s floors with painèd pace that go.<br +/> +From stones and poets you may know,<br /> +Nothing so active is, as that which least seems so.</p> +<p class="poetry">For he, that conduit running wine of song,<br +/> +Then to himself does most belong,<br /> +When he his mortal house unbars<br /> +To the importunate and thronging feet<br /> +That round our corporal walls unheeded beat;<br /> +Till, all containing, he exalt<br /> +His stature to the stars, or stars<br /> +Narrow their heaven to his fleshly vault:<br /> +When, like a city under ocean,<br /> +To human things he grows a desolation,<br /> +And is made a habitation<br /> +For the fluctuous universe<br /> +<a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>To lave +with unimpeded motion.<br /> +He scarcely frets the atmosphere<br /> +With breathing, and his body shares<br /> +The immobility of rocks;<br /> +His heart’s a drop-well of tranquillity;<br /> +His mind more still is than the limbs of fear,<br /> +And yet its unperturbed velocity<br /> +The spirit of the simoom mocks.<br /> +He round the solemn centre of his soul<br /> +Wheels like a dervish, while his being is<br /> +Streamed with the set of the world’s harmonies,<br /> +In the long draft of whatsoever sphere<br /> +He lists the sweet and clear<br /> +Clangour of his high orbit on to roll,<br /> +So gracious is his heavenly grace;<br /> +And the bold stars does hear,<br /> +Every one in his airy soar,<br /> +For evermore<br /> +Shout to each other from the peaks of space,<br /> +As thwart ravines of azure shouts the mountaineer.</p> +<h3><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +18</span>‘BY REASON OF THY LAW’</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Here</span> I make +oath—<br /> +Although the heart that knows its bitterness<br /> +Hear loath,<br /> +And credit less—<br /> +That he who kens to meet Pain’s kisses fierce<br /> +Which hiss against his tears,<br /> +Dread, loss, nor love frustrate,<br /> +Nor all iniquity of the froward years<br /> +Shall his inurèd wing make idly bate,<br /> +Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight<br /> +To lose observance quite;<br /> +Seal from half-sad and all-elate<br /> +Sagacious eyes<br /> +Ultimate Paradise;<br /> +Nor shake his certitude of haughty fate.</p> +<p class="poetry">Pacing the burning shares of many dooms,<br /> +I with stern tread do the clear-witting stars<br /> +<a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>To +judgment cite,<br /> +If I have borne aright<br /> +The proving of their pure-willed ordeal.<br /> +From food of all delight<br /> +The heavenly Falconer my heart debars,<br /> +And tames with fearful glooms<br /> +The haggard to His call;<br /> +Yet sometimes comes a hand, sometimes a voice withal,<br /> +And she sits meek now, and expects the light.</p> +<p class="poetry">In this Avernian sky,<br /> +This sultry and incumbent canopy<br /> +Of dull and doomed regret;<br /> +Where on the unseen verges yet, O yet,<br /> +At intervals,<br /> +Trembles, and falls,<br /> +Faint lightning of remembered transient sweet—<br /> +Ah, far too sweet<br /> +But to be sweet a little, a little sweet, and fleet;<br /> +Leaving this pallid trace,<br /> +This loitering and most fitful light a space,<br /> +Still some sad space,<br /> +For Grief to see her own poor face:—</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +20</span>Here where I keep my stand<br /> +With all o’er-anguished feet,<br /> +And no live comfort near on any hand;<br /> +Lo, I proclaim the unavoided term,<br /> +When this morass of tears, then drained and firm,<br /> +Shall be a land—<br /> +Unshaken I affirm—<br /> +Where seven-quired psalterings meet;<br /> +And all the gods move with calm hand in hand,<br /> +And eyes that know not trouble and the worm.</p> +<h3><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>THE +DREAD OF HEIGHT</h3> +<blockquote><p>If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now +ye say: We see: your sin remaineth.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">John</span> ix. +41.</p> +</blockquote> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Not</span> the Circean +wine<br /> +Most perilous is for pain:<br /> +Grapes of the heavens’ star-loaden vine,<br /> +Whereto the lofty-placed<br /> +Thoughts of fair souls attain,<br /> +Tempt with a more retributive delight,<br /> +And do disrelish all life’s sober taste.<br /> +’Tis to have drunk too well<br /> +The drink that is divine,<br /> +Maketh the kind earth waste,<br /> +And breath intolerable.</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah me!<br /> +How shall my mouth content it with mortality?<br /> +Lo, secret music, sweetest music,<br /> +From distances of distance drifting its lone flight,<br /> +Down the arcane where Night would perish in night,<br /> +<a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>Like a +god’s loosened locks slips undulously:<br /> +Music that is too grievous of the height<br /> +For safe and low delight,<br /> +Too infinite,<br /> +For bounded hearts which yet would girth the sea!</p> +<p class="poetry">So let it be,<br /> +Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small:<br /> +So let it be,<br /> +O music, music, though you wake in me<br /> +No joy, no joy at all;<br /> +Although you only wake<br /> +Uttermost sadness, measure of delight,<br /> +Which else I could not credit to the height,<br /> +Did I not know,<br /> +That ill is statured to its opposite;<br /> +Did I not know,<br /> +And even of sadness so,<br /> +Of utter sadness make,<br /> +Of extreme sad a rod to mete<br /> +The incredible excess of unsensed sweet,<br /> +And mystic wall of strange felicity.<br /> +So let it be,<br /> +<a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>Though +sweet be great, and though my heart be small,<br /> +And bitter meat<br /> +The food of gods for men to eat;<br /> +Yea, John ate daintier, and did tread<br /> +Less ways of heat,<br /> +Than whom to their wind-carpeted<br /> +High banquet-hall,<br /> +And golden love-feasts, the fair stars entreat.</p> +<p class="poetry">But ah withal,<br /> +Some hold, some stay,<br /> +O difficult Joy, I pray,<br /> +Some arms of thine,<br /> +Not only, only arms of mine!<br /> +Lest like a weary girl I fall<br /> +From clasping love so high,<br /> +And lacking thus thine arms, then may<br /> +Most hapless I<br /> +Turn utterly to love of basest rate;<br /> +For low they fall whose fall is from the sky.<br /> +Yea, who me shall secure<br /> +But I of height grown desperate<br /> +Surcease my wing, and my lost fate<br /> +<a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>Be dashed +from pure<br /> +To broken writhings in the shameful slime:<br /> +Lower than man, for I dreamed higher,<br /> +Thrust down, by how much I aspire,<br /> +And damned with drink of immortality?<br /> +For such things be,<br /> +Yea, and the lowest reach of reeky Hell<br /> +Is but made possible<br /> +By forta’en breath of Heaven’s austerest clime.</p> +<p class="poetry">These tidings from the vast to bring<br /> +Needeth not doctor nor divine,<br /> +Too well, too well<br /> +My flesh doth know the heart-perturbing thing;<br /> +That dread theology alone<br /> +Is mine,<br /> +Most native and my own;<br /> +And ever with victorious toil<br /> +When I have made<br /> +<a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>Of the +deific peaks dim escalade,<br /> +My soul with anguish and recoil<br /> +Doth like a city in an earthquake rock,<br /> +As at my feet the abyss is cloven then,<br /> +With deeper menace than for other men,<br /> +Of my potential cousinship with mire;<br /> +That all my conquered skies do grow a hollow mock,<br /> +My fearful powers retire,<br /> +No longer strong,<br /> +Reversing the shook banners of their song.</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven,<br +/> +A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint,<br /> +Or for a will accipitrine to pursue!<br /> +The veil of tutelar flesh to simple livers given,<br /> +Or those brave-fledging fervours of the Saint,<br /> +Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint,<br /> +Nor they in sickest time their ample virtue mew.</p> +<h3><a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>ORIENT +ODE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Lo</span>, in the +sanctuaried East,<br /> +Day, a dedicated priest<br /> +In all his robes pontifical exprest,<br /> +Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly,<br /> +From out its Orient tabernacle drawn,<br /> +Yon orbèd sacrament confest<br /> +Which sprinkles benediction through the dawn;<br /> +And when the grave procession’s ceased,<br /> +The earth with due illustrious rite<br /> +Blessed,—ere the frail fingers featly<br /> +Of twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte,<br /> +His sacerdotal stoles unvest—<br /> +Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast,<br /> +The sun in august exposition meetly<br /> +Within the flaming monstrance of the West.<br /> +<a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span><i>O +salutaris hostia</i>,<br /> +<i>Quæ coeli pandis ostium</i>!<br /> +Through breachèd darkness’ rampart, a<br /> +Divine assaulter, art thou come!<br /> +God whom none may live and mark!<br /> +Borne within thy radiant ark,<br /> +While the Earth, a joyous David,<br /> +Dances before thee from the dawn to dark.<br /> +The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve;<br /> +Behold her fair and greater daughter <a name="citation27"></a><a +href="#footnote27" class="citation">[27]</a><br /> +Offers to thee her fruitful water,<br /> +Which at thy first white Ave shall conceive!<br /> +Thy gazes do on simple her<br /> +Desirable allures confer;<br /> +What happy comelinesses rise<br /> +Beneath thy beautifying eyes!<br /> +Who was, indeed, at first a maid<br /> +Such as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair,<br /> +And secret views herself afraid,<br /> +Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear:<br /> +Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover,<br /> +Make the beauties they discover!<br /> +<a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>What +dainty guiles and treacheries caught<br /> +From artful prompting of love’s artless thought<br /> +Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn,<br /> +When thy plumes shiver against the conscious gates of morn!</p> +<p class="poetry">And so the love which is thy dower,<br /> +Earth, though her first-frightened breast<br /> +Against the exigent boon protest,<br /> +(For she, poor maid, of her own power<br /> +Has nothing in herself, not even love,<br /> +But an unwitting void thereof),<br /> +Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower;<br /> +And holy odours do her bosom invest,<br /> +That sweeter grows for being prest:<br /> +Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy,<br /> +From thine embrace still startles coy,<br /> +Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour,<br /> +The laughing captive from the wishing West.</p> +<p class="poetry">Nor the majestic heavens less<br /> +Thy formidable sweets approve,<br /> +Thy dreads and thy delights confess,<br /> +That do draw, and that remove.<br /> +<a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>Thou as a +lion roar’st, O Sun,<br /> +Upon thy satellites’ vexèd heels;<br /> +Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run;<br /> +Each in his frighted orbit wheels,<br /> +Each flies through inassuageable chase,<br /> +Since the hunt o’ the world begun,<br /> +The puissant approaches of thy face,<br /> +And yet thy radiant leash he feels.<br /> +Since the hunt o’ the world begun,<br /> +Lashed with terror, leashed with longing,<br /> +The mighty course is ever run;<br /> +Pricked with terror, leashed with longing,<br /> +Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun.<br /> +Since the hunt o’ the world began,<br /> +With love that trembleth, fear that loveth,<br /> +Thou join’st the woman to the man;<br /> +And Life with Death<br /> +In obscure nuptials moveth,<br /> +Commingling alien, yet affinèd breath.</p> +<p class="poetry">Thou art the incarnated Light<br /> +Whose Sire is aboriginal, and beyond<br /> +Death and resurgence of our day and night;<br /> +From him is thy vicegerent wand<br /> +<a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>With +double potence of the black and white.<br /> +Giver of Love, and Beauty, and Desire,<br /> +The terror, and the loveliness, and purging,<br /> +The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire!<br /> +Samson’s riddling meanings merging<br /> +In thy twofold sceptre meet:<br /> +Out of thy minatory might,<br /> +Burning Lion, burning Lion,<br /> +Comes the honey of all sweet,<br /> +And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat.<br /> +And though, by thine alternate breath,<br /> +Every kiss thou dost inspire<br /> +Echoeth<br /> +Back from the windy vaultages of death;<br /> +Yet thy clear warranty above<br /> +Augurs the wings of death too must<br /> +Occult reverberations stir of love<br /> +Crescent and life incredible;<br /> +That even the kisses of the just<br /> +Go down not unresurgent to the dust.<br /> +Yea, not a kiss which I have given,<br /> +But shall triúmph upon my lips in heaven,<br /> +Or cling a shameful fungus there in hell.<br /> +<a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +31</span>Know’st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, well<br /> +Thou know’st the ancient miracle,<br /> +The children know’st of Zeus and May;<br /> +And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother,<br /> +To incarnate, the antique way,<br /> +The truth which is their heritage from their Sire<br /> +In sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother.<br /> +My fingers thou hast taught to con<br /> +Thy flame-chorded psalterion,<br /> +Till I can translate into mortal wire—<br /> +Till I can translate passing well—<br /> +The heavenly harping harmony,<br /> +Melodious, sealed, inaudible,<br /> +Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world’s desire.<br /> +Thou whisperest in the Moon’s white ear,<br /> +And she does whisper into mine,—<br /> +By night together, I and she—<br /> +With her virgin voice divine,<br /> +The things I cannot half so sweetly tell<br /> +As she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear.</p> +<p class="poetry">By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord,<br +/> +Yet she for Earth, and both in thee.<br /> +Light out of Light!<br /> +<a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +32</span>Resplendent and prevailing Word<br /> +Of the Unheard!<br /> +Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee<br /> +Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee;<br /> +And in an age of faith grown frore<br /> +If I too shall adore,<br /> +Be it accounted unto me<br /> +A bright sciential idolatry!<br /> +God has given thee visible thunders<br /> +To utter thine apocalypse of wonders;<br /> +And what want I of prophecy,<br /> +That at the sounding from thy station<br /> +Of thy flagrant trumpet, see<br /> +The seals that melt, the open revelation?<br /> +Or who a God-persuading angel needs,<br /> +That only heeds<br /> +The rhetoric of thy burning deeds?<br /> +Which but to sing, if it may be,<br /> +In worship-warranting moiety,<br /> +So I would win<br /> +In such a song as hath within<br /> +A smouldering core of mystery,<br /> +Brimmèd with nimbler meanings up<br /> +Than hasty Gideons in their hands may sup;—<br /> +<a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>Lo, my +suit pleads<br /> +That thou, Isaian coal of fire,<br /> +Touch from yon altar my poor mouth’s desire,<br /> +And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds.</p> +<p class="poetry">To thine own shape<br /> +Thou round’st the chrysolite of the grape,<br /> +Bind’st thy gold lightnings in his veins;<br /> +Thou storest the white garners of the rains.<br /> +Destroyer and preserver, thou<br /> +Who medicinest sickness, and to health<br /> +Art the unthankèd marrow of its wealth;<br /> +To those apparent sovereignties we bow<br /> +And bright appurtenances of thy brow!<br /> +Thy proper blood dost thou not give,<br /> +That Earth, the gusty Mænad, drink and dance?<br /> +Art thou not life of them that live?<br /> +Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell<br /> +Within our body as a tabernacle!<br /> +Thou bittest with thine ordinance<br /> +The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete<br /> +The unsustainable treading of his feet.<br /> +Thou to thy spousal universe<br /> +Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church;<br /> +<a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>Who in +most dusk and vidual curch,<br /> +Her Lord being hence,<br /> +Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hearse.<br /> +The heavens renew their innocence<br /> +And morning state<br /> +But by thy sacrament communicate:<br /> +Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers,<br /> +Our darkened search,<br /> +And sinful vigil desolate.<br /> +Yea, biune in imploring dumb,<br /> +Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await,<br /> +The Spirit and the Bride say: Come!<br /> +Lo, of thy Magians I the least<br /> +Haste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs,<br /> +To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced<br /> +Regions and odorous of Song’s traded East.<br /> +Thou, for the life of all that live<br /> +The victim daily born and sacrificed;<br /> +To whom the pinion of this longing verse<br /> +Beats but with fire which first thyself did give,<br /> +To thee, O Sun—or is’t perchance, to Christ?</p> +<p class="poetry">Ay, if men say that on all high heaven’s +face<br /> +The saintly signs I trace<br /> +<a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>Which +round my stolèd altars hold their solemn place,<br /> +Amen, amen! For oh, how could it be,—<br /> +When I with wingèd feet had run<br /> +Through all the windy earth about,<br /> +Quested its secret of the sun,<br /> +And heard what thing the stars together shout,—<br /> +I should not heed thereout<br /> +Consenting counsel won:—<br /> +‘By this, O Singer, know we if thou see.<br /> +When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is here,<br /> +When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is there,<br /> +Believe them: yea, and this—then art thou seer,<br /> +When all thy crying clear<br /> +Is but: Lo here! lo there!—ah me, lo everywhere!’</p> +<h3><a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>NEW +YEAR’S CHIMES.</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">What</span> is the song the +stars sing?<br /> + (<i>And a million songs are as song of one</i>.)<br +/> +This is the song the stars sing:<br /> + <i>Sweeter song’s none</i>.</p> +<p class="poetry">One to set, and many to sing,<br /> + (<i>And a million songs are as song of one</i>),<br +/> +One to stand, and many to cling,<br /> +The many things, and the one Thing,<br /> + The one that runs not, the many that run.</p> +<p class="poetry">The ever new weaveth the ever old<br /> + (<i>And a million songs are as song of one</i>).<br +/> +Ever telling the never told;<br /> +The silver saith, and the said is gold,<br /> + And done ever the never done.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +37</span>The chase that’s chased is the Lord o’ the +chase<br /> + (<i>And a million songs are as song of one</i>),<br +/> +And the pursued cries on the race;<br /> + And the hounds in leash are the hounds that run.</p> +<p class="poetry">Hidden stars by the shown stars’ +sheen;<br /> + (<i>And a million suns are but as one</i>);<br /> +Colours unseen by the colours seen,<br /> +And sounds unheard heard sounds between,<br /> + And a night is in the light of the sun.</p> +<p class="poetry">An ambuscade of light in night,<br /> + (<i>And a million secrets are but as one</i>),<br /> +And a night is dark in the sun’s light,<br /> + And a world in the world man looks upon.</p> +<p class="poetry">Hidden stars by the shown stars’ +wings,<br /> + (<i>And a million cycles are but as one</i>),<br /> +And a world with unapparent strings<br /> +Knits the simulant world of things;<br /> + Behold, and vision thereof is none.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +38</span>The world above in the world below<br /> + (<i>And a million worlds are but as one</i>),<br /> +And the One in all; as the sun’s strength so<br /> +Strives in all strength, glows in all glow<br /> + Of the earth that wits not, and man thereon.</p> +<p class="poetry">Braced in its own fourfold embrace<br /> + (<i>And a million strengths are as strength of +one</i>),<br /> +And round it all God’s arms of grace,<br /> +The world, so as the Vision says,<br /> + Doth with great lightning-tramples run.</p> +<p class="poetry">And thunder bruiteth into thunder,<br /> + (<i>And a million sounds are as sound of +one</i>),<br /> +From stellate peak to peak is tossed a voice of wonder,<br /> +And the height stoops down to the depths thereunder,<br /> + And sun leans forth to his brother-sun.</p> +<p class="poetry">And the more ample years unfold<br /> + (<i>With a million songs as song of one</i>),<br /> +A little new of the ever old,<br /> +A little told of the never told,<br /> + Added act of the never done.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +39</span>Loud the descant, and low the theme,<br /> + (<i>A million songs are as song of one</i>);<br /> +And the dream of the world is dream in dream,<br /> +But the one Is is, or nought could seem;<br /> + And the song runs round to the song begun.</p> +<p class="poetry">This is the song the stars sing,<br /> + (<i>Tonèd all in time</i>);<br /> +Tintinnabulous, tuned to ring<br /> +A multitudinous-single thing,<br /> + Rung all in rhyme.</p> +<h3><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 40</span>FROM +THE NIGHT OF FOREBEING<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">AN ODE AFTER EASTER</span></h3> +<blockquote><p><i>In the chaos of preordination</i>, <i>and night +of our forebeings</i>.—</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Sir Thomas +Browne</span>.</p> +<p><i>Et lux in tenebris erat</i>, <i>et tenebræ eam non +comprehenderunt</i>.—</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">St. +John</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Cast</span> wide the +folding doorways of the East,<br /> +For now is light increased!<br /> +And the wind-besomed chambers of the air,<br /> +See they be garnished fair;<br /> +And look the ways exhale some precious odours,<br /> +And set ye all about wild-breathing spice,<br /> +Most fit for Paradise.<br /> +Now is no time for sober gravity,<br /> +Season enough has Nature to be wise;<br /> +But now discinct, with raiment glittering free,<br /> +Shake she the ringing rafters of the skies<br /> +With festal footing and bold joyance sweet,<br /> +<a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>And let +the earth be drunken and carouse!<br /> +For lo, into her house<br /> +Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet,<br /> +And all things are made young with young desires;<br /> +And all for her is light increased<br /> +In yellow stars and yellow daffodils,<br /> +And East to West, and West to East,<br /> +Fling answering welcome-fires,<br /> +By dawn and day-fall, on the jocund hills.<br /> +And ye, winged minstrels of her fair meinie,<br /> +Being newly coated in glad livery,<br /> +Upon her steps attend,<br /> +And round her treading dance and without end<br /> +Reel your shrill lutany.<br /> +What popular breath her coming does out-tell<br /> +The garrulous leaves among!<br /> +What little noises stir and pass<br /> +From blade to blade along the voluble grass!<br /> +O Nature, never-done<br /> +Ungaped-at Pentecostal miracle,<br /> +We hear thee, each man in his proper tongue!<br /> +Break, elemental children, break ye loose<br /> +<a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>From the +strict frosty rule<br /> +Of grey-beard Winter’s school.<br /> +Vault, O young winds, vault in your tricksome courses<br /> +Upon the snowy steeds that reinless use<br /> +In coerule pampas of the heaven to run;<br /> +Foaled of the white sea-horses,<br /> +Washed in the lambent waters of the sun.<br /> +Let even the slug-abed snail upon the thorn<br /> +Put forth a conscious horn!<br /> +Mine elemental co-mates, joy each one;<br /> +And ah, my foster-brethren, seem not sad—<br /> +No, seem not sad,<br /> +That my strange heart and I should be so little glad.<br /> +Suffer me at your leafy feast<br /> +To sit apart, a somewhat alien guest,<br /> +And watch your mirth,<br /> +Unsharing in the liberal laugh of earth;<br /> +Yet with a sympathy,<br /> +Begot of wholly sad and half-sweet memory—<br /> +The little sweetness making grief complete;<br /> +Faint wind of wings from hours that distant beat,<br /> +<a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span>When I, I +too,<br /> +Was once, O wild companions, as are you,<br /> +Ran with such wilful feet.<br /> +Wraith of a recent day and dead,<br /> +Risen wanly overhead,<br /> +Frail, strengthless as a noon-belated moon,<br /> +Or as the glazing eyes of watery heaven,<br /> +When the sick night sinks into deathly swoon.</p> +<p class="poetry">A higher and a solemn voice<br /> +I heard through your gay-hearted noise;<br /> +A solemn meaning and a stiller voice<br /> +Sounds to me from far days when I too shall rejoice,<br /> +Nor more be with your jollity at strife.<br /> +O prophecy<br /> +Of things that are, and are not, and shall be!<br /> +The great-vanned Angel March<br /> +Hath trumpeted<br /> +His clangorous ‘Sleep no more’ to all the +dead—<br /> +Beat his strong vans o’er earth, and air, and sea.<br /> +And they have heard;<br /> +Hark to the Jubilate of the bird<br /> +<a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>For them +that found the dying way to life!<br /> +And they have heard,<br /> +And quicken to the great precursive word;<br /> +Green spray showers lightly down the cascade of the larch;<br /> +The graves are riven,<br /> +And the Sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven!<br /> +Before his way<br /> +Went forth the trumpet of the March;<br /> +Before his way, before his way<br /> +Dances the pennon of the May!<br /> +O earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long<br /> +Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree<br /> +Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy,<br /> +Behold how all things are made true!<br /> +Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you,<br /> +Exceeding glad and strong.<br /> +Raise up your eyes, O raise your eyes abroad!<br /> +No more shall you sit sole and vidual,<br /> +Searching, in servile pall,<br /> +Upon the hieratic night the star-sealed sense of all:<br /> +Rejoice, O barren, and look forth abroad!<br /> +<a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>Your +children gathered back to your embrace<br /> +See with a mother’s face.<br /> +Look up, O mortals, and the portent heed;<br /> +In very deed,<br /> +Washed with new fire to their irradiant birth,<br /> +Reintegrated are the heavens and earth!<br /> +From sky to sod,<br /> +The world’s unfolded blossom smells of God.</p> +<p class="poetry">O imagery<br /> +Of that which was the first, and is the last!<br /> +For as the dark, profound nativity,<br /> +God saw the end should be,<br /> +When the world’s infant horoscope He cast.<br /> +Unshackled from the bright Phoebean awe,<br /> +In leaf, flower, mould, and tree,<br /> +Resolved into dividual liberty,<br /> +Most strengthless, unparticipant, inane,<br /> +Or suffered the ill peace of lethargy,<br /> +Lo, the Earth eased of rule:<br /> +Unsummered, granted to her own worst smart<br /> +The dear wish of the fool—<br /> +<a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +46</span>Disintegration, merely which man’s heart<br /> +For freedom understands,<br /> +Amid the frog-like errors from the damp<br /> +And quaking swamp<br /> +Of the low popular levels spawned in all the lands.<br /> +But thou, O Earth, dost much disdain<br /> +The bondage of thy waste and futile reign,<br /> +And sweetly to the great compulsion draw<br /> +Of God’s alone true-manumitting law,<br /> +And Freedom, only which the wise intend,<br /> +To work thine innate end.<br /> +Over thy vacant counterfeit of death<br /> +Broods with soft urgent breath<br /> +Love, that is child of Beauty and of Awe:<br /> +To intercleavage of sharp warring pain,<br /> +As of contending chaos come again,<br /> +Thou wak’st, O Earth,<br /> +And work’st from change to change and birth to birth<br /> +Creation old as hope, and new as sight;<br /> +For meed of toil not vain,<br /> +Hearing once more the primal fiat toll:—<br /> +‘Let there be light!’<br /> +<a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>And there +is light!<br /> +Light flagrant, manifest;<br /> +Light to the zenith, light from pole to pole;<br /> +Light from the East that waxeth to the West,<br /> +And with its puissant goings-forth<br /> +Encroaches on the South and on the North;<br /> +And with its great approaches does prevail<br /> +Upon the sullen fastness of the height,<br /> +And summoning its levied power<br /> +Crescent and confident through the crescent hour,<br /> +Goes down with laughters on the subject vale.<br /> +Light flagrant, manifest;<br /> +Light to the sentient closeness of the breast,<br /> +Light to the secret chambers of the brain!<br /> +And thou up-floatest, warm, and newly-bathed,<br /> +Earth, through delicious air,<br /> +And with thine own apparent beauties swathed,<br /> +Wringing the waters from thine arborous hair;<br /> +That all men’s hearts, which do behold and see,<br /> +Grow weak with their exceeding much desire,<br /> +And turn to thee on fire,<br /> +Enamoured with their utter wish of thee,<br /> +Anadyomene!<br /> +<a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>What +vine-outquickening life all creatures sup,<br /> +Feel, for the air within its sapphire cup<br /> +How it does leap, and twinkle headily!<br /> +Feel, for Earth’s bosom pants, and heaves her scarfing +sea;<br /> +And round and round in bacchanal rout reel the swift spheres +intemperably!</p> +<p class="poetry">My little-worlded self! the shadows pass<br /> +In this thy sister-world, as in a glass,<br /> +Of all processions that revolve in thee:<br /> +Not only of cyclic Man<br /> +Thou here discern’st the plan,<br /> +Not only of cyclic Man, but of the cyclic Me.<br /> +Not solely of Mortality’s great years<br /> +The reflex just appears,<br /> +But thine own bosom’s year, still circling round<br /> +In ample and in ampler gyre<br /> +Toward the far completion, wherewith crowned,<br /> +Love unconsumed shall chant in his own furnace-fire.<br /> +How many trampled and deciduous joys<br /> +Enrich thy soul for joys deciduous still,<br /> +Before the distance shall fulfil<br /> +<a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>Cyclic +unrest with solemn equipoise!<br /> +Happiness is the shadow of things past,<br /> +Which fools still take for that which is to be!<br /> +And not all foolishly:<br /> +For all the past, read true, is prophecy,<br /> +And all the firsts are hauntings of some Last,<br /> +And all the springs are flash-lights of one Spring.<br /> +Then leaf, and flower, and falless fruit<br /> +Shall hang together on the unyellowing bough;<br /> +And silence shall be Music mute<br /> +For her surchargèd heart. Hush thou!<br /> +These things are far too sure that thou should’st dream<br +/> +Thereof, lest they appear as things that seem.</p> +<p class="poetry">Shade within shade! for deeper in the glass<br +/> +Now other imaged meanings pass;<br /> +And as the man, the poet there is read.<br /> +Winter with me, alack!<br /> +Winter on every hand I find:<br /> +Soul, brain, and pulses dead;<br /> +The mind no further by the warm sense fed,<br /> +The soul weak-stirring in the arid mind,<br /> +More tearless-weak to flash itself abroad<br /> +<a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>Than the +earth’s life beneath the frost-scorched sod.<br /> +My lips have drought, and crack,<br /> +By laving music long unvisited.<br /> +Beneath the austere and macerating rime<br /> +Draws back constricted in its icy urns<br /> +The genial flame of Earth, and there<br /> +With torment and with tension does prepare<br /> +The lush disclosures of the vernal time.<br /> +All joys draw inward to their icy urns,<br /> +Tormented by constraining rime,<br /> +And there<br /> +With undelight and throe prepare<br /> +The bounteous efflux of the vernal time.<br /> +Nor less beneath compulsive Law<br /> +Rebukèd draw<br /> +The numbèd musics back upon my heart;<br /> +Whose yet-triumphant course I know<br /> +And prevalent pulses forth shall start,<br /> +Like cataracts that with thunderous hoof charge the disbanding +snow.<br /> +All power is bound<br /> +In quickening refusal so;<br /> +And silence is the lair of sound;<br /> +<a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>In act its +impulse to deliver,<br /> +With fluctuance and quiver<br /> +The endeavouring thew grows rigid;<br /> +Strong<br /> +From its retracted coil strikes the resilient song.</p> +<p class="poetry">Giver of spring,<br /> +And song, and every young new thing!<br /> +Thou only seest in me, so stripped and bare,<br /> +The lyric secret waiting to be born,<br /> +The patient term allowed<br /> +Before it stretch and flutteringly unfold<br /> +Its rumpled webs of amethyst-freaked, diaphanous gold.<br /> +And what hard task abstracts me from delight,<br /> +Filling with hopeless hope and dear despair<br /> +The still-born day and parchèd fields of night,<br /> +That my old way of song, no longer fair,<br /> +For lack of serene care,<br /> +Is grown a stony and a weed-choked plot,<br /> +Thou only know’st aright,<br /> +Thou only know’st, for I know not.<br /> +How many songs must die that this may live!<br /> +And shall this most rash hope and fugitive,<br /> +<a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>Fulfilled +with beauty and with might<br /> +In days whose feet are rumorous on the air,<br /> +Make me forget to grieve<br /> +For songs which might have been, nor ever were?<br /> +Stern the denial, the travail slow,<br /> +The struggling wall will scantly grow:<br /> +And though with that dread rite of sacrifice<br /> +Ordained for during edifice,<br /> +How long, how long ago!<br /> +Into that wall which will not thrive<br /> +I build myself alive,<br /> +Ah, who shall tell me will the wall uprise?<br /> +Thou wilt not tell me, who dost only know!<br /> +Yet still in mind I keep,<br /> +He which observes the wind shall hardly sow,<br /> +He which regards the clouds shall hardly reap.<br /> +Thine ancient way! I give,<br /> +Nor wit if I receive;<br /> +Risk all, who all would gain: and blindly. Be it so.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘And blindly,’ said I?—No!<br +/> +That saying I unsay: the wings<br /> +Hear I not in prævenient winnowings<br /> +<a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>Of coming +songs, that lift my hair and stir it?<br /> +What winds with music wet do the sweet storm foreshow!<br /> +Utter stagnation<br /> +Is the solstitial slumber of the spirit,<br /> +The blear and blank negation of all life:<br /> +But these sharp questionings mean strife, and strife<br /> +Is the negation of negation.<br /> +The thing from which I turn my troubled look<br /> +Fearing the gods’ rebuke;<br /> +That perturbation putting glory on,<br /> +As is the golden vortex in the West<br /> +Over the foundered sun;<br /> +That—but low breathe it, lest the Nemesis<br /> +Unchild me, vaunting this—<br /> +Is bliss, the hid, hugged, swaddled bliss!<br /> +O youngling Joy carest!<br /> +That on my now first-mothered breast<br /> +Pliest the strange wonder of thine infant lip,<br /> +What this aghast surprise of keenest panging,<br /> +Wherefrom I blench, and cry thy soft mouth rest?<br /> +Ah hold, withhold, and let the sweet mouth slip!<br /> +So, with such pain, recoils the woolly dam,<br /> +Unused, affrighted, from her yeanling lamb:<br /> +<a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>I, one +with her in cruel fellowship,<br /> +Marvel what unmaternal thing I am.</p> +<p class="poetry">Nature, enough! within thy glass<br /> +Too many and too stern the shadows pass.<br /> +In this delighted season, flaming<br /> +For thy resurrection-feast,<br /> +Ah, more I think the long ensepulture cold,<br /> +Than stony winter rolled<br /> +From the unsealed mouth of the holy East;<br /> +The snowdrop’s saintly stoles less heed<br /> +Than the snow-cloistered penance of the seed.<br /> +’Tis the weak flesh reclaiming<br /> +Against the ordinance<br /> +Which yet for just the accepting spirit scans.<br /> +Earth waits, and patient heaven,<br /> +Self-bonded God doth wait<br /> +Thrice-promulgated bans<br /> +Of his fair nuptial-date.<br /> +And power is man’s,<br /> +With that great word of ‘wait,’<br /> +To still the sea of tears,<br /> +And shake the iron heart of Fate.<br /> +In that one word is strong<br /> +<a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>An else, +alas, much-mortal song;<br /> +With sight to pass the frontier of all spheres,<br /> +And voice which does my sight such wrong.</p> +<p class="poetry">Not without fortitude I wait<br /> +The dark majestical ensuit<br /> +Of destiny, nor peevish rate<br /> +Calm-knowledged Fate.<br /> +I, that no part have in the time’s bragged way,<br /> +And its loud bruit<br /> +I, in this house so rifted, marred,<br /> +So ill to live in, hard to leave;<br /> +I, so star-weary, over-warred,<br /> +That have no joy in this your day—<br /> +Rather foul fume englutting, that of day<br /> +Confounds all ray—<br /> +But only stand aside and grieve;<br /> +I yet have sight beyond the smoke,<br /> +And kiss the gods’ feet, though they wreak<br /> +Upon me stroke and again stroke;<br /> +And this my seeing is not weak.<br /> +The Woman I behold, whose vision seek<br /> +All eyes and know not; t’ward whom climb<br /> +<a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>The steps +o’ the world, and beats all wing of rhyme,<br /> +And knows not; ’twixt the sun and moon<br /> +Her inexpressible front enstarred<br /> +Tempers the wrangling spheres to tune;<br /> +Their divergent harmonies<br /> +Concluded in the concord of her eyes,<br /> +And vestal dances of her glad regard.<br /> +I see, which fretteth with surmise<br /> +Much heads grown unsagacious-grey,<br /> +The slow aim of wise-hearted Time,<br /> +Which folded cycles within cycles cloak:<br /> +We pass, we pass, we pass; this does not pass away,<br /> +But holds the furrowing earth still harnessed to its yoke.<br /> +The stars still write their golden purposes<br /> +On heaven’s high palimpsest, and no man sees,<br /> +Nor any therein Daniel; I do hear<br /> +From the revolving year<br /> +A voice which cries:<br /> +‘All dies;<br /> +Lo, how all dies! O seer,<br /> +And all things too arise:<br /> +<a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>All dies, +and all is born;<br /> +But each resurgent morn, behold, more near the Perfect +Morn.’</p> +<p class="poetry">Firm is the man, and set beyond the cast<br /> +Of Fortune’s game, and the iniquitous hour,<br /> +Whose falcon soul sits fast,<br /> +And not intends her high sagacious tour<br /> +Or ere the quarry sighted; who looks past<br /> +To slow much sweet from little instant sour,<br /> +And in the first does always see the last.</p> +<h3><a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>ANY +SAINT</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">His</span> shoulder did I +hold<br /> +Too high that I, o’erbold<br /> + Weak one,<br /> + Should lean thereon.</p> +<p class="poetry">But He a little hath<br /> +Declined His stately path<br /> + And my<br /> + Feet set more high;</p> +<p class="poetry">That the slack arm may reach<br /> +His shoulder, and faint speech<br /> + Stir<br /> + His unwithering hair.</p> +<p class="poetry">And bolder now and bolder<br /> +I lean upon that shoulder<br /> + So dear<br /> + He is and near:</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +59</span>And with His aureole<br /> +The tresses of my soul<br /> + Are blent<br /> + In wished content.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yes, this too gentle Lover<br /> +Hath flattering words to move her<br /> + To pride<br /> + By His sweet side.</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah, Love! somewhat let be!<br /> +Lest my humility<br /> + Grow weak<br /> + When thou dost speak!</p> +<p class="poetry">Rebate thy tender suit,<br /> +Lest to herself impute<br /> + Some worth<br /> + Thy bride of earth!</p> +<p class="poetry">A maid too easily<br /> +Conceits herself to be<br /> + Those things<br /> + Her lover sings;</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +60</span>And being straitly wooed,<br /> +Believes herself the Good<br /> + And Fair<br /> + He seeks in her.</p> +<p class="poetry">Turn something of Thy look,<br /> +And fear me with rebuke,<br /> + That I<br /> + May timorously</p> +<p class="poetry">Take tremors in Thy arms,<br /> +And with contrivèd charms<br /> + Allure<br /> + A love unsure.</p> +<p class="poetry">Not to me, not to me,<br /> +Builded so flawfully,<br /> + O God,<br /> + Thy humbling laud!</p> +<p class="poetry">Not to this man, but Man,—<br /> +Universe in a span;<br /> + Point<br /> + Of the spheres conjoint;</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +61</span>In whom eternally<br /> +Thou, Light, dost focus Thee!—<br /> + Didst pave<br /> + The way o’ the wave;</p> +<p class="poetry">Rivet with stars the Heaven,<br /> +For causeways to Thy driven<br /> + Car<br /> + In its coming far</p> +<p class="poetry">Unto him, only him;<br /> +In Thy deific whim<br /> + Didst bound<br /> + Thy works’ great round</p> +<p class="poetry">In this small ring of flesh;<br /> +The sky’s gold-knotted mesh<br /> + Thy wrist<br /> + Did only twist</p> +<p class="poetry">To take him in that net.—<br /> +Man! swinging-wicket set<br /> + Between<br /> + The Unseen and Seen;</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +62</span>Lo, God’s two worlds immense,<br /> +Of spirit and of sense,<br /> + Wed<br /> + In this narrow bed;</p> +<p class="poetry">Yea, and the midge’s hymn<br /> +Answers the seraphim<br /> + Athwart<br /> + Thy body’s court!</p> +<p class="poetry">Great arm-fellow of God!<br /> +To the ancestral clod<br /> + Kin,<br /> + And to cherubin;</p> +<p class="poetry">Bread predilectedly<br /> +O’ the worm and Deity!<br /> + Hark,<br /> + O God’s clay-sealed Ark,</p> +<p class="poetry">To praise that fits thee, clear<br /> +To the ear within the ear,<br /> + But dense<br /> + To clay-sealed sense.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +63</span>All the Omnific made<br /> +When in a word he said,<br /> + (Mystery!)<br /> + He uttered <i>thee</i>;</p> +<p class="poetry">Thee His great utterance bore,<br /> +O secret metaphor<br /> + Of what<br /> + Thou dream’st no jot!</p> +<p class="poetry">Cosmic metonymy!<br /> +Weak world-unshuttering key!<br /> + One<br /> + Seal of Solomon!</p> +<p class="poetry">Trope that itself not scans<br /> +Its huge significance,<br /> + Which tries<br /> + Cherubic eyes.</p> +<p class="poetry">Primer where the angels all<br /> +God’s grammar spell in small,<br /> + Nor spell<br /> + The highest too well.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +64</span>Point for the great descants<br /> +Of starry disputants;<br /> + Equation<br /> + Of creation.</p> +<p class="poetry">Thou meaning, couldst thou see,<br /> +Of all which dafteth thee;<br /> + So plain,<br /> + It mocks thy pain;</p> +<p class="poetry">Stone of the Law indeed,<br /> +Thine own self couldst thou read;<br /> + Thy bliss<br /> + Within thee is.</p> +<p class="poetry">Compost of Heaven and mire,<br /> +Slow foot and swift desire!<br /> + Lo,<br /> + To have Yes, choose No;</p> +<p class="poetry">Gird, and thou shalt unbind;<br /> +Seek not, and thou shalt find;<br /> + To eat,<br /> + Deny thy meat;</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +65</span>And thou shalt be fulfilled<br /> +With all sweet things unwilled:<br /> + So best<br /> + God loves to jest</p> +<p class="poetry">With children small—a freak<br /> +Of heavenly hide-and-seek<br /> + Fit<br /> + For thy wayward wit,</p> +<p class="poetry">Who art thyself a thing<br /> +Of whim and wavering;<br /> + Free<br /> + When His wings pen thee;</p> +<p class="poetry">Sole fully blest, to feel<br /> +God whistle thee at heel;<br /> + Drunk up<br /> + As a dew-drop,</p> +<p class="poetry">When He bends down, sun-wise,<br /> +Intemperable eyes;<br /> + Most proud,<br /> + When utterly bowed.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +66</span>To feel thyself and be<br /> +His dear nonentity—<br /> + Caught<br /> + Beyond human thought</p> +<p class="poetry">In the thunder-spout of Him,<br /> +Until thy being dim,<br /> + And be<br /> + Dead deathlessly.</p> +<p class="poetry">Stoop, stoop; for thou dost fear<br /> +The nettle’s wrathful spear,<br /> + So slight<br /> + Art thou of might!</p> +<p class="poetry">Rise; for Heaven hath no frown<br /> +When thou to thee pluck’st down,<br /> + Strong clod!<br /> + The neck of God.</p> +<h3><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +67</span>ASSUMPTA MARIA</h3> +<blockquote><p>‘<i>Thou needst not sing new songs</i>, +<i>but say the old</i>.’—<span +class="smcap">Cowley</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p class="poetry"><i>Mortals</i>, <i>that behold a Woman</i>,<br +/> + <i>Rising ’twixt the Moon and Sun</i>;<br /> +<i>Who am I the heavens assume</i>? <i>an</i><br /> + <i>All am I</i>, <i>and I am one</i>.</p> +<p class="poetry">Multitudinous ascend I,<br /> + Dreadful as a battle arrayed,<br /> +For I bear you whither tend I;<br /> + Ye are I: be undismayed!<br /> +I, the Ark that for the graven<br /> + Tables of the Law was made;<br /> +Man’s own heart was one, one Heaven,<br /> + Both within my womb were laid.<br /> + For there Anteros with Eros<br /> + Heaven with man +conjoinèd was,—<br /> + Twin-stone of the Law, +<i>Ischyros</i>,<br /> + <i>Agios +Athanatos</i>.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +68</span>I, the flesh-girt Paradises<br /> + Gardenered by the Adam new,<br /> +Daintied o’er with sweet devices<br /> + Which He loveth, for He grew.<br /> +I, the boundless strict savannah<br /> + Which God’s leaping feet go through;<br /> +I, the heaven whence the Manna,<br /> + Weary Israel, slid on you!<br /> + He the Anteros and Eros,<br /> + I the body, He +the Cross;<br /> + He upbeareth me, +<i>Ischyros</i>,<br /> + <i>Agios +Athanatos</i>!</p> +<p class="poetry">I am Daniel’s mystic Mountain,<br /> + Whence the mighty stone was rolled;<br /> +I am the four Rivers’ fountain,<br /> + Watering Paradise of old;<br /> +Cloud down-raining the Just One am,<br /> + Danae of the Shower of Gold;<br /> +I the Hostel of the Sun am;<br /> + He the Lamb, and I the Fold.<br /> + He the Anteros and Eros,<br /> + I the body, He +the Cross;<br /> + He is fast to me, +<i>Ischyros</i>,<br /> + <i>Agios +Athanatos</i>!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +69</span>I, the presence-hall where Angels<br /> + Do enwheel their placèd King—<br /> +Even my thoughts which, without change else,<br /> + Cyclic burn and cyclic sing.<br /> +To the hollow of Heaven transplanted,<br /> + I a breathing Eden spring,<br /> +Where with venom all outpanted<br /> + Lies the slimed Curse shrivelling.<br /> + For the brazen Serpent clear on<br +/> + That old +fangèd knowledge shone;<br /> + I to Wisdom rise, +<i>Ischyron</i>,<br /> + <i>Agion +Athanaton</i>!</p> +<p class="poetry">See in highest heaven pavilioned<br /> + Now the maiden Heaven rest,<br /> +The many-breasted sky out-millioned<br /> + By the splendours of her vest.<br /> +Lo, the Ark this holy tide is<br /> + The un-handmade Temple’s guest,<br /> +And the dark Egyptian bride is<br /> + Whitely to the Spouse-Heart prest!<br /> + He the Anteros and Eros,<br /> + Nail me to Thee, +sweetest Cross!<br /> + He is fast to me, +<i>Ischyros</i>,<br /> + <i>Agios +Athanatos</i>!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +70</span>‘Tell me, tell me, O Belovèd,<br /> + Where Thou dost in mid-day feed!<br /> +For my wanderings are reprovèd,<br /> + And my heart is salt with need.’<br /> +‘Thine own self not spellest God in,<br /> + Nor the lisping papyrus reed?<br /> +Follow where the flocks have trodden,<br /> + Follow where the shepherds lead.’<br /> + He, the Anteros and Eros,<br /> + Mounts me in +Ægyptic car,<br /> + Twin-yoked; leading me, +<i>Ischyros</i>,<br /> + Trembling to the +untempted Far.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘Make me chainlets, silvern, golden,<br +/> + I that sow shall surely reap;<br /> +While as yet my Spouse is holden<br /> + Like a Lion in mountained sleep.’<br /> +‘Make her chainlets, silvern, golden,<br /> + She hath sown and she shall reap;<br /> +Look up to the mountains olden,<br /> + Whence help comes with lioned leap.’<br /> + By what gushed the bitter Spear +on,<br /> + Pain, which +sundered, maketh one;<br /> + Crucified to Him, +<i>Ischyron</i>,<br /> + <i>Agion +Athanaton</i>!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +71</span>Then commanded and spake to me<br /> + He who framed all things that be;<br /> +And my Maker entered through me,<br /> + In my tent His rest took He.<br /> +Lo! He standeth, Spouse and Brother;<br /> + I to Him, and He to me,<br /> +Who upraised me where my mother<br /> + Fell, beneath the apple-tree.<br /> + Risen ’twixt Anteros and +Eros,<br /> + Blood and Water, +Moon and Sun,<br /> + He upbears me, He +<i>Ischyros</i>,<br /> + I bear Him, the +<i>Athanaton</i>!</p> +<p class="poetry">Where is laid the Lord arisen?<br /> + In the light we walk in gloom;<br /> +Though the sun has burst his prison,<br /> + We know not his biding-room.<br /> +Tell us where the Lord sojourneth,<br /> + For we find an empty tomb.<br /> +‘Whence He sprung, there He returneth,<br /> + Mystic Sun,—the Virgin’s Womb.’<br +/> + Hidden Sun, His beams so near +us,<br /> + Cloud enpillared +as He was<br /> + From of old, there He, +<i>Ischyros</i>,<br /> + Waits our +search, <i>Athanatos</i>.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +72</span>Who will give Him me for brother,<br /> + Counted of my family,<br /> +Sucking the sweet breasts of my Mother?—<br /> + I His flesh, and mine is He;<br /> +To my Bread myself the bread is,<br /> + And my Wine doth drink me: see,<br /> +His left hand beneath my head is,<br /> + His right hand embraceth me!<br /> + Sweetest Anteros and Eros,<br /> + Lo, her arms He +leans across;<br /> + Dead that we die not, stooped to +rear us,<br /> + <i>Thanatos +Athanatos</i>.</p> +<p class="poetry">Who is She, in candid vesture,<br /> + Rushing up from out the brine?<br /> +Treading with resilient gesture<br /> + Air, and with that Cup divine?<br /> +She in us and we in her are,<br /> + Beating Godward: all that pine,<br /> +Lo, a wonder and a terror!<br /> + The Sun hath blushed the Sea to Wine!<br /> + He the Anteros and Eros,<br /> + She the Bride +and Spirit; for<br /> + Now the days of promise near +us,<br /> + And the Sea +shall be no more.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +73</span>Open wide thy gates, O Virgin,<br /> + That the King may enter thee!<br /> +At all gates the clangours gurge in,<br /> + God’s paludament lightens, see!<br /> +Camp of Angels! Well we even<br /> + Of this thing may doubtful be,—<br /> +If thou art assumed to Heaven,<br /> + Or is Heaven assumed to thee!<br /> + <i>Consummatum</i>. Christ +the promised,<br /> + Thy maiden realm +is won, O Strong!<br /> + Since to such sweet Kingdom +comest,<br /> + Remember me, +poor Thief of Song!</p> +<p class="poetry">Cadent fails the stars along:—<br /> + <i>Mortals</i>, <i>that behold a woman</i><br /> + <i>Rising ’twixt the Moon +and Sun</i>;<br /> + <i>Who am I the heavens assume</i>? <i>an</i><br /> + <i>All am I</i>, <i>and I am +one</i>.</p> +<h3><a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>THE +AFTER WOMAN</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Daughter</span> of the +ancient Eve,<br /> +We know the gifts ye gave—and give.<br /> +Who knows the gifts which <i>you</i> shall give,<br /> +Daughter of the newer Eve?<br /> +You, if my soul be augur, you<br /> +Shall—O what shall you not, Sweet, do?<br /> +The celestial traitress play,<br /> +And all mankind to bliss betray;<br /> +With sacrosanct cajoleries<br /> +And starry treachery of your eyes,<br /> +Tempt us back to Paradise!<br /> +Make heavenly trespass;—ay, press in<br /> +Where faint the fledge-foot seraphin,<br /> +Blest Fool! Be ensign of our wars,<br /> +And shame us all to warriors!<br /> +Unbanner your bright locks,—advance<br /> +Girl, their gilded puissance,<br /> +I’ the mystic vaward, and draw on<br /> +<a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>After the +lovely gonfalon<br /> +Us to out-folly the excess<br /> +Of your sweet foolhardiness;<br /> +To adventure like intense<br /> +Assault against Omnipotence!</p> +<p class="poetry">Give me song, as She is, new,<br /> +Earth should turn in time thereto!<br /> +New, and new, and thrice so new,<br /> +All old sweets, New Sweet, meant you!<br /> +Fair, I had a dream of thee,<br /> +When my young heart beat prophecy,<br /> +And in apparition elate<br /> +Thy little breasts knew waxèd great,<br /> +Sister of the Canticle,<br /> +And thee for God grown marriageable.<br /> +How my desire desired your day,<br /> +That, wheeled in rumour on its way,<br /> +Shook me thus with presentience! Then<br /> +Eden’s lopped tree shall shoot again:<br /> +For who Christ’s eyes shall miss, with those<br /> +Eyes for evident nuncios?<br /> +Or who be tardy to His call<br /> +In your accents augural?</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +76</span>Who shall not feel the Heavens hid<br /> +Impend, at tremble of your lid,<br /> +And divine advent shine avowed<br /> +Under that dim and lucid cloud;<br /> +Yea, ’fore the silver apocalypse<br /> +Fail, at the unsealing of your lips?<br /> +When to love <i>you</i> is (O Christ’s Spouse!)<br /> +To love the beauty of His house;<br /> +Then come the Isaian days; the old<br /> +Shall dream; and our young men behold<br /> +Vision—yea, the vision of Thabor mount,<br /> +Which none to other shall recount,<br /> +Because in all men’s hearts shall be<br /> +The seeing and the prophecy.<br /> +For ended is the Mystery Play,<br /> +When Christ is life, and you the way;<br /> +When Egypt’s spoils are Israel’s right,<br /> +And Day fulfils the married arms of Night.<br /> +But here my lips are still.<br /> +Until<br /> +You and the hour shall be revealed,<br /> +This song is sung and sung not, and its words are sealed.</p> +<h3><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>GRACE +OF THE WAY</h3> +<p class="poetry">‘<span class="smcap">My</span> +brother!’ spake she to the sun;<br /> + The kindred kisses of the stars<br /> +Were hers; her feet were set upon<br /> + The moon. If slumber solved the bars</p> +<p class="poetry">Of sense, or sense transpicuous grown<br /> + Fulfillèd seeing unto sight,<br /> +I know not; nor if ’twas my own<br /> + Ingathered self that made her night.</p> +<p class="poetry">The windy trammel of her dress,<br /> + Her blown locks, took my soul in mesh;<br /> +God’s breath they spake, with visibleness<br /> + That stirred the raiment of her flesh:</p> +<p class="poetry">And sensible, as her blown were,<br /> + Beyond the precincts of her form<br /> +I felt the woman flow from her—<br /> + A calm of intempestuous storm.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +78</span>I failed against the affluent tide;<br /> + Out of this abject earth of me<br /> +I was translated and enskied<br /> + Into the heavenly-regioned She.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now of that vision I bereaven<br /> + This knowledge keep, that may not dim:—<br /> +Short arm needs man to reach to Heaven,<br /> + So ready is Heaven to stoop to him.</p> +<p class="poetry">Which sets, to measure of man’s feet,<br +/> + No alien Tree for trysting-place;<br /> +And who can read, may read the sweet<br /> + Direction in his Lady’s face.</p> +<p class="poetry">And pass and pass the daily crowd,<br /> + Unwares, occulted Paradise;<br /> +Love the lost plot cries silver-loud,<br /> + Nor any know the tongue he cries.</p> +<p class="poetry">The light is in the darkness, and<br /> + The darkness doth not comprehend:<br /> +God hath no haste; and God’s sons stand<br /> + Yet a Day, tarrying for the end.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +79</span>Dishonoured Rahab still hath hid,<br /> + Yea still, within her house of shame,<br /> +The messengers by Jesus bid<br /> + Forerun the coming of His Name.</p> +<p class="poetry">The Word was flesh, and crucified,<br /> + From the beginning, and blasphemed:<br /> +Its profaned raiment men divide,<br /> + Damned by what, reverenced, had redeemed.</p> +<p class="poetry">Thy Lady, was thy heart not blind,<br /> + One hour gave to thy witless trust<br /> +The key thou go’st about to find;<br /> + And thou hast dropped it in the dust.</p> +<p class="poetry">Of her, the Way’s one mortal grace,<br /> + Own, save thy seeing be all forgot,<br /> +That truly, God was in this place,<br /> + And thou, unblessèd, knew’st it +not.</p> +<p class="poetry">But some have eyes, and will not see;<br /> + And some would see, and have not eyes;<br /> +And fail the tryst, yet find the Tree,<br /> + And take the lesson for the prize.</p> +<h3><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +80</span>RETROSPECT</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Alas</span>, and I have +sung<br /> +Much song of matters vain,<br /> +And a heaven-sweetened tongue<br /> +Turned to unprofiting strain<br /> +Of vacant things, which though<br /> +Even so they be, and throughly so,<br /> +It is no boot at all for thee to know,<br /> +But babble and false pain.</p> +<p class="poetry">What profit if the sun<br /> +Put forth his radiant thews,<br /> +And on his circuit run,<br /> +Even after my device, to this and to that use;<br /> +And the true Orient, Christ,<br /> +Make not His cloud of thee?<br /> +I have sung vanity,<br /> +And nothing well devised.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +81</span>And though the cry of stars<br /> +Give tongue before his way<br /> +Goldenly as I say,<br /> +And each from wide Saturnus to hot Mars<br /> +He calleth by its name,<br /> +Lest that its bright feet stray;<br /> +And thou have lore of all,<br /> +But to thine own Sun’s call<br /> +Thy path disorbed hast never wit to tame;<br /> +It profits not withal,<br /> +And my rede is but lame.</p> +<p class="poetry">Only that, ’mid vain vaunt<br /> +Of wisdom ignorant,<br /> +A little kiss upon the feet of Love<br /> +My hasty verse has stayed<br /> +Sometimes a space to plant:<br /> +It has not wholly strayed,<br /> +Not wholly missed near sweet, fanning proud plumes above.</p> +<p class="poetry">Therefore I do repent<br /> +That with religion vain,<br /> +And misconceivèd pain,<br /> +<a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>I have my +music bent<br /> +To waste on bootless things its skiey-gendered rain:<br /> +Yet shall a wiser day<br /> +Fulfil more heavenly way,<br /> +And with approvèd music clear this slip<br /> +I trust in God most sweet;<br /> +Meantime the silent lip,<br /> +Meantime the climbing feet.</p> +<h2><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>A +NARROW VESSEL.</h2> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BEING A +LITTLE DRAMATIC SEQUENCE ON THE</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">ASPECT OF PRIMITIVE GIRL-NATURE</span><br +/> +<span class="GutSmall">TOWARDS A LOVE BEYOND</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">ITS CAPACITIES.</span></p> +<h3><a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>A +GIRL’S SIN<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">I.—IN HER EYES</span></h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Cross</span> child! red, +and frowning so?<br /> + ‘I, the day just over,<br /> +Gave a lock of hair to—no!<br /> + How <i>dare</i> you say, my lover?’</p> +<p class="poetry">He asked you?—Let me understand;<br /> + Come, child, let me sound it!<br /> +‘Of course, he <i>would</i> have asked it, and—<br /> + And so—somehow—he—found it.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘He told it out with great loud +eyes—<br /> + Men have such little wit!<br /> +His sin I ever will chastise<br /> + Because I gave him it.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘Shameless in me the gift, alas!<br /> + In him his open bliss:<br /> +But for the privilege he has<br /> + A thousand he shall miss!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +86</span>‘His eyes, where once I dreadless laughed,<br /> + Call up a burning blot:<br /> +I hate him, for his shameful craft<br /> + That asked by asking not!’</p> +<p class="poetry">Luckless boy! and all for hair<br /> + He never asked, you said?<br /> +‘Not just—but then he gazed—I swear<br /> + He gazed it from my head!</p> +<p class="poetry">‘His silence on my cheek like breath<br +/> + I felt in subtle way;<br /> +More sweet than aught another saith<br /> + Was what he did not say.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘He’ll think me vanquished, for +this lapse,<br /> + Who should be above him;<br /> +Perhaps he’ll think me light; perhaps—<br /> + Perhaps he’ll think I—love him!</p> +<p class="poetry">‘Are his eyes conscious and elate,<br /> + I hate him that I blush;<br /> +Or are they innocent, still I hate—<br /> + They mean a thing’s to hush.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +87</span>‘Before he nought amiss could do,<br /> + Now all things show amiss;<br /> +’Twas all my fault, I know that true,<br /> + But all my fault was his.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘I hate him for his mute distress,<br /> + ’Tis insult he should care!<br /> +Because my heart’s all humbleness,<br /> + All pride is in my air.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘With him, each favour that I do<br /> + Is bold suit’s hallowing text;<br /> +Each gift a bastion levelled, to<br /> + The next one and the next.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘Each wish whose grant may him befall<br +/> + Is clogged by those withstood;<br /> +He trembles, hoping one means all,<br /> + And I, lest perhaps it should.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘Behind me piecemeal gifts I cast,<br /> + My fleeing self to save;<br /> +And that’s the thing must go at last,<br /> + For that’s the thing he’d have.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +88</span>‘My lock the enforcèd steel did grate<br /> + To cut; its root-thrills came<br /> +Down to my bosom. It might sate<br /> + His lust for my poor shame!</p> +<p class="poetry">‘His sifted dainty this should be<br /> + For a score ambrosial years!<br /> +But his too much humility<br /> + Alarums me with fears.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘My gracious grace a breach he counts<br +/> + For graceless escalade;<br /> +And, though he’s silent ere he mounts,<br /> + My watch is not betrayed.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘My heart hides from my soul he’s +sweet:<br /> + Ah dread, if he divine!<br /> +One touch, I might fall at his feet,<br /> + And he might rise from mine.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘To hear him praise my eyes’ brown +gleams<br /> + Was native, safe delight;<br /> +But now it usurpation seems,<br /> + Because I’ve given him right.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +89</span>‘Before I’d have him not remove,<br /> + Now would not have him near;<br /> +With sacrifice I called on Love,<br /> + And the apparition’s Fear.’</p> +<p class="poetry">Foolish to give it!—‘’Twas my +whim,<br /> + When he might parted be,<br /> +To think that I should stay by him<br /> + In a little piece of me.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘He always said my hair was +soft—<br /> + What touches he will steal!<br /> +Each touch and look (and he’ll look oft)<br /> + I almost thought I’d feel.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘And then, when first he saw the hair,<br +/> + To think his dear amazement!<br /> +As if he wished from skies a star,<br /> + And found it in his casement.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘He’s kiss the lock—and I had +toyed<br /> + With dreamed delight of this:<br /> +But ah, in proof, delight was void—<br /> + I could not <i>see</i> his kiss!’</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +90</span>So, fond one, half this agony<br /> + Were spared, which my hand hushes,<br /> +Could you have played, Sweet, the sweet spy,<br /> + And blushed not for your blushes!</p> +<h3><a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>A +GIRL’S SIN<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">II.—IN HIS EYES</span></h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Can</span> I forget her +cruelty<br /> +Who, brown miracle, gave you me?<br /> +Or with unmoisted eyes think on<br /> +The proud surrender overgone,<br /> +(Lowlihead in haughty dress),<br /> +Of the tender tyranness?<br /> +And ere thou for my joy was given,<br /> +How rough the road to that blest heaven!<br /> +With what pangs I fore-expiated<br /> +Thy cold outlawry from her head;<br /> +How was I trampled and brought low,<br /> +Because her virgin neck was so;<br /> +How thralled beneath the jealous state<br /> +She stood at point to abdicate;<br /> +<a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 92</span>How +sacrificed, before to me<br /> +She sacrificed her pride and thee;<br /> +How did she, struggling to abase<br /> +Herself to do me strange, sweet grace,<br /> +Enforce unwitting me to share<br /> +Her throes and abjectness with her;<br /> +Thence heightening that hour when her lover<br /> +Her grace, with trembling, should discover,<br /> +And in adoring trouble be<br /> +Humbled at her humility!<br /> +And with what pitilessness was I<br /> +After slain, to pacify<br /> +The uneasy manes of her shame,<br /> +Her haunting blushes!—Mine the blame:<br /> +What fair injustice did I rue<br /> +For what I—did not tempt her to?<br /> +Nor aught the judging maid might win<br /> +Me to assoil from <i>her</i> sweet sin.<br /> +But nought were extreme punishment<br /> +For that beyond-divine content,<br /> +When my with-thee-first-giddied eyes<br /> +Stooped ere their due on Paradise!<br /> +O hour of consternating bliss<br /> +When I heavened me in thy kiss;<br /> +<a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>Thy +softness (daring overmuch!)<br /> +Profaned with my licensed touch;<br /> +Worshipped, with tears, on happy knee,<br /> +Her doubt, her trust, her shyness free,<br /> +Her timorous audacity!</p> +<h3><a name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>LOVE +DECLARED</h3> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">looked</span>, she +drooped, and neither spake, and cold,<br /> +We stood, how unlike all forecasted thought<br /> +Of that desirèd minute! Then I leaned<br /> +Doubting; whereat she lifted—oh, brave eyes<br /> +Unfrighted:—forward like a wind-blown flame<br /> +Came bosom and mouth to mine!<br /> + + +That falling kiss<br /> +Touching long-laid expectance, all went up<br /> +Suddenly into passion; yea, the night<br /> +Caught, blazed, and wrapt us round in vibrant fire.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Time’s beating wing +subsided, and the winds<br /> +Caught up their breathing, and the world’s great pulse<br +/> +Stayed in mid-throb, and the wild train of life<br /> +Reeled by, and left us stranded on a hush.<br /> +This moment is a statue unto Love<br /> +Carved from a fair white silence.<br /> + + +<a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>Lo, he +stands<br /> +Within us—are we not one now, one, one roof,<br /> +His roof, and the partition of weak flesh<br /> +Gone down before him, and no more, for ever?—<br /> +Stands like a bird new-lit, and as he lit,<br /> +Poised in our quiet being; only, only<br /> +Within our shaken hearts the air of passion,<br /> +Cleft by his sudden coming, eddies still<br /> +And whirs round his enchanted movelessness.</p> +<p class="poetry">A film of trance between two stirrings! +Lo,<br /> +It bursts; yet dream’s snapped links cling round the +limbs<br /> +Of waking: like a running evening stream<br /> +Which no man hears, or sees, or knows to run,<br /> +(Glazed with dim quiet), save that there the moon<br /> +Is shattered to a creamy flicker of flame,<br /> +Our eyes’ sweet trouble were hid, save that the love<br /> +Trembles a little on their impassioned calms.</p> +<h3><a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>THE +WAY OF A MAID</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> lover whose soul +shaken is<br /> +In some decuman billow of bliss,<br /> +Who feels his gradual-wading feet<br /> +Sink in some sudden hollow of sweet,<br /> +And ’mid love’s usèd converse comes<br /> +Sharp on a mood which all joy sums—<br /> +An instant’s fine compendium of<br /> +The liberal-leavèd writ of love;<br /> +His abashed pulses beating thick<br /> +At the exigent joy and quick,<br /> +Is dumbed, by aiming utterance great<br /> +Up to the miracle of his fate.<br /> +The wise girl, such Icarian fall<br /> +Saved by her confidence that she’s small,—<br /> +As what no kindred word will fit<br /> +Is uttered best by opposite,<br /> +Love in the tongue of hate exprest,<br /> +And deepest anguish in a jest,—<br /> +<a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>Feeling +the infinite must be<br /> +Best said by triviality,<br /> +Speaks, where expression bates its wings,<br /> +Just happy, alien, little things;<br /> +What of all words is in excess<br /> +Implies in a sweet nothingness,<br /> +With dailiest babble shows her sense<br /> +That full speech were full impotence;<br /> +And while she feels the heavens lie bare,<br /> +She only talks about her hair.</p> +<h3><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +98</span>BEGINNING OF END</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">She</span> was aweary of +the hovering<br /> +Of Love’s incessant tumultuous wing;<br /> +Her lover’s tokens she would answer not—<br /> +’Twere well she should be strange with him somewhat:<br /> +A pretty babe, this Love,—but fie on it,<br /> +That would not suffer her lay it down a whit!<br /> +Appointed tryst defiantly she balked,<br /> +And with her lightest comrade lightly walked,<br /> +Who scared the chidden Love to hide apart,<br /> +And peep from some unnoticed corner of her heart.<br /> +She thought not of her lover, deem it not<br /> +(There yonder, in the hollow, that’s <i>his</i> cot),<br /> +But she forgot not that he was forgot.<br /> +She saw him at his gate, yet stilled her tongue—<br /> +So weak she felt her, that she would feel strong,<br /> +And she must punish him for doing him wrong:<br /> +<a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>Passed, +unoblivious of oblivion still;<br /> +And if she turned upon the brow o’ the hill,<br /> +It was so openly, so lightly done,<br /> +You saw she thought he was not thought upon.<br /> +He through the gate went back in bitterness;<br /> +She that night woke and stirred, with no distress,<br /> +Glad of her doing,—sedulous to be glad,<br /> +Lest perhaps her foolish heart suspect that it was sad.</p> +<h3><a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +100</span>PENELOPE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Love</span>, like a wind, +shook wide your blosmy eyes,<br /> +You trembled, and your breath came sobbing-wise<br /> + For that you loved me.</p> +<p class="poetry">You were so kind, so sweet, none could +withhold<br /> +To adore, but that you were so strange, so cold;<br /> + For that you loved me.</p> +<p class="poetry">Like to a box of spikenard did you break<br /> +Your heart about my feet. What words you spake!<br /> + For that you loved me.</p> +<p class="poetry">Life fell to dust without me; so you tried<br +/> +All carefullest ways to drive me from your side,<br /> + For that you loved me.</p> +<p class="poetry">You gave yourself as children give, that +weep<br /> +And snatch back, with—‘I meant you not to +keep!’<br /> + For that you loved me.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +101</span>I am no woman, girl, nor ever knew<br /> +That love could teach all ways that hate could do<br /> + To her that loved me.</p> +<p class="poetry">Have less of love, or less of woman in<br /> +Your love, or loss may even from this begin—<br /> + That you so love me.</p> +<p class="poetry">For, wild Penelope, the web you wove<br /> +You still unweave, unloving all your love;<br /> + Is this to love me,</p> +<p class="poetry">Or what rights have I that scorn could deny?<br +/> +Even of your love, alas, poor Love must die,<br /> + If so you love me!</p> +<h3><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 102</span>THE +END OF IT</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">She</span> did not love to +love; but hated him<br /> +For making her to love, and so her whim<br /> +From passion taught misprision to begin;<br /> +And all this sin<br /> +Was because love to cast out had no skill<br /> +Self, which was regent still.<br /> +Her own self-will made void her own self’s will</p> +<h3><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +103</span>EPILOGUE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">If</span> I have studied +here in part<br /> +A tale as old as maiden’s heart,<br /> + ’Tis that I do see herein<br /> + Shadow of more piteous sin.</p> +<p class="poetry">She, that but giving part, not whole,<br /> +Took even the part back, is the Soul:<br /> + And that so disdainèd Lover—<br /> + Best unthought, since Love is over.</p> +<p class="poetry">Love to invite, desire, and fear,<br /> +And Love’s exactions cost too dear<br /> + Count for Love’s possession,—ah,<br /> + Thy way, misera Anima!</p> +<p class="poetry">To give the pledge, and yet be pined<br /> +That a pledge should have force to bind,<br /> + This, O Soul, too often still<br /> + Is the recreance of thy will!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +104</span>Out of Love’s arms to make fond chain,<br /> +And, because struggle bringeth pain,<br /> + Hate Love for Love’s sweet constraint,<br /> + Is the way of Souls that faint.</p> +<p class="poetry">Such a Soul, for saddest end,<br /> +Finds Love the foe in Love the friend;<br /> + And—ah, grief incredible!—<br /> + Treads the way of Heaven, to Hell.</p> +<h2><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +105</span>MISCELLANEOUS ODES</h2> +<h3><a name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 107</span>ODE +TO THE SETTING SUN</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">PRELUDE.</span></p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> wailful +sweetness of the violin<br /> + Floats down the hushèd waters of the wind,<br +/> +The heart-strings of the throbbing harp begin<br /> + To long in aching music. Spirit-pined,</p> +<p class="poetry">In wafts that poignant sweetness drifts, +until<br /> + The wounded soul ooze sadness. The red sun,<br +/> +A bubble of fire, drops slowly toward the hill,<br /> + While one bird prattles that the day is done.</p> +<p class="poetry">O setting Sun, that as in reverent days<br /> + Sinkest in music to thy smoothèd sleep,<br /> +Discrowned of homage, though yet crowned with rays,<br /> + Hymned not at harvest more, though reapers reap:</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +108</span>For thee this music wakes not. O deceived,<br /> + If thou hear in these thoughtless harmonies<br /> +A pious phantom of adorings reaved,<br /> + And echo of fair ancient flatteries!</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet, in this field where the Cross planted +reigns,<br /> + I know not what strange passion bows my head<br /> +To thee, whose great command upon my veins<br /> + Proves thee a god for me not dead, not dead!</p> +<p class="poetry">For worship it is too incredulous,<br /> + For doubt—oh, too believing-passionate!<br /> +What wild divinity makes my heart thus<br /> + A fount of most baptismal tears?—Thy +straight</p> +<p class="poetry">Long beam lies steady on the Cross. Ah +me!<br /> + What secret would thy radiant finger show?<br /> +Of thy bright mastership is this the key?<br /> + Is <i>this</i> thy secret, then? And is it +woe?</p> +<p class="poetry">Fling from thine ear the burning curls, and +hark<br /> + A song thou hast not heard in Northern day;<br /> +For Rome too daring, and for Greece too dark,<br /> + Sweet with wild wings that pass, that pass away!</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page109"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 109</span><span +class="GutSmall">ODE.</span></p> +<p class="poetry">Alpha and Omega, sadness and mirth,<br /> + The springing music, and its wasting +breath—<br /> +The fairest things in life are Death and Birth,<br /> + And of these two the fairer thing is Death.<br /> +Mystical twins of Time inseparable,<br /> + The younger hath the holier array,<br /> + And hath the awfuller sway:<br /> + It is the falling star that trails the light,<br /> + It is the breaking wave that hath the might,<br /> +The passing shower that rainbows maniple.<br /> + Is it not so, O thou down-stricken Day,<br /> +That draw’st thy splendours round thee in thy fall?<br /> +High was thine Eastern pomp inaugural;<br /> +But thou dost set in statelier pageantry,<br /> + Lauded with tumults of a firmament:<br /> +Thy visible music-blasts make deaf the sky,<br /> + Thy cymbals clang to fire the Occident,<br /> +Thou dost thy dying so triumphally:<br /> +I <i>see</i> the crimson blaring of thy shawms!<br /> + <a name="page110"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 110</span>Why do those lucent palms<br /> +Strew thy feet’s failing thicklier than their might,<br /> +Who dost but hood thy glorious eyes with night,<br /> +And vex the heels of all the yesterdays?<br /> + Lo! this loud, lackeying praise<br +/> +Will stay behind to greet the usurping moon,<br /> + When they have cloud-barred over thee the West.<br +/> +Oh, shake the bright dust from thy parting shoon!<br /> + The earth not pæans thee, nor serves thy +hest,<br /> +Be godded not by Heaven! avert thy face,<br /> + And leave to blank disgrace<br /> +The oblivious world! unsceptre thee of state and place!</p> +<p class="poetry">Ha! but bethink thee what thou gazedst on,<br +/> + Ere yet the snake Decay had venomed tooth;<br /> +The name thou bar’st in those vast seasons gone—<br +/> + Candid Hyperion,<br /> + Clad in the light of thine immortal youth!<br /> + Ere Dionysus bled thy vines,<br /> +Or Artemis drave her clamours through the wood,<br /> + Thou saw’st how once against +Olympus’ height<br /> + The brawny +Titans stood,<br /> +And shook the gods’ world ’bout their ears, and +how<br /> +Enceladus (whom Etna cumbers now)<br /> + <a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +111</span>Shouldered me Pelion with its swinging pines,<br /> +The river unrecked, that did its broken flood<br /> +Spurt on his back: before the mountainous shock<br /> + The rankèd gods dislock,<br +/> +Scared to their skies; wide o’er rout-trampled night<br /> +Flew spurned the pebbled stars: those splendours then<br /> + Had tempested on earth, star upon star<br /> + Mounded in ruin, if a longer war<br /> +Had quaked Olympus and cold-fearing men.<br /> + Then did the +ample marge<br /> + And circuit of +thy targe<br /> + Sullenly redden all the vaward +fight,<br /> + Above the +blusterous clash<br /> + Wheeled thy +swung falchion’s flash<br /> + And hewed their forces into +splintered flight.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet ere Olympus thou wast, and a god!<br /> + Though we deny thy nod,<br /> +We cannot spoil thee of thy divinity.<br /> + What know we elder than thee?<br +/> +When thou didst, bursting from the great void’s husk,<br /> +Leap like a lion on the throat o’ the dusk;<br /> + <a name="page112"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 112</span>When the angels rose-chapleted<br /> + Sang each to +other,<br /> + The vaulted blaze overhead<br /> + Of their vast pinions spread,<br +/> + Hailing thee +brother;<br /> +How chaos rolled back from the wonder,<br /> +And the First Morn knelt down to thy visage of thunder!<br /> + Thou didst draw to thy side<br /> + Thy young Auroral bride,<br /> + And lift her veil of night and mystery;<br /> + Tellus with baby hands<br /> + Shook off her swaddling-bands,<br +/> + And from the unswathèd vapours laughed to +thee.</p> +<p class="poetry">Thou twi-form deity, nurse at once and sire!<br +/> + Thou genitor that all things nourishest!<br /> + The earth was suckled at thy shining breast,<br /> +And in her veins is quick thy milky fire.<br /> +Who scarfed her with the morning? and who set<br /> +Upon her brow the day-fall’s carcanet?<br /> + Who queened her front with the +enrondured moon?<br /> + <a name="page113"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 113</span>Who dug night’s jewels from +their vaulty mine<br /> + To dower her, +past an eastern wizard’s dreams,<br /> + When hovering on him through his haschish-swoon,<br +/> + All the rained gems of the old +Tartarian line<br /> +Shiver in lustrous throbbings of tinged flame?<br /> + Whereof a moiety in the +Paolis’ seams<br /> + Statelily builded their Venetian +name.<br /> + Thou hast +enwoofèd her<br /> + An empress of +the air,<br /> +And all her births are propertied by thee:<br /> + Her teeming +centuries<br /> + Drew being from +thine eyes:<br /> +Thou fatt’st the marrow of all quality.</p> +<p class="poetry">Who lit the furnace of the mammoth’s +heart?<br /> + Who shagged him like Pilatus’ ribbèd +flanks?<br /> + Who raised the +columned ranks<br /> +Of that old pre-diluvian forestry,<br /> +Which like a continent torn oppressed the sea,<br /> + When the ancient heavens did in rains depart,<br /> + While the high-dancèd +whirls<br /> +Of the tossed scud made hiss thy drenchèd curls?<br /> + Thou rear’dst the enormous +brood;<br /> + <a name="page114"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 114</span>Who hast with life imbued<br /> + The lion maned in tawny majesty,<br /> + The tiger velvet-barred,<br /> + The stealthy-stepping pard,<br /> + And the lithe panther’s flexuous symmetry.</p> +<p class="poetry">How came the entombèd tree a +light-bearer,<br /> + Though sunk in +lightless lair?<br /> + Friend of the +forgers of earth,<br /> + Mate of the earthquake and +thunders volcanic,<br /> + Clasped in the arms of the forces +Titanic<br /> + Which rock like +a cradle the girth<br /> + + +Of the ether-hung world;<br /> + Swart son of the swarthy mine,<br +/> + When flame on the breath of his +nostrils feeds<br /> + How is his +countenance half-divine,<br /> + Like thee in thy +sanguine weeds?<br /> + Thou gavest him his light,<br /> + Though sepultured in night<br /> + Beneath the dead bones of a perished world;<br /> + Over his prostrate form<br /> + Though cold, and heat, and +storm,<br /> + The mountainous wrack of a creation hurled.<br /> + <a name="page115"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 115</span>Who made the splendid rose<br /> + Saturate with purple glows;<br /> +Cupped to the marge with beauty; a perfume-press<br /> + Whence the wind vintages<br /> +Gushes of warmèd fragrance richer far<br /> + Than all the flavorous ooze of Cyprus’ +vats?<br /> +Lo, in yon gale which waves her green cymar,<br /> + With dusky cheeks burnt red<br /> + She sways her heavy head,<br /> +Drunk with the must of her own odorousness;<br /> + While in a moted trouble the vexed gnats<br /> +Maze, and vibrate, and tease the noontide hush.<br /> + Who girt dissolvèd lightnings in the +grape?<br /> +Summered the opal with an Irised flush?<br /> + Is it not thou that dost the tulip drape,<br /> + And huest the daffodilly,<br /> + Yet who hast snowed the lily,<br +/> +And her frail sister, whom the waters name,<br /> + Dost vestal-vesture ’mid the blaze of June,<br +/> + Cold as the new-sprung girlhood of the moon<br /> +Ere Autumn’s kiss sultry her cheek with flame?<br /> + Thou sway’st thy sceptred +beam<br /> + O’er all delight and +dream,<br /> + <a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +116</span>Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance:<br /> + And like a jocund maid<br /> + In garland-flowers arrayed,<br /> + Before thy ark Earth keeps her sacred dance.</p> +<p class="poetry">And now, O shaken from thine antique throne,<br +/> + And sunken from thy coerule empery,<br /> +Now that the red glare of thy fall is blown<br /> + In smoke and flame about the windy sky,<br /> +Where are the wailing voices that should meet<br /> + From hill, stream, grove, and all of mortal shape<br +/> +Who tread thy gifts, in vineyards as stray feet<br /> + Pulp the globed weight of juiced Iberia’s +grape?<br /> + Where is the threne o’ the +sea?<br /> + And why not dirges thee<br /> +The wind, that sings to himself as he makes stride<br /> + Lonely and terrible on the Andean height?<br /> + Where is the Naiad ’mid her +sworded sedge?<br /> + The Nymph wan-glimmering by her +wan fount’s verge?<br /> +The Dryad at timid gaze by the wood-side?<br /> + The Oread +jutting light<br /> + On one up-strainèd sole from the +rock-ledge?<br /> + The Nereid tip-toe on the scud +o’ the surge,<br /> +<a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>With +whistling tresses dank athwart her face,<br /> +And all her figure poised in lithe Circean grace?<br /> + Why withers their lament?<br /> + Their tresses tear-besprent,<br /> + Have they sighed hence with trailing garment-gem?<br +/> + O sweet, O sad, O fair!<br /> + I catch your flying hair,<br /> + Draw your eyes down to me, and dream on them!</p> +<p class="poetry">A space, and they fleet from me. Must ye +fade—<br /> +O old, essential candours, ye who made<br /> + The earth a living and a radiant thing—<br /> + And leave her corpse in our +strained, cheated arms?<br /> + Lo ever thus, when Song with +chorded charms<br /> +Draws from dull death his lost Eurydice,<br /> + Lo ever thus, even at consummating,<br /> + Even in the swooning minute that claims her his,<br +/> + Even as he trembles to the impassioned kiss<br /> + Of reincarnate Beauty, his control<br /> + Clasps the cold body, and foregoes the soul!<br /> + Whatso looks lovelily<br /> +Is but the rainbow on life’s weeping rain.<br /> +Why have we longings of immortal pain,<br /> +<a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>And all +we long for mortal? Woe is me,<br /> +And all our chants but chaplet some decay,<br /> +As mine this vanishing—nay, vanished Day.<br /> +The low sky-line dusks to a leaden hue,<br /> + No rift disturbs the heavy shade and chill,<br /> +Save one, where the charred firmament lets through<br /> + The scorching dazzle of Heaven; ’gainst which +the hill,<br /> + Out-flattened sombrely,<br /> +Stands black as life against eternity.<br /> + Against eternity?<br /> + A rifting light in me<br /> + Burns through the leaden broodings of the mind:<br +/> + O blessèd Sun, thy state<br +/> + Uprisen or derogate<br /> + Dafts me no more with doubt; I seek and find.</p> +<p class="poetry"> If with +exultant tread<br /> + Thou foot the +Eastern sea,<br /> + Or like a golden +bee<br /> + Sting the West to angry red,<br /> + Thou dost image, thou dost +follow<br /> + That King-Maker +of Creation,<br /> + <a name="page119"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 119</span>Who, ere Hellas hailed Apollo,<br /> + Gave thee, +angel-god, thy station;<br /> +Thou art of Him a type memorial.<br /> + Like Him thou hang’st in dreadful pomp of +blood<br /> + Upon thy Western rood;<br /> + And His stained brow did veil like thine to +night,<br /> + Yet lift once more Its light,<br +/> +And, risen, again departed from our ball,<br /> +But when It set on earth arose in Heaven.<br /> +Thus hath He unto death His beauty given:<br /> +And so of all which form inheriteth<br /> + The fall doth pass the rise in +worth;<br /> +For birth hath in itself the germ of death,<br /> + But death hath in itself the germ of birth.<br /> +It is the falling acorn buds the tree,<br /> +The falling rain that bears the greenery,<br /> + The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise.<br /> + For there is nothing lives but something dies,<br /> +And there is nothing dies but something lives.<br /> + Till skies be fugitives,<br /> +Till Time, the hidden root of change, updries,<br /> +Are Birth and Death inseparable on earth;<br /> +For they are twain yet one, and Death is Birth.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page120"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 120</span><span +class="GutSmall">AFTER-STRAIN.</span></p> +<p class="poetry">Now with wan ray that other sun of Song<br /> + Sets in the bleakening waters of my soul:<br /> +One step, and lo! the Cross stands gaunt and long<br /> + ’Twixt me and yet bright skies, a presaged +dole.</p> +<p class="poetry">Even so, O Cross! thine is the victory.<br /> + Thy roots are fast within our fairest fields;<br /> +Brightness may emanate in Heaven from thee,<br /> + Here thy dread symbol only shadow yields.</p> +<p class="poetry">Of reapèd joys thou art the heavy +sheaf<br /> + Which must be lifted, though the reaper groan;<br /> +Yea, we may cry till Heaven’s great ear be deaf,<br /> + But we must bear thee, and must bear alone.</p> +<p class="poetry">Vain were a Simon; of the Antipodes<br /> + Our night not borrows the superfluous day.<br /> +Yet woe to him that from his burden flees!<br /> + Crushed in the fall of what he cast away.</p> +<p class="poetry">Therefore, O tender Lady, Queen Mary,<br /> + Thou gentleness that dost enmoss and drape<br /> +The Cross’s rigorous austerity,<br /> + Wipe thou the blood from wounds that needs must +gape.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +121</span>‘Lo, though suns rise and set, but crosses +stay,<br /> + I leave thee ever,’ saith she, ‘light of +cheer.’<br /> +’Tis so: yon sky still thinks upon the Day,<br /> + And showers aërial blossoms on his bier.</p> +<p class="poetry">Yon cloud with wrinkled fire is edgèd +sharp;<br /> + And once more welling through the air, ah me!<br /> +How the sweet viol plains him to the harp,<br /> + Whose pangèd sobbings throng +tumultuously.</p> +<p class="poetry">Oh, this Medusa-pleasure with her stings!<br /> + This essence of all suffering, which is joy!<br /> +I am not thankless for the spell it brings,<br /> + Though tears must be told down for the charmed +toy.</p> +<p class="poetry">No; while soul, sky, and music bleed +together,<br /> + Let me give thanks even for those griefs in me,<br +/> +The restless windward stirrings of whose feather<br /> + Prove them the brood of immortality.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +122</span>My soul is quitted of death-neighbouring swoon,<br /> + Who shall not slake her immitigable scars<br /> +Until she hear ‘My sister!’ from the moon,<br /> + And take the kindred kisses of the stars.</p> +<h3><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>A +CAPTAIN OF SONG</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">(ON A +PORTRAIT OF COVENTRY PATMORE</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">BY J. S. SARGENT, R.A.)</span></p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Look</span> on him. +This is he whose works ye know;<br /> +Ye have adored, thanked, loved him,—no, not him!<br /> +But that of him which proud portentous woe<br /> +To its own grim<br /> +Presentment was not potent to subdue,<br /> +Nor all the reek of Erebus to dim.<br /> +This, and not him, ye knew.<br /> +Look on him now. Love, worship if ye can,<br /> +The very man.<br /> +Ye may not. He has trod the ways afar,<br /> +The fatal ways of parting and farewell,<br /> +Where all the paths of painèd greatness are;<br /> +Where round and always round<br /> +The abhorrèd words resound,<br /> +The words accursed of comfortable men,—<br /> +‘For ever’; and infinite glooms intolerable<br /> +With spacious replication give again,<br /> +And hollow jar,<br /> +<a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span>The +words abhorred of comfortable men.<br /> +You the stern pities of the gods debar<br /> +To drink where he has drunk<br /> +The moonless mere of sighs,<br /> +And pace the places infamous to tell,<br /> +Where God wipes not the tears from any eyes,<br /> +Where-through the ways of dreadful greatness are<br /> +He knows the perilous rout<br /> +That all those ways about<br /> +Sink into doom, and sinking, still are sunk.<br /> +And if his sole and solemn term thereout<br /> +He has attained, to love ye shall not dare<br /> +One who has journeyed there;<br /> +Ye shall mark well<br /> +The mighty cruelties which arm and mar<br /> +That countenance of control,<br /> +With minatory warnings of a soul<br /> +That hath to its own selfhood been most fell,<br /> +And is not weak to spare:<br /> +And lo, that hair<br /> +Is blanchèd with the travel-heats of hell.</p> +<p class="poetry">If any be<br /> +That shall with rites of reverent piety<br /> +<a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>Approach +this strong<br /> +Sad soul of sovereign Song,<br /> +Nor fail and falter with the intimidate throng;<br /> +If such there be,<br /> +These, these are only they<br /> +Have trod the self-same way;<br /> +The never-twice-revolving portals heard<br /> +Behind them clang infernal, and that word<br /> +Abhorrèd sighed of kind mortality,<br /> +As he—<br /> +Ah, even as he!</p> +<h3><a name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +126</span>AGAINST URANIA</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Lo</span> I, Song’s +most true lover, plain me sore<br /> +That worse than other women she can deceive,<br /> +For she being goddess, I have given her more<br /> +Than mortal ladies from their loves receive;<br /> +And first of her embrace<br /> +She was not coy, and gracious were her ways,<br /> +That I forgot all virgins to adore;<br /> +Nor did I greatly grieve<br /> +To bear through arid days<br /> +The pretty foil of her divine delays;<br /> +And one by one to cast<br /> +Life, love, and health,<br /> +Content, and wealth,<br /> +Before her, thinking ever on her praise,<br /> +Until at last<br /> +Nought had I left she would be gracious for.<br /> +<a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>Now of +her cozening I complain me sore,<br /> +Seeing her uses,<br /> +That still, more constantly she is pursued,<br /> +And straitlier wooed,<br /> +Her only-adorèd favour more refuses,<br /> +And leaves me to implore<br /> +Remembered boon in bitterness of blood.</p> +<p class="poetry">From mortal woman thou may’st know full +well,<br /> +O poet, that dost deem the fair and tall<br /> +Urania of her ways not mutable,<br /> +When things shall thee befall<br /> +What thou art toilèd in her sweet, wild spell.<br /> +Do they strow for thy feet<br /> +A little tender favour and deceit<br /> +Over the sudden mouth of hidden hell?—<br /> +As more intolerable<br /> +Her pit, as her first kiss is heavenlier-sweet.<br /> +Are they, the more thou sigh,<br /> +Still the more watchful-cruel to deny?—<br /> +Know this, that in her service thou shalt learn<br /> +How harder than the heart of woman is<br /> +The immortal cruelty<br /> +Of the high goddesses.<br /> +<a name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 128</span>True is +his witness who doth witness this,<br /> +Whose gaze too early fell—<br /> +Nor thence shall turn,<br /> +Nor in those fires shall cease to weep and burn—<br /> +Upon her ruinous eyes and ineludible.</p> +<h3><a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>AN +ANTHEM OF EARTH</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">PRŒMION</span></p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Immeasurable</span> +Earth!<br /> +Through the loud vast and populacy of Heaven,<br /> +Tempested with gold schools of ponderous orbs,<br /> +That cleav’st with deep-revolting harmonies<br /> +Passage perpetual, and behind thee draw’st<br /> +A furrow sweet, a cometary wake<br /> +Of trailing music! What large effluence,<br /> +Not sole the cloudy sighing of thy seas,<br /> +Nor thy blue-coifing air, encases thee<br /> +From prying of the stars, and the broad shafts<br /> +Of thrusting sunlight tempers? For, dropped near<br /> +From my removèd tour in the serene<br /> +Of utmost contemplation, I scent lives.<br /> +This is the efflux of thy rocks and fields,<br /> +And wind-cuffed forestage, and the souls of men,<br /> +And aura of all treaders over thee;<br /> +<a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 130</span>A +sentient exhalation, wherein close<br /> +The odorous lives of many-throated flowers,<br /> +And each thing’s mettle effused; that so thou +wear’st,<br /> +Even like a breather on a frosty morn,<br /> +Thy proper suspiration. For I know,<br /> +Albeit, with custom-dulled perceivingness,<br /> +Nestled against thy breast, my sense not take<br /> +The breathings of thy nostrils, there’s no tree,<br /> +No grain of dust, nor no cold-seeming stone,<br /> +But wears a fume of its circumfluous self.<br /> +Thine own life and the lives of all that live,<br /> +The issue of thy loins,<br /> +Is this thy gaberdine,<br /> +Wherein thou walkest through thy large demesne<br /> +And sphery pleasances,—<br /> +Amazing the unstalèd eyes of Heaven,<br /> +And us that still a precious seeing have<br /> +Behind this dim and mortal jelly.<br /> + + +Ah!<br /> +If not in all too late and frozen a day<br /> +I come in rearward of the throats of song,<br /> +Unto the deaf sense of the agèd year<br /> +Singing with doom upon me; yet give heed!<br /> +<a name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 131</span>One poet +with sick pinion, that still feels<br /> +Breath through the Orient gateways closing fast,<br /> +Fast closing t’ward the undelighted night!</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">ANTHEM</span></p> +<p class="poetry">In nescientness, in nescientness,<br /> +Mother, we put these fleshly lendings on<br /> +Thou yield’st to thy poor children; took thy gift<br /> +Of life, which must, in all the after-days,<br /> +Be craved again with tears,—<br /> +With fresh and still-petitionary tears.<br /> +Being once bound thine almsmen for that gift,<br /> +We are bound to beggary, nor our own can call<br /> +The journal dole of customary life,<br /> +But after suit obsequious for’t to thee.<br /> +Indeed this flesh, O Mother,<br /> +A beggar’s gown, a client’s badging,<br /> +We find, which from thy hands we simply took,<br /> +Nought dreaming of the after penury,<br /> +In nescientness.</p> +<p class="poetry">In a little joy, in a little joy,<br /> +We wear awhile thy sore insignia,<br /> +<a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 132</span>Nor know +thy heel o’ the neck. O Mother! Mother!<br /> +Then what use knew I of thy solemn robes,<br /> +But as a child, to play with them? I bade thee<br /> +Leave thy great husbandries, thy grave designs,<br /> +Thy tedious state which irked my ignorant years,<br /> +Thy winter-watches, suckling of the grain,<br /> +Severe premeditation taciturn<br /> +Upon the brooded Summer, thy chill cares,<br /> +And all thy ministries majestical,<br /> +To sport with me, thy darling. Thought I not<br /> +Thou set’st thy seasons forth processional<br /> +To pamper me with pageant,—thou thyself<br /> +My fellow-gamester, appanage of mine arms?<br /> +Then what wild Dionysia I, young Bacchanal,<br /> +Danced in thy lap! Ah for thy gravity!<br /> +Then, O Earth, thou rang’st beneath me,<br /> +Rocked to Eastward, rocked to Westward,<br /> +Even with the shifted<br /> +Poise and footing of my thought!<br /> +I brake through thy doors of sunset,<br /> +Ran before the hooves of sunrise,<br /> +<a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>Shook +thy matron tresses down in fancies<br /> +Wild and wilful<br /> +As a poet’s hand could twine them;<br /> +Caught in my fantasy’s crystal chalice<br /> +The Bow, as its cataract of colours<br /> +Plashed to thee downward;<br /> +Then when thy circuit swung to nightward,<br /> +Night the abhorrèd, night was a new dawning,<br /> +Celestial dawning<br /> +Over the ultimate marges of the soul;<br /> +Dusk grew turbulent with fire before me,<br /> +And like a windy arras waved with dreams.<br /> +Sleep I took not for my bedfellow,<br /> +Who could waken<br /> +To a revel, an inexhaustible<br /> +Wassail of orgiac imageries;<br /> +Then while I wore thy sore insignia<br /> +In a little joy, O Earth, in a little joy;<br /> +Loving thy beauty in all creatures born of thee,<br /> +Children, and the sweet-essenced body of woman;<br /> +Feeling not yet upon my neck thy foot,<br /> +But breathing warm of thee as infants breathe<br /> +New from their mother’s morning bosom. So I,<br /> +Risen from thee, restless winnower of the heaven,<br /> +<a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 134</span>Most +Hermes-like, did keep<br /> +My vital and resilient path, and felt<br /> +The play of wings about my fledgèd heel—<br /> +Sure on the verges of precipitous dream,<br /> +Swift in its springing<br /> +From jut to jut of inaccessible fancies,<br /> +In a little joy.</p> +<p class="poetry">In a little thought, in a little thought,<br /> +We stand and eye thee in a grave dismay,<br /> +With sad and doubtful questioning, when first<br /> +Thou speak’st to us as men: like sons who hear<br /> +Newly their mother’s history, unthought<br /> +Before, and say—‘She is not as we dreamed:<br /> +Ah me! we are beguiled!’ What art thou, then,<br /> +That art not our conceiving? Art thou not<br /> +Too old for thy young children? Or perchance,<br /> +Keep’st thou a youth perpetual-burnishable<br /> +Beyond thy sons decrepit? It is long<br /> +Since Time was first a fledgling;<br /> +Yet thou may’st be but as a pendant bulla<br /> +Against his stripling bosom swung. Alack!<br /> +For that we seem indeed<br /> +<a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>To have +slipped the world’s great leaping-time, and come<br /> +Upon thy pinched and dozing days: these weeds,<br /> +These corporal leavings, thou not cast’st us new,<br /> +Fresh from thy craftship, like the lilies’ coats,<br /> +But foist’st us off<br /> +With hasty tarnished piecings negligent,<br /> +Snippets and waste<br /> +From old ancestral wearings,<br /> +That have seen sorrier usage; remainder-flesh<br /> +After our father’s surfeits; nay with chinks,<br /> +Some of us, that if speech may have free leave<br /> +Our souls go out at elbows. We are sad<br /> +With more than our sires’ heaviness, and with<br /> +More than their weakness weak; we shall not be<br /> +Mighty with all their mightiness, nor shall not<br /> +Rejoice with all their joy. Ay, Mother! Mother!<br /> +What is this Man, thy darling kissed and cuffed,<br /> +Thou lustingly engender’st,<br /> +To sweat, and make his brag, and rot,<br /> +Crowned with all honour and all shamefulness?<br /> +From nightly towers<br /> +He dogs the secret footsteps of the heavens,<br /> +<a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 136</span>Sifts in +his hands the stars, weighs them as gold-dust,<br /> +And yet is he successive unto nothing<br /> +But patrimony of a little mould,<br /> +And entail of four planks. Thou hast made his mouth<br /> +Avid of all dominion and all mightiness,<br /> +All sorrow, all delight, all topless grandeurs,<br /> +All beauty, and all starry majesties,<br /> +And dim transtellar things;—even that it may,<br /> +Filled in the ending with a puff of dust,<br /> +Confess—‘It is enough.’ The world left +empty<br /> +What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded<br /> +For pride, for potency, infinity,<br /> +All heights, all deeps, and all immensities,<br /> +Arrased with purple like the house of kings,—<br /> +To stall the grey-rat, and the carrion-worm<br /> +Statelily lodge. Mother of mysteries!<br /> +Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues,<br /> +Who bringest forth no saying yet so dark<br /> +As we ourselves, thy darkest! We the young,<br /> +In a little thought, in a little thought,<br /> +At last confront thee, and ourselves in thee,<br /> +<a name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span>And wake +disgarmented of glory: as one<br /> +On a mount standing, and against him stands,<br /> +On the mount adverse, crowned with westering rays,<br /> +The golden sun, and they two brotherly<br /> +Gaze each on each;<br /> +He faring down<br /> +To the dull vale, his Godhead peels from him<br /> +Till he can scarcely spurn the pebble—<br /> +For nothingness of new-found mortality—<br /> +That mutinies against his gallèd foot.<br /> +Littly he sets him to the daily way,<br /> +With all around the valleys growing grave,<br /> +And known things changed and strange; but he holds on,<br /> +Though all the land of light be widowèd,<br /> +In a little thought.</p> +<p class="poetry">In a little strength, in a little strength,<br +/> +We affront thy unveiled face intolerable,<br /> +Which yet we do sustain.<br /> +Though I the Orient never more shall feel<br /> +Break like a clash of cymbals, and my heart<br /> +Clang through my shaken body like a gong;<br /> +<a name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>Nor ever +more with spurted feet shall tread<br /> +I’ the winepresses of song; nought’s truly lost<br /> +That moulds to sprout forth gain: now I have on me<br /> +The high Phœbean priesthood, and that craves<br /> +An unrash utterance; not with flaunted hem<br /> +May the Muse enter in behind the veil,<br /> +Nor, though we hold the sacred dances good,<br /> +Shall the holy Virgins mænadize: ruled lips<br /> +Befit a votaress Muse.<br /> +Thence with no mutable, nor no gelid love,<br /> +I keep, O Earth, thy worship,<br /> +Though life slow, and the sobering Genius change<br /> +To a lamp his gusty torch. What though no more <br /> +Athwart its roseal glow<br /> +Thy face look forth triumphal? Thou put’st on<br /> +Strange sanctities of pathos; like this knoll<br /> +Made derelict of day,<br /> +Couchant and shadowèd<br /> +Under dim Vesper’s overloosened hair:<br /> +This, where embossèd with the half-blown seed<br /> +The solemn purple thistle stands in grass<br /> +Grey as an exhalation, when the bank<br /> +Holds mist for water in the nights of Fall.<br /> +<a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>Not to +the boy, although his eyes be pure<br /> +As the prime snowdrop is,<br /> +Ere the rash Phœbus break her cloister<br /> +Of sanctimonious snow;<br /> +Or Winter fasting sole on Himalay<br /> +Since those dove-nuncioed days<br /> +When Asia rose from bathing;<br /> +Not to such eyes,<br /> +Uneuphrasied with tears, the hierarchical<br /> +Vision lies unoccult, rank under rank<br /> +Through all create down-wheeling, from the Throne<br /> +Even to the bases of the pregnant ooze.<br /> +This is the enchantment, this the exaltation,<br /> +The all-compensating wonder,<br /> +Giving to common things wild kindred<br /> +With the gold-tesserate floors of Jove;<br /> +Linking such heights and such humilities<br /> +Hand in hand in ordinal dances,<br /> +That I do think my tread,<br /> +Stirring the blossoms in the meadow-grass,<br /> +Flickers the unwithering stars.<br /> +This to the shunless fardel of the world<br /> +Nerves my uncurbèd back; that I endure,<br /> +<a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 140</span>The +monstrous Temple’s moveless caryatid,<br /> +With wide eyes calm upon the whole of things,<br /> +In a little strength.</p> +<p class="poetry">In a little sight, in a little sight,<br /> +We learn from what in thee is credible<br /> +The incredible, with bloody clutch and feet<br /> +Clinging the painful juts of jaggèd faith.<br /> +Science, old noser in its prideful straw,<br /> +That with anatomising scalpel tents<br /> +Its three-inch of thy skin, and brags—‘All’s +bare,’<br /> +The eyeless worm, that boring works the soil,<br /> +Making it capable for the crops of God;<br /> +Against its own dull will<br /> +Ministers poppies to our troublous thought,<br /> +A Balaam come to prophecy,—parables,<br /> +Nor of its parable itself is ware,<br /> +Grossly unwotting; all things has expounded<br /> +Reflux and influx, counts the sepulchre<br /> +The seminary of being, and extinction<br /> +The Ceres of existence: it discovers<br /> +Life in putridity, vigour in decay;<br /> +Dissolution even, and disintegration,<br /> +Which in our dull thoughts symbolise disorder,<br /> +<a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 141</span>Finds in +God’s thoughts irrefragable order,<br /> +And admirable the manner of our corruption<br /> +As of our health. It grafts upon the cypress<br /> +The tree of Life—Death dies on his own dart<br /> +Promising to our ashes perpetuity,<br /> +And to our perishable elements<br /> +Their proper imperishability; extracting<br /> +Medicaments from out mortality<br /> +Against too mortal cogitation; till<br /> +Even of the caput mortuum we do thus<br /> +Make a memento vivere. To such uses<br /> +I put the blinding knowledge of the fool,<br /> +Who in no order seeth ordinance;<br /> +Nor thrust my arm in nature shoulder-high,<br /> +And cry—‘There’s nought beyond!’ +How should I so,<br /> +That cannot with these arms of mine engirdle<br /> +All which I am; that am a foreigner<br /> +In mine own region? Who the chart shall draw<br /> +Of the strange courts and vaulty labyrinths,<br /> +The spacious tenements and wide pleasances,<br /> +Innumerable corridors far-withdrawn,<br /> +Where I wander darkling, of myself?<br /> +Darkling I wander, nor I dare explore<br /> +<a name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>The long +arcane of those dim catacombs,<br /> +Where the rat memory does its burrows make,<br /> +Close-seal them as I may, and my stolen tread<br /> +Starts populace, a <i>gens lucifuga</i>;<br /> +That too strait seems my mind my mind to hold,<br /> +And I myself incontinent of me.<br /> +Then go I, my foul-venting ignorance<br /> +With scabby sapience plastered, aye forsooth!<br /> +Clap my wise foot-rule to the walls o’ the world,<br /> +And vow—<i>A goodly house</i>, <i>but something +ancient</i>,<br /> +<i>And I can find no Master</i>? Rather, nay,<br /> +By baffled seeing, something I divine<br /> +Which baffles, and a seeing set beyond;<br /> +And so with strenuous gazes sounding down,<br /> +Like to the day-long porer on a stream,<br /> +Whose last look is his deepest, I beside<br /> +This slow perpetual Time stand patiently,<br /> +In a little sight.</p> +<p class="poetry">In a little dust, in a little dust,<br /> +Earth, thou reclaim’st us, who do all our lives<br /> +Find of thee but Egyptian villeinage.<br /> +Thou dost this body, this enhavocked realm,<br /> +Subject to ancient and ancestral shadows;<br /> +<a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +143</span>Descended passions sway it; it is distraught<br /> +With ghostly usurpation, dinned and fretted<br /> +With the still-tyrannous dead; a haunted tenement,<br /> +Peopled from barrows and outworn ossuaries.<br /> +Thou giv’st us life not half so willingly<br /> +As thou undost thy giving; thou that teem’st<br /> +The stealthy terror of the sinuous pard,<br /> +The lion maned with curlèd puissance,<br /> +The serpent, and all fair strong beasts of ravin,<br /> +Thyself most fair and potent beast of ravin;<br /> +And thy great eaters thou, the greatest, eat’st.<br /> +Thou hast devoured mammoth and mastodon,<br /> +And many a floating bank of fangs,<br /> +The scaly scourges of thy primal brine,<br /> +And the tower-crested plesiosaure.<br /> +Thou fill’st thy mouth with nations, gorgest slow<br /> +On purple æons of kings; man’s hulking towers<br /> +Are carcase for thee, and to modern sun<br /> +Disglutt’st their splintered bones.<br /> +Rabble of Pharaohs and Arsacidæ<br /> +Keep their cold house within thee; thou hast sucked down<br /> +How many Ninevehs and Hecatompyloi,<br /> +<a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 144</span>And +perished cities whose great phantasmata<br /> +O’erbrow the silent citizens of Dis:—<br /> +Hast not thy fill?<br /> +Tarry awhile, lean Earth, for thou shalt drink,<br /> +Even till thy dull throat sicken,<br /> +The draught thou grow’st most fat on; hear’st thou +not<br /> +The world’s knives bickering in their sheaths? O +patience!<br /> +Much offal of a foul world comes thy way,<br /> +And man’s superfluous cloud shall soon be laid<br /> +In a little blood.</p> +<p class="poetry">In a little peace, in a little peace,<br /> +Thou dost rebate thy rigid purposes<br /> +Of imposed being, and relenting, mend’st<br /> +Too much, with nought. The westering Phoebus’ +horse<br /> +Paws i’ the lucent dust as when he shocked<br /> +The East with rising; O how may I trace<br /> +In this decline that morning when we did<br /> +Sport ’twixt the claws of newly-whelped existence,<br /> +Which had not yet learned rending? we did then<br /> +Divinely stand, not knowing yet against us<br /> +<a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>Sentence +had passed of life, nor commutation<br /> +Petitioning into death. What’s he that of<br /> +The Free State argues? Tellus! bid him stoop,<br /> +Even where the low <i>hic jacet</i> answers him;<br /> +Thus low, O Man! there’s freedom’s seignory,<br /> +Tellus’ most reverend sole free commonweal,<br /> +And model deeply-policied: there none<br /> +Stands on precedence, nor ambitiously<br /> +Woos the impartial worm, whose favours kiss<br /> +With liberal largesse all; there each is free<br /> +To be e’en what he must, which here did strive<br /> +So much to be he could not; there all do<br /> +Their uses just, with no flown questioning.<br /> +To be took by the hand of equal earth<br /> +They doff her livery, slip to the worm,<br /> +Which lacqueys them, their suits of maintenance,<br /> +And that soiled workaday apparel cast,<br /> +Put on condition: Death’s ungentle buffet<br /> +Alone makes ceremonial manumission;<br /> +So are the heavenly statutes set, and those<br /> +Uranian tables of the primal Law.<br /> +In a little peace, in a little peace,<br /> +Like fierce beasts that a common thirst makes brothers,<br /> +<a name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 146</span>We draw +together to one hid dark lake;<br /> +In a little peace, in a little peace,<br /> +We drain with all our burthens of dishonour<br /> +Into the cleansing sands o’ the thirsty grave.<br /> +The fiery pomps, brave exhalations,<br /> +And all the glistering shows o’ the seeming world,<br /> +Which the sight aches at, we unwinking see<br /> +Through the smoked glass of Death; Death, wherewith’s +fined<br /> +The muddy wine of life; that earth doth purge<br /> +Of her plethora of man; Death, that doth flush<br /> +The cumbered gutters of humanity;<br /> +Nothing, of nothing king, with front uncrowned,<br /> +Whose hand holds crownets; playmate swart o’ the strong;<br +/> +Tenebrous moon that flux and refluence draws<br /> +Of the high-tided man; skull-housèd asp<br /> +That stings the heel of kings; true Fount of Youth,<br /> +Where he that dips is deathless; being’s drone-pipe;<br /> +Whose nostril turns to blight the shrivelled stars,<br /> +And thicks the lusty breathing of the sun;<br /> +Pontifical Death, that doth the crevasse bridge<br /> +To the steep and trifid God; one mortal birth<br /> +<a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>That +broker is of immortality.<br /> +Under this dreadful brother uterine,<br /> +This kinsman feared, Tellus, behold me come,<br /> +Thy son stern-nursed; who mortal-motherlike,<br /> +To turn thy weanlings’ mouth averse, embitter’st<br +/> +Thine over-childed breast. Now, mortal-sonlike,<br /> +I thou hast suckled, Mother, I at last<br /> +Shall sustenant be to thee. Here I untrammel,<br /> +Here I pluck loose the body’s cerementing,<br /> +And break the tomb of life; here I shake off<br /> +The bur o’ the world, man’s congregation shun,<br /> +And to the antique order of the dead<br /> +I take the tongueless vows: my cell is set<br /> +Here in thy bosom; my little trouble is ended<br /> +In a little peace.</p> +<h2><a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +149</span>MISCELLANEOUS POEMS</h2> +<h3><a name="page151"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +151</span>‘EX ORE INFANTIUM’</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Little</span> Jesus, wast +Thou shy<br /> +Once, and just so small as I?<br /> +And what did it feel like to be<br /> +Out of Heaven, and just like me?<br /> +Didst Thou sometimes think of <i>there</i>,<br /> +And ask where all the angels were?<br /> +I should think that I would cry<br /> +For my house all made of sky;<br /> +I would look about the air,<br /> +And wonder where my angels were;<br /> +And at waking ’twould distress me—<br /> +Not an angel there to dress me!<br /> +Hadst Thou ever any toys,<br /> +Like us little girls and boys?<br /> +And didst Thou play in Heaven with all<br /> +The angels that were not too tall,<br /> +With stars for marbles? Did the things<br /> +Play <i>Can you see me</i>? through their wings?<br /> +<a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 152</span>And did +Thy Mother let Thee spoil<br /> +Thy robes, with playing on <i>our</i> soil?<br /> +How nice to have them always new<br /> +In Heaven, because ’twas quite clean blue!</p> +<p class="poetry">Didst Thou kneel at night to pray,<br /> +And didst Thou join Thy hands, this way?<br /> +And did they tire sometimes, being young,<br /> +And make the prayer seem very long?<br /> +And dost Thou like it best, that we<br /> +Should join our hands to pray to Thee?<br /> +I used to think, before I knew,<br /> +The prayer not said unless we do.<br /> +And did Thy Mother at the night<br /> +Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right?<br /> +And didst Thou feel quite good in bed,<br /> +Kissed, and sweet, and thy prayers said?</p> +<p class="poetry">Thou canst not have forgotten all<br /> +That it feels like to be small:<br /> +And Thou know’st I cannot pray<br /> +To Thee in my father’s way—<br /> +When Thou wast so little, say,<br /> +Couldst Thou talk Thy Father’s way?—<br /> +<a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 153</span>So, a +little Child, come down<br /> +And hear a child’s tongue like Thy own;<br /> +Take me by the hand and walk,<br /> +And listen to my baby-talk.<br /> +To Thy Father show my prayer<br /> +(He will look, Thou art so fair),<br /> +And say: ‘O Father, I, Thy Son,<br /> +Bring the prayer of a little one.’</p> +<p class="poetry">And He will smile, that children’s +tongue<br /> +Has not changed since Thou wast young!</p> +<h3><a name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 154</span>A +QUESTION</h3> +<p class="poetry">O <span class="smcap">bird</span> with heart of +wassail,<br /> + That toss the Bacchic branch,<br /> +And slip your shaken music,<br /> + An elfin avalanche;</p> +<p class="poetry">Come tell me, O tell me,<br /> + My poet of the blue!<br /> +What’s <i>your</i> thought of me, Sweet?—<br /> + Here’s <i>my</i> thought of you.</p> +<p class="poetry">A small thing, a wee thing,<br /> + A brown fleck of nought;<br /> +With winging and singing<br /> + That who could have thought?</p> +<p class="poetry">A small thing, a wee thing,<br /> + A brown amaze withal,<br /> +That fly a pitch more azure<br /> + Because you’re so small.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +155</span>Bird, I’m a small thing—<br /> + My angel descries;<br /> +With winging and singing<br /> + That who could surmise?</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah, small things, ah, wee things,<br /> + Are the poets all,<br /> +Whose tour’s the more azure<br /> + Because they’re so small.</p> +<p class="poetry">The angels hang watching<br /> + The tiny men-things:—<br /> +‘The dear speck of flesh, see,<br /> + With such daring wings!</p> +<p class="poetry">‘Come, tell us, O tell us,<br /> + Thou strange mortality!<br /> +What’s <i>thy</i> thought of us, Dear?—<br /> + Here’s <i>our</i> thought of thee.’</p> +<p class="poetry">‘Alack! you tall angels,<br /> + I can’t think so high!<br /> +I can’t think what it feels like<br /> + Not to be I.’</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +156</span>Come tell me, O tell me,<br /> + My poet of the blue!<br /> +What’s <i>your</i> thought of me, Sweet?—<br /> + Here’s <i>my</i> thought of you.</p> +<h3><a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +157</span>FIELD-FLOWER</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">A PHANTASY</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">God</span> took a fit of +Paradise-wind,<br /> + A slip of coerule weather,<br /> +A thought as simple as Himself,<br /> + And ravelled them together.<br /> +Unto His eyes He held it there,<br /> +To teach it gazing debonair<br /> + With memory of what, perdie,<br /> +A God’s young innocences were.<br /> +His fingers pushed it through the sod—<br /> +It came up redolent of God,<br /> +Garrulous of the eyes of God<br /> + To all the breezes near it;<br /> +Musical of the mouth of God<br /> + To all had eyes to hear it;<br /> +Mystical with the mirth of God,<br /> + That glow-like did ensphere it.<br /> + <a name="page158"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. +158</span><i>And</i>—‘<i>Babble</i>! <i>babble</i>! +<i>babble</i>!’ <i>said</i>;<br /> + ‘<i>I’ll tell the +whole world one day</i>!’<br /> + <i>There was no blossom half so +glad</i>,<br /> + <i>Since sun of +Christ’s first Sunday</i>.</p> +<p class="poetry">A poet took a flaw of pain,<br /> + A hap of skiey pleasure,<br /> +A thought had in his cradle lain,<br /> + And mingled them in measure.<br /> +That chrism he laid upon his eyes,<br /> +And lips, and heart, for euphrasies,<br /> + That he might see, feel, sing, perdie,<br /> +The simple things that are the wise.<br /> +Beside the flower he held his ways,<br /> +And leaned him to it gaze for gaze—<br /> +He took its meaning, gaze for gaze,<br /> + As baby looks on baby;<br /> +Its meaning passed into his gaze,<br /> + Native as meaning may be;<br /> +He rose with all his shining gaze<br /> + As children’s eyes at play be.<br /> + +<i>And</i>—‘<i>Babble</i>! <i>babble</i>! +<i>babble</i>!’ <i>said</i>;<br /> + ‘<i>I’ll tell the +whole world one day</i>!’<br /> + <i>There was no poet half so +glad</i>,<br /> + <i>Since man +grew God that Sunday</i>.</p> +<h3><a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 159</span>THE +CLOUD’S SWAN-SONG</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">There</span> is a parable +in the pathless cloud,<br /> +There’s prophecy in heaven,—they did not lie,<br /> +The Chaldee shepherds; sealèd from the proud,<br /> +To cheer the weighted heart that mates the seeing eye.</p> +<p class="poetry">A lonely man, oppressed with lonely ills,<br /> +And all the glory fallen from my song,<br /> +Here do I walk among the windy hills,<br /> +The wind and I keep both one monotoning tongue.</p> +<p class="poetry">Like grey clouds one by one my songs upsoar<br +/> +Over my soul’s cold peaks; and one by one<br /> +They loose their little rain, and are no more;<br /> +And whether well or ill, to tell me there is none.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +160</span>For ’tis an alien tongue, of alien things,<br /> +From all men’s care, how miserably apart!<br /> +Even my friends say: ‘Of what is this he sings?’<br +/> +And barren is my song, and barren is my heart.</p> +<p class="poetry">For who can work, unwitting his work’s +worth?<br /> +Better, meseems, to know the work for naught,<br /> +Turn my sick course back to the kindly earth,<br /> +And leave to ampler plumes the jetting tops of thought.</p> +<p class="poetry">And visitations, that do often use,<br /> +Remote, unhappy, inauspicious sense<br /> +Of doom, and poets widowed of their muse,<br /> +And what dark ’gan, dark ended, in me did commence.</p> +<p class="poetry">I thought of spirit wronged by mortal ills,<br +/> +And my flesh rotting on my fate’s dull stake;<br /> +And how self-scornèd they the bounty fills<br /> +Of others, and the bread, even of their dearest, take.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +161</span>I thought of Keats, that died in perfect time,<br /> +In predecease of his just-sickening song;<br /> +Of him that set, wrapt in his radiant rhyme,<br /> +Sunlike in sea. Life longer had been life too long.</p> +<p class="poetry">But I, exanimate of quick Poesy,—<br /> +O then, no more but even a soulless corse!<br /> +Nay, my Delight dies not; ’tis I should be<br /> +Her dead, a stringless harp on which she had no force.</p> +<p class="poetry">Of my wild lot I thought; from place to +place,<br /> +Apollo’s song-bowed Scythian, I go on;<br /> +Making in all my home, with pliant ways,<br /> +But, provident of change, putting forth root in none.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now, with starved brain, sick body, patience +galled<br /> +With fardels even to wincing; from fair sky<br /> +Fell sudden little rain, scarce to be called<br /> +A shower, which of the instant was gone wholly by.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +162</span>What cloud thus died I saw not; heaven was fair.<br /> +Methinks my angel plucked my locks: I bowed<br /> +My spirit, shamed; and looking in the air:—<br /> +‘Even so,’ I said, ‘even so, my brother the +good Cloud?’</p> +<p class="poetry">It was a pilgrim of the fields of air,<br /> +Its home was allwheres the wind left it rest,<br /> +And in a little forth again did fare,<br /> +And in all places was a stranger and a guest.</p> +<p class="poetry">It harked all breaths of heaven, and did +obey<br /> +With sweet peace their uncomprehended wills;<br /> +It knew the eyes of stars which made no stay,<br /> +And with the thunder walked upon the lonely hills.</p> +<p class="poetry">And from the subject earth it seemed to +scorn,<br /> +It drew the sustenance whereby it grew<br /> +Perfect in bosom for the married Morn,<br /> +And of his life and light full as a maid kissed new.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +163</span>Its also darkness of the face withdrawn,<br /> +And the long waiting for the little light,<br /> +So long in life so little. Like a fawn<br /> +It fled with tempest breathing hard at heel of flight;</p> +<p class="poetry">And having known full East, did not disdain<br +/> +To sit in shadow and oblivious cold,<br /> +Save what all loss doth of its loss retain,<br /> +And who hath held hath somewhat that he still must hold.</p> +<p class="poetry">Right poet! who thy rightness to approve,<br /> +Having all liberty, didst keep all measure,<br /> +And with a firmament for ranging, move<br /> +But at the heavens’ uncomprehended pleasure.</p> +<p class="poetry">With amplitude unchecked, how sweetly thou<br +/> +Didst wear the ancient custom of the skies,<br /> +And yoke of used prescription; and thence how<br /> +Find gay variety no license could devise!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +164</span>As we the quested beauties better wit<br /> +Of the one grove our own than forests great,<br /> +Restraint, by the delighted search of it,<br /> +Turns to right scope. For lovely moving intricate</p> +<p class="poetry">Is put to fair devising in the curb<br /> +Of ordered limit; and all-changeful Hermes<br /> +Is Terminus as well. Yet we perturb<br /> +Our souls for latitude, whose strength in bound and term is.</p> +<p class="poetry">How far am I from heavenly liberty,<br /> +That play at policy with change and fate,<br /> +Who should my soul from foreign broils keep free,<br /> +In the fast-guarded frontiers of its single state!</p> +<p class="poetry">Could I face firm the Is, and with To-be<br /> +Trust Heaven; to Heaven commit the deed, and do;<br /> +In power contained, calm in infirmity,<br /> +And fit myself to change with virtue ever new;</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +165</span>Thou hadst not shamed me, cousin of the sky,<br /> +Thou wandering kinsman, that didst sweetly live<br /> +Unnoted, and unnoted sweetly die,<br /> +Weeping more gracious song than any I can weave;</p> +<p class="poetry">Which these gross-tissued words do sorely +wrong.<br /> +Thou hast taught me on powerlessness a power;<br /> +To make song wait on life, not life on song;<br /> +To hold sweet not too sweet, and bread for bread though sour;</p> +<p class="poetry">By law to wander, to be strictly free.<br /> +With tears ascended from the heart’s sad sea,<br /> +Ah, such a silver song to Death could I<br /> +Sing, Pain would list, forgetting Pain to be,<br /> +And Death would tarry marvelling, and forget to die!</p> +<h3><a name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>TO +THE SINKING SUN</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">How</span> graciously thou +wear’st the yoke<br /> + Of use that does not fail!<br /> +The grasses, like an anchored smoke,<br /> + Ride in the bending gale;<br /> +This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna,<br /> + And fire-dropt as a seraph’s mail.</p> +<p class="poetry">Here every eve thou stretchest out<br /> + Untarnishable wing,<br /> +And marvellously bring’st about<br /> + Newly an olden thing;<br /> +Nor ever through like-ordered heaven<br /> + Moves largely thy grave progressing.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +167</span>Here every eve thou goest down<br /> + Behind the self-same hill,<br /> +Nor ever twice alike go’st down<br /> + Behind the self-same hill;<br /> +Nor like-ways is one flame-sopped flower<br /> + Possessed with glory past its will.</p> +<p class="poetry">Not twice alike! I am not blind,<br /> + My sight is live to see;<br /> +And yet I do complain of thy<br /> + Weary variety.<br /> +O Sun! I ask thee less or more,<br /> + Change not at all, or utterly!</p> +<p class="poetry">O give me unprevisioned new,<br /> + Or give to change reprieve!<br /> +For new in me is olden too,<br /> + That I for sameness grieve.<br /> +O flowers! O grasses! be but once<br /> + The grass and flower of yester-eve!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +168</span>Wonder and sadness are the lot<br /> + Of change: thou yield’st mine eyes<br /> +Grief of vicissitude, but not<br /> + Its penetrant surprise.<br /> +Immutability mutable<br /> + Burthens my spirit and the skies.</p> +<p class="poetry">O altered joy, all joyed of yore,<br /> + Plodding in unconned ways!<br /> +O grief grieved out, and yet once more<br /> + A dull, new, staled amaze!<br /> +I dream, and all was dreamed before,<br /> + Or dream I so? the dreamer says.</p> +<h3><a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +169</span>GRIEF’S HARMONICS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">At</span> evening, when the +lank and rigid trees,<br /> +To the mere forms of their sweet day-selves drying,<br /> +On heaven’s blank leaf seem pressed and +flattenèd;<br /> +Or rather, to my sombre thoughts replying,<br /> +Of plumes funereal the thin effigies;<br /> +That hour when all old dead things seem most dead,<br /> +And their death instant most and most undying,<br /> +That the flesh aches at them; there stirred in me<br /> +The babe of an unborn calamity,<br /> +Ere its due time to be deliverèd.<br /> +Dead sorrow and sorrow unborn so blent their pain,<br /> +That which more present was were hardly said,<br /> +But both more <i>now</i> than any Now can be.<br /> +My soul like sackcloth did her body rend,<br /> +And thus with Heaven contend:—<br /> +‘Let pass the chalice of this coming dread,<br /> +<a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>Or that +fore-drained O bid me not re-drain!’<br /> +So have I asked, who know my asking vain,<br /> +Woe against woe in antiphon set over,<br /> +That grief’s soul transmigrates, and lives again,<br /> +And in new pang old pang’s incarnated.</p> +<h3><a name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +171</span>MEMORAT MEMORIA</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Come</span> you living or +dead to me, out of the silt of the Past,<br /> +With the sweet of the piteous first, and the shame of the +shameful last?<br /> +Come with your dear and dreadful face through the passes of +Sleep,<br /> +The terrible mask, and the face it masked—the face you did +not keep?<br /> +You are neither two nor one—I would you were one or two,<br +/> +For your awful self is embalmed in the fragrant self I knew:<br +/> +And Above may ken, and Beneath may ken, what I mean by these +words of whirl,<br /> +But by my sleep that sleepeth not,—O Shadow of a +Girl!—<br /> +Nought here but I and my dreams shall know the secret of this +thing:—<br /> +<a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>For ever +the songs I sing are sad with the songs I never sing,<br /> +Sad are sung songs, but how more sad the songs we dare not +sing!</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah, the ill that we do in tenderness, and the +hateful horror of love!<br /> +It has sent more souls to the unslaked Pit than it ever will draw +above.<br /> +I damned you, girl, with my pity, who had better by far been +thwart,<br /> +And drave you hard on the track to hell, because I was gentle of +heart.<br /> +I shall have no comfort now in scent, no ease in dew, for +this;<br /> +I shall be afraid of daffodils, and rose-buds are amiss;<br /> +You have made a thing of innocence as shameful as a sin,<br /> +I shall never feel a girl’s soft arms without horror of the +skin.<br /> +My child! what was it that I sowed, that I so ill should reap?<br +/> +You have done this to me. And I, what I to you?—It +lies with Sleep.</p> +<h3><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>JULY +FUGITIVE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Can</span> you tell me +where has hid her<br /> + Pretty Maid July?<br /> +I would swear one day ago<br /> + She passed by,<br /> +I would swear that I do know<br /> + The blue bliss of her eye:<br /> +‘Tarry, maid, maid,’ I bid her;<br /> + But she hastened by.<br /> +Do you know where she has hid her,<br /> + Maid July?</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet in truth it needs must be<br /> + The flight of her is old;<br /> +Yet in truth it needs must be,<br /> + For her nest, the earth, is cold.<br /> +No more in the poolèd Even<br /> + Wade her rosy feet,<br /> +Dawn-flakes no more plash from them<br /> + To poppies ’mid the wheat.<br /> +<a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 174</span>She has +muddied the day’s oozes<br /> + With her petulant feet;<br /> +Scared the clouds that floated,<br /> + As sea-birds they were,<br /> +Slow on the coerule<br /> + Lulls of the air,<br /> +Lulled on the luminous<br /> + Levels of air:<br /> +She has chidden in a pet<br /> + All her stars from her;<br /> +Now they wander loose and sigh<br /> + Through the turbid blue,<br /> +Now they wander, weep, and cry—<br /> + Yea, and I too—<br /> +‘Where are you, sweet July,<br /> + Where are you?’</p> +<p class="poetry">Who hath beheld her footprints,<br /> + Or the pathway she goes?<br /> +Tell me, wind, tell me, wheat,<br /> + Which of you knows?<br /> +Sleeps she swathed in the flushed Arctic<br /> + Night of the rose?<br /> +<a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>Or lie +her limbs like Alp-glow<br /> + On the lily’s snows?<br /> +Gales, that are all-visitant,<br /> + Find the runaway;<br /> +And for him who findeth her<br /> + (I do charge you say)<br /> +I will throw largesse of broom<br /> + Of this summer’s mintage,<br /> +I will broach a honey-bag<br /> + Of the bee’s best vintage.<br /> +Breezes, wheat, flowers sweet,<br /> + None of them knows!<br /> +How then shall we lure her back<br /> + From the way she goes?<br /> +For it were a shameful thing,<br /> + Saw we not this comer<br /> +Ere Autumn camp upon the fields<br /> + Red with rout of Summer.</p> +<p class="poetry">When the bird quits the cage,<br /> + We set the cage outside,<br /> +With seed and with water,<br /> + And the door wide,<br /> +<a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 176</span>Haply we +may win it so<br /> + Back to abide.<br /> +Hang her cage of earth out<br /> + O’er Heaven’s sunward wall,<br /> +Its four gates open, winds in watch<br /> + By reinèd cars at all;<br /> +Relume in hanging hedgerows<br /> + The rain-quenched blossom,<br /> +And roses sob their tears out<br /> + On the gale’s warm heaving bosom;<br /> +Shake the lilies till their scent<br /> + Over-drip their rims;<br /> +That our runaway may see<br /> + We do know her whims:<br /> +Sleek the tumbled waters out<br /> + For her travelled limbs;<br /> +Strew and smoothe blue night thereon,<br /> + There will—O not doubt her!—<br /> +The lovely sleepy lady lie,<br /> + With all her stars about her!</p> +<h3><a name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 177</span>TO A +SNOW-FLAKE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">What</span> heart could +have thought you?—<br /> +Past our devisal<br /> +(O filigree petal!)<br /> +Fashioned so purely,<br /> +Fragilely, surely,<br /> +From what Paradisal<br /> +Imagineless metal,<br /> +Too costly for cost?<br /> +Who hammered you, wrought you,<br /> +From argentine vapour?—<br /> +‘God was my shaper.<br /> +Passing surmisal,<br /> +He hammered, He wrought me,<br /> +From curled silver vapour,<br /> +To lust of His mind:—<br /> +Thou could’st not have thought me!<br /> +<a name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>So +purely, so palely,<br /> +Tinily, surely,<br /> +Mightily, frailly,<br /> +Insculped and embossed,<br /> +With His hammer of wind,<br /> +And His graver of frost.’</p> +<h3><a name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +179</span>NOCTURN</h3> +<p class="poetry">I walk, I only,<br /> +Not I only wake;<br /> +Nothing is, this sweet night,<br /> +But doth couch and wake<br /> +For its love’s sake;<br /> +Everything, this sweet night,<br /> +Couches with its mate.<br /> +For whom but for the stealthy-visitant sun<br /> +Is the naked moon<br /> +Tremulous and elate?<br /> +The heaven hath the earth<br /> +Its own and all apart;<br /> +The hushèd pool holdeth<br /> +A star to its heart.<br /> +You may think the rose sleepeth,<br /> +But though she folded is,<br /> +The wind doubts her sleeping;<br /> +Not all the rose sleeps,<br /> +<a name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 180</span>But +smiles in her sweet heart<br /> +For crafty bliss.<br /> +The wind lieth with the rose,<br /> +And when he stirs, she stirs in her repose:<br /> +The wind hath the rose,<br /> +And the rose her kiss.<br /> +Ah, mouth of me!<br /> +Is it then that this<br /> +Seemeth much to thee?—<br /> +I wander only.<br /> +The rose hath her kiss.</p> +<h3><a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 181</span>A +MAY BURDEN</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Through</span> meadow-ways +as I did tread,<br /> +The corn grew in great lustihead,<br /> +And hey! the beeches burgeonèd.<br /> + By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay!<br /> +It is the month, the jolly month,<br /> +It is the jolly month of May.</p> +<p class="poetry">God ripe the wines and corn, I say<br /> +And wenches for the marriage-day,<br /> +And boys to teach love’s comely play.<br /> + By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay!<br /> +It is the month, the jolly month,<br /> +It is the jolly month of May.</p> +<p class="poetry">As I went down by lane and lea,<br /> +The daisies reddened so, pardie!<br /> +‘Blushets!’ I said, ‘I well do see,<br /> + By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay!<br /> +The thing ye think of in this month,<br /> +Heigho! this jolly month of May.’</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +182</span>As down I went by rye and oats,<br /> +The blossoms smelt of kisses; throats<br /> +Of birds turned kisses into notes;<br /> + By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay!<br /> +The kiss it is a growing flower,<br /> +I trow, this jolly month of May!</p> +<p class="poetry">God send a mouth to every kiss,<br /> +Seeing the blossom of this bliss<br /> +By gathering doth grow, certes!<br /> + By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay!<br /> +Thy brow-garland pushed all aslant<br /> +Tells—but I tell not, wanton May!</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Note</span>. The first two stanzas are +from a French original—I have forgotten what.</p> +<h3><a name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 183</span>A +DEAD ASTRONOMER</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">(FATHER +PERRY, S.J.)</span></p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Starry</span> amorist, +starward gone,<br /> +Thou art—what thou didst gaze upon!<br /> +Passed through thy golden garden’s bars,<br /> +Thou seest the Gardener of the Stars.</p> +<p class="poetry">She, about whose moonèd brows<br /> +Seven stars make seven glows,<br /> +Seven lights for seven woes;<br /> +She, like thine own Galaxy,<br /> +All lustres in one purity:—<br /> +What said’st thou, Astronomer,<br /> +When thou did’st discover <i>her</i>?<br /> +When thy hand its tube let fall,<br /> +Thou found’st the fairest Star of all!</p> +<h3><a name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +184</span>‘CHOSE VUE’</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">A METRICAL +CAPRICE</span></p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Up</span> she rose, fair +daughter—well she was graced<br /> +As a cloud her going, stept from her chair,<br /> +As a summer-soft cloud, in her going paced,<br /> +Down dropped her riband-band, and all her waving hair<br /> +Shook like loosened music cadent to her waist;—<br /> +Lapsing like music, wavery as water,<br /> + Slid to her waist.</p> +<h3><a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +185</span>‘WHERETO ART THOU COME?’</h3> +<p class="poetry">‘<span class="smcap">Friend</span>, +whereto art thou come?’ Thus Verity;<br /> +Of each that to the world’s sad Olivet<br /> +Comes with no multitude, but alone by night,<br /> +Lit with the one torch of his lifted soul,<br /> +Seeking her that he may lay hands on her;<br /> +Thus: and waits answer from the mouth of deed.<br /> +Truth is a maid, whom men woo diversely;<br /> +This, as a spouse; that, as a light-o’-love,<br /> +To know, and having known, to make his brag.<br /> +But woe to him that takes the immortal kiss,<br /> +And not estates her in his housing life,<br /> +Mother of all his seed! So he betrays,<br /> +Not Truth, the unbetrayable, but himself:<br /> +And with his kiss’s rated traitor-craft,<br /> +The Haceldama of a plot of days<br /> +He buys, to consummate his Judasry<br /> +Therein with Judas’ guerdon of despair.</p> +<h3><a name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +186</span>HEAVEN AND HELL</h3> +<p class="poetry">’<span class="smcap">Tis</span> said +there were no thought of hell,<br /> + Save hell were taught; that there should be<br /> +A Heaven for all’s self-credible.<br /> + Not so the thing appears to me.<br /> +’Tis Heaven that lies beyond our sights,<br /> + And hell too possible that proves;<br /> +For all can feel the God that smites,<br /> + But ah, how few the God that loves!</p> +<h3><a name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>TO A +CHILD</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Whenas</span> my life shall +time with funeral tread<br /> +The heavy death-drum of the beaten hours,<br /> +Following, sole mourner, mine own manhood dead,<br /> +Poor forgot corse, where not a maid strows flowers;<br /> +When I you love am no more I you love,<br /> +But go with unsubservient feet, behold<br /> +Your dear face through changed eyes, all grim change +prove;—<br /> +A new man, mockèd with misname of old;<br /> +When shamed Love keep his ruined lodging, elf!<br /> +When, ceremented in mouldering memory,<br /> +Myself is hearsèd underneath myself,<br /> +And I am but the monument of me:—<br /> + O to that tomb be tender then, which bears<br /> + Only the name of him it sepulchres!</p> +<h3><a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +188</span>HERMES</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Soothsay</span>. +Behold, with rod twy-serpented,<br /> +Hermes the prophet, twining in one power<br /> +The woman with the man. Upon his head<br /> +The cloudy cap, wherewith he hath in dower<br /> +The cloud’s own virtue—change and counterchange,<br +/> +To show in light, and to withdraw in pall,<br /> +As mortal eyes best bear. His lineage strange<br /> +From Zeus, Truth’s sire, and maiden May—the all-<br +/> +Illusive Nature. His fledged feet declare<br /> +That ’tis the nether self transdeified,<br /> +And the thrice-furnaced passions, which do bear<br /> +The poet Olympusward. In him allied<br /> + Both parents clasp; and from the womb of Nature<br +/> + Stern Truth takes flesh in shows of lovely +feature.</p> +<h3><a name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +189</span>HOUSE OF BONDAGE</h3> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> I perceive +Love’s heavenly reaping still<br /> +Regard perforce the clouds’ vicissitude,<br /> +That the fixed spirit loves not when it will,<br /> +But craves its seasons of the flawful blood;<br /> +When I perceive that the high poet doth<br /> +Oft voiceless stray beneath the uninfluent stars,<br /> +That even Urania of her kiss is loath,<br /> +And Song’s brave wings fret on their sensual bars;<br /> +When I perceived the fullest-sailèd sprite<br /> +Lag at most need upon the lethèd seas,<br /> +The provident captainship oft voided quite,<br /> +And lamèd lie deep-draughted argosies;<br /> + I scorn myself, that put for such strange toys<br /> + The wit of man to purposes of boys.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page190"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 190</span>II</p> +<p class="poetry">The spirit’s ark sealed with a little +clay,<br /> +Was old ere Memphis grew a memory; <a name="citation190"></a><a +href="#footnote190" class="citation">[190]</a><br /> +The hand pontifical to break away<br /> +That seal what shall surrender? Not the sea<br /> +Which did englut great Egypt and his war,<br /> +Nor all the desert-drownèd sepulchres.<br /> +Love’s feet are stained with clay and travel-sore,<br /> +And dusty are Song’s lucent wing and hairs.<br /> +O Love, that must do courtesy to decay,<br /> +Eat hasty bread standing with loins up-girt,<br /> +How shall this stead thy feet for their sore way?<br /> +Ah, Song, what brief embraces balm thy hurt!<br /> + Had Jacob’s toil full guerdon, casting his<br +/> + Twice-seven heaped years to burn in Rachel’s +kiss?</p> +<h3><a name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 191</span>THE +HEART</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">TWO +SONNETS</span></p> +<blockquote><p>(To my Critic, who had objected to the +phrase—‘The heart’s burning floors.’)</p> +</blockquote> +<p style="text-align: center">I</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> heart you hold +too small and local thing,<br /> +Such spacious terms of edifice to bear.<br /> +And yet, since Poesy first shook out her wing,<br /> +The mighty Love has been impalaced there;<br /> +That has she given him as his wide demesne,<br /> +And for his sceptre ample empery;<br /> +Against its door to knock has Beauty been<br /> +Content; it has its purple canopy<br /> +A dais for the sovereign lady spread<br /> +Of many a lover, who the heaven would think<br /> +Too low an awning for her sacred head.<br /> +The world, from star to sea, cast down its brink—<br /> + Yet shall that chasm, till He Who these did build<br +/> + An awful Curtius make Him, yawn unfilled.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page192"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 192</span>II</p> +<p class="poetry">O nothing, in this corporal earth of man,<br /> +That to the imminent heaven of his high soul<br /> +Responds with colour and with shadow, can<br /> +Lack correlated greatness. If the scroll<br /> +Where thoughts lie fast in spell of hieroglyph<br /> +Be mighty through its mighty habitants;<br /> +If God be in His Name; grave potence if<br /> +The sounds unbind of hieratic chants;<br /> +All’s vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirm<br /> +Nature is whole in her least things exprest,<br /> +Nor know we with what scope God builds the worm.<br /> +Our towns are copied fragments from our breast;<br /> + And all man’s Babylons strive but to impart<br +/> + The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.</p> +<h3><a name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>A +SUNSET</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">FROM +HUGO’S ‘FEUILLES D’AUTOMNE’</span></p> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">love</span> the evenings, +passionless and fair, I love the evens,<br /> +Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence +leavens,<br /> + In numerous +leafage bosomed close;<br /> +Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,<br /> +Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere<br /> + On cloudy +archipelagos.</p> +<p class="poetry">Oh gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds +in motion,<br /> +Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds’ +commotion,<br /> + Their unimagined +shapes accord:<br /> +<a name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 194</span>Under +their waves at intervals flames a pale levin through,<br /> +As if some giant of the air amid the vapours drew<br /> + A sudden +elemental sword.</p> +<p class="poetry">The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still +keeps the sullen fold;<br /> +And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold,<br /> + The thatched +roof of a cot a-glance;<br /> +Or on the blurred horizons joins his battle with the haze;<br /> +Or pools the glooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze<br /> + Great moveless +meres of radiance.</p> +<p class="poetry">Then mark you how there hangs athwart the +firmament’s swept track<br /> +Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back,<br /> + A triple row of +pointed teeth?<br /> +Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide,<br /> +The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds its tenebrous side<br +/> + With scales of +golden mail ensheathe.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +195</span>Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates—the +vision flees.<br /> +Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice<br /> + Ruins immense in +mounded wrack:<br /> +Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone<br /> +Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown<br /> + When the +earthquake heaves its hugy back.</p> +<p class="poetry">These vapours with their leaden, golden, iron, +bronzèd glows,<br /> +Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose,<br +/> + Muttering hoarse +dreams of destined harms,<br /> +’Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep,<br +/> +As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep<br /> + His dreadful and +resounding arms!</p> +<p class="poetry">All vanishes! The sun, from topmost +heaven precipitated,<br /> +Like to a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red<br /> + Into the furnace +stirred to fume,<br /> +<a name="page196"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 196</span>Shocking +the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire,<br /> +Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire<br /> + The vaporous and +inflamèd spume.</p> +<p class="poetry">O contemplate the heavens! whenas the +vein-drawn day dies pale,<br /> +In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil,<br +/> + With love that +has not speech for need;<br /> +Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite:<br /> +If winter hue them like a pall; or if the summer night<br /> + Fantasy them +with starry brede.</p> +<h3><a name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +197</span>HEARD ON THE MOUNTAIN</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">FROM +HUGO’S ‘FEUILLES D’AUTOMNE’</span></p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Have</span> you sometimes, +calm, silent, let your tread aspirant rise<br /> +Up to the mountain’s summit, in the presence of the +skies?<br /> +Was’t on the borders of the South? or on the Bretagne +coast?<br /> +And at the basis of the mount had you the Ocean tossed?<br /> +And there, leaned o’er the wave and o’er the +immeasurableness,<br /> +Calm, silent, have you harkened what it says? Lo, what it +says!<br /> +One day at least, whereon my thought, enlicensèd to +muse,<br /> +Had drooped its wing above the beachèd margent of the +ooze,<br /> +<a name="page198"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 198</span>And, +plunging from the mountain height into the immensity,<br /> +Beheld upon one side the land, on the other side the sea.<br /> +I harkened, comprehended,—never, as from those abysses,<br +/> +No, never issued from a mouth, nor moved an ear, such voice as +this is!</p> +<p class="poetry">A sound it was, at outset, vast, immeasurable, +confused,<br /> +Vaguer than is the wind among the tufted trees effused,<br /> +Full of magnificent accords, suave murmurs, sweet as is<br /> +The evensong, and mighty as the shock of panoplies<br /> +When the hoarse melee in its arms the closing squadrons grips,<br +/> +And pants, in furious breathings, from the clarions’ brazen +lips.<br /> +Unutterable the harmony, unsearchable its deep,<br /> +Whose fluid undulations round the world a girdle keep,<br /> +<a name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 199</span>And +through the vasty heavens, which by its surges are washed +young,<br /> +Its infinite volutions roll, enlarging as they throng,<br /> +Even to the profound arcane, whose ultimate chasms sombre<br /> +Its shattered flood englut with time, with space and form and +number.<br /> +Like to another atmosphere with thin o’erflowing robe,<br +/> +The hymn eternal covers all the inundated globe:<br /> +And the world, swathed about with this investuring symphony,<br +/> +Even as it trepidates in the air, so trepidates in the +harmony.</p> +<p class="poetry">And pensive, I attended the ethereal lutany,<br +/> +Lost within this containing voice as if within the sea.</p> +<p class="poetry">Soon I distinguished, yet as tone which veils +confuse and smother,<br /> +Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other,<br /> +Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens +aspire;<br /> +Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire.<br /> +<a name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 200</span>And I +distinguished them amid that deep and rumorous sound,<br /> +As who beholds two currents thwart amid the fluctuous +profound.</p> +<p class="poetry">The one was of the waters; a be-radiant hymnal +speech!<br /> +That was the voice o’ the surges, as they parleyed each +with each.<br /> +The other, which arose from our abode terranean,<br /> +Was sorrowful; and that, alack! the murmur was of man;<br /> +And in this mighty quire, whose chantings day and night +resound,<br /> +Every wave had its utterance, and every man his sound.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now, the magnificent Ocean, as I said, +unbannering<br /> +A voice of joy, a voice of peace, did never stint to sing,<br /> +Most like in Sion’s temples to a psaltery psaltering,<br /> +And to creation’s beauty reared the great lauds of his +song.<br /> +Upon the gale, upon the squall, his clamour borne along<br /> +<a name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +201</span>Unpausingly arose to God in more triumphal swell;<br /> +And every one among his waves, that God alone can quell,<br /> +When the other of its song made end, into the singing pressed.<br +/> +Like that majestic lion whereof Daniel was the guest,<br /> +At intervals the Ocean his tremendous murmur awed;<br /> +And I, t’ward where the sunset fires fell shaggily and +broad,<br /> +Under his golden mane, methought, that I saw pass the hand of +God.</p> +<p class="poetry">Meanwhile, and side by side with that august +fan-faronnade,<br /> +The other voice, like the sudden scream of a destrier +affrayed,<br /> +Like an infernal door that grates ajar its rusty throat,<br /> +Like to a bow of iron that gnarls upon an iron rote,<br /> +Grinded; and tears, and shriekings, the anathema, the lewd +taunt,<br /> +Refusal of viaticum, refusal of the font,<br /> +<a name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 202</span>And +clamour, and malediction, and dread blasphemy, among<br /> +That hurtling crowd of rumour from the diverse human tongue,<br +/> +Went by as who beholdeth, when the valleys thick t’ward +night,<br /> +The long drifts of the birds of dusk pass, blackening flight on +flight.<br /> +What was this sound whose thousand echoes vibrated unsleeping?<br +/> +Alas! the sound was earth’s and man’s, for earth and +man were weeping.</p> +<p class="poetry">Brothers! of these two voices, strange most +unimaginably,<br /> +Unceasingly regenerated, dying unceasingly,<br /> +Harkenèd of the Eternal throughout His Eternity,<br /> +The one voice uttereth: <span class="smcap">Nature</span>! and +the other voice: <span class="smcap">Humanity</span>!</p> +<p class="poetry">Then I alit in reverie; for my ministering +sprite<br /> +Alack! had never yet deployed a pinion of an ampler flight,<br /> +<a name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 203</span>Nor ever +had my shadow endured so large a day to burn:<br /> +And long I rested dreaming, contemplating turn by turn<br /> +Now that abyss obscure which lurked beneath the water’s +roll,<br /> +And now that other untemptable abyss which opened in my soul.<br +/> +And I made question of me, to what issues are we here,<br /> +Whither should tend the thwarting threads of all this ravelled +gear;<br /> +What doth the soul; to be or live if better worth it is;<br /> +And why the Lord, Who, only, reads within that book of His,<br /> +In fatal hymeneals hath eternally entwined<br /> +The vintage-chant of nature with the dirging cry of +humankind?</p> +<p>(The metre of the second of these two translations is an +experiment. The splendid fourteen-syllable metre of Chapman +I have treated after the manner of Drydenian rhyming heroics; +with the occasional triplet, and even the occasional Alexandrine, +represented by a line of eight accents—a treatment which +can well extend, I believe, the majestic resources of the +metre.)</p> +<h2><a name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +205</span>ULTIMA</h2> +<h3><a name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +207</span>LOVE’S ALMSMAN PLAINETH HIS FARE</h3> +<p class="poetry">O <span class="smcap">you</span>, love’s +mendicancy who never tried,<br /> + How little of your almsman me you know!<br /> +Your little languid hand in mine you slide,<br /> + Like to a child says—‘Kiss me and let me +go!’<br /> +And night for this is fretted with my tears,<br /> + While I:—‘How soon this heavenly neck +doth tire<br /> +Bending to me from its transtellar spheres!’<br /> + Ah, heart all kneaded out of honey and fire!<br /> +Who bound thee to a body nothing worth,<br /> + And shamed thee much with an unlovely soul,<br /> +That the most strainedest charity of earth<br /> + Distasteth soon to render back the whole<br /> +Of thine inflamèd sweets and gentilesse!<br /> + Whereat, like an unpastured Titan, thou<br /> +Gnaw’st on thyself for famine’s bitterness,<br /> + And leap’st against thy chain. Sweet +Lady, how<br /> +<a name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 208</span>Little a +linking of the hand to you!<br /> + Though I should touch yours careless for a year,<br +/> +Not one blue vein would lie divinelier blue<br /> + Upon your fragile temple, to unsphere<br /> +The seraphim for kisses! Not one curve<br /> + Of your sad mouth would droop more sad and sweet.<br +/> +But little food love’s beggars needs must serve,<br /> + That eye your plenteous graces from the street.<br +/> +A hand-clasp I must feed on for a night,<br /> + A noon, although the untasted feast you lay,<br /> +To mock me, of your beauty. That you might<br /> + Be lover for one space, and make essay<br /> +What ’tis to pass unsuppered to your couch,<br /> + Keep fast from love all day; and so be taught<br /> +The famine which these craving lines avouch!<br /> + Ah! miser of good things that cost thee naught,<br +/> +How know’st thou poor men’s hunger?—Misery!<br +/> +When I go doleless and unfed by thee!</p> +<h2><a name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 209</span>A +HOLOCAUST</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘<i>No man ever attained supreme knowledge, +unless his heart had been torn up by the roots</i>.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> I presage the +time shall come—yea, now<br /> + Perchance is come, when you shall fail from me,<br +/> +Because the mighty spirit, to whom you vow<br /> + Faith of kin genius unrebukably,<br /> +Scourges my sloth, and from your side dismissed<br /> + Henceforth this sad and most, most lonely soul<br /> +Must, marching fatally through pain and mist,<br /> + The God-bid levy of its powers enrol;<br /> +When I presage that none shall hear the voice<br /> + From the great Mount that clangs my ordained +advance,<br /> +That sullen envy bade the churlish choice<br /> + Yourself shall say, and turn your altered glance;<br +/> +O God! Thou knowest if this heart of flesh<br /> + Quivers like broken entrails, when the wheel<br /> +<a name="page210"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 210</span>Rolleth +some dog in middle street, or fresh<br /> + Fruit when ye tear it bleeding from the peel;<br /> +If my soul cries the uncomprehended cry<br /> + When the red agony oozed on Olivet!<br /> +Yet not for this, a caitiff, falter I,<br /> + Beloved whom I must lose, nor thence regret<br /> +The doubly-vouched and twin allegiance owed<br /> + To you in Heaven, and Heaven in you, Lady.<br /> +How could you hope, loose dealer with my God,<br /> + That I should keep for you my fealty?<br /> +For still ’tis thus:—because I am so true,<br /> +My Fair, to Heaven, I am so true to you!</p> +<h3><a name="page211"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +211</span>BENEATH A PHOTOGRAPH</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Phœbus</span>, who +taught me art divine,<br /> +Here tried his hand where I did mine;<br /> +And his white fingers in this face<br /> +Set my Fair’s sigh-suggesting grace.<br /> +O sweetness past profaning guess,<br /> +Grievous with its own exquisiteness!<br /> +Vesper-like face, its shadows bright<br /> +With meanings of sequestered light;<br /> +Drooped with shamefast sanctities<br /> +She purely fears eyes cannot miss,<br /> +Yet would blush to know she <i>is</i>.<br /> +Ah, who can view with passionless glance<br /> +This tear-compelling countenance!<br /> +He has cozened it to tell<br /> +Almost its own miracle.<br /> +Yet I, all-viewing though he be,<br /> +Methinks saw further here than he;<br /> +And, Master gay! I swear I drew<br /> +Something the better of the two!</p> +<h3><a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +212</span>AFTER HER GOING</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> +after-even! Ah, did I walk,<br /> + Indeed, in her or even?<br /> +For nothing of me or around<br /> + But absent She did leaven,<br /> +Felt in my body as its soul,<br /> + And in my soul its heaven.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘Ah me! my very flesh turns soul,<br /> + Essenced,’ I sighed, ‘with +bliss!’<br /> +And the blackbird held his lutany,<br /> + All fragrant-through with bliss;<br /> +And all things stilled were as a maid<br /> + Sweet with a single kiss.</p> +<p class="poetry">For grief of perfect fairness, eve<br /> + Could nothing do but smile;<br /> +The time was far too perfect fair,<br /> + Being but for a while;<br /> +And ah, in me, too happy grief<br /> + Blinded herself with smile!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page213"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +213</span>The sunset at its radiant heart<br /> + Had somewhat unconfest:<br /> +The bird was loath of speech, its song<br /> + Half-refluent on its breast,<br /> +And made melodious toyings with<br /> + A note or two at best.</p> +<p class="poetry">And she was gone, my sole, my Fair,<br /> + Ah, sole my Fair, was gone!<br /> +Methinks, throughout the world ’twere right<br /> + I had been sad alone;<br /> +And yet, such sweet in all things’ heart,<br /> + And such sweet in my own!</p> +<h3><a name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 214</span>MY +LADY THE TYRANNESS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Me</span> since your fair +ambition bows<br /> +Feodary to those gracious brows,<br /> +Is nothing mine will not confess<br /> +Your sovran sweet rapaciousness?<br /> +Though use to the white yoke inures,<br /> +Half-petulant is<br /> +Your loving rebel for somewhat his,<br /> +Not yours, my love, not yours!</p> +<p class="poetry">Behold my skies, which make with me<br /> +One passionate tranquillity!<br /> +Wrap thyself in them as a robe,<br /> +She shares them not; their azures probe,<br /> +No countering wings thy flight endures.<br /> +Nay, they do stole<br /> +Me like an aura of her soul.<br /> +I yield them, love, for yours!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +215</span>But mine these hills and fields, which put<br /> +Not on the sanctity of her foot.<br /> +Far off, my dear, far off the sweet<br /> +Grave pianissimo of your feet!<br /> +My earth, perchance, your sway abjures?—<br /> +Your absence broods<br /> +O’er all, a subtler presence. Woods,<br /> +Fields, hills, all yours, all yours!</p> +<p class="poetry">Nay then, I said, I have my thought,<br /> +Which never woman’s reaching raught;<br /> +Being strong beyond a woman’s might,<br /> +And high beyond a woman’s height,<br /> +Shaped to my shape in all contours.—<br /> +I looked, and knew<br /> +No thought but you were garden to.<br /> +All yours, my love, all yours!</p> +<p class="poetry">Meseemeth still, I have my life;<br /> +All-clement Her its resolute strife<br /> +Evades; contained, relinquishing<br /> +Her mitigating eyes; a thing<br /> +Which the whole girth of God secures.<br /> +Ah, fool, pause! pause!<br /> +<a name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 216</span>I had no +life, until it was<br /> +All yours, my love, all yours!</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet, stern possession! I have my +death,<br /> +Sole yielding up of my sole breath;<br /> +Which all within myself I die,<br /> +All in myself must cry the cry<br /> +Which the deaf body’s wall immures.—<br /> +Thought fashioneth<br /> +My death without her.—Ah, even death<br /> +All yours, my love, all yours!</p> +<p class="poetry">Death, then, he hers. I have my +heaven,<br /> +For which no arm of hers has striven;<br /> +Which solitary I must choose,<br /> +And solitary win or lose.—<br /> +Ah, but not heaven my own endures!<br /> +I must perforce<br /> +Taste you, my stream, in God your source,—<br /> +So steep my heaven in yours.</p> +<p class="poetry">At last I said—I have my God,<br /> +Who doth desire me, though a clod,<br /> +And from His liberal Heaven shall He <br /> +Bar in mine arms His privacy.<br /> +<a name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 217</span>Himself +for mine Himself assures.—<br /> +None shall deny<br /> +God to be mine, but He and I<br /> +All yours, my love, all yours!</p> +<p class="poetry">I have no fear at all lest I<br /> +Without her draw felicity.<br /> +God for His Heaven will not forego<br /> +Her whom I found such heaven below,<br /> +And she will train Him to her lures.<br /> +Nought, lady, I love<br /> +In you but more is loved above;<br /> +What made me, makes Him yours.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘I, thy sought own, am I +forgot?’<br /> +Ha, thou?—thou liest, I seek thee not.<br /> +Why what, thou painted parrot, Fame,<br /> +What have I taught thee but her name?<br /> +Hear, thou slave Fame, while Time endures,<br /> +I give her thee;<br /> +Page her triumphal name!—Lady,<br /> +Take her, the thrall is yours.</p> +<h3><a name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 218</span>UNTO +THIS LAST</h3> +<p class="poetry">A <span class="smcap">boy’s</span> young +fancy taketh love<br /> +Most simply, with the rind thereof;<br /> +A boy’s young fancy tasteth more<br /> +The rind, than the deific core.<br /> +Ah, Sweet! to cast away the slips<br /> +Of unessential rind, and lips<br /> +Fix on the immortal core, is well;<br /> +But heard’st thou ever any tell<br /> +Of such a fool would take for food<br /> +Aspect and scent, however good,<br /> +Of sweetest core Love’s orchards grow?<br /> +Should such a phantast please him so,<br /> +Love where Love’s reverent self denies<br /> +Love to feed, but with his eyes,<br /> +All the savour, all the touch,<br /> +Another’s—was there ever such?<br /> +Such were fool, if fool there be;<br /> +Such fool was I, and was for thee!<br /> +<a name="page219"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 219</span>But if +the touch and savour too<br /> +Of this fruit—say, Sweet, of you—<br /> +You unto another give<br /> +For sacrosanct prerogative,<br /> +Yet even scent and aspect were<br /> +Some elected Second’s share;<br /> +And one, gone mad, should rest content<br /> +With memory of show and scent;<br /> +Would not thyself vow, if there sigh<br /> +Such a fool—say, Sweet, as I—<br /> +Treble frenzy it must be<br /> +Still to love, and to love thee?</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet had I torn (man knoweth not,<br /> +Nor scarce the unweeping angels wot<br /> +Of such dread task the lightest part)<br /> +Her fingers from about my heart.<br /> +Heart, did we not think that she<br /> +Had surceased her tyranny?<br /> +Heart, we bounded, and were free!<br /> +O sacrilegious freedom!—Till<br /> +She came, and taught my apostate will<br /> +The winnowed sweet mirth cannot guess<br /> +And tear-fined peace of hopefulness;<br /> +<a name="page220"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 220</span>Looked, +spake, simply touched, and went.<br /> +Now old pain is fresh content,<br /> +Proved content is unproved pain.<br /> +Pangs fore-tempted, which in vain<br /> +I, faithless, have denied, now bud<br /> +To untempted fragrance and the mood<br /> +Of contrite heavenliness; all days<br /> +Joy affrights me in my ways;<br /> +Extremities of old delight<br /> +Afflict me with new exquisite<br /> +Virgin piercings of surprise,—<br /> +Stung by those wild brown bees, her eyes!</p> +<h3><a name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +221</span>ULTIMUM</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Now</span> in these last +spent drops, slow, slower shed,<br /> +Love dies, Love dies, Love dies—ah, Love is dead!<br /> +Sad Love in life, sore Love in agony,<br /> +Pale Love in death; while all his offspring songs,<br /> +Like children, versed not in death’s chilly wrongs,<br /> +About him flit, frighted to see him lie<br /> +So still, who did not know that Love could die.<br /> +One lifts his wing, where dulls the vermeil all<br /> +Like clotting blood, and shrinks to find it cold,<br /> +And when she sees its lapse and nerveless fall<br /> +Clasps her fans, while her sobs ooze through the webbèd +gold.<br /> +Thereat all weep together, and their tears<br /> +Make lights like shivered moonlight on long waters.<br /> +Have peace, O piteous daughters!<br /> +He shall not wake more through the mortal years,<br /> +Nor comfort come to my soul widowèd,<br /> +Nor breath to your wild wings; for Love is dead!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +222</span>I slew, that moan for him: he lifted me<br /> +Above myself, and that I might not be<br /> +Less than myself, need was that he should die;<br /> +Since Love that first did wing, now clogged me from the sky.<br +/> +Yet lofty Love being dead thus passeth base—<br /> +There is a soul of nobleness which stays,<br /> +The spectre of the rose: be comforted,<br /> +Songs, for the dust that dims his sacred head!<br /> +The days draw on too dark for Song or Love;<br /> +O peace, my songs, nor stir ye any wing!<br /> +For lo, the thunder hushing all the grove,<br /> +And did Love live, not even Love could sing.</p> +<p class="poetry">And, Lady, thus I dare to say,<br /> +Not all with you is passed away!<br /> +For your love taught me this:—’tis Love’s true +praise<br /> +To be, not staff, but writ of worthy days;<br /> +And that high worth in love unfortunate<br /> +Should still remain it learned in love elate.<br /> +Beyond your star, still, still the stars are bright;<br /> +Beyond your highness, still I follow height;<br /> +Sole I go forth, yet still to my sad view,<br /> +Beyond your trueness, Lady, Truth stands true.<br /> +<a name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 223</span>This +wisdom sings my song with last firm breath,<br /> +Caught from the twisted lore of Love and Death,<br /> +The strange inwoven harmony that wakes<br /> +From Pallas’ straying locks twined with her +ægis-snakes.<br /> +‘On him the unpetitioned heavens descend,<br /> +Who heaven on earth proposes not for end;<br /> +The perilous and celestial excess<br /> +Taking with peace, lacking with thankfulness.<br /> +Bliss in extreme befits thee not, until<br /> +Thou’rt not extreme in bliss; be equal still:<br /> +Sweets to be granted think thy self unmeet<br /> +Till thou have learned to hold sweet not too sweet.’<br /> +This thing not far is he from wise in art<br /> +Who teacheth; nor who doth, from wise in heart.</p> +<h3><a name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +224</span>ENVOY</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Go</span>, songs, for ended +is our brief, sweet play;<br /> + Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow:<br /> +And some are sung, and that was yesterday,<br /> + And some unsung, and that may be to-morrow.</p> +<p class="poetry">Go forth; and if it be o’er stony way,<br +/> + Old joy can lend what newer grief must borrow:<br /> +And it was sweet, and that was yesterday,<br /> + And sweet is sweet, though purchasèd with +sorrow.</p> +<p class="poetry">Go, songs, and come not back from your far +way:<br /> + And if men ask you why ye smile and sorrow,<br /> +Tell them ye grieve, for your hearts know To-day,<br /> + Tell them ye smile, for your eyes know +To-morrow.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote27"></a><a href="#citation27" +class="footnote">[27]</a> The earth.</p> +<p><a name="footnote190"></a><a href="#citation190" +class="footnote">[190]</a> The Ark of the Egyptian temple +was sealed with clay, which the Pontiff-king broke when he +entered the inner shrine to offer worship.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW POEMS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1471-h.htm or 1471-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/7/1471 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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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 at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: New Poems + +Author: Francis Thompson + +Release Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1471] +Last Updated: February 7, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW POEMS *** + + + + +Produced by Les Bowler, and David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <h1> + NEW POEMS, + </h1> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <h2> + By Francis Thompson. + </h2> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Dedication to Coventry Patmore. + </pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Lo, my book thinks to look Time's leaguer down, + Under the banner of your spread renown! + Or if these levies of impuissant rhyme + Fall to the overthrow of assaulting Time, + Yet this one page shall fend oblivious shame, + Armed with your crested and prevailing Name. + </pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Note.—This dedication was written while the dear friend and great + Poet to whom it was addressed yet lived. It is left as he saw it— + the last verses of mine that were ever to pass under his eyes. + + F. T. + </pre> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <blockquote> + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>SIGHT AND INSIGHT.</b> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> THE MISTRESS OF VISION. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> CONTEMPLATION. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> 'BY REASON OF THY LAW'. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE DREAD OF HEIGHT. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> ORIENT ODE. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> NEW YEAR'S CHIMES. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> ANY SAINT. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> ASSUMPTA MARIA. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> THE AFTER WOMAN. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> GRACE OF THE WAY. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> RETROSPECT. </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> <b>A NARROW VESSEL.</b> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> A GIRL'S SIN. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> A GIRL'S SIN. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> LOVE DECLARED. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> THE WAY OF A MAID. </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> <b>MISCELLANEOUS ODES.</b> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> ODE TO THE SETTING SUN. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> A CAPTAIN OF SONG. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> AGAINST URANIA. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> AN ANTHEM OF EARTH. </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> <b>MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.</b> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> 'EX ORE INFANTIUM'. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> A QUESTION. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> FIELD-FLOWER. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> THE CLOUD'S SWAN-SONG. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> TO THE SINKING SUN. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> GRIEF'S HARMONICS. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> MEMORAT MEMORIA. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> JULY FUGITIVE. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> TO A SNOW-FLAKE. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> NOCTURN. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> A MAY BURDEN. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> A DEAD ASTRONOMER. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> 'CHOSE VUE'. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> 'WHERETO ART THOU COME?' </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> HEAVEN AND HELL. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0039"> TO A CHILD. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0040"> HERMES. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0041"> HOUSE OF BONDAGE. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0042"> THE HEART. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0043"> A SUNSET. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0044"> HEARD ON THE MOUNTAIN. </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0045"> <b>ULTIMA.</b> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0046"> LOVE'S ALMSMAN PLAINETH HIS FARE. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0047"> A HOLOCAUST. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0048"> BENEATH A PHOTOGRAPH. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0049"> AFTER HER GOING. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0050"> MY LADY THE TYRANNESS. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0051"> UNTO THIS LAST. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0052"> ULTIMUM. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0053"> ENVOY. </a> + </p> + </blockquote> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <h2> + SIGHT AND INSIGHT. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + 'Wisdom is easily seen by them that love her, and is found + by them that seek her. + To think therefore upon her is perfect understanding.' + + WISDOM, vi. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE MISTRESS OF VISION. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I + + Secret was the garden; + Set i' the pathless awe + Where no star its breath can draw. + Life, that is its warden, + Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw not, + and I saw. + + II + + It was a mazeful wonder; + Thrice three times it was enwalled + With an emerald— + Seal-ed so asunder. + All its birds in middle air hung a-dream, their + music thralled. + + III + + The Lady of fair weeping, + At the garden's core, + Sang a song of sweet and sore + And the after-sleeping; + In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore. + + IV + + With sweet-panged singing, + Sang she through a dream-night's day; + That the bowers might stay, + Birds bate their winging, + Nor the wall of emerald float in wreath-ed haze away. + + V + + The lily kept its gleaming, + In her tears (divine conservers!) + Wash-ed with sad art; + And the flowers of dreaming + Pal-ed not their fervours, + For her blood flowed through their nervures; + And the roses were most red, for she dipt them in + her heart. + + VI + + There was never moon, + Save the white sufficing woman: + Light most heavenly-human— + Like the unseen form of sound, + Sensed invisibly in tune,— + With a sun-deriv-ed stole + Did inaureole + All her lovely body round; + Lovelily her lucid body with that light was inter- + strewn. + + VII + + The sun which lit that garden wholly, + Low and vibrant visible, + Tempered glory woke; + And it seem-ed solely + Like a silver thurible + Solemnly swung, slowly, + Fuming clouds of golden fire, for a cloud of incense- + smoke. + + VIII + + But woe's me, and woe's me, + For the secrets of her eyes! + In my visions fearfully + They are ever shown to be + As fring-ed pools, whereof each lies + Pallid-dark beneath the skies + Of a night that is + But one blear necropolis. + And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her + own sighs. + + IX + + Many changes rise on + Their phantasmal mysteries. + They grow to an horizon + Where earth and heaven meet; + And like a wing that dies on + The vague twilight-verges, + Many a sinking dream doth fleet + Lessening down their secrecies. + And, as dusk with day converges, + Their orbs are troublously + Over-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fear + of things to be. + + X + + There is a peak on Himalay, + And on the peak undeluged snow, + And on the snow not eagles stray; + There if your strong feet could go,— + Looking over tow'rd Cathay + From the never-deluged snow— + Farthest ken might not survey + Where the peoples underground dwell whom + antique fables know. + + XI + + East, ah, east of Himalay, + Dwell the nations underground; + Hiding from the shock of Day, + For the sun's uprising-sound: + Dare not issue from the ground + At the tumults of the Day, + So fearfully the sun doth sound + Clanging up beyond Cathay; + For the great earthquaking sunrise rolling up + beyond Cathay. + + XII + + Lend me, O lend me + The terrors of that sound, + That its music may attend me. + Wrap my chant in thunders round; + While I tell the ancient secrets in that Lady's + singing found. + + XIII + + On Ararat there grew a vine, + When Asia from her bathing rose; + Our first sailor made a twine + Thereof for his prefiguring brows. + Canst divine + Where, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a cluster + grows? + + XIV + + On Golgotha there grew a thorn + Round the long-prefigured Brows. + Mourn, O mourn! + For the vine have we the spine? Is this all the + Heaven allows? + + XV + + On Calvary was shook a spear; + Press the point into thy heart— + Joy and fear! + All the spines upon the thorn into curling tendrils + start. + + XVI + + O, dismay! + I, a wingless mortal, sporting + With the tresses of the sun? + I, that dare my hand to lay + On the thunder in its snorting? + Ere begun, + Falls my singed song down the sky, even the old + Icarian way. + + XVII + + From the fall precipitant + These dim snatches of her chant + Only have remain-ed mine;— + That from spear and thorn alone + May be grown + For the front of saint or singer any divinizing twine. + + XVIII + + Her song said that no springing + Paradise but evermore + Hangeth on a singing + That has chords of weeping, + And that sings the after-sleeping + To souls which wake too sore. + 'But woe the singer, woe!' she said; 'beyond the + dead his singing-lore, + All its art of sweet and sore, + He learns, in Elenore!' + + XIX + + Where is the land of Luthany, + Where is the tract of Elenore? + I am bound therefor. + + XX + + 'Pierce thy heart to find the key; + With thee take + Only what none else would keep; + Learn to dream when thou dost wake, + Learn to wake when thou dost sleep. + Learn to water joy with tears, + Learn from fears to vanquish fears; + To hope, for thou dar'st not despair, + Exult, for that thou dar'st not grieve; + Plough thou the rock until it bear; + Know, for thou else couldst not believe; + Lose, that the lost thou may'st receive; + Die, for none other way canst live. + When earth and heaven lay down their veil, + And that apocalypse turns thee pale; + When thy seeing blindeth thee + To what thy fellow-mortals see; + When their sight to thee is sightless; + Their living, death; their light, most light- + less; + Search no more— + Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.' + + XXI + + Where is the land of Luthany, + And where the region Elenore? + I do faint therefor. + 'When to the new eyes of thee + All things by immortal power, + Near or far, + Hiddenly + To each other link-ed are, + That thou canst not stir a flower + Without troubling of a star; + When thy song is shield and mirror + To the fair snake-curl-ed Pain, + Where thou dar'st affront her terror + That on her thou may'st attain + Persean conquest; seek no more, + O seek no more! + Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.' + + XXII + + So sang she, so wept she, + Through a dream-night's day; + And with her magic singing kept she— + Mystical in music— + That garden of enchanting + In visionary May; + Swayless for my spirit's haunting, + Thrice-threefold walled with emerald from our mor- + tal mornings grey. + + XXIII + + And as a necromancer + Raises from the rose-ash + The ghost of the rose; + My heart so made answer + To her voice's silver plash,— + Stirred in reddening flash, + And from out its mortal ruins the purpureal phantom + blows. + + XXIV + + Her tears made dulcet fretting, + Her voice had no word, + More than thunder or the bird. + Yet, unforgetting, + The ravished soul her meanings knew. Mine ears + heard not, and I heard. + + XXV + + When she shall unwind + All those wiles she wound about me, + Tears shall break from out me, + That I cannot find + Music in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt + me! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CONTEMPLATION. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + This morning saw I, fled the shower, + The earth reclining in a lull of power: + The heavens, pursuing not their path, + Lay stretched out naked after bath, + Or so it seemed; field, water, tree, were still, + Nor was there any purpose on the calm-browed hill. + + The hill, which sometimes visibly is + Wrought with unresting energies, + Looked idly; from the musing wood, + And every rock, a life renewed + Exhaled like an unconscious thought + When poets, dreaming unperplexed, + Dream that they dream of nought. + Nature one hour appears a thing unsexed, + Or to such serene balance brought + That her twin natures cease their sweet alarms, + And sleep in one another's arms. + The sun with resting pulses seems to brood, + And slacken its command upon my unurged blood. + + The river has not any care + Its passionless water to the sea to bear; + The leaves have brown content; + The wall to me has freshness like a scent, + And takes half animate the air, + Making one life with its green moss and stain; + And life with all things seems too perfect blent + For anything of life to be aware. + The very shades on hill, and tree, and plain, + Where they have fallen doze, and where they doze remain. + + No hill can idler be than I; + No stone its inter-particled vibration + Investeth with a stiller lie; + No heaven with a more urgent rest betrays + The eyes that on it gaze. + We are too near akin that thou shouldst cheat + Me, Nature, with thy fair deceit. + + In poets floating like a water-flower + Upon the bosom of the glassy hour, + In skies that no man sees to move, + Lurk untumultuous vortices of power, + For joy too native, and for agitation + Too instant, too entire for sense thereof, + Motion like gnats when autumn suns are low, + Perpetual as the prisoned feet of love + On the heart's floors with pain-ed pace that go. + From stones and poets you may know, + Nothing so active is, as that which least seems so. + + For he, that conduit running wine of song, + Then to himself does most belong, + When he his mortal house unbars + To the importunate and thronging feet + That round our corporal walls unheeded beat; + Till, all containing, he exalt + His stature to the stars, or stars + Narrow their heaven to his fleshly vault: + When, like a city under ocean, + To human things he grows a desolation, + And is made a habitation + For the fluctuous universe + To lave with unimpeded motion. + He scarcely frets the atmosphere + With breathing, and his body shares + The immobility of rocks; + His heart's a drop-well of tranquillity; + His mind more still is than the limbs of fear, + And yet its unperturbed velocity + The spirit of the simoom mocks. + He round the solemn centre of his soul + Wheels like a dervish, while his being is + Streamed with the set of the world's harmonies, + In the long draft of whatsoever sphere + He lists the sweet and clear + Clangour of his high orbit on to roll, + So gracious is his heavenly grace; + And the bold stars does hear, + Every one in his airy soar, + For evermore + Shout to each other from the peaks of space, + As thwart ravines of azure shouts the mountaineer. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + 'BY REASON OF THY LAW'. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Here I make oath— + Although the heart that knows its bitterness + Hear loath, + And credit less— + That he who kens to meet Pain's kisses fierce + Which hiss against his tears, + Dread, loss, nor love frustrate, + Nor all iniquity of the froward years + Shall his inur-ed wing make idly bate, + Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight + To lose observance quite; + Seal from half-sad and all-elate + Sagacious eyes + Ultimate Paradise; + Nor shake his certitude of haughty fate. + + Pacing the burning shares of many dooms, + I with stern tread do the clear-witting stars + To judgment cite, + If I have borne aright + The proving of their pure-willed ordeal. + From food of all delight + The heavenly Falconer my heart debars, + And tames with fearful glooms + The haggard to His call; + Yet sometimes comes a hand, sometimes a voice withal, + And she sits meek now, and expects the light. + + In this Avernian sky, + This sultry and incumbent canopy + Of dull and doomed regret; + Where on the unseen verges yet, O yet, + At intervals, + Trembles, and falls, + Faint lightning of remembered transient sweet— + Ah, far too sweet + But to be sweet a little, a little sweet, and fleet; + Leaving this pallid trace, + This loitering and most fitful light a space, + Still some sad space, + For Grief to see her own poor face:- + + Here where I keep my stand + With all o'er-anguished feet, + And no live comfort near on any hand; + Lo, I proclaim the unavoided term, + When this morass of tears, then drained and firm, + Shall be a land— + Unshaken I affirm— + Where seven-quired psalterings meet; + And all the gods move with calm hand in hand, + And eyes that know not trouble and the worm. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE DREAD OF HEIGHT. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say: We + see: your sin remaineth. JOHN ix. 41. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Not the Circean wine + Most perilous is for pain: + Grapes of the heavens' star-loaden vine, + Whereto the lofty-placed + Thoughts of fair souls attain, + Tempt with a more retributive delight, + And do disrelish all life's sober taste. + 'Tis to have drunk too well + The drink that is divine, + Maketh the kind earth waste, + And breath intolerable. + + Ah me! + How shall my mouth content it with mortality? + Lo, secret music, sweetest music, + From distances of distance drifting its lone flight, + Down the arcane where Night would perish in night, + Like a god's loosened locks slips undulously: + Music that is too grievous of the height + For safe and low delight, + Too infinite, + For bounded hearts which yet would girth the sea! + + So let it be, + Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small: + So let it be, + O music, music, though you wake in me + No joy, no joy at all; + Although you only wake + Uttermost sadness, measure of delight, + Which else I could not credit to the height, + Did I not know, + That ill is statured to its opposite; + Did I not know, + And even of sadness so, + Of utter sadness make, + Of extreme sad a rod to mete + The incredible excess of unsensed sweet, + And mystic wall of strange felicity. + So let it be, + Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small, + And bitter meat + The food of gods for men to eat; + Yea, John ate daintier, and did tread + Less ways of heat, + Than whom to their wind-carpeted + High banquet-hall, + And golden love-feasts, the fair stars entreat. + + But ah withal, + Some hold, some stay, + O difficult Joy, I pray, + Some arms of thine, + Not only, only arms of mine! + Lest like a weary girl I fall + From clasping love so high, + And lacking thus thine arms, then may + Most hapless I + Turn utterly to love of basest rate; + For low they fall whose fall is from the sky. + Yea, who me shall secure + But I of height grown desperate + Surcease my wing, and my lost fate + Be dashed from pure + To broken writhings in the shameful slime: + Lower than man, for I dreamed higher, + Thrust down, by how much I aspire, + And damned with drink of immortality? + For such things be, + Yea, and the lowest reach of reeky Hell + Is but made possible + By forta'en breath of Heaven's austerest clime. + + These tidings from the vast to bring + Needeth not doctor nor divine, + Too well, too well + My flesh doth know the heart-perturbing thing; + That dread theology alone + Is mine, + Most native and my own; + And ever with victorious toil + When I have made + Of the deific peaks dim escalade, + My soul with anguish and recoil + Doth like a city in an earthquake rock, + As at my feet the abyss is cloven then, + With deeper menace than for other men, + Of my potential cousinship with mire; + That all my conquered skies do grow a hollow mock, + My fearful powers retire, + No longer strong, + Reversing the shook banners of their song. + + Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven, + A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint, + Or for a will accipitrine to pursue! + The veil of tutelar flesh to simple livers given, + Or those brave-fledging fervours of the Saint, + Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint, + Nor they in sickest time their ample virtue mew. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + ORIENT ODE. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Lo, in the sanctuaried East, + Day, a dedicated priest + In all his robes pontifical exprest, + Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly, + From out its Orient tabernacle drawn, + Yon orb-ed sacrament confest + Which sprinkles benediction through the dawn; + And when the grave procession's ceased, + The earth with due illustrious rite + Blessed,—ere the frail fingers featly + Of twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte, + His sacerdotal stoles unvest— + Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast, + The sun in august exposition meetly + Within the flaming monstrance of the West. + O salutaris hostia, + Quae coeli pandis ostium! + Through breach-ed darkness' rampart, a + Divine assaulter, art thou come! + God whom none may live and mark! + Borne within thy radiant ark, + While the Earth, a joyous David, + Dances before thee from the dawn to dark. + The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve; + Behold her fair and greater daughter {1} + Offers to thee her fruitful water, + Which at thy first white Ave shall conceive! + Thy gazes do on simple her + Desirable allures confer; + What happy comelinesses rise + Beneath thy beautifying eyes! + Who was, indeed, at first a maid + Such as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair, + And secret views herself afraid, + Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear: + Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover, + Make the beauties they discover! + What dainty guiles and treacheries caught + From artful prompting of love's artless thought + Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn, + When thy plumes shiver against the conscious gates of morn! + + And so the love which is thy dower, + Earth, though her first-frightened breast + Against the exigent boon protest, + (For she, poor maid, of her own power + Has nothing in herself, not even love, + But an unwitting void thereof), + Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower; + And holy odours do her bosom invest, + That sweeter grows for being prest: + Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, + From thine embrace still startles coy, + Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, + The laughing captive from the wishing West. + + Nor the majestic heavens less + Thy formidable sweets approve, + Thy dreads and thy delights confess, + That do draw, and that remove. + Thou as a lion roar'st, O Sun, + Upon thy satellites' vex-ed heels; + Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run; + Each in his frighted orbit wheels, + Each flies through inassuageable chase, + Since the hunt o' the world begun, + The puissant approaches of thy face, + And yet thy radiant leash he feels. + Since the hunt o' the world begun, + Lashed with terror, leashed with longing, + The mighty course is ever run; + Pricked with terror, leashed with longing, + Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun. + Since the hunt o' the world began, + With love that trembleth, fear that loveth, + Thou join'st the woman to the man; + And Life with Death + In obscure nuptials moveth, + Commingling alien, yet affin-ed breath. + + Thou art the incarnated Light + Whose Sire is aboriginal, and beyond + Death and resurgence of our day and night; + From him is thy vicegerent wand + With double potence of the black and white. + Giver of Love, and Beauty, and Desire, + The terror, and the loveliness, and purging, + The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire! + Samson's riddling meanings merging + In thy twofold sceptre meet: + Out of thy minatory might, + Burning Lion, burning Lion, + Comes the honey of all sweet, + And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat. + And though, by thine alternate breath, + Every kiss thou dost inspire + Echoeth + Back from the windy vaultages of death; + Yet thy clear warranty above + Augurs the wings of death too must + Occult reverberations stir of love + Crescent and life incredible; + That even the kisses of the just + Go down not unresurgent to the dust. + Yea, not a kiss which I have given, + But shall tri-umph upon my lips in heaven, + Or cling a shameful fungus there in hell. + Know'st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, well + Thou know'st the ancient miracle, + The children know'st of Zeus and May; + And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother, + To incarnate, the antique way, + The truth which is their heritage from their Sire + In sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother. + My fingers thou hast taught to con + Thy flame-chorded psalterion, + Till I can translate into mortal wire— + Till I can translate passing well— + The heavenly harping harmony, + Melodious, sealed, inaudible, + Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world's desire. + Thou whisperest in the Moon's white ear, + And she does whisper into mine,— + By night together, I and she— + With her virgin voice divine, + The things I cannot half so sweetly tell + As she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear. + + By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord, + Yet she for Earth, and both in thee. + Light out of Light! + Resplendent and prevailing Word + Of the Unheard! + Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee + Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee; + And in an age of faith grown frore + If I too shall adore, + Be it accounted unto me + A bright sciential idolatry! + God has given thee visible thunders + To utter thine apocalypse of wonders; + And what want I of prophecy, + That at the sounding from thy station + Of thy flagrant trumpet, see + The seals that melt, the open revelation? + Or who a God-persuading angel needs, + That only heeds + The rhetoric of thy burning deeds? + Which but to sing, if it may be, + In worship-warranting moiety, + So I would win + In such a song as hath within + A smouldering core of mystery, + Brimm-ed with nimbler meanings up + Than hasty Gideons in their hands may sup;— + Lo, my suit pleads + That thou, Isaian coal of fire, + Touch from yon altar my poor mouth's desire, + And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds. + + To thine own shape + Thou round'st the chrysolite of the grape, + Bind'st thy gold lightnings in his veins; + Thou storest the white garners of the rains. + Destroyer and preserver, thou + Who medicinest sickness, and to health + Art the unthank-ed marrow of its wealth; + To those apparent sovereignties we bow + And bright appurtenances of thy brow! + Thy proper blood dost thou not give, + That Earth, the gusty Maenad, drink and dance? + Art thou not life of them that live? + Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell + Within our body as a tabernacle! + Thou bittest with thine ordinance + The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete + The unsustainable treading of his feet. + Thou to thy spousal universe + Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church; + Who in most dusk and vidual curch, + Her Lord being hence, + Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hearse. + The heavens renew their innocence + And morning state + But by thy sacrament communicate: + Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers, + Our darkened search, + And sinful vigil desolate. + Yea, biune in imploring dumb, + Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await, + The Spirit and the Bride say: Come! + Lo, of thy Magians I the least + Haste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs, + To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced + Regions and odorous of Song's traded East. + Thou, for the life of all that live + The victim daily born and sacrificed; + To whom the pinion of this longing verse + Beats but with fire which first thyself did give, + To thee, O Sun—or is't perchance, to Christ? + + Ay, if men say that on all high heaven's face + The saintly signs I trace + Which round my stol-ed altars hold their solemn place, + Amen, amen! For oh, how could it be,— + When I with wing-ed feet had run + Through all the windy earth about, + Quested its secret of the sun, + And heard what thing the stars together shout,— + I should not heed thereout + Consenting counsel won:- + 'By this, O Singer, know we if thou see. + When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is here, + When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is there, + Believe them: yea, and this—then art thou seer, + When all thy crying clear + Is but: Lo here! lo there!—ah me, lo everywhere!' + + {1} The earth. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + NEW YEAR'S CHIMES. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + What is the song the stars sing? + (And a million songs are as song of one.) + This is the song the stars sing: + Sweeter song's none. + + One to set, and many to sing, + (And a million songs are as song of one), + One to stand, and many to cling, + The many things, and the one Thing, + The one that runs not, the many that run. + + The ever new weaveth the ever old + (And a million songs are as song of one). + Ever telling the never told; + The silver saith, and the said is gold, + And done ever the never done. + + The chase that's chased is the Lord o' the chase + (And a million songs are as song of one), + And the pursued cries on the race; + And the hounds in leash are the hounds that run. + + Hidden stars by the shown stars' sheen; + (And a million suns are but as one); + Colours unseen by the colours seen, + And sounds unheard heard sounds between, + And a night is in the light of the sun. + + An ambuscade of light in night, + (And a million secrets are but as one), + And a night is dark in the sun's light, + And a world in the world man looks upon. + + Hidden stars by the shown stars' wings, + (And a million cycles are but as one), + And a world with unapparent strings + Knits the simulant world of things; + Behold, and vision thereof is none. + + The world above in the world below + (And a million worlds are but as one), + And the One in all; as the sun's strength so + Strives in all strength, glows in all glow + Of the earth that wits not, and man thereon. + + Braced in its own fourfold embrace + (And a million strengths are as strength of one), + And round it all God's arms of grace, + The world, so as the Vision says, + Doth with great lightning-tramples run. + + And thunder bruiteth into thunder, + (And a million sounds are as sound of one), + From stellate peak to peak is tossed a voice of wonder, + And the height stoops down to the depths thereunder, + And sun leans forth to his brother-sun. + + And the more ample years unfold + (With a million songs as song of one), + A little new of the ever old, + A little told of the never told, + Added act of the never done. + + Loud the descant, and low the theme, + (A million songs are as song of one); + And the dream of the world is dream in dream, + But the one Is is, or nought could seem; + And the song runs round to the song begun. + + This is the song the stars sing, + (Ton-ed all in time); + Tintinnabulous, tuned to ring + A multitudinous-single thing, + Rung all in rhyme. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> +FROM THE NIGHT OF FOREBEING. + An ode after Easter. + + In the chaos of preordination, and night of our forebeings.— + + SIR THOMAS BROWNE. + + Et lux in tenebris erat, et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt.— + + ST. JOHN. + + Cast wide the folding doorways of the East, + For now is light increased! + And the wind-besomed chambers of the air, + See they be garnished fair; + And look the ways exhale some precious odours, + And set ye all about wild-breathing spice, + Most fit for Paradise. + Now is no time for sober gravity, + Season enough has Nature to be wise; + But now distinct, with raiment glittering free, + Shake she the ringing rafters of the skies + With festal footing and bold joyance sweet, + And let the earth be drunken and carouse! + For lo, into her house + Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet, + And all things are made young with young desires; + And all for her is light increased + In yellow stars and yellow daffodils, + And East to West, and West to East, + Fling answering welcome-fires, + By dawn and day-fall, on the jocund hills. + And ye, winged minstrels of her fair meinie, + Being newly coated in glad livery, + Upon her steps attend, + And round her treading dance and without end + Reel your shrill lutany. + What popular breath her coming does out-tell + The garrulous leaves among! + What little noises stir and pass + From blade to blade along the voluble grass! + O Nature, never-done + Ungaped-at Pentecostal miracle, + We hear thee, each man in his proper tongue! + Break, elemental children, break ye loose + From the strict frosty rule + Of grey-beard Winter's school. + Vault, O young winds, vault in your tricksome courses + Upon the snowy steeds that reinless use + In coerule pampas of the heaven to run; + Foaled of the white sea-horses, + Washed in the lambent waters of the sun. + Let even the slug-abed snail upon the thorn + Put forth a conscious horn! + Mine elemental co-mates, joy each one; + And ah, my foster-brethren, seem not sad— + No, seem not sad, + That my strange heart and I should be so little glad. + Suffer me at your leafy feast + To sit apart, a somewhat alien guest, + And watch your mirth, + Unsharing in the liberal laugh of earth; + Yet with a sympathy, + Begot of wholly sad and half-sweet memory— + The little sweetness making grief complete; + Faint wind of wings from hours that distant beat, + When I, I too, + Was once, O wild companions, as are you, + Ran with such wilful feet. + Wraith of a recent day and dead, + Risen wanly overhead, + Frail, strengthless as a noon-belated moon, + Or as the glazing eyes of watery heaven, + When the sick night sinks into deathly swoon. + + A higher and a solemn voice + I heard through your gay-hearted noise; + A solemn meaning and a stiller voice + Sounds to me from far days when I too shall rejoice, + Nor more be with your jollity at strife. + O prophecy + Of things that are, and are not, and shall be! + The great-vanned Angel March + Hath trumpeted + His clangorous 'Sleep no more' to all the dead— + Beat his strong vans o'er earth, and air, and sea. + And they have heard; + Hark to the Jubilate of the bird + For them that found the dying way to life! + And they have heard, + And quicken to the great precursive word; + Green spray showers lightly down the cascade of the larch; + The graves are riven, + And the Sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven! + Before his way + Went forth the trumpet of the March; + Before his way, before his way + Dances the pennon of the May! + O earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long + Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree + Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy, + Behold how all things are made true! + Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you, + Exceeding glad and strong. + Raise up your eyes, O raise your eyes abroad! + No more shall you sit sole and vidual, + Searching, in servile pall, + Upon the hieratic night the star-sealed sense of all: + Rejoice, O barren, and look forth abroad! + Your children gathered back to your embrace + See with a mother's face. + Look up, O mortals, and the portent heed; + In very deed, + Washed with new fire to their irradiant birth, + Reintegrated are the heavens and earth! + From sky to sod, + The world's unfolded blossom smells of God. + + O imagery + Of that which was the first, and is the last! + For as the dark, profound nativity, + God saw the end should be, + When the world's infant horoscope He cast. + Unshackled from the bright Phoebean awe, + In leaf, flower, mould, and tree, + Resolved into dividual liberty, + Most strengthless, unparticipant, inane, + Or suffered the ill peace of lethargy, + Lo, the Earth eased of rule: + Unsummered, granted to her own worst smart + The dear wish of the fool— + Disintegration, merely which man's heart + For freedom understands, + Amid the frog-like errors from the damp + And quaking swamp + Of the low popular levels spawned in all the lands. + But thou, O Earth, dost much disdain + The bondage of thy waste and futile reign, + And sweetly to the great compulsion draw + Of God's alone true-manumitting law, + And Freedom, only which the wise intend, + To work thine innate end. + Over thy vacant counterfeit of death + Broods with soft urgent breath + Love, that is child of Beauty and of Awe: + To intercleavage of sharp warring pain, + As of contending chaos come again, + Thou wak'st, O Earth, + And work'st from change to change and birth to birth + Creation old as hope, and new as sight; + For meed of toil not vain, + Hearing once more the primal fiat toll:- + 'Let there be light!' + And there is light! + Light flagrant, manifest; + Light to the zenith, light from pole to pole; + Light from the East that waxeth to the West, + And with its puissant goings-forth + Encroaches on the South and on the North; + And with its great approaches does prevail + Upon the sullen fastness of the height, + And summoning its levied power + Crescent and confident through the crescent hour, + Goes down with laughters on the subject vale. + Light flagrant, manifest; + Light to the sentient closeness of the breast, + Light to the secret chambers of the brain! + And thou up-floatest, warm, and newly-bathed, + Earth, through delicious air, + And with thine own apparent beauties swathed, + Wringing the waters from thine arborous hair; + That all men's hearts, which do behold and see, + Grow weak with their exceeding much desire, + And turn to thee on fire, + Enamoured with their utter wish of thee, + Anadyomene! + What vine-outquickening life all creatures sup, + Feel, for the air within its sapphire cup + How it does leap, and twinkle headily! + Feel, for Earth's bosom pants, and heaves her scarfing sea; + And round and round in bacchanal rout reel the swift spheres + intemperably! + + My little-worlded self! the shadows pass + In this thy sister-world, as in a glass, + Of all processions that revolve in thee: + Not only of cyclic Man + Thou here discern'st the plan, + Not only of cyclic Man, but of the cyclic Me. + Not solely of Mortality's great years + The reflex just appears, + But thine own bosom's year, still circling round + In ample and in ampler gyre + Toward the far completion, wherewith crowned, + Love unconsumed shall chant in his own furnace-fire. + How many trampled and deciduous joys + Enrich thy soul for joys deciduous still, + Before the distance shall fulfil + Cyclic unrest with solemn equipoise! + Happiness is the shadow of things past, + Which fools still take for that which is to be! + And not all foolishly: + For all the past, read true, is prophecy, + And all the firsts are hauntings of some Last, + And all the springs are flash-lights of one Spring. + Then leaf, and flower, and falless fruit + Shall hang together on the unyellowing bough; + And silence shall be Music mute + For her surcharg-ed heart. Hush thou! + These things are far too sure that thou should'st dream + Thereof, lest they appear as things that seem. + + Shade within shade! for deeper in the glass + Now other imaged meanings pass; + And as the man, the poet there is read. + Winter with me, alack! + Winter on every hand I find: + Soul, brain, and pulses dead; + The mind no further by the warm sense fed, + The soul weak-stirring in the arid mind, + More tearless-weak to flash itself abroad + Than the earth's life beneath the frost-scorched sod. + My lips have drought, and crack, + By laving music long unvisited. + Beneath the austere and macerating rime + Draws back constricted in its icy urns + The genial flame of Earth, and there + With torment and with tension does prepare + The lush disclosures of the vernal time. + All joys draw inward to their icy urns, + Tormented by constraining rime, + And there + With undelight and throe prepare + The bounteous efflux of the vernal time. + Nor less beneath compulsive Law + Rebuk-ed draw + The numb-ed musics back upon my heart; + Whose yet-triumphant course I know + And prevalent pulses forth shall start, + Like cataracts that with thunderous hoof charge the disbanding snow. + All power is bound + In quickening refusal so; + And silence is the lair of sound; + In act its impulse to deliver, + With fluctuance and quiver + The endeavouring thew grows rigid; + Strong + From its retracted coil strikes the resilient song. + + Giver of spring, + And song, and every young new thing! + Thou only seest in me, so stripped and bare, + The lyric secret waiting to be born, + The patient term allowed + Before it stretch and flutteringly unfold + Its rumpled webs of amethyst-freaked, diaphanous gold. + And what hard task abstracts me from delight, + Filling with hopeless hope and dear despair + The still-born day and parch-ed fields of night, + That my old way of song, no longer fair, + For lack of serene care, + Is grown a stony and a weed-choked plot, + Thou only know'st aright, + Thou only know'st, for I know not. + How many songs must die that this may live! + And shall this most rash hope and fugitive, + Fulfilled with beauty and with might + In days whose feet are rumorous on the air, + Make me forget to grieve + For songs which might have been, nor ever were? + Stern the denial, the travail slow, + The struggling wall will scantly grow: + And though with that dread rite of sacrifice + Ordained for during edifice, + How long, how long ago! + Into that wall which will not thrive + I build myself alive, + Ah, who shall tell me will the wall uprise? + Thou wilt not tell me, who dost only know! + Yet still in mind I keep, + He which observes the wind shall hardly sow, + He which regards the clouds shall hardly reap. + Thine ancient way! I give, + Nor wit if I receive; + Risk all, who all would gain: and blindly. Be it so. + + 'And blindly,' said I?—No! + That saying I unsay: the wings + Hear I not in praevenient winnowings + Of coming songs, that lift my hair and stir it? + What winds with music wet do the sweet storm foreshow! + Utter stagnation + Is the solstitial slumber of the spirit, + The blear and blank negation of all life: + But these sharp questionings mean strife, and strife + Is the negation of negation. + The thing from which I turn my troubled look + Fearing the gods' rebuke; + That perturbation putting glory on, + As is the golden vortex in the West + Over the foundered sun; + That—but low breathe it, lest the Nemesis + Unchild me, vaunting this— + Is bliss, the hid, hugged, swaddled bliss! + O youngling Joy carest! + That on my now first-mothered breast + Pliest the strange wonder of thine infant lip, + What this aghast surprise of keenest panging, + Wherefrom I blench, and cry thy soft mouth rest? + Ah hold, withhold, and let the sweet mouth slip! + So, with such pain, recoils the woolly dam, + Unused, affrighted, from her yeanling lamb: + I, one with her in cruel fellowship, + Marvel what unmaternal thing I am. + + Nature, enough! within thy glass + Too many and too stern the shadows pass. + In this delighted season, flaming + For thy resurrection-feast, + Ah, more I think the long ensepulture cold, + Than stony winter rolled + From the unsealed mouth of the holy East; + The snowdrop's saintly stoles less heed + Than the snow-cloistered penance of the seed. + 'Tis the weak flesh reclaiming + Against the ordinance + Which yet for just the accepting spirit scans. + Earth waits, and patient heaven, + Self-bonded God doth wait + Thrice-promulgated bans + Of his fair nuptial-date. + And power is man's, + With that great word of 'wait,' + To still the sea of tears, + And shake the iron heart of Fate. + In that one word is strong + An else, alas, much-mortal song; + With sight to pass the frontier of all spheres, + And voice which does my sight such wrong. + + Not without fortitude I wait + The dark majestical ensuit + Of destiny, nor peevish rate + Calm-knowledged Fate. + I, that no part have in the time's bragged way, + And its loud bruit + I, in this house so rifted, marred, + So ill to live in, hard to leave; + I, so star-weary, over-warred, + That have no joy in this your day— + Rather foul fume englutting, that of day + Confounds all ray— + But only stand aside and grieve; + I yet have sight beyond the smoke, + And kiss the gods' feet, though they wreak + Upon me stroke and again stroke; + And this my seeing is not weak. + The Woman I behold, whose vision seek + All eyes and know not; t'ward whom climb + The steps o' the world, and beats all wing of rhyme, + And knows not; 'twixt the sun and moon + Her inexpressible front enstarred + Tempers the wrangling spheres to tune; + Their divergent harmonies + Concluded in the concord of her eyes, + And vestal dances of her glad regard. + I see, which fretteth with surmise + Much heads grown unsagacious-grey, + The slow aim of wise-hearted Time, + Which folded cycles within cycles cloak: + We pass, we pass, we pass; this does not pass away, + But holds the furrowing earth still harnessed to its yoke. + The stars still write their golden purposes + On heaven's high palimpsest, and no man sees, + Nor any therein Daniel; I do hear + From the revolving year + A voice which cries: + 'All dies; + Lo, how all dies! O seer, + And all things too arise: + All dies, and all is born; + But each resurgent morn, behold, more near the Perfect Morn.' + + Firm is the man, and set beyond the cast + Of Fortune's game, and the iniquitous hour, + Whose falcon soul sits fast, + And not intends her high sagacious tour + Or ere the quarry sighted; who looks past + To slow much sweet from little instant sour, + And in the first does always see the last. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + ANY SAINT. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + His shoulder did I hold + Too high that I, o'erbold + Weak one, + Should lean thereon. + + But He a little hath + Declined His stately path + And my + Feet set more high; + + That the slack arm may reach + His shoulder, and faint speech + Stir + His unwithering hair. + + And bolder now and bolder + I lean upon that shoulder + So dear + He is and near: + + And with His aureole + The tresses of my soul + Are blent + In wished content. + + Yes, this too gentle Lover + Hath flattering words to move her + To pride + By His sweet side. + + Ah, Love! somewhat let be! + Lest my humility + Grow weak + When thou dost speak! + + Rebate thy tender suit, + Lest to herself impute + Some worth + Thy bride of earth! + + A maid too easily + Conceits herself to be + Those things + Her lover sings; + + And being straitly wooed, + Believes herself the Good + And Fair + He seeks in her. + + Turn something of Thy look, + And fear me with rebuke, + That I + May timorously + + Take tremors in Thy arms, + And with contriv-ed charms + Allure + A 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; + Point + Of the spheres conjoint; + + In whom eternally + Thou, Light, dost focus Thee!— + Didst pave + The way o' the wave; + + Rivet with stars the Heaven, + For causeways to Thy driven + Car + In its coming far + + Unto him, only him; + In Thy deific whim + Didst bound + Thy works' great round + + In this small ring of flesh; + The sky's gold-knotted mesh + Thy wrist + Did only twist + + To take him in that net.— + Man! swinging-wicket set + Between + The Unseen and Seen; + + Lo, God's two worlds immense, + Of spirit and of sense, + Wed + In this narrow bed; + + Yea, and the midge's hymn + Answers the seraphim + Athwart + Thy body's court! + + Great arm-fellow of God! + To the ancestral clod + Kin, + And to cherubin; + + Bread predilectedly + O' the worm and Deity! + Hark, + O God's clay-sealed Ark, + + To praise that fits thee, clear + To the ear within the ear, + But dense + To clay-sealed sense. + + All the Omnific made + When in a word he said, + (Mystery!) + He uttered THEE; + + Thee His great utterance bore, + O secret metaphor + Of what + Thou dream'st no jot! + + Cosmic metonymy! + Weak world-unshuttering key! + One + Seal of Solomon! + + Trope that itself not scans + Its huge significance, + Which tries + Cherubic eyes. + + Primer where the angels all + God's grammar spell in small, + Nor spell + The highest too well. + + Point for the great descants + Of starry disputants; + Equation + Of 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 bliss + Within 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 fulfilled + With all sweet things unwilled: + So best + God loves to jest + + With children small—a freak + Of heavenly hide-and-seek + Fit + For thy wayward wit, + + Who art thyself a thing + Of whim and wavering; + Free + When His wings pen thee; + + Sole fully blest, to feel + God whistle thee at heel; + Drunk up + As a dew-drop, + + When He bends down, sun-wise, + Intemperable eyes; + Most proud, + When utterly bowed. + + To feel thyself and be + His dear nonentity— + Caught + Beyond human thought + + In the thunder-spout of Him, + Until thy being dim, + And be + Dead deathlessly. + + Stoop, stoop; for thou dost fear + The nettle's wrathful spear, + So slight + Art thou of might! + + Rise; for Heaven hath no frown + When thou to thee pluck'st down, + Strong clod! + The neck of God. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + ASSUMPTA MARIA. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 'Thou needst not sing new songs, but say the old.'—COWLEY. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Mortals, that behold a Woman, + Rising 'twixt the Moon and Sun; + Who am I the heavens assume? an + All 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 graven + Tables of the Law was made; + Man's own heart was one, one Heaven, + Both within my womb were laid. + For there Anteros with Eros + Heaven with man conjoin-ed was,— + Twin-stone of the Law, Ischyros, + Agios Athanatos. + + I, the flesh-girt Paradises + Gardenered by the Adam new, + Daintied o'er with sweet devices + Which He loveth, for He grew. + I, the boundless strict savannah + Which 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 Angels + Do enwheel their plac-ed 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 outpanted + Lies the slimed Curse shrivelling. + For the brazen Serpent clear on + That old fang-ed knowledge shone; + I to Wisdom rise, Ischyron, + Agion Athanaton! + + See in highest heaven pavilioned + Now the maiden Heaven rest, + The many-breasted sky out-millioned + By the splendours of her vest. + Lo, the Ark this holy tide is + The un-handmade Temple's guest, + And the dark Egyptian bride is + Whitely 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 Belov-ed, + Where Thou dost in mid-day feed! + For my wanderings are reprov-ed, + 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 AEgyptic 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 holden + Like 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 me + He 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 mother + Fell, beneath the apple-tree. + Risen 'twixt Anteros and Eros, + Blood and Water, Moon and Sun, + He upbears me, He Ischyros, + I bear Him, the Athanaton! + + 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 was + From 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 gesture + Air, 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; for + Now 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 even + Of 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 woman + Rising 'twixt the Moon and Sun; + Who am I the heavens assume? an + All am I, and I am one. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE AFTER WOMAN. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Daughter of the ancient Eve, + We know the gifts ye gave—and give. + Who knows the gifts which YOU shall give, + Daughter of the newer Eve? + You, if my soul be augur, you + Shall—O what shall you not, Sweet, do? + The celestial traitress play, + And all mankind to bliss betray; + With sacrosanct cajoleries + And starry treachery of your eyes, + Tempt us back to Paradise! + Make heavenly trespass;—ay, press in + Where faint the fledge-foot seraphin, + Blest Fool! Be ensign of our wars, + And shame us all to warriors! + Unbanner your bright locks,—advance + Girl, their gilded puissance, + I' the mystic vaward, and draw on + After the lovely gonfalon + Us to out-folly the excess + Of your sweet foolhardiness; + To adventure like intense + Assault 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 elate + Thy little breasts knew wax-ed 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! Then + Eden's lopped tree shall shoot again: + For who Christ's eyes shall miss, with those + Eyes for evident nuncios? + Or who be tardy to His call + In your accents augural? + + Who shall not feel the Heavens hid + Impend, at tremble of your lid, + And divine advent shine avowed + Under that dim and lucid cloud; + Yea, 'fore the silver apocalypse + Fail, at the unsealing of your lips? + When to love YOU is (O Christ's Spouse!) + To love the beauty of His house; + Then come the Isaian days; the old + Shall dream; and our young men behold + Vision—yea, the vision of Thabor mount, + Which none to other shall recount, + Because in all men's hearts shall be + The 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. + Until + You and the hour shall be revealed, + This song is sung and sung not, and its words are sealed. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + GRACE OF THE WAY. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 'My brother!' spake she to the sun; + The kindred kisses of the stars + Were hers; her feet were set upon + The moon. If slumber solved the bars + + Of sense, or sense transpicuous grown + Fulfill-ed seeing unto sight, + I know not; nor if 'twas my own + Ingathered 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 visibleness + That stirred the raiment of her flesh: + + And sensible, as her blown were, + Beyond the precincts of her form + I felt the woman flow from her— + A calm of intempestuous storm. + + I failed against the affluent tide; + Out of this abject earth of me + I was translated and enskied + Into the heavenly-regioned She. + + Now of that vision I bereaven + This 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 sweet + Direction 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, and + The darkness doth not comprehend: + God hath no haste; and God's sons stand + Yet a Day, tarrying for the end. + + Dishonoured Rahab still hath hid, + Yea still, within her house of shame, + The messengers by Jesus bid + Forerun 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 trust + The 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, unbless-ed, 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. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + RETROSPECT. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Alas, and I have sung + Much song of matters vain, + And a heaven-sweetened tongue + Turned to unprofiting strain + Of vacant things, which though + Even 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 sun + Put 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 stars + Give tongue before his way + Goldenly as I say, + And each from wide Saturnus to hot Mars + He calleth by its name, + Lest that its bright feet stray; + And thou have lore of all, + But to thine own Sun's call + Thy path disorbed hast never wit to tame; + It profits not withal, + And my rede is but lame. + + Only that, 'mid vain vaunt + Of wisdom ignorant, + A little kiss upon the feet of Love + My hasty verse has stayed + Sometimes a space to plant: + It has not wholly strayed, + Not wholly missed near sweet, fanning proud plumes above. + + Therefore I do repent + That with religion vain, + And misconceiv-ed pain, + I have my music bent + To waste on bootless things its skiey-gendered rain: + Yet shall a wiser day + Fulfil more heavenly way, + And with approv-ed music clear this slip + I trust in God most sweet; + Meantime the silent lip, + Meantime the climbing feet. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A NARROW VESSEL. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> +Being a little dramatic sequence on the aspect of primitive girl- + nature + towards a love beyond its capacities. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A GIRL'S SIN. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I.—In her eyes. + + Cross child! red, and frowning so? + 'I, the day just over, + Gave a lock of hair to—no! + How DARE you say, my lover?' + + He asked you?—Let me understand; + Come, child, let me sound it! + 'Of course, he WOULD have 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 chastise + Because I gave him it. + + 'Shameless in me the gift, alas! + In him his open bliss: + But for the privilege he has + A thousand he shall miss! + + 'His eyes, where once I dreadless laughed, + Call up a burning blot: + I hate him, for his shameful craft + That asked by asking not!' + + Luckless boy! and all for hair + He never asked, you said? + 'Not just—but then he gazed—I swear + He gazed it from my head! + + 'His silence on my cheek like breath + I felt in subtle way; + More sweet than aught another saith + Was 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 do + Is bold suit's hallowing text; + Each gift a bastion levelled, to + The next one and the next. + + 'Each wish whose grant may him befall + Is 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 enforc-ed steel did grate + To cut; its root-thrills came + Down to my bosom. It might sate + His lust for my poor shame! + + 'His sifted dainty this should be + For a score ambrosial years! + But his too much humility + Alarums me with fears. + + 'My gracious grace a breach he counts + For 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 gleams + Was 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 him + In 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 toyed + With dreamed delight of this: + But ah, in proof, delight was void— + I could not SEE his kiss!' + + So, fond one, half this agony + Were spared, which my hand hushes, + Could you have played, Sweet, the sweet spy, + And blushed not for your blushes! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A GIRL'S SIN. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + II.—In his eyes. + + Can I forget her cruelty + Who, brown miracle, gave you me? + Or with unmoisted eyes think on + The 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-expiated + Thy cold outlawry from her head; + How was I trampled and brought low, + Because her virgin neck was so; + How thralled beneath the jealous state + She stood at point to abdicate; + How sacrificed, before to me + She sacrificed her pride and thee; + How did she, struggling to abase + Herself to do me strange, sweet grace, + Enforce unwitting me to share + Her throes and abjectness with her; + Thence heightening that hour when her lover + Her grace, with trembling, should discover, + And in adoring trouble be + Humbled at her humility! + And with what pitilessness was I + After slain, to pacify + The uneasy manes of her shame, + Her haunting blushes!—Mine the blame: + What fair injustice did I rue + For what I—did not tempt her to? + Nor aught the judging maid might win + Me to assoil from HER sweet sin. + But nought were extreme punishment + For that beyond-divine content, + When my with-thee-first-giddied eyes + Stooped ere their due on Paradise! + O hour of consternating bliss + When I heavened me in thy kiss; + Thy softness (daring overmuch!) + Profan-ed with my licensed touch; + Worshipped, with tears, on happy knee, + Her doubt, her trust, her shyness free, + Her timorous audacity! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + LOVE DECLARED. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I looked, she drooped, and neither spake, and cold, + We stood, how unlike all forecasted thought + Of that desir-ed minute! Then I leaned + Doubting; whereat she lifted—oh, brave eyes + Unfrighted:—forward like a wind-blown flame + Came bosom and mouth to mine! + That falling kiss + Touching long-laid expectance, all went up + Suddenly into passion; yea, the night + Caught, blazed, and wrapt us round in vibrant fire. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Time's beating wing subsided, and the winds + Caught up their breathing, and the world's great pulse + Stayed in mid-throb, and the wild train of life + Reeled by, and left us stranded on a hush. + This moment is a statue unto Love + Carved from a fair white silence. + Lo, he stands + Within us—are we not one now, one, one roof, + His roof, and the partition of weak flesh + Gone down before him, and no more, for ever?— + Stands like a bird new-lit, and as he lit, + Poised in our quiet being; only, only + Within our shaken hearts the air of passion, + Cleft by his sudden coming, eddies still + And whirs round his enchanted movelessness. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + A film of trance between two stirrings! Lo, + It bursts; yet dream's snapped links cling round the limbs + Of waking: like a running evening stream + Which no man hears, or sees, or knows to run, + (Glazed with dim quiet), save that there the moon + Is shattered to a creamy flicker of flame, + Our eyes' sweet trouble were hid, save that the love + Trembles a little on their impassioned calms. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE WAY OF A MAID. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + The lover whose soul shaken is + In some decuman billow of bliss, + Who feels his gradual-wading feet + Sink in some sudden hollow of sweet, + And 'mid love's us-ed converse comes + Sharp on a mood which all joy sums— + An instant's fine compendium of + The liberal-leav-ed writ of love; + His abashed pulses beating thick + At the exigent joy and quick, + Is dumbed, by aiming utterance great + Up to the miracle of his fate. + The wise girl, such Icarian fall + Saved by her confidence that she's small,— + As what no kindred word will fit + Is uttered best by opposite, + Love in the tongue of hate exprest, + And deepest anguish in a jest,— + Feeling the infinite must be + Best said by triviality, + Speaks, where expression bates its wings, + Just happy, alien, little things; + What of all words is in excess + Implies in a sweet nothingness, + With dailiest babble shows her sense + That full speech were full impotence; + And while she feels the heavens lie bare, + She only talks about her hair. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + BEGINNING OF END. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + She was aweary of the hovering + Of 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's HIS cot), + 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. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + PENELOPE. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Love, like a wind, shook wide your blosmy eyes, + You trembled, and your breath came sobbing-wise + For that you loved me. + + You were so kind, so sweet, none could withhold + To adore, but that you were so strange, so cold; + For that you loved me. + + Like to a box of spikenard did you break + Your heart about my feet. What words you spake! + For that you loved me. + + Life fell to dust without me; so you tried + All carefullest ways to drive me from your side, + For that you loved me. + + You gave yourself as children give, that weep + And snatch back, with—'I meant you not to keep!' + For that you loved me. + + I am no woman, girl, nor ever knew + That love could teach all ways that hate could do + To her that loved me. + + Have less of love, or less of woman in + Your love, or loss may even from this begin— + That you so love me. + + For, wild Penelope, the web you wove + You 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! +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + THE END OF IT. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + She did not love to love; but hated him + For making her to love, and so her whim + From passion taught misprision to begin; + And all this sin + Was because love to cast out had no skill + Self, which was regent still. + Her own self-will made void her own self's will +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + EPILOGUE. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + If I have studied here in part + A tale as old as maiden's heart, + 'Tis that I do see herein + Shadow of more piteous sin. + + She, that but giving part, not whole, + Took even the part back, is the Soul: + And that so disdain-ed Lover— + Best unthought, since Love is over. + + Love to invite, desire, and fear, + And Love's exactions cost too dear + Count for Love's possession,—ah, + Thy way, misera Anima! + + To give the pledge, and yet be pined + That a pledge should have force to bind, + This, O Soul, too often still + Is 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. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + MISCELLANEOUS ODES. + </h2> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + ODE TO THE SETTING SUN. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + PRELUDE. + + The wailful sweetness of the violin + Floats down the hush-ed waters of the wind, + The heart-strings of the throbbing harp begin + To long in aching music. Spirit-pined, + + In wafts that poignant sweetness drifts, until + The 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 days + Sinkest in music to thy smooth-ed 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 harmonies + A 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 head + To thee, whose great command upon my veins + Proves 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 thus + A 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? + Is THIS thy secret, then? And is it woe? + + Fling from thine ear the burning curls, and hark + A 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! +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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: + I SEE the crimson blaring of thy shawms! + Why do those lucent palms + Strew 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 praise + Will 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 paeans thee, nor serves thy hest, + Be godded not by Heaven! avert thy face, + And leave to blank disgrace + The 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' height + The brawny Titans stood, + And shook the gods' world 'bout their ears, and how + Enceladus (whom Etna cumbers now) + Shouldered me Pelion with its swinging pines, + The river unrecked, that did its broken flood + Spurt on his back: before the mountainous shock + The rank-ed gods dislock, + Scared to their skies; wide o'er rout-trampled night + Flew spurned the pebbled stars: those splendours then + Had tempested on earth, star upon star + Mounded in ruin, if a longer war + Had quaked Olympus and cold-fearing men. + Then did the ample marge + And circuit of thy targe + Sullenly redden all the vaward fight, + Above the blusterous clash + Wheeled thy swung falchion's flash + And 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-chapleted + Sang each to other, + The vaulted blaze overhead + Of 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 side + Thy young Auroral bride, + And lift her veil of night and mystery; + Tellus with baby hands + Shook off her swaddling-bands, + And from the unswath-ed 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 set + Upon her brow the day-fall's carcanet? + Who queened her front with the enrondured moon? + Who dug night's jewels from their vaulty mine + To dower her, past an eastern wizard's dreams, + When hovering on him through his haschish-swoon, + All the rained gems of the old Tartarian line + Shiver in lustrous throbbings of tinged flame? + Whereof a moiety in the Paolis' seams + Statelily builded their Venetian name. + Thou hast enwoof-ed her + An empress of the air, + And all her births are propertied by thee: + Her teeming centuries + Drew 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' ribb-ed flanks? + Who raised the columned ranks + Of that old pre-diluvian forestry, + Which like a continent torn oppressed the sea, + When the ancient heavens did in rains depart, + While the high-danc-ed whirls + Of the tossed scud made hiss thy drench-ed curls? + Thou rear'dst the enormous brood; + Who hast with life imbued + The lion maned in tawny majesty, + The tiger velvet-barred, + The stealthy-stepping pard, + And the lithe panther's flexuous symmetry. + + How came the entomb-ed 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 Titanic + Which rock like a cradle the girth + Of the ether-hung world; + Swart son of the swarthy mine, + When flame on the breath of his nostrils feeds + How is his countenance half-divine, + Like thee in thy sanguine weeds? + Thou gavest him his light, + Though sepultured in night + Beneath the dead bones of a perished world; + Over his prostrate form + Though cold, and heat, and storm, + The mountainous wrack of a creation hurled. + Who made the splendid rose + Saturate with purple glows; + Cupped to the marge with beauty; a perfume-press + Whence the wind vintages + Gushes of warm-ed fragrance richer far + Than all the flavorous ooze of Cyprus' vats? + Lo, in yon gale which waves her green cymar, + With dusky cheeks burnt red + She sways her heavy head, + Drunk with the must of her own odorousness; + While in a moted trouble the vexed gnats + Maze, and vibrate, and tease the noontide hush. + Who girt dissolv-ed 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 moon + Ere Autumn's kiss sultry her cheek with flame? + Thou sway'st thy sceptred beam + O'er all delight and dream, + Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance: + And like a jocund maid + In 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 blown + In smoke and flame about the windy sky, + Where are the wailing voices that should meet + From hill, stream, grove, and all of mortal shape + Who tread thy gifts, in vineyards as stray feet + Pulp the globed weight of juiced Iberia's grape? + Where is the threne o' the sea? + And why not dirges thee + The wind, that sings to himself as he makes stride + Lonely 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 light + On one up-strain-ed 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 made + The earth a living and a radiant thing— + And leave her corpse in our strained, cheated arms? + Lo ever thus, when Song with chorded charms + Draws 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 kiss + Of reincarnate Beauty, his control + Clasps the cold body, and foregoes the soul! + Whatso looks lovelily + Is 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 through + The scorching dazzle of Heaven; 'gainst which the hill, + Out-flattened sombrely, + Stands black as life against eternity. + Against eternity? + A rifting light in me + Burns through the leaden broodings of the mind: + O bless-ed Sun, thy state + Uprisen or derogate + Dafts me no more with doubt; I seek and find. + + If with exultant tread + Thou foot the Eastern sea, + Or like a golden bee + Sting the West to angry red, + Thou dost image, thou dost follow + That 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 blood + Upon 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 inheriteth + The 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 Song + Sets 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 reap-ed joys thou art the heavy sheaf + Which 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 Antipodes + Our 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 drape + The 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 aerial blossoms on his bier. + + Yon cloud with wrinkled fire is edg-ed sharp; + And once more welling through the air, ah me! + How the sweet viol plains him to the harp, + Whose pang-ed 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 feather + Prove them the brood of immortality. + + My soul is quitted of death-neighbouring swoon, + Who shall not slake her immitigable scars + Until she hear 'My sister!' from the moon, + And take the kindred kisses of the stars. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A CAPTAIN OF SONG. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + (On a portrait of Coventry Patmore by J. S. Sargent, R.A.) + + Look on him. This is he whose works ye know; + Ye have adored, thanked, loved him,—no, not him! + But that of him which proud portentous woe + To its own grim + Presentment 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 pain-ed greatness are; + Where round and always round + The abhorr-ed words resound, + The words accursed of comfortable men,— + 'For ever'; and infinite glooms intolerable + With spacious replication give again, + And hollow jar, + The words abhorred of comfortable men. + You the stern pities of the gods debar + To drink where he has drunk + The 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 are + He knows the perilous rout + That all those ways about + Sink into doom, and sinking, still are sunk. + And if his sole and solemn term thereout + He has attained, to love ye shall not dare + One who has journeyed there; + Ye shall mark well + The mighty cruelties which arm and mar + That countenance of control, + With minatory warnings of a soul + That hath to its own selfhood been most fell, + And is not weak to spare: + And lo, that hair + Is blanch-ed with the travel-heats of hell. + + If any be + That shall with rites of reverent piety + Approach this strong + Sad soul of sovereign Song, + Nor fail and falter with the intimidate throng; + If such there be, + These, these are only they + Have trod the self-same way; + The never-twice-revolving portals heard + Behind them clang infernal, and that word + Abhorr-ed sighed of kind mortality, + As he— + Ah, even as he! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + AGAINST URANIA. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Lo I, Song's most true lover, plain me sore + That worse than other women she can deceive, + For she being goddess, I have given her more + Than mortal ladies from their loves receive; + And first of her embrace + She was not coy, and gracious were her ways, + That I forgot all virgins to adore; + Nor did I greatly grieve + To bear through arid days + The pretty foil of her divine delays; + And one by one to cast + Life, love, and health, + Content, and wealth, + Before her, thinking ever on her praise, + Until at last + Nought 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-ador-ed favour more refuses, + And leaves me to implore + Remembered boon in bitterness of blood. + + From mortal woman thou may'st know full well, + O poet, that dost deem the fair and tall + Urania of her ways not mutable, + When things shall thee befall + What thou art toil-ed in her sweet, wild spell. + Do they strow for thy feet + A little tender favour and deceit + Over the sudden mouth of hidden hell?— + As more intolerable + Her 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 learn + How harder than the heart of woman is + The immortal cruelty + Of 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. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + AN ANTHEM OF EARTH. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Proemion. + + Immeasurable Earth! + Through the loud vast and populacy of Heaven, + Tempested with gold schools of ponderous orbs, + That cleav'st with deep-revolting harmonies + Passage perpetual, and behind thee draw'st + A furrow sweet, a cometary wake + Of trailing music! What large effluence, + Not sole the cloudy sighing of thy seas, + Nor thy blue-coifing air, encases thee + From prying of the stars, and the broad shafts + Of thrusting sunlight tempers? For, dropped near + From my remov-ed tour in the serene + Of 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 close + The 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 take + The 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 demesne + And sphery pleasances,— + Amazing the unstal-ed eyes of Heaven, + And us that still a precious seeing have + Behind this dim and mortal jelly. + Ah! + If not in all too late and frozen a day + I come in rearward of the throats of song, + Unto the deaf sense of the ag-ed year + Singing with doom upon me; yet give heed! + One poet with sick pinion, that still feels + Breath through the Orient gateways closing fast, + Fast closing t'ward the undelighted night! +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Anthem. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + In nescientness, in nescientness, + Mother, we put these fleshly lendings on + Thou yield'st to thy poor children; took thy gift + Of 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 call + The 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 thee + Leave thy great husbandries, thy grave designs, + Thy tedious state which irked my ignorant years, + Thy winter-watches, suckling of the grain, + Severe premeditation taciturn + Upon the brooded Summer, thy chill cares, + And all thy ministries majestical, + To sport with me, thy darling. Thought I not + Thou set'st thy seasons forth processional + To pamper me with pageant,—thou thyself + My 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 shifted + Poise and footing of my thought! + I brake through thy doors of sunset, + Ran before the hooves of sunrise, + Shook thy matron tresses down in fancies + Wild and wilful + As a poet's hand could twine them; + Caught in my fantasy's crystal chalice + The Bow, as its cataract of colours + Plashed to thee downward; + Then when thy circuit swung to nightward, + Night the abhorr-ed, night was a new dawning, + Celestial dawning + Over 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 waken + To a revel, an inexhaustible + Wassail of orgiac imageries; + Then while I wore thy sore insignia + In 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 breathe + New from their mother's morning bosom. So I, + Risen from thee, restless winnower of the heaven, + Most Hermes-like, did keep + My vital and resilient path, and felt + The play of wings about my fledg-ed heel— + Sure on the verges of precipitous dream, + Swift in its springing + From 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 first + Thou speak'st to us as men: like sons who hear + Newly their mother's history, unthought + Before, and say—'She is not as we dreamed: + Ah me! we are beguiled!' What art thou, then, + That art not our conceiving? Art thou not + Too old for thy young children? Or perchance, + Keep'st thou a youth perpetual-burnishable + Beyond thy sons decrepit? It is long + Since Time was first a fledgling; + Yet thou may'st be but as a pendant bulla + Against his stripling bosom swung. Alack! + For that we seem indeed + To have slipped the world's great leaping-time, and come + Upon 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 off + With hasty tarnished piecings negligent, + Snippets and waste + From old ancestral wearings, + That have seen sorrier usage; remainder-flesh + After our father's surfeits; nay with chinks, + Some of us, that if speech may have free leave + Our souls go out at elbows. We are sad + With more than our sires' heaviness, and with + More than their weakness weak; we shall not be + Mighty with all their mightiness, nor shall not + Rejoice 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 towers + He dogs the secret footsteps of the heavens, + Sifts in his hands the stars, weighs them as gold-dust, + And yet is he successive unto nothing + But patrimony of a little mould, + And entail of four planks. Thou hast made his mouth + Avid 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 empty + What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded + For 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-worm + Statelily lodge. Mother of mysteries! + Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues, + Who bringest forth no saying yet so dark + As 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 one + On a mount standing, and against him stands, + On the mount adverse, crowned with westering rays, + The golden sun, and they two brotherly + Gaze each on each; + He faring down + To the dull vale, his Godhead peels from him + Till he can scarcely spurn the pebble— + For nothingness of new-found mortality— + That mutinies against his gall-ed 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 widow-ed, + 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 feel + Break like a clash of cymbals, and my heart + Clang through my shaken body like a gong; + Nor ever more with spurted feet shall tread + I' the winepresses of song; nought's truly lost + That moulds to sprout forth gain: now I have on me + The high Phoebean priesthood, and that craves + An unrash utterance; not with flaunted hem + May the Muse enter in behind the veil, + Nor, though we hold the sacred dances good, + Shall the holy Virgins maenadize: ruled lips + Befit a votaress Muse. + Thence with no mutable, nor no gelid love, + I keep, O Earth, thy worship, + Though life slow, and the sobering Genius change + To a lamp his gusty torch. What though no more + Athwart its roseal glow + Thy face look forth triumphal? Thou put'st on + Strange sanctities of pathos; like this knoll + Made derelict of day, + Couchant and shadow-ed + Under dim Vesper's overloosened hair: + This, where emboss-ed with the half-blown seed + The solemn purple thistle stands in grass + Grey as an exhalation, when the bank + Holds mist for water in the nights of Fall. + Not to the boy, although his eyes be pure + As the prime snowdrop is, + Ere the rash Phoebus break her cloister + Of sanctimonious snow; + Or Winter fasting sole on Himalay + Since those dove-nuncioed days + When Asia rose from bathing; + Not to such eyes, + Uneuphrasied with tears, the hierarchical + Vision lies unoccult, rank under rank + Through all create down-wheeling, from the Throne + Even to the bases of the pregnant ooze. + This is the enchantment, this the exaltation, + The all-compensating wonder, + Giving to common things wild kindred + With the gold-tesserate floors of Jove; + Linking such heights and such humilities + Hand 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 world + Nerves my uncurb-ed 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 credible + The incredible, with bloody clutch and feet + Clinging the painful juts of jagg-ed faith. + Science, old noser in its prideful straw, + That with anatomising scalpel tents + Its 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 will + Ministers poppies to our troublous thought, + A Balaam come to prophecy,—parables, + Nor of its parable itself is ware, + Grossly unwotting; all things has expounded + Reflux and influx, counts the sepulchre + The seminary of being, and extinction + The Ceres of existence: it discovers + Life 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 corruption + As of our health. It grafts upon the cypress + The tree of Life—Death dies on his own dart + Promising to our ashes perpetuity, + And to our perishable elements + Their proper imperishability; extracting + Medicaments from out mortality + Against too mortal cogitation; till + Even of the caput mortuum we do thus + Make a memento vivere. To such uses + I 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 engirdle + All which I am; that am a foreigner + In mine own region? Who the chart shall draw + Of 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 explore + The long arcane of those dim catacombs, + Where the rat memory does its burrows make, + Close-seal them as I may, and my stolen tread + Starts populace, a gens lucifuga; + That too strait seems my mind my mind to hold, + And I myself incontinent of me. + Then go I, my foul-venting ignorance + With 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 divine + Which 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 beside + This slow perpetual Time stand patiently, + In a little sight. + + In a little dust, in a little dust, + Earth, thou reclaim'st us, who do all our lives + Find of thee but Egyptian villeinage. + Thou dost this body, this enhavocked realm, + Subject to ancient and ancestral shadows; + Descended passions sway it; it is distraught + With ghostly usurpation, dinned and fretted + With the still-tyrannous dead; a haunted tenement, + Peopled from barrows and outworn ossuaries. + Thou giv'st us life not half so willingly + As thou undost thy giving; thou that teem'st + The stealthy terror of the sinuous pard, + The lion maned with curl-ed puissance, + The serpent, and all fair strong beasts of ravin, + Thyself most fair and potent beast of ravin; + And thy great eaters thou, the greatest, eat'st. + Thou hast devoured mammoth and mastodon, + And many a floating bank of fangs, + The scaly scourges of thy primal brine, + And the tower-crested plesiosaure. + Thou fill'st thy mouth with nations, gorgest slow + On purple aeons of kings; man's hulking towers + Are carcase for thee, and to modern sun + Disglutt'st their splintered bones. + Rabble of Pharaohs and Arsacidae + Keep their cold house within thee; thou hast sucked down + How many Ninevehs and Hecatompyloi, + And perished cities whose great phantasmata + O'erbrow the silent citizens of Dis:- + Hast not thy fill? + Tarry awhile, lean Earth, for thou shalt drink, + Even till thy dull throat sicken, + The draught thou grow'st most fat on; hear'st thou not + The world's knives bickering in their sheaths? O patience! + Much offal of a foul world comes thy way, + And man's superfluous cloud shall soon be laid + In a little blood. + + In a little peace, in a little peace, + Thou dost rebate thy rigid purposes + Of imposed being, and relenting, mend'st + Too much, with nought. The westering Phoebus' horse + Paws i' the lucent dust as when he shocked + The East with rising; O how may I trace + In this decline that morning when we did + Sport 'twixt the claws of newly-whelped existence, + Which had not yet learned rending? we did then + Divinely stand, not knowing yet against us + Sentence had passed of life, nor commutation + Petitioning into death. What's he that of + The Free State argues? Tellus! bid him stoop, + Even where the low hic jacet answers him; + Thus low, O Man! there's freedom's seignory, + Tellus' most reverend sole free commonweal, + And model deeply-policied: there none + Stands on precedence, nor ambitiously + Woos the impartial worm, whose favours kiss + With liberal largesse all; there each is free + To be e'en what he must, which here did strive + So much to be he could not; there all do + Their uses just, with no flown questioning. + To be took by the hand of equal earth + They doff her livery, slip to the worm, + Which lacqueys them, their suits of maintenance, + And that soiled workaday apparel cast, + Put on condition: Death's ungentle buffet + Alone makes ceremonial manumission; + So are the heavenly statutes set, and those + Uranian tables of the primal Law. + In a little peace, in a little peace, + Like fierce beasts that a common thirst makes brothers, + We draw together to one hid dark lake; + In a little peace, in a little peace, + We drain with all our burthens of dishonour + Into the cleansing sands o' the thirsty grave. + The fiery pomps, brave exhalations, + And all the glistering shows o' the seeming world, + Which the sight aches at, we unwinking see + Through the smoked glass of Death; Death, wherewith's fined + The muddy wine of life; that earth doth purge + Of her plethora of man; Death, that doth flush + The cumbered gutters of humanity; + Nothing, of nothing king, with front uncrowned, + Whose hand holds crownets; playmate swart o' the strong; + Tenebrous moon that flux and refluence draws + Of the high-tided man; skull-hous-ed asp + That stings the heel of kings; true Fount of Youth, + Where he that dips is deathless; being's drone-pipe; + Whose nostril turns to blight the shrivelled stars, + And thicks the lusty breathing of the sun; + Pontifical Death, that doth the crevasse bridge + To the steep and trifid God; one mortal birth + That broker is of immortality. + Under this dreadful brother uterine, + This kinsman feared, Tellus, behold me come, + Thy son stern-nursed; who mortal-motherlike, + To turn thy weanlings' mouth averse, embitter'st + Thine over-childed breast. Now, mortal-sonlike, + I thou hast suckled, Mother, I at last + Shall sustenant be to thee. Here I untrammel, + Here I pluck loose the body's cerementing, + And break the tomb of life; here I shake off + The bur o' the world, man's congregation shun, + And to the antique order of the dead + I take the tongueless vows: my cell is set + Here in thy bosom; my little trouble is ended + In a little peace. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. + </h2> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + 'EX ORE INFANTIUM'. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Little Jesus, wast Thou shy + Once, and just so small as I? + And what did it feel like to be + Out of Heaven, and just like me? + Didst Thou sometimes think of THERE, + And ask where all the angels were? + I should think that I would cry + For my house all made of sky; + I would look about the air, + And wonder where my angels were; + And at waking 'twould distress me— + Not an angel there to dress me! + Hadst Thou ever any toys, + Like us little girls and boys? + And didst Thou play in Heaven with all + The angels that were not too tall, + With stars for marbles? Did the things + Play Can you see me? through their wings? + And did Thy Mother let Thee spoil + Thy robes, with playing on OUR soil? + How nice to have them always new + In Heaven, because 'twas quite clean blue! + + Didst Thou kneel at night to pray, + And didst Thou join Thy hands, this way? + And did they tire sometimes, being young, + And make the prayer seem very long? + And dost Thou like it best, that we + Should join our hands to pray to Thee? + I used to think, before I knew, + The prayer not said unless we do. + And did Thy Mother at the night + Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right? + And didst Thou feel quite good in bed, + Kissed, and sweet, and thy prayers said? + + Thou canst not have forgotten all + That it feels like to be small: + And Thou know'st I cannot pray + To Thee in my father's way— + When Thou wast so little, say, + Couldst Thou talk Thy Father's way?— + So, a little Child, come down + And hear a child's tongue like Thy own; + Take me by the hand and walk, + And listen to my baby-talk. + To Thy Father show my prayer + (He will look, Thou art so fair), + And say: 'O Father, I, Thy Son, + Bring the prayer of a little one.' + + And He will smile, that children's tongue + Has not changed since Thou wast young! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A QUESTION. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + O bird with heart of wassail, + That toss the Bacchic branch, + And slip your shaken music, + An elfin avalanche; + + Come tell me, O tell me, + My poet of the blue! + What's YOUR thought of me, Sweet?— + Here's MY thought of you. + + A small thing, a wee thing, + A brown fleck of nought; + With winging and singing + That who could have thought? + + A small thing, a wee thing, + A brown amaze withal, + That fly a pitch more azure + Because you're so small. + + Bird, I'm a small thing— + My angel descries; + With winging and singing + That who could surmise? + + Ah, small things, ah, wee things, + Are the poets all, + Whose tour's the more azure + Because they're so small. + + The angels hang watching + The tiny men-things:- + 'The dear speck of flesh, see, + With such daring wings! + + 'Come, tell us, O tell us, + Thou strange mortality! + What's THY thought of us, Dear?— + Here's OUR thought of thee.' + + 'Alack! you tall angels, + I can't think so high! + I can't think what it feels like + Not to be I.' + + Come tell me, O tell me, + My poet of the blue! + What's YOUR thought of me, Sweet?— + Here's MY thought of you. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + FIELD-FLOWER. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + A Phantasy. + + God took a fit of Paradise-wind, + A slip of coerule weather, + A thought as simple as Himself, + And ravelled them together. + Unto His eyes He held it there, + To teach it gazing debonair + With memory of what, perdie, + A God's young innocences were. + His fingers pushed it through the sod— + It came up redolent of God, + Garrulous of the eyes of God + To all the breezes near it; + Musical of the mouth of God + To all had eyes to hear it; + Mystical with the mirth of God, + That glow-like did ensphere it. + And—'Babble! babble! babble!' said; + 'I'll tell the whole world one day!' + There was no blossom half so glad, + Since sun of Christ's first Sunday. + + A poet took a flaw of pain, + A hap of skiey pleasure, + A thought had in his cradle lain, + And mingled them in measure. + That chrism he laid upon his eyes, + And lips, and heart, for euphrasies, + That he might see, feel, sing, perdie, + The simple things that are the wise. + Beside the flower he held his ways, + And leaned him to it gaze for gaze— + He took its meaning, gaze for gaze, + As baby looks on baby; + Its meaning passed into his gaze, + Native as meaning may be; + He rose with all his shining gaze + As children's eyes at play be. + And—'Babble! babble! babble!' said; + 'I'll tell the whole world one day!' + There was no poet half so glad, + Since man grew God that Sunday. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE CLOUD'S SWAN-SONG. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + There is a parable in the pathless cloud, + There's prophecy in heaven,—they did not lie, + The Chaldee shepherds; seal-ed from the proud, + To cheer the weighted heart that mates the seeing eye. + + A lonely man, oppressed with lonely ills, + And all the glory fallen from my song, + Here do I walk among the windy hills, + The wind and I keep both one monotoning tongue. + + Like grey clouds one by one my songs upsoar + Over my soul's cold peaks; and one by one + They loose their little rain, and are no more; + And whether well or ill, to tell me there is none. + + For 'tis an alien tongue, of alien things, + From all men's care, how miserably apart! + Even my friends say: 'Of what is this he sings?' + And barren is my song, and barren is my heart. + + For who can work, unwitting his work's worth? + Better, meseems, to know the work for naught, + Turn my sick course back to the kindly earth, + And leave to ampler plumes the jetting tops of thought. + + And visitations, that do often use, + Remote, unhappy, inauspicious sense + Of doom, and poets widowed of their muse, + And what dark 'gan, dark ended, in me did commence. + + I thought of spirit wronged by mortal ills, + And my flesh rotting on my fate's dull stake; + And how self-scorn-ed they the bounty fills + Of others, and the bread, even of their dearest, take. + + I thought of Keats, that died in perfect time, + In predecease of his just-sickening song; + Of him that set, wrapt in his radiant rhyme, + Sunlike in sea. Life longer had been life too long. + + But I, exanimate of quick Poesy,— + O then, no more but even a soulless corse! + Nay, my Delight dies not; 'tis I should be + Her dead, a stringless harp on which she had no force. + + Of my wild lot I thought; from place to place, + Apollo's song-bowed Scythian, I go on; + Making in all my home, with pliant ways, + But, provident of change, putting forth root in none. + + Now, with starved brain, sick body, patience galled + With fardels even to wincing; from fair sky + Fell sudden little rain, scarce to be called + A shower, which of the instant was gone wholly by. + + What cloud thus died I saw not; heaven was fair. + Methinks my angel plucked my locks: I bowed + My spirit, shamed; and looking in the air:- + 'Even so,' I said, 'even so, my brother the good Cloud?' + + It was a pilgrim of the fields of air, + Its home was allwheres the wind left it rest, + And in a little forth again did fare, + And in all places was a stranger and a guest. + + It harked all breaths of heaven, and did obey + With sweet peace their uncomprehended wills; + It knew the eyes of stars which made no stay, + And with the thunder walked upon the lonely hills. + + And from the subject earth it seemed to scorn, + It drew the sustenance whereby it grew + Perfect in bosom for the married Morn, + And of his life and light full as a maid kissed new. + + Its also darkness of the face withdrawn, + And the long waiting for the little light, + So long in life so little. Like a fawn + It fled with tempest breathing hard at heel of flight; + + And having known full East, did not disdain + To sit in shadow and oblivious cold, + Save what all loss doth of its loss retain, + And who hath held hath somewhat that he still must hold. + + Right poet! who thy rightness to approve, + Having all liberty, didst keep all measure, + And with a firmament for ranging, move + But at the heavens' uncomprehended pleasure. + + With amplitude unchecked, how sweetly thou + Didst wear the ancient custom of the skies, + And yoke of used prescription; and thence how + Find gay variety no license could devise! + + As we the quested beauties better wit + Of the one grove our own than forests great, + Restraint, by the delighted search of it, + Turns to right scope. For lovely moving intricate + + Is put to fair devising in the curb + Of ordered limit; and all-changeful Hermes + Is Terminus as well. Yet we perturb + Our souls for latitude, whose strength in bound and term is. + + How far am I from heavenly liberty, + That play at policy with change and fate, + Who should my soul from foreign broils keep free, + In the fast-guarded frontiers of its single state! + + Could I face firm the Is, and with To-be + Trust Heaven; to Heaven commit the deed, and do; + In power contained, calm in infirmity, + And fit myself to change with virtue ever new; + + Thou hadst not shamed me, cousin of the sky, + Thou wandering kinsman, that didst sweetly live + Unnoted, and unnoted sweetly die, + Weeping more gracious song than any I can weave; + + Which these gross-tissued words do sorely wrong. + Thou hast taught me on powerlessness a power; + To make song wait on life, not life on song; + To hold sweet not too sweet, and bread for bread though sour; + + By law to wander, to be strictly free. + With tears ascended from the heart's sad sea, + Ah, such a silver song to Death could I + Sing, Pain would list, forgetting Pain to be, + And Death would tarry marvelling, and forget to die! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + TO THE SINKING SUN. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + How graciously thou wear'st the yoke + Of use that does not fail! + The grasses, like an anchored smoke, + Ride in the bending gale; + This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna, + And fire-dropt as a seraph's mail. + + Here every eve thou stretchest out + Untarnishable wing, + And marvellously bring'st about + Newly an olden thing; + Nor ever through like-ordered heaven + Moves largely thy grave progressing. + + Here every eve thou goest down + Behind the self-same hill, + Nor ever twice alike go'st down + Behind the self-same hill; + Nor like-ways is one flame-sopped flower + Possessed with glory past its will. + + Not twice alike! I am not blind, + My sight is live to see; + And yet I do complain of thy + Weary variety. + O Sun! I ask thee less or more, + Change not at all, or utterly! + + O give me unprevisioned new, + Or give to change reprieve! + For new in me is olden too, + That I for sameness grieve. + O flowers! O grasses! be but once + The grass and flower of yester-eve! + + Wonder and sadness are the lot + Of change: thou yield'st mine eyes + Grief of vicissitude, but not + Its penetrant surprise. + Immutability mutable + Burthens my spirit and the skies. + + O altered joy, all joyed of yore, + Plodding in unconned ways! + O grief grieved out, and yet once more + A dull, new, staled amaze! + I dream, and all was dreamed before, + Or dream I so? the dreamer says. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + GRIEF'S HARMONICS. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + At evening, when the lank and rigid trees, + To the mere forms of their sweet day-selves drying, + On heaven's blank leaf seem pressed and flatten-ed; + Or rather, to my sombre thoughts replying, + Of plumes funereal the thin effigies; + That hour when all old dead things seem most dead, + And their death instant most and most undying, + That the flesh aches at them; there stirred in me + The babe of an unborn calamity, + Ere its due time to be deliver-ed. + Dead sorrow and sorrow unborn so blent their pain, + That which more present was were hardly said, + But both more NOW than any Now can be. + My soul like sackcloth did her body rend, + And thus with Heaven contend:- + 'Let pass the chalice of this coming dread, + Or that fore-drained O bid me not re-drain!' + So have I asked, who know my asking vain, + Woe against woe in antiphon set over, + That grief's soul transmigrates, and lives again, + And in new pang old pang's incarnated. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + MEMORAT MEMORIA. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Come you living or dead to me, out of the silt of the Past, + With the sweet of the piteous first, and the shame of the shameful + last? + Come with your dear and dreadful face through the passes of Sleep, + The terrible mask, and the face it masked—the face you did not + keep? + You are neither two nor one—I would you were one or two, + For your awful self is embalmed in the fragrant self I knew: + And Above may ken, and Beneath may ken, what I mean by these words + of whirl, + But by my sleep that sleepeth not,—O Shadow of a Girl!— + Nought here but I and my dreams shall know the secret of this + thing:- + For ever the songs I sing are sad with the songs I never sing, + Sad are sung songs, but how more sad the songs we dare not sing! + + Ah, the ill that we do in tenderness, and the hateful horror of + love! + It has sent more souls to the unslaked Pit than it ever will draw + above. + I damned you, girl, with my pity, who had better by far been thwart, + And drave you hard on the track to hell, because I was gentle of + heart. + I shall have no comfort now in scent, no ease in dew, for this; + I shall be afraid of daffodils, and rose-buds are amiss; + You have made a thing of innocence as shameful as a sin, + I shall never feel a girl's soft arms without horror of the skin. + My child! what was it that I sowed, that I so ill should reap? + You have done this to me. And I, what I to you?—It lies with + Sleep. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + JULY FUGITIVE. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Can you tell me where has hid her + Pretty Maid July? + I would swear one day ago + She passed by, + I would swear that I do know + The blue bliss of her eye: + 'Tarry, maid, maid,' I bid her; + But she hastened by. + Do you know where she has hid her, + Maid July? + + Yet in truth it needs must be + The flight of her is old; + Yet in truth it needs must be, + For her nest, the earth, is cold. + No more in the pool-ed Even + Wade her rosy feet, + Dawn-flakes no more plash from them + To poppies 'mid the wheat. + She has muddied the day's oozes + With her petulant feet; + Scared the clouds that floated, + As sea-birds they were, + Slow on the coerule + Lulls of the air, + Lulled on the luminous + Levels of air: + She has chidden in a pet + All her stars from her; + Now they wander loose and sigh + Through the turbid blue, + Now they wander, weep, and cry— + Yea, and I too— + 'Where are you, sweet July, + Where are you?' + + Who hath beheld her footprints, + Or the pathway she goes? + Tell me, wind, tell me, wheat, + Which of you knows? + Sleeps she swathed in the flushed Arctic + Night of the rose? + Or lie her limbs like Alp-glow + On the lily's snows? + Gales, that are all-visitant, + Find the runaway; + And for him who findeth her + (I do charge you say) + I will throw largesse of broom + Of this summer's mintage, + I will broach a honey-bag + Of the bee's best vintage. + Breezes, wheat, flowers sweet, + None of them knows! + How then shall we lure her back + From the way she goes? + For it were a shameful thing, + Saw we not this comer + Ere Autumn camp upon the fields + Red with rout of Summer. + + When the bird quits the cage, + We set the cage outside, + With seed and with water, + And the door wide, + Haply we may win it so + Back to abide. + Hang her cage of earth out + O'er Heaven's sunward wall, + Its four gates open, winds in watch + By rein-ed cars at all; + Relume in hanging hedgerows + The rain-quenched blossom, + And roses sob their tears out + On the gale's warm heaving bosom; + Shake the lilies till their scent + Over-drip their rims; + That our runaway may see + We do know her whims: + Sleek the tumbled waters out + For her travelled limbs; + Strew and smoothe blue night thereon, + There will—O not doubt her!— + The lovely sleepy lady lie, + With all her stars about her! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + TO A SNOW-FLAKE. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + What heart could have thought you?— + Past our devisal + (O filigree petal!) + Fashioned so purely, + Fragilely, surely, + From what Paradisal + Imagineless metal, + Too costly for cost? + Who hammered you, wrought you, + From argentine vapour?— + 'God was my shaper. + Passing surmisal, + He hammered, He wrought me, + From curled silver vapour, + To lust of His mind:- + Thou could'st not have thought me! + So purely, so palely, + Tinily, surely, + Mightily, frailly, + Insculped and embossed, + With His hammer of wind, + And His graver of frost.' +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + NOCTURN. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I walk, I only, + Not I only wake; + Nothing is, this sweet night, + But doth couch and wake + For its love's sake; + Everything, this sweet night, + Couches with its mate. + For whom but for the stealthy-visitant sun + Is the naked moon + Tremulous and elate? + The heaven hath the earth + Its own and all apart; + The hush-ed pool holdeth + A star to its heart. + You may think the rose sleepeth, + But though she folded is, + The wind doubts her sleeping; + Not all the rose sleeps, + But smiles in her sweet heart + For crafty bliss. + The wind lieth with the rose, + And when he stirs, she stirs in her repose: + The wind hath the rose, + And the rose her kiss. + Ah, mouth of me! + Is it then that this + Seemeth much to thee?— + I wander only. + The rose hath her kiss. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A MAY BURDEN. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Through meadow-ways as I did tread, + The corn grew in great lustihead, + And hey! the beeches burgeon-ed. + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! + It is the month, the jolly month, + It is the jolly month of May. + + God ripe the wines and corn, I say + And wenches for the marriage-day, + And boys to teach love's comely play. + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! + It is the month, the jolly month, + It is the jolly month of May. + + As I went down by lane and lea, + The daisies reddened so, pardie! + 'Blushets!' I said, 'I well do see, + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! + The thing ye think of in this month, + Heigho! this jolly month of May.' + + As down I went by rye and oats, + The blossoms smelt of kisses; throats + Of birds turned kisses into notes; + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! + The kiss it is a growing flower, + I trow, this jolly month of May! + + God send a mouth to every kiss, + Seeing the blossom of this bliss + By gathering doth grow, certes! + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! + Thy brow-garland pushed all aslant + Tells—but I tell not, wanton May! + + NOTE. The first two stanzas are from a French original—I have + forgotten what. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A DEAD ASTRONOMER. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + (Father Perry, S.J.) + + Starry amorist, starward gone, + Thou art—what thou didst gaze upon! + Passed through thy golden garden's bars, + Thou seest the Gardener of the Stars. + + She, about whose moon-ed brows + Seven stars make seven glows, + Seven lights for seven woes; + She, like thine own Galaxy, + All lustres in one purity:- + What said'st thou, Astronomer, + When thou did'st discover HER? + When thy hand its tube let fall, + Thou found'st the fairest Star of all! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + 'CHOSE VUE'. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + A metrical caprice. + + Up she rose, fair daughter—well she was graced + As a cloud her going, stept from her chair, + As a summer-soft cloud, in her going paced, + Down dropped her riband-band, and all her waving hair + Shook like loosened music cadent to her waist;— + Lapsing like music, wavery as water, + Slid to her waist. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + 'WHERETO ART THOU COME?' + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 'Friend, whereto art thou come?' Thus Verity; + Of each that to the world's sad Olivet + Comes with no multitude, but alone by night, + Lit with the one torch of his lifted soul, + Seeking her that he may lay hands on her; + Thus: and waits answer from the mouth of deed. + Truth is a maid, whom men woo diversely; + This, as a spouse; that, as a light-o'-love, + To know, and having known, to make his brag. + But woe to him that takes the immortal kiss, + And not estates her in his housing life, + Mother of all his seed! So he betrays, + Not Truth, the unbetrayable, but himself: + And with his kiss's rated traitor-craft, + The Haceldama of a plot of days + He buys, to consummate his Judasry + Therein with Judas' guerdon of despair. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0038" id="link2H_4_0038"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + HEAVEN AND HELL. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 'Tis said there were no thought of hell, + Save hell were taught; that there should be + A Heaven for all's self-credible. + Not so the thing appears to me. + 'Tis Heaven that lies beyond our sights, + And hell too possible that proves; + For all can feel the God that smites, + But ah, how few the God that loves! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0039" id="link2H_4_0039"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + TO A CHILD. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Whenas my life shall time with funeral tread + The heavy death-drum of the beaten hours, + Following, sole mourner, mine own manhood dead, + Poor forgot corse, where not a maid strows flowers; + When I you love am no more I you love, + But go with unsubservient feet, behold + Your dear face through changed eyes, all grim change prove;— + A new man, mock-ed with misname of old; + When shamed Love keep his ruined lodging, elf! + When, ceremented in mouldering memory, + Myself is hears-ed underneath myself, + And I am but the monument of me:- + O to that tomb be tender then, which bears + Only the name of him it sepulchres! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0040" id="link2H_4_0040"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + HERMES. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Soothsay. Behold, with rod twy-serpented, + Hermes the prophet, twining in one power + The woman with the man. Upon his head + The cloudy cap, wherewith he hath in dower + The cloud's own virtue—change and counterchange, + To show in light, and to withdraw in pall, + As mortal eyes best bear. His lineage strange + From Zeus, Truth's sire, and maiden May—the all- + Illusive Nature. His fledged feet declare + That 'tis the nether self transdeified, + And the thrice-furnaced passions, which do bear + The poet Olympusward. In him allied + Both parents clasp; and from the womb of Nature + Stern Truth takes flesh in shows of lovely feature. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0041" id="link2H_4_0041"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + HOUSE OF BONDAGE. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I + + When I perceive Love's heavenly reaping still + Regard perforce the clouds' vicissitude, + That the fixed spirit loves not when it will, + But craves its seasons of the flawful blood; + When I perceive that the high poet doth + Oft voiceless stray beneath the uninfluent stars, + That even Urania of her kiss is loath, + And Song's brave wings fret on their sensual bars; + When I perceived the fullest-sail-ed sprite + Lag at most need upon the leth-ed seas, + The provident captainship oft voided quite, + And lam-ed lie deep-draughted argosies; + I scorn myself, that put for such strange toys + The wit of man to purposes of boys. + + II + + The spirit's ark sealed with a little clay, + Was old ere Memphis grew a memory; {2} + The hand pontifical to break away + That seal what shall surrender? Not the sea + Which did englut great Egypt and his war, + Nor all the desert-drown-ed sepulchres. + Love's feet are stained with clay and travel-sore, + And dusty are Song's lucent wing and hairs. + O Love, that must do courtesy to decay, + Eat hasty bread standing with loins up-girt, + How shall this stead thy feet for their sore way? + Ah, Song, what brief embraces balm thy hurt! + Had Jacob's toil full guerdon, casting his + Twice-seven heaped years to burn in Rachel's kiss? + + {2} The Ark of the Egyptian temple was sealed with clay, which the + Pontiff-king broke when he entered the inner shrine to offer + worship. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0042" id="link2H_4_0042"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE HEART. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Two Sonnets. + + (To my Critic, who had objected to the phrase—'The heart's burning + floors.') + + I + + The heart you hold too small and local thing, + Such spacious terms of edifice to bear. + And yet, since Poesy first shook out her wing, + The mighty Love has been impalaced there; + That has she given him as his wide demesne, + And for his sceptre ample empery; + Against its door to knock has Beauty been + Content; it has its purple canopy + A dais for the sovereign lady spread + Of many a lover, who the heaven would think + Too low an awning for her sacred head. + The world, from star to sea, cast down its brink— + Yet shall that chasm, till He Who these did build + An awful Curtius make Him, yawn unfilled. + + II + + O nothing, in this corporal earth of man, + That to the imminent heaven of his high soul + Responds with colour and with shadow, can + Lack correlated greatness. If the scroll + Where thoughts lie fast in spell of hieroglyph + Be mighty through its mighty habitants; + If God be in His Name; grave potence if + The sounds unbind of hieratic chants; + All's vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirm + Nature is whole in her least things exprest, + Nor know we with what scope God builds the worm. + Our towns are copied fragments from our breast; + And all man's Babylons strive but to impart + The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0043" id="link2H_4_0043"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A SUNSET. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + From Hugo's 'Feuilles d'Automne'. + + I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens, + Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens, + In numerous leafage bosomed close; + Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, + Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere + On cloudy archipelagos. + + Oh gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion, + Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion, + Their unimagined shapes accord: + Under their waves at intervals flames a pale levin through, + As if some giant of the air amid the vapours drew + A sudden elemental sword. + + The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold; + And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold, + The thatched roof of a cot a-glance; + Or on the blurred horizons joins his battle with the haze; + Or pools the glooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze + Great moveless meres of radiance. + + Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track + Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back, + A triple row of pointed teeth? + Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide, + The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds its tenebrous side + With scales of golden mail ensheathe. + + Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates—the vision flees. + Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice + Ruins immense in mounded wrack: + Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone + Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown + When the earthquake heaves its hugy back. + + These vapours with their leaden, golden, iron, bronz-ed glows, + Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose, + Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms, + 'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep, + As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep + His dreadful and resounding arms! + + All vanishes! The sun, from topmost heaven precipitated, + Like to a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red + Into the furnace stirred to fume, + Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire, + Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire + The vaporous and inflam-ed spume. + + O contemplate the heavens! whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale, + In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil, + With love that has not speech for need; + Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite: + If winter hue them like a pall; or if the summer night + Fantasy them with starry brede. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0044" id="link2H_4_0044"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + HEARD ON THE MOUNTAIN. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + From Hugo's 'Feuilles d'Automne'. + + Have you sometimes, calm, silent, let your tread aspirant rise + Up to the mountain's summit, in the presence of the skies? + Was't on the borders of the South? or on the Bretagne coast? + And at the basis of the mount had you the Ocean tossed? + And there, leaned o'er the wave and o'er the immeasurableness, + Calm, silent, have you harkened what it says? Lo, what it says! + One day at least, whereon my thought, enlicens-ed to muse, + Had drooped its wing above the beach-ed margent of the ooze, + And, plunging from the mountain height into the immensity, + Beheld upon one side the land, on the other side the sea. + I harkened, comprehended,—never, as from those abysses, + No, never issued from a mouth, nor moved an ear, such voice as this + is! + + A sound it was, at outset, vast, immeasurable, confused, + Vaguer than is the wind among the tufted trees effused, + Full of magnificent accords, suave murmurs, sweet as is + The evensong, and mighty as the shock of panoplies + When the hoarse melee in its arms the closing squadrons grips, + And pants, in furious breathings, from the clarions' brazen lips. + Unutterable the harmony, unsearchable its deep, + Whose fluid undulations round the world a girdle keep, + And through the vasty heavens, which by its surges are washed young, + Its infinite volutions roll, enlarging as they throng, + Even to the profound arcane, whose ultimate chasms sombre + Its shattered flood englut with time, with space and form and + number. + Like to another atmosphere with thin o'erflowing robe, + The hymn eternal covers all the inundated globe: + And the world, swathed about with this investuring symphony, + Even as it trepidates in the air, so trepidates in the harmony. + + And pensive, I attended the ethereal lutany, + Lost within this containing voice as if within the sea. + + Soon I distinguished, yet as tone which veils confuse and smother, + Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other, + Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire; + Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. + And I distinguished them amid that deep and rumorous sound, + As who beholds two currents thwart amid the fluctuous profound. + + The one was of the waters; a be-radiant hymnal speech! + That was the voice o' the surges, as they parleyed each with each. + The other, which arose from our abode terranean, + Was sorrowful; and that, alack! the murmur was of man; + And in this mighty quire, whose chantings day and night resound, + Every wave had its utterance, and every man his sound. + + Now, the magnificent Ocean, as I said, unbannering + A voice of joy, a voice of peace, did never stint to sing, + Most like in Sion's temples to a psaltery psaltering, + And to creation's beauty reared the great lauds of his song. + Upon the gale, upon the squall, his clamour borne along + Unpausingly arose to God in more triumphal swell; + And every one among his waves, that God alone can quell, + When the other of its song made end, into the singing pressed. + Like that majestic lion whereof Daniel was the guest, + At intervals the Ocean his tremendous murmur awed; + And I, t'ward where the sunset fires fell shaggily and broad, + Under his golden mane, methought, that I saw pass the hand of God. + + Meanwhile, and side by side with that august fan-faronnade, + The other voice, like the sudden scream of a destrier affrayed, + Like an infernal door that grates ajar its rusty throat, + Like to a bow of iron that gnarls upon an iron rote, + Grinded; and tears, and shriekings, the anathema, the lewd taunt, + Refusal of viaticum, refusal of the font, + And clamour, and malediction, and dread blasphemy, among + That hurtling crowd of rumour from the diverse human tongue, + Went by as who beholdeth, when the valleys thick t'ward night, + The long drifts of the birds of dusk pass, blackening flight on + flight. + What was this sound whose thousand echoes vibrated unsleeping? + Alas! the sound was earth's and man's, for earth and man were + weeping. + + Brothers! of these two voices, strange most unimaginably, + Unceasingly regenerated, dying unceasingly, + Harken-ed of the Eternal throughout His Eternity, + The one voice uttereth: NATURE! and the other voice: HUMANITY! + + Then I alit in reverie; for my ministering sprite + Alack! had never yet deployed a pinion of an ampler flight, + Nor ever had my shadow endured so large a day to burn: + And long I rested dreaming, contemplating turn by turn + Now that abyss obscure which lurked beneath the water's roll, + And now that other untemptable abyss which opened in my soul. + And I made question of me, to what issues are we here, + Whither should tend the thwarting threads of all this ravelled gear; + What doth the soul; to be or live if better worth it is; + And why the Lord, Who, only, reads within that book of His, + In fatal hymeneals hath eternally entwined + The vintage-chant of nature with the dirging cry of humankind? + + (The metre of the second of these two translations is an experiment. + The splendid fourteen-syllable metre of Chapman I have treated after + the manner of Drydenian rhyming heroics; with the occasional + triplet, and even the occasional Alexandrine, represented by a line + of eight accents—a treatment which can well extend, I believe, the + majestic resources of the metre.) +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0045" id="link2H_4_0045"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + ULTIMA. + </h2> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0046" id="link2H_4_0046"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + LOVE'S ALMSMAN PLAINETH HIS FARE. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + O you, love's mendicancy who never tried, + How little of your almsman me you know! + Your little languid hand in mine you slide, + Like to a child says—'Kiss me and let me go!' + And night for this is fretted with my tears, + While I:-'How soon this heavenly neck doth tire + Bending to me from its transtellar spheres!' + Ah, heart all kneaded out of honey and fire! + Who bound thee to a body nothing worth, + And shamed thee much with an unlovely soul, + That the most strainedest charity of earth + Distasteth soon to render back the whole + Of thine inflam-ed sweets and gentilesse! + Whereat, like an unpastured Titan, thou + Gnaw'st on thyself for famine's bitterness, + And leap'st against thy chain. Sweet Lady, how + Little a linking of the hand to you! + Though I should touch yours careless for a year, + Not one blue vein would lie divinelier blue + Upon your fragile temple, to unsphere + The seraphim for kisses! Not one curve + Of your sad mouth would droop more sad and sweet. + But little food love's beggars needs must serve, + That eye your plenteous graces from the street. + A hand-clasp I must feed on for a night, + A noon, although the untasted feast you lay, + To mock me, of your beauty. That you might + Be lover for one space, and make essay + What 'tis to pass unsuppered to your couch, + Keep fast from love all day; and so be taught + The famine which these craving lines avouch! + Ah! miser of good things that cost thee naught, + How know'st thou poor men's hunger?—Misery! + When I go doleless and unfed by thee! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0047" id="link2H_4_0047"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A HOLOCAUST. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 'No man ever attained supreme knowledge, unless his heart had been + torn up by the roots.' +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + When I presage the time shall come—yea, now + Perchance is come, when you shall fail from me, + Because the mighty spirit, to whom you vow + Faith of kin genius unrebukably, + Scourges my sloth, and from your side dismissed + Henceforth this sad and most, most lonely soul + Must, marching fatally through pain and mist, + The God-bid levy of its powers enrol; + When I presage that none shall hear the voice + From the great Mount that clangs my ordained advance, + That sullen envy bade the churlish choice + Yourself shall say, and turn your altered glance; + O God! Thou knowest if this heart of flesh + Quivers like broken entrails, when the wheel + Rolleth some dog in middle street, or fresh + Fruit when ye tear it bleeding from the peel; + If my soul cries the uncomprehended cry + When the red agony oozed on Olivet! + Yet not for this, a caitiff, falter I, + Beloved whom I must lose, nor thence regret + The doubly-vouched and twin allegiance owed + To you in Heaven, and Heaven in you, Lady. + How could you hope, loose dealer with my God, + That I should keep for you my fealty? + For still 'tis thus:-because I am so true, + My Fair, to Heaven, I am so true to you! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0048" id="link2H_4_0048"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + BENEATH A PHOTOGRAPH. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Phoebus, who taught me art divine, + Here tried his hand where I did mine; + And his white fingers in this face + Set my Fair's sigh-suggesting grace. + O sweetness past profaning guess, + Grievous with its own exquisiteness! + Vesper-like face, its shadows bright + With meanings of sequestered light; + Drooped with shamefast sanctities + She purely fears eyes cannot miss, + Yet would blush to know she IS. + Ah, who can view with passionless glance + This tear-compelling countenance! + He has cozened it to tell + Almost its own miracle. + Yet I, all-viewing though he be, + Methinks saw further here than he; + And, Master gay! I swear I drew + Something the better of the two! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0049" id="link2H_4_0049"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + AFTER HER GOING. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + The after-even! Ah, did I walk, + Indeed, in her or even? + For nothing of me or around + But absent She did leaven, + Felt in my body as its soul, + And in my soul its heaven. + + 'Ah me! my very flesh turns soul, + Essenced,' I sighed, 'with bliss!' + And the blackbird held his lutany, + All fragrant-through with bliss; + And all things stilled were as a maid + Sweet with a single kiss. + + For grief of perfect fairness, eve + Could nothing do but smile; + The time was far too perfect fair, + Being but for a while; + And ah, in me, too happy grief + Blinded herself with smile! + + The sunset at its radiant heart + Had somewhat unconfest: + The bird was loath of speech, its song + Half-refluent on its breast, + And made melodious toyings with + A note or two at best. + + And she was gone, my sole, my Fair, + Ah, sole my Fair, was gone! + Methinks, throughout the world 'twere right + I had been sad alone; + And yet, such sweet in all things' heart, + And such sweet in my own! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0050" id="link2H_4_0050"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + MY LADY THE TYRANNESS. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Me since your fair ambition bows + Feodary to those gracious brows, + Is nothing mine will not confess + Your sovran sweet rapaciousness? + Though use to the white yoke inures, + Half-petulant is + Your loving rebel for somewhat his, + Not yours, my love, not yours! + + Behold my skies, which make with me + One passionate tranquillity! + Wrap thyself in them as a robe, + She shares them not; their azures probe, + No countering wings thy flight endures. + Nay, they do stole + Me like an aura of her soul. + I yield them, love, for yours! + + But mine these hills and fields, which put + Not on the sanctity of her foot. + Far off, my dear, far off the sweet + Grave pianissimo of your feet! + My earth, perchance, your sway abjures?— + Your absence broods + O'er all, a subtler presence. Woods, + Fields, hills, all yours, all yours! + + Nay then, I said, I have my thought, + Which never woman's reaching raught; + Being strong beyond a woman's might, + And high beyond a woman's height, + Shaped to my shape in all contours.— + I looked, and knew + No thought but you were garden to. + All yours, my love, all yours! + + Meseemeth still, I have my life; + All-clement Her its resolute strife + Evades; contained, relinquishing + Her mitigating eyes; a thing + Which the whole girth of God secures. + Ah, fool, pause! pause! + I had no life, until it was + All yours, my love, all yours! + + Yet, stern possession! I have my death, + Sole yielding up of my sole breath; + Which all within myself I die, + All in myself must cry the cry + Which the deaf body's wall immures.— + Thought fashioneth + My death without her.—Ah, even death + All yours, my love, all yours! + + Death, then, be hers. I have my heaven, + For which no arm of hers has striven; + Which solitary I must choose, + And solitary win or lose.— + Ah, but not heaven my own endures! + I must perforce + Taste you, my stream, in God your source,— + So steep my heaven in yours. + + At last I said—I have my God, + Who doth desire me, though a clod, + And from His liberal Heaven shall He + Bar in mine arms His privacy. + Himself for mine Himself assures.— + None shall deny + God to be mine, but He and I + All yours, my love, all yours! + + I have no fear at all lest I + Without her draw felicity. + God for His Heaven will not forego + Her whom I found such heaven below, + And she will train Him to her lures. + Nought, lady, I love + In you but more is loved above; + What made me, makes Him yours. + + 'I, thy sought own, am I forgot?' + Ha, thou?—thou liest, I seek thee not. + Why what, thou painted parrot, Fame, + What have I taught thee but her name? + Hear, thou slave Fame, while Time endures, + I give her thee; + Page her triumphal name!—Lady, + Take her, the thrall is yours. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0051" id="link2H_4_0051"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + UNTO THIS LAST. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + A boy's young fancy taketh love + Most simply, with the rind thereof; + A boy's young fancy tasteth more + The rind, than the deific core. + Ah, Sweet! to cast away the slips + Of unessential rind, and lips + Fix on the immortal core, is well; + But heard'st thou ever any tell + Of such a fool would take for food + Aspect and scent, however good, + Of sweetest core Love's orchards grow? + Should such a phantast please him so, + Love where Love's reverent self denies + Love to feed, but with his eyes, + All the savour, all the touch, + Another's—was there ever such? + Such were fool, if fool there be; + Such fool was I, and was for thee! + But if the touch and savour too + Of this fruit—say, Sweet, of you— + You unto another give + For sacrosanct prerogative, + Yet even scent and aspect were + Some elected Second's share; + And one, gone mad, should rest content + With memory of show and scent; + Would not thyself vow, if there sigh + Such a fool—say, Sweet, as I— + Treble frenzy it must be + Still to love, and to love thee? + + Yet had I torn (man knoweth not, + Nor scarce the unweeping angels wot + Of such dread task the lightest part) + Her fingers from about my heart. + Heart, did we not think that she + Had surceased her tyranny? + Heart, we bounded, and were free! + O sacrilegious freedom!—Till + She came, and taught my apostate will + The winnowed sweet mirth cannot guess + And tear-fined peace of hopefulness; + Looked, spake, simply touched, and went. + Now old pain is fresh content, + Proved content is unproved pain. + Pangs fore-tempted, which in vain + I, faithless, have denied, now bud + To untempted fragrance and the mood + Of contrite heavenliness; all days + Joy affrights me in my ways; + Extremities of old delight + Afflict me with new exquisite + Virgin piercings of surprise,— + Stung by those wild brown bees, her eyes! +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0052" id="link2H_4_0052"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + ULTIMUM. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Now in these last spent drops, slow, slower shed, + Love dies, Love dies, Love dies—ah, Love is dead! + Sad Love in life, sore Love in agony, + Pale Love in death; while all his offspring songs, + Like children, versed not in death's chilly wrongs, + About him flit, frighted to see him lie + So still, who did not know that Love could die. + One lifts his wing, where dulls the vermeil all + Like clotting blood, and shrinks to find it cold, + And when she sees its lapse and nerveless fall + Clasps her fans, while her sobs ooze through the webb-ed gold. + Thereat all weep together, and their tears + Make lights like shivered moonlight on long waters. + Have peace, O piteous daughters! + He shall not wake more through the mortal years, + Nor comfort come to my soul widow-ed, + Nor breath to your wild wings; for Love is dead! + + I slew, that moan for him: he lifted me + Above myself, and that I might not be + Less than myself, need was that he should die; + Since Love that first did wing, now clogged me from the sky. + Yet lofty Love being dead thus passeth base— + There is a soul of nobleness which stays, + The spectre of the rose: be comforted, + Songs, for the dust that dims his sacred head! + The days draw on too dark for Song or Love; + O peace, my songs, nor stir ye any wing! + For lo, the thunder hushing all the grove, + And did Love live, not even Love could sing. + + And, Lady, thus I dare to say, + Not all with you is passed away! + For your love taught me this:-'tis Love's true praise + To be, not staff, but writ of worthy days; + And that high worth in love unfortunate + Should still remain it learned in love elate. + Beyond your star, still, still the stars are bright; + Beyond your highness, still I follow height; + Sole I go forth, yet still to my sad view, + Beyond your trueness, Lady, Truth stands true. + This wisdom sings my song with last firm breath, + Caught from the twisted lore of Love and Death, + The strange inwoven harmony that wakes + From Pallas' straying locks twined with her aegis-snakes. + 'On him the unpetitioned heavens descend, + Who heaven on earth proposes not for end; + The perilous and celestial excess + Taking with peace, lacking with thankfulness. + Bliss in extreme befits thee not, until + Thou'rt not extreme in bliss; be equal still: + Sweets to be granted think thy self unmeet + Till thou have learned to hold sweet not too sweet.' + This thing not far is he from wise in art + Who teacheth; nor who doth, from wise in heart. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0053" id="link2H_4_0053"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + ENVOY. + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Go, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play; + Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow: + And some are sung, and that was yesterday, + And some unsung, and that may be to-morrow. + + Go forth; and if it be o'er stony way, + Old joy can lend what newer grief must borrow: + And it was sweet, and that was yesterday, + And sweet is sweet, though purchas-ed with sorrow. + + Go, songs, and come not back from your far way: + And if men ask you why ye smile and sorrow, + Tell them ye grieve, for your hearts know To-day, + Tell them ye smile, for your eyes know To-morrow. +</pre> + <p> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of New Poems, by Francis Thompson + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW POEMS *** + +***** This file should be named 1471-h.htm or 1471-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/7/1471/ + +Produced by Les Bowler, and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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 at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: New Poems + +Author: Francis Thompson + +Posting Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1471] +Release Date: September, 1998 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW POEMS *** + + + + +Produced by Les Bowler + + + + + +NEW POEMS, + +By Francis Thompson. + + + Dedication to Coventry Patmore. + + + Lo, my book thinks to look Time's leaguer down, + Under the banner of your spread renown! + Or if these levies of impuissant rhyme + Fall to the overthrow of assaulting Time, + Yet this one page shall fend oblivious shame, + Armed with your crested and prevailing Name. + + + Note.--This dedication was written while the dear friend and great + Poet to whom it was addressed yet lived. It is left as he saw it-- + the last verses of mine that were ever to pass under his eyes. + + F. T. + + + +Contents. + + + SIGHT AND INSIGHT. + + + The mistress of vision. + Contemplation. + 'By reason of Thy law.' + The dread of height. + Orient ode. + New Year's chimes. + From the night of forebeing. + Any saint. + Assumpta Maria. + The after woman. + Grace of the way. + Retrospect. + + + + A NARROW VESSEL. + + + A girl's sin--in her eyes. + A girl's sin--in his eyes. + Love declared. + The way of a maid. + Beginning of the end. + Penelope. + The end of it. + Epilogue. + + + + MISCELLANEOUS ODES. + + + Ode to the setting sun. + A captain of song. + Against Urania. + An anthem of earth. + + + + MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. + + + 'Ex ore infantium.' + A question. + Field-flower. + The cloud's swan-song. + To the sinking sun. + Grief's harmonics. + Memorat memoria. + July fugitive. + To a snow-flake. + Nocturn. + A May burden. + A dead astronomer. + 'Chose vue.' + 'Whereto art thou come.' + Heaven and hell. + To a child. + Hermes. + House of bondage. + The heart. + A sunset. + Heard on the mountain. + + + + ULTIMA. + + + Love's almsman plaineth his fare. + A holocaust. + Beneath a photograph. + After her going. + My lady the tyranness. + Unto this last. + Ultimum. + Envoy. + + + + +SIGHT AND INSIGHT. + + + + + 'Wisdom is easily seen by them that love her, and is found + by them that seek her. + To think therefore upon her is perfect understanding.' + + WISDOM, vi. + + + + +THE MISTRESS OF VISION. + + I + + Secret was the garden; + Set i' the pathless awe + Where no star its breath can draw. + Life, that is its warden, + Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw not, + and I saw. + + II + + It was a mazeful wonder; + Thrice three times it was enwalled + With an emerald-- + Seal-ed so asunder. + All its birds in middle air hung a-dream, their + music thralled. + + III + + The Lady of fair weeping, + At the garden's core, + Sang a song of sweet and sore + And the after-sleeping; + In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore. + + IV + + With sweet-panged singing, + Sang she through a dream-night's day; + That the bowers might stay, + Birds bate their winging, + Nor the wall of emerald float in wreath-ed haze away. + + V + + The lily kept its gleaming, + In her tears (divine conservers!) + Wash-ed with sad art; + And the flowers of dreaming + Pal-ed not their fervours, + For her blood flowed through their nervures; + And the roses were most red, for she dipt them in + her heart. + + VI + + There was never moon, + Save the white sufficing woman: + Light most heavenly-human-- + Like the unseen form of sound, + Sensed invisibly in tune,-- + With a sun-deriv-ed stole + Did inaureole + All her lovely body round; + Lovelily her lucid body with that light was inter- + strewn. + + VII + + The sun which lit that garden wholly, + Low and vibrant visible, + Tempered glory woke; + And it seem-ed solely + Like a silver thurible + Solemnly swung, slowly, + Fuming clouds of golden fire, for a cloud of incense- + smoke. + + VIII + + But woe's me, and woe's me, + For the secrets of her eyes! + In my visions fearfully + They are ever shown to be + As fring-ed pools, whereof each lies + Pallid-dark beneath the skies + Of a night that is + But one blear necropolis. + And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her + own sighs. + + IX + + Many changes rise on + Their phantasmal mysteries. + They grow to an horizon + Where earth and heaven meet; + And like a wing that dies on + The vague twilight-verges, + Many a sinking dream doth fleet + Lessening down their secrecies. + And, as dusk with day converges, + Their orbs are troublously + Over-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fear + of things to be. + + X + + There is a peak on Himalay, + And on the peak undeluged snow, + And on the snow not eagles stray; + There if your strong feet could go,-- + Looking over tow'rd Cathay + From the never-deluged snow-- + Farthest ken might not survey + Where the peoples underground dwell whom + antique fables know. + + XI + + East, ah, east of Himalay, + Dwell the nations underground; + Hiding from the shock of Day, + For the sun's uprising-sound: + Dare not issue from the ground + At the tumults of the Day, + So fearfully the sun doth sound + Clanging up beyond Cathay; + For the great earthquaking sunrise rolling up + beyond Cathay. + + XII + + Lend me, O lend me + The terrors of that sound, + That its music may attend me. + Wrap my chant in thunders round; + While I tell the ancient secrets in that Lady's + singing found. + + XIII + + On Ararat there grew a vine, + When Asia from her bathing rose; + Our first sailor made a twine + Thereof for his prefiguring brows. + Canst divine + Where, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a cluster + grows? + + XIV + + On Golgotha there grew a thorn + Round the long-prefigured Brows. + Mourn, O mourn! + For the vine have we the spine? Is this all the + Heaven allows? + + XV + + On Calvary was shook a spear; + Press the point into thy heart-- + Joy and fear! + All the spines upon the thorn into curling tendrils + start. + + XVI + + O, dismay! + I, a wingless mortal, sporting + With the tresses of the sun? + I, that dare my hand to lay + On the thunder in its snorting? + Ere begun, + Falls my singed song down the sky, even the old + Icarian way. + + XVII + + From the fall precipitant + These dim snatches of her chant + Only have remain-ed mine;-- + That from spear and thorn alone + May be grown + For the front of saint or singer any divinizing twine. + + XVIII + + Her song said that no springing + Paradise but evermore + Hangeth on a singing + That has chords of weeping, + And that sings the after-sleeping + To souls which wake too sore. + 'But woe the singer, woe!' she said; 'beyond the + dead his singing-lore, + All its art of sweet and sore, + He learns, in Elenore!' + + XIX + + Where is the land of Luthany, + Where is the tract of Elenore? + I am bound therefor. + + XX + + 'Pierce thy heart to find the key; + With thee take + Only what none else would keep; + Learn to dream when thou dost wake, + Learn to wake when thou dost sleep. + Learn to water joy with tears, + Learn from fears to vanquish fears; + To hope, for thou dar'st not despair, + Exult, for that thou dar'st not grieve; + Plough thou the rock until it bear; + Know, for thou else couldst not believe; + Lose, that the lost thou may'st receive; + Die, for none other way canst live. + When earth and heaven lay down their veil, + And that apocalypse turns thee pale; + When thy seeing blindeth thee + To what thy fellow-mortals see; + When their sight to thee is sightless; + Their living, death; their light, most light- + less; + Search no more-- + Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.' + + XXI + + Where is the land of Luthany, + And where the region Elenore? + I do faint therefor. + 'When to the new eyes of thee + All things by immortal power, + Near or far, + Hiddenly + To each other link-ed are, + That thou canst not stir a flower + Without troubling of a star; + When thy song is shield and mirror + To the fair snake-curl-ed Pain, + Where thou dar'st affront her terror + That on her thou may'st attain + Persean conquest; seek no more, + O seek no more! + Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.' + + XXII + + So sang she, so wept she, + Through a dream-night's day; + And with her magic singing kept she-- + Mystical in music-- + That garden of enchanting + In visionary May; + Swayless for my spirit's haunting, + Thrice-threefold walled with emerald from our mor- + tal mornings grey. + + XXIII + + And as a necromancer + Raises from the rose-ash + The ghost of the rose; + My heart so made answer + To her voice's silver plash,-- + Stirred in reddening flash, + And from out its mortal ruins the purpureal phantom + blows. + + XXIV + + Her tears made dulcet fretting, + Her voice had no word, + More than thunder or the bird. + Yet, unforgetting, + The ravished soul her meanings knew. Mine ears + heard not, and I heard. + + XXV + + When she shall unwind + All those wiles she wound about me, + Tears shall break from out me, + That I cannot find + Music in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt + me! + + + + +CONTEMPLATION. + + + This morning saw I, fled the shower, + The earth reclining in a lull of power: + The heavens, pursuing not their path, + Lay stretched out naked after bath, + Or so it seemed; field, water, tree, were still, + Nor was there any purpose on the calm-browed hill. + + The hill, which sometimes visibly is + Wrought with unresting energies, + Looked idly; from the musing wood, + And every rock, a life renewed + Exhaled like an unconscious thought + When poets, dreaming unperplexed, + Dream that they dream of nought. + Nature one hour appears a thing unsexed, + Or to such serene balance brought + That her twin natures cease their sweet alarms, + And sleep in one another's arms. + The sun with resting pulses seems to brood, + And slacken its command upon my unurged blood. + + The river has not any care + Its passionless water to the sea to bear; + The leaves have brown content; + The wall to me has freshness like a scent, + And takes half animate the air, + Making one life with its green moss and stain; + And life with all things seems too perfect blent + For anything of life to be aware. + The very shades on hill, and tree, and plain, + Where they have fallen doze, and where they doze remain. + + No hill can idler be than I; + No stone its inter-particled vibration + Investeth with a stiller lie; + No heaven with a more urgent rest betrays + The eyes that on it gaze. + We are too near akin that thou shouldst cheat + Me, Nature, with thy fair deceit. + + In poets floating like a water-flower + Upon the bosom of the glassy hour, + In skies that no man sees to move, + Lurk untumultuous vortices of power, + For joy too native, and for agitation + Too instant, too entire for sense thereof, + Motion like gnats when autumn suns are low, + Perpetual as the prisoned feet of love + On the heart's floors with pain-ed pace that go. + From stones and poets you may know, + Nothing so active is, as that which least seems so. + + For he, that conduit running wine of song, + Then to himself does most belong, + When he his mortal house unbars + To the importunate and thronging feet + That round our corporal walls unheeded beat; + Till, all containing, he exalt + His stature to the stars, or stars + Narrow their heaven to his fleshly vault: + When, like a city under ocean, + To human things he grows a desolation, + And is made a habitation + For the fluctuous universe + To lave with unimpeded motion. + He scarcely frets the atmosphere + With breathing, and his body shares + The immobility of rocks; + His heart's a drop-well of tranquillity; + His mind more still is than the limbs of fear, + And yet its unperturbed velocity + The spirit of the simoom mocks. + He round the solemn centre of his soul + Wheels like a dervish, while his being is + Streamed with the set of the world's harmonies, + In the long draft of whatsoever sphere + He lists the sweet and clear + Clangour of his high orbit on to roll, + So gracious is his heavenly grace; + And the bold stars does hear, + Every one in his airy soar, + For evermore + Shout to each other from the peaks of space, + As thwart ravines of azure shouts the mountaineer. + + + + +'BY REASON OF THY LAW'. + + Here I make oath-- + Although the heart that knows its bitterness + Hear loath, + And credit less-- + That he who kens to meet Pain's kisses fierce + Which hiss against his tears, + Dread, loss, nor love frustrate, + Nor all iniquity of the froward years + Shall his inur-ed wing make idly bate, + Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight + To lose observance quite; + Seal from half-sad and all-elate + Sagacious eyes + Ultimate Paradise; + Nor shake his certitude of haughty fate. + + Pacing the burning shares of many dooms, + I with stern tread do the clear-witting stars + To judgment cite, + If I have borne aright + The proving of their pure-willed ordeal. + From food of all delight + The heavenly Falconer my heart debars, + And tames with fearful glooms + The haggard to His call; + Yet sometimes comes a hand, sometimes a voice withal, + And she sits meek now, and expects the light. + + In this Avernian sky, + This sultry and incumbent canopy + Of dull and doomed regret; + Where on the unseen verges yet, O yet, + At intervals, + Trembles, and falls, + Faint lightning of remembered transient sweet-- + Ah, far too sweet + But to be sweet a little, a little sweet, and fleet; + Leaving this pallid trace, + This loitering and most fitful light a space, + Still some sad space, + For Grief to see her own poor face:- + + Here where I keep my stand + With all o'er-anguished feet, + And no live comfort near on any hand; + Lo, I proclaim the unavoided term, + When this morass of tears, then drained and firm, + Shall be a land-- + Unshaken I affirm-- + Where seven-quired psalterings meet; + And all the gods move with calm hand in hand, + And eyes that know not trouble and the worm. + + + + +THE DREAD OF HEIGHT. + + If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say: We + see: your sin remaineth. JOHN ix. 41. + + + Not the Circean wine + Most perilous is for pain: + Grapes of the heavens' star-loaden vine, + Whereto the lofty-placed + Thoughts of fair souls attain, + Tempt with a more retributive delight, + And do disrelish all life's sober taste. + 'Tis to have drunk too well + The drink that is divine, + Maketh the kind earth waste, + And breath intolerable. + + Ah me! + How shall my mouth content it with mortality? + Lo, secret music, sweetest music, + From distances of distance drifting its lone flight, + Down the arcane where Night would perish in night, + Like a god's loosened locks slips undulously: + Music that is too grievous of the height + For safe and low delight, + Too infinite, + For bounded hearts which yet would girth the sea! + + So let it be, + Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small: + So let it be, + O music, music, though you wake in me + No joy, no joy at all; + Although you only wake + Uttermost sadness, measure of delight, + Which else I could not credit to the height, + Did I not know, + That ill is statured to its opposite; + Did I not know, + And even of sadness so, + Of utter sadness make, + Of extreme sad a rod to mete + The incredible excess of unsensed sweet, + And mystic wall of strange felicity. + So let it be, + Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small, + And bitter meat + The food of gods for men to eat; + Yea, John ate daintier, and did tread + Less ways of heat, + Than whom to their wind-carpeted + High banquet-hall, + And golden love-feasts, the fair stars entreat. + + But ah withal, + Some hold, some stay, + O difficult Joy, I pray, + Some arms of thine, + Not only, only arms of mine! + Lest like a weary girl I fall + From clasping love so high, + And lacking thus thine arms, then may + Most hapless I + Turn utterly to love of basest rate; + For low they fall whose fall is from the sky. + Yea, who me shall secure + But I of height grown desperate + Surcease my wing, and my lost fate + Be dashed from pure + To broken writhings in the shameful slime: + Lower than man, for I dreamed higher, + Thrust down, by how much I aspire, + And damned with drink of immortality? + For such things be, + Yea, and the lowest reach of reeky Hell + Is but made possible + By forta'en breath of Heaven's austerest clime. + + These tidings from the vast to bring + Needeth not doctor nor divine, + Too well, too well + My flesh doth know the heart-perturbing thing; + That dread theology alone + Is mine, + Most native and my own; + And ever with victorious toil + When I have made + Of the deific peaks dim escalade, + My soul with anguish and recoil + Doth like a city in an earthquake rock, + As at my feet the abyss is cloven then, + With deeper menace than for other men, + Of my potential cousinship with mire; + That all my conquered skies do grow a hollow mock, + My fearful powers retire, + No longer strong, + Reversing the shook banners of their song. + + Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven, + A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint, + Or for a will accipitrine to pursue! + The veil of tutelar flesh to simple livers given, + Or those brave-fledging fervours of the Saint, + Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint, + Nor they in sickest time their ample virtue mew. + + + + +ORIENT ODE. + + Lo, in the sanctuaried East, + Day, a dedicated priest + In all his robes pontifical exprest, + Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly, + From out its Orient tabernacle drawn, + Yon orb-ed sacrament confest + Which sprinkles benediction through the dawn; + And when the grave procession's ceased, + The earth with due illustrious rite + Blessed,--ere the frail fingers featly + Of twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte, + His sacerdotal stoles unvest-- + Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast, + The sun in august exposition meetly + Within the flaming monstrance of the West. + O salutaris hostia, + Quae coeli pandis ostium! + Through breach-ed darkness' rampart, a + Divine assaulter, art thou come! + God whom none may live and mark! + Borne within thy radiant ark, + While the Earth, a joyous David, + Dances before thee from the dawn to dark. + The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve; + Behold her fair and greater daughter {1} + Offers to thee her fruitful water, + Which at thy first white Ave shall conceive! + Thy gazes do on simple her + Desirable allures confer; + What happy comelinesses rise + Beneath thy beautifying eyes! + Who was, indeed, at first a maid + Such as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair, + And secret views herself afraid, + Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear: + Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover, + Make the beauties they discover! + What dainty guiles and treacheries caught + From artful prompting of love's artless thought + Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn, + When thy plumes shiver against the conscious gates of morn! + + And so the love which is thy dower, + Earth, though her first-frightened breast + Against the exigent boon protest, + (For she, poor maid, of her own power + Has nothing in herself, not even love, + But an unwitting void thereof), + Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower; + And holy odours do her bosom invest, + That sweeter grows for being prest: + Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, + From thine embrace still startles coy, + Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, + The laughing captive from the wishing West. + + Nor the majestic heavens less + Thy formidable sweets approve, + Thy dreads and thy delights confess, + That do draw, and that remove. + Thou as a lion roar'st, O Sun, + Upon thy satellites' vex-ed heels; + Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run; + Each in his frighted orbit wheels, + Each flies through inassuageable chase, + Since the hunt o' the world begun, + The puissant approaches of thy face, + And yet thy radiant leash he feels. + Since the hunt o' the world begun, + Lashed with terror, leashed with longing, + The mighty course is ever run; + Pricked with terror, leashed with longing, + Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun. + Since the hunt o' the world began, + With love that trembleth, fear that loveth, + Thou join'st the woman to the man; + And Life with Death + In obscure nuptials moveth, + Commingling alien, yet affin-ed breath. + + Thou art the incarnated Light + Whose Sire is aboriginal, and beyond + Death and resurgence of our day and night; + From him is thy vicegerent wand + With double potence of the black and white. + Giver of Love, and Beauty, and Desire, + The terror, and the loveliness, and purging, + The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire! + Samson's riddling meanings merging + In thy twofold sceptre meet: + Out of thy minatory might, + Burning Lion, burning Lion, + Comes the honey of all sweet, + And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat. + And though, by thine alternate breath, + Every kiss thou dost inspire + Echoeth + Back from the windy vaultages of death; + Yet thy clear warranty above + Augurs the wings of death too must + Occult reverberations stir of love + Crescent and life incredible; + That even the kisses of the just + Go down not unresurgent to the dust. + Yea, not a kiss which I have given, + But shall tri-umph upon my lips in heaven, + Or cling a shameful fungus there in hell. + Know'st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, well + Thou know'st the ancient miracle, + The children know'st of Zeus and May; + And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother, + To incarnate, the antique way, + The truth which is their heritage from their Sire + In sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother. + My fingers thou hast taught to con + Thy flame-chorded psalterion, + Till I can translate into mortal wire-- + Till I can translate passing well-- + The heavenly harping harmony, + Melodious, sealed, inaudible, + Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world's desire. + Thou whisperest in the Moon's white ear, + And she does whisper into mine,-- + By night together, I and she-- + With her virgin voice divine, + The things I cannot half so sweetly tell + As she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear. + + By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord, + Yet she for Earth, and both in thee. + Light out of Light! + Resplendent and prevailing Word + Of the Unheard! + Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee + Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee; + And in an age of faith grown frore + If I too shall adore, + Be it accounted unto me + A bright sciential idolatry! + God has given thee visible thunders + To utter thine apocalypse of wonders; + And what want I of prophecy, + That at the sounding from thy station + Of thy flagrant trumpet, see + The seals that melt, the open revelation? + Or who a God-persuading angel needs, + That only heeds + The rhetoric of thy burning deeds? + Which but to sing, if it may be, + In worship-warranting moiety, + So I would win + In such a song as hath within + A smouldering core of mystery, + Brimm-ed with nimbler meanings up + Than hasty Gideons in their hands may sup;-- + Lo, my suit pleads + That thou, Isaian coal of fire, + Touch from yon altar my poor mouth's desire, + And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds. + + To thine own shape + Thou round'st the chrysolite of the grape, + Bind'st thy gold lightnings in his veins; + Thou storest the white garners of the rains. + Destroyer and preserver, thou + Who medicinest sickness, and to health + Art the unthank-ed marrow of its wealth; + To those apparent sovereignties we bow + And bright appurtenances of thy brow! + Thy proper blood dost thou not give, + That Earth, the gusty Maenad, drink and dance? + Art thou not life of them that live? + Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell + Within our body as a tabernacle! + Thou bittest with thine ordinance + The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete + The unsustainable treading of his feet. + Thou to thy spousal universe + Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church; + Who in most dusk and vidual curch, + Her Lord being hence, + Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hearse. + The heavens renew their innocence + And morning state + But by thy sacrament communicate: + Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers, + Our darkened search, + And sinful vigil desolate. + Yea, biune in imploring dumb, + Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await, + The Spirit and the Bride say: Come! + Lo, of thy Magians I the least + Haste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs, + To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced + Regions and odorous of Song's traded East. + Thou, for the life of all that live + The victim daily born and sacrificed; + To whom the pinion of this longing verse + Beats but with fire which first thyself did give, + To thee, O Sun--or is't perchance, to Christ? + + Ay, if men say that on all high heaven's face + The saintly signs I trace + Which round my stol-ed altars hold their solemn place, + Amen, amen! For oh, how could it be,-- + When I with wing-ed feet had run + Through all the windy earth about, + Quested its secret of the sun, + And heard what thing the stars together shout,-- + I should not heed thereout + Consenting counsel won:- + 'By this, O Singer, know we if thou see. + When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is here, + When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is there, + Believe them: yea, and this--then art thou seer, + When all thy crying clear + Is but: Lo here! lo there!--ah me, lo everywhere!' + + {1} The earth. + + + + +NEW YEAR'S CHIMES. + + What is the song the stars sing? + (And a million songs are as song of one.) + This is the song the stars sing: + Sweeter song's none. + + One to set, and many to sing, + (And a million songs are as song of one), + One to stand, and many to cling, + The many things, and the one Thing, + The one that runs not, the many that run. + + The ever new weaveth the ever old + (And a million songs are as song of one). + Ever telling the never told; + The silver saith, and the said is gold, + And done ever the never done. + + The chase that's chased is the Lord o' the chase + (And a million songs are as song of one), + And the pursued cries on the race; + And the hounds in leash are the hounds that run. + + Hidden stars by the shown stars' sheen; + (And a million suns are but as one); + Colours unseen by the colours seen, + And sounds unheard heard sounds between, + And a night is in the light of the sun. + + An ambuscade of light in night, + (And a million secrets are but as one), + And a night is dark in the sun's light, + And a world in the world man looks upon. + + Hidden stars by the shown stars' wings, + (And a million cycles are but as one), + And a world with unapparent strings + Knits the simulant world of things; + Behold, and vision thereof is none. + + The world above in the world below + (And a million worlds are but as one), + And the One in all; as the sun's strength so + Strives in all strength, glows in all glow + Of the earth that wits not, and man thereon. + + Braced in its own fourfold embrace + (And a million strengths are as strength of one), + And round it all God's arms of grace, + The world, so as the Vision says, + Doth with great lightning-tramples run. + + And thunder bruiteth into thunder, + (And a million sounds are as sound of one), + From stellate peak to peak is tossed a voice of wonder, + And the height stoops down to the depths thereunder, + And sun leans forth to his brother-sun. + + And the more ample years unfold + (With a million songs as song of one), + A little new of the ever old, + A little told of the never told, + Added act of the never done. + + Loud the descant, and low the theme, + (A million songs are as song of one); + And the dream of the world is dream in dream, + But the one Is is, or nought could seem; + And the song runs round to the song begun. + + This is the song the stars sing, + (Ton-ed all in time); + Tintinnabulous, tuned to ring + A multitudinous-single thing, + Rung all in rhyme. + + + + +FROM THE NIGHT OF FOREBEING. + An ode after Easter. + + In the chaos of preordination, and night of our forebeings.-- + + SIR THOMAS BROWNE. + + Et lux in tenebris erat, et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt.-- + + ST. JOHN. + + Cast wide the folding doorways of the East, + For now is light increased! + And the wind-besomed chambers of the air, + See they be garnished fair; + And look the ways exhale some precious odours, + And set ye all about wild-breathing spice, + Most fit for Paradise. + Now is no time for sober gravity, + Season enough has Nature to be wise; + But now distinct, with raiment glittering free, + Shake she the ringing rafters of the skies + With festal footing and bold joyance sweet, + And let the earth be drunken and carouse! + For lo, into her house + Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet, + And all things are made young with young desires; + And all for her is light increased + In yellow stars and yellow daffodils, + And East to West, and West to East, + Fling answering welcome-fires, + By dawn and day-fall, on the jocund hills. + And ye, winged minstrels of her fair meinie, + Being newly coated in glad livery, + Upon her steps attend, + And round her treading dance and without end + Reel your shrill lutany. + What popular breath her coming does out-tell + The garrulous leaves among! + What little noises stir and pass + From blade to blade along the voluble grass! + O Nature, never-done + Ungaped-at Pentecostal miracle, + We hear thee, each man in his proper tongue! + Break, elemental children, break ye loose + From the strict frosty rule + Of grey-beard Winter's school. + Vault, O young winds, vault in your tricksome courses + Upon the snowy steeds that reinless use + In coerule pampas of the heaven to run; + Foaled of the white sea-horses, + Washed in the lambent waters of the sun. + Let even the slug-abed snail upon the thorn + Put forth a conscious horn! + Mine elemental co-mates, joy each one; + And ah, my foster-brethren, seem not sad-- + No, seem not sad, + That my strange heart and I should be so little glad. + Suffer me at your leafy feast + To sit apart, a somewhat alien guest, + And watch your mirth, + Unsharing in the liberal laugh of earth; + Yet with a sympathy, + Begot of wholly sad and half-sweet memory-- + The little sweetness making grief complete; + Faint wind of wings from hours that distant beat, + When I, I too, + Was once, O wild companions, as are you, + Ran with such wilful feet. + Wraith of a recent day and dead, + Risen wanly overhead, + Frail, strengthless as a noon-belated moon, + Or as the glazing eyes of watery heaven, + When the sick night sinks into deathly swoon. + + A higher and a solemn voice + I heard through your gay-hearted noise; + A solemn meaning and a stiller voice + Sounds to me from far days when I too shall rejoice, + Nor more be with your jollity at strife. + O prophecy + Of things that are, and are not, and shall be! + The great-vanned Angel March + Hath trumpeted + His clangorous 'Sleep no more' to all the dead-- + Beat his strong vans o'er earth, and air, and sea. + And they have heard; + Hark to the Jubilate of the bird + For them that found the dying way to life! + And they have heard, + And quicken to the great precursive word; + Green spray showers lightly down the cascade of the larch; + The graves are riven, + And the Sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven! + Before his way + Went forth the trumpet of the March; + Before his way, before his way + Dances the pennon of the May! + O earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long + Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree + Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy, + Behold how all things are made true! + Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you, + Exceeding glad and strong. + Raise up your eyes, O raise your eyes abroad! + No more shall you sit sole and vidual, + Searching, in servile pall, + Upon the hieratic night the star-sealed sense of all: + Rejoice, O barren, and look forth abroad! + Your children gathered back to your embrace + See with a mother's face. + Look up, O mortals, and the portent heed; + In very deed, + Washed with new fire to their irradiant birth, + Reintegrated are the heavens and earth! + From sky to sod, + The world's unfolded blossom smells of God. + + O imagery + Of that which was the first, and is the last! + For as the dark, profound nativity, + God saw the end should be, + When the world's infant horoscope He cast. + Unshackled from the bright Phoebean awe, + In leaf, flower, mould, and tree, + Resolved into dividual liberty, + Most strengthless, unparticipant, inane, + Or suffered the ill peace of lethargy, + Lo, the Earth eased of rule: + Unsummered, granted to her own worst smart + The dear wish of the fool-- + Disintegration, merely which man's heart + For freedom understands, + Amid the frog-like errors from the damp + And quaking swamp + Of the low popular levels spawned in all the lands. + But thou, O Earth, dost much disdain + The bondage of thy waste and futile reign, + And sweetly to the great compulsion draw + Of God's alone true-manumitting law, + And Freedom, only which the wise intend, + To work thine innate end. + Over thy vacant counterfeit of death + Broods with soft urgent breath + Love, that is child of Beauty and of Awe: + To intercleavage of sharp warring pain, + As of contending chaos come again, + Thou wak'st, O Earth, + And work'st from change to change and birth to birth + Creation old as hope, and new as sight; + For meed of toil not vain, + Hearing once more the primal fiat toll:- + 'Let there be light!' + And there is light! + Light flagrant, manifest; + Light to the zenith, light from pole to pole; + Light from the East that waxeth to the West, + And with its puissant goings-forth + Encroaches on the South and on the North; + And with its great approaches does prevail + Upon the sullen fastness of the height, + And summoning its levied power + Crescent and confident through the crescent hour, + Goes down with laughters on the subject vale. + Light flagrant, manifest; + Light to the sentient closeness of the breast, + Light to the secret chambers of the brain! + And thou up-floatest, warm, and newly-bathed, + Earth, through delicious air, + And with thine own apparent beauties swathed, + Wringing the waters from thine arborous hair; + That all men's hearts, which do behold and see, + Grow weak with their exceeding much desire, + And turn to thee on fire, + Enamoured with their utter wish of thee, + Anadyomene! + What vine-outquickening life all creatures sup, + Feel, for the air within its sapphire cup + How it does leap, and twinkle headily! + Feel, for Earth's bosom pants, and heaves her scarfing sea; + And round and round in bacchanal rout reel the swift spheres + intemperably! + + My little-worlded self! the shadows pass + In this thy sister-world, as in a glass, + Of all processions that revolve in thee: + Not only of cyclic Man + Thou here discern'st the plan, + Not only of cyclic Man, but of the cyclic Me. + Not solely of Mortality's great years + The reflex just appears, + But thine own bosom's year, still circling round + In ample and in ampler gyre + Toward the far completion, wherewith crowned, + Love unconsumed shall chant in his own furnace-fire. + How many trampled and deciduous joys + Enrich thy soul for joys deciduous still, + Before the distance shall fulfil + Cyclic unrest with solemn equipoise! + Happiness is the shadow of things past, + Which fools still take for that which is to be! + And not all foolishly: + For all the past, read true, is prophecy, + And all the firsts are hauntings of some Last, + And all the springs are flash-lights of one Spring. + Then leaf, and flower, and falless fruit + Shall hang together on the unyellowing bough; + And silence shall be Music mute + For her surcharg-ed heart. Hush thou! + These things are far too sure that thou should'st dream + Thereof, lest they appear as things that seem. + + Shade within shade! for deeper in the glass + Now other imaged meanings pass; + And as the man, the poet there is read. + Winter with me, alack! + Winter on every hand I find: + Soul, brain, and pulses dead; + The mind no further by the warm sense fed, + The soul weak-stirring in the arid mind, + More tearless-weak to flash itself abroad + Than the earth's life beneath the frost-scorched sod. + My lips have drought, and crack, + By laving music long unvisited. + Beneath the austere and macerating rime + Draws back constricted in its icy urns + The genial flame of Earth, and there + With torment and with tension does prepare + The lush disclosures of the vernal time. + All joys draw inward to their icy urns, + Tormented by constraining rime, + And there + With undelight and throe prepare + The bounteous efflux of the vernal time. + Nor less beneath compulsive Law + Rebuk-ed draw + The numb-ed musics back upon my heart; + Whose yet-triumphant course I know + And prevalent pulses forth shall start, + Like cataracts that with thunderous hoof charge the disbanding snow. + All power is bound + In quickening refusal so; + And silence is the lair of sound; + In act its impulse to deliver, + With fluctuance and quiver + The endeavouring thew grows rigid; + Strong + From its retracted coil strikes the resilient song. + + Giver of spring, + And song, and every young new thing! + Thou only seest in me, so stripped and bare, + The lyric secret waiting to be born, + The patient term allowed + Before it stretch and flutteringly unfold + Its rumpled webs of amethyst-freaked, diaphanous gold. + And what hard task abstracts me from delight, + Filling with hopeless hope and dear despair + The still-born day and parch-ed fields of night, + That my old way of song, no longer fair, + For lack of serene care, + Is grown a stony and a weed-choked plot, + Thou only know'st aright, + Thou only know'st, for I know not. + How many songs must die that this may live! + And shall this most rash hope and fugitive, + Fulfilled with beauty and with might + In days whose feet are rumorous on the air, + Make me forget to grieve + For songs which might have been, nor ever were? + Stern the denial, the travail slow, + The struggling wall will scantly grow: + And though with that dread rite of sacrifice + Ordained for during edifice, + How long, how long ago! + Into that wall which will not thrive + I build myself alive, + Ah, who shall tell me will the wall uprise? + Thou wilt not tell me, who dost only know! + Yet still in mind I keep, + He which observes the wind shall hardly sow, + He which regards the clouds shall hardly reap. + Thine ancient way! I give, + Nor wit if I receive; + Risk all, who all would gain: and blindly. Be it so. + + 'And blindly,' said I?--No! + That saying I unsay: the wings + Hear I not in praevenient winnowings + Of coming songs, that lift my hair and stir it? + What winds with music wet do the sweet storm foreshow! + Utter stagnation + Is the solstitial slumber of the spirit, + The blear and blank negation of all life: + But these sharp questionings mean strife, and strife + Is the negation of negation. + The thing from which I turn my troubled look + Fearing the gods' rebuke; + That perturbation putting glory on, + As is the golden vortex in the West + Over the foundered sun; + That--but low breathe it, lest the Nemesis + Unchild me, vaunting this-- + Is bliss, the hid, hugged, swaddled bliss! + O youngling Joy carest! + That on my now first-mothered breast + Pliest the strange wonder of thine infant lip, + What this aghast surprise of keenest panging, + Wherefrom I blench, and cry thy soft mouth rest? + Ah hold, withhold, and let the sweet mouth slip! + So, with such pain, recoils the woolly dam, + Unused, affrighted, from her yeanling lamb: + I, one with her in cruel fellowship, + Marvel what unmaternal thing I am. + + Nature, enough! within thy glass + Too many and too stern the shadows pass. + In this delighted season, flaming + For thy resurrection-feast, + Ah, more I think the long ensepulture cold, + Than stony winter rolled + From the unsealed mouth of the holy East; + The snowdrop's saintly stoles less heed + Than the snow-cloistered penance of the seed. + 'Tis the weak flesh reclaiming + Against the ordinance + Which yet for just the accepting spirit scans. + Earth waits, and patient heaven, + Self-bonded God doth wait + Thrice-promulgated bans + Of his fair nuptial-date. + And power is man's, + With that great word of 'wait,' + To still the sea of tears, + And shake the iron heart of Fate. + In that one word is strong + An else, alas, much-mortal song; + With sight to pass the frontier of all spheres, + And voice which does my sight such wrong. + + Not without fortitude I wait + The dark majestical ensuit + Of destiny, nor peevish rate + Calm-knowledged Fate. + I, that no part have in the time's bragged way, + And its loud bruit + I, in this house so rifted, marred, + So ill to live in, hard to leave; + I, so star-weary, over-warred, + That have no joy in this your day-- + Rather foul fume englutting, that of day + Confounds all ray-- + But only stand aside and grieve; + I yet have sight beyond the smoke, + And kiss the gods' feet, though they wreak + Upon me stroke and again stroke; + And this my seeing is not weak. + The Woman I behold, whose vision seek + All eyes and know not; t'ward whom climb + The steps o' the world, and beats all wing of rhyme, + And knows not; 'twixt the sun and moon + Her inexpressible front enstarred + Tempers the wrangling spheres to tune; + Their divergent harmonies + Concluded in the concord of her eyes, + And vestal dances of her glad regard. + I see, which fretteth with surmise + Much heads grown unsagacious-grey, + The slow aim of wise-hearted Time, + Which folded cycles within cycles cloak: + We pass, we pass, we pass; this does not pass away, + But holds the furrowing earth still harnessed to its yoke. + The stars still write their golden purposes + On heaven's high palimpsest, and no man sees, + Nor any therein Daniel; I do hear + From the revolving year + A voice which cries: + 'All dies; + Lo, how all dies! O seer, + And all things too arise: + All dies, and all is born; + But each resurgent morn, behold, more near the Perfect Morn.' + + Firm is the man, and set beyond the cast + Of Fortune's game, and the iniquitous hour, + Whose falcon soul sits fast, + And not intends her high sagacious tour + Or ere the quarry sighted; who looks past + To slow much sweet from little instant sour, + And in the first does always see the last. + + + + +ANY SAINT. + + His shoulder did I hold + Too high that I, o'erbold + Weak one, + Should lean thereon. + + But He a little hath + Declined His stately path + And my + Feet set more high; + + That the slack arm may reach + His shoulder, and faint speech + Stir + His unwithering hair. + + And bolder now and bolder + I lean upon that shoulder + So dear + He is and near: + + And with His aureole + The tresses of my soul + Are blent + In wished content. + + Yes, this too gentle Lover + Hath flattering words to move her + To pride + By His sweet side. + + Ah, Love! somewhat let be! + Lest my humility + Grow weak + When thou dost speak! + + Rebate thy tender suit, + Lest to herself impute + Some worth + Thy bride of earth! + + A maid too easily + Conceits herself to be + Those things + Her lover sings; + + And being straitly wooed, + Believes herself the Good + And Fair + He seeks in her. + + Turn something of Thy look, + And fear me with rebuke, + That I + May timorously + + Take tremors in Thy arms, + And with contriv-ed charms + Allure + A 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; + Point + Of the spheres conjoint; + + In whom eternally + Thou, Light, dost focus Thee!-- + Didst pave + The way o' the wave; + + Rivet with stars the Heaven, + For causeways to Thy driven + Car + In its coming far + + Unto him, only him; + In Thy deific whim + Didst bound + Thy works' great round + + In this small ring of flesh; + The sky's gold-knotted mesh + Thy wrist + Did only twist + + To take him in that net.-- + Man! swinging-wicket set + Between + The Unseen and Seen; + + Lo, God's two worlds immense, + Of spirit and of sense, + Wed + In this narrow bed; + + Yea, and the midge's hymn + Answers the seraphim + Athwart + Thy body's court! + + Great arm-fellow of God! + To the ancestral clod + Kin, + And to cherubin; + + Bread predilectedly + O' the worm and Deity! + Hark, + O God's clay-sealed Ark, + + To praise that fits thee, clear + To the ear within the ear, + But dense + To clay-sealed sense. + + All the Omnific made + When in a word he said, + (Mystery!) + He uttered THEE; + + Thee His great utterance bore, + O secret metaphor + Of what + Thou dream'st no jot! + + Cosmic metonymy! + Weak world-unshuttering key! + One + Seal of Solomon! + + Trope that itself not scans + Its huge significance, + Which tries + Cherubic eyes. + + Primer where the angels all + God's grammar spell in small, + Nor spell + The highest too well. + + Point for the great descants + Of starry disputants; + Equation + Of 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 bliss + Within 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 fulfilled + With all sweet things unwilled: + So best + God loves to jest + + With children small--a freak + Of heavenly hide-and-seek + Fit + For thy wayward wit, + + Who art thyself a thing + Of whim and wavering; + Free + When His wings pen thee; + + Sole fully blest, to feel + God whistle thee at heel; + Drunk up + As a dew-drop, + + When He bends down, sun-wise, + Intemperable eyes; + Most proud, + When utterly bowed. + + To feel thyself and be + His dear nonentity-- + Caught + Beyond human thought + + In the thunder-spout of Him, + Until thy being dim, + And be + Dead deathlessly. + + Stoop, stoop; for thou dost fear + The nettle's wrathful spear, + So slight + Art thou of might! + + Rise; for Heaven hath no frown + When thou to thee pluck'st down, + Strong clod! + The neck of God. + + + + +ASSUMPTA MARIA. + + '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? an + All 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 graven + Tables of the Law was made; + Man's own heart was one, one Heaven, + Both within my womb were laid. + For there Anteros with Eros + Heaven with man conjoin-ed was,-- + Twin-stone of the Law, Ischyros, + Agios Athanatos. + + I, the flesh-girt Paradises + Gardenered by the Adam new, + Daintied o'er with sweet devices + Which He loveth, for He grew. + I, the boundless strict savannah + Which 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 Angels + Do enwheel their plac-ed 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 outpanted + Lies the slimed Curse shrivelling. + For the brazen Serpent clear on + That old fang-ed knowledge shone; + I to Wisdom rise, Ischyron, + Agion Athanaton! + + See in highest heaven pavilioned + Now the maiden Heaven rest, + The many-breasted sky out-millioned + By the splendours of her vest. + Lo, the Ark this holy tide is + The un-handmade Temple's guest, + And the dark Egyptian bride is + Whitely 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 Belov-ed, + Where Thou dost in mid-day feed! + For my wanderings are reprov-ed, + 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 AEgyptic 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 holden + Like 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 me + He 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 mother + Fell, beneath the apple-tree. + Risen 'twixt Anteros and Eros, + Blood and Water, Moon and Sun, + He upbears me, He Ischyros, + I bear Him, the Athanaton! + + 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 was + From 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 gesture + Air, 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; for + Now 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 even + Of 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 woman + Rising 'twixt the Moon and Sun; + Who am I the heavens assume? an + All am I, and I am one. + + + + +THE AFTER WOMAN. + + Daughter of the ancient Eve, + We know the gifts ye gave--and give. + Who knows the gifts which YOU shall give, + Daughter of the newer Eve? + You, if my soul be augur, you + Shall--O what shall you not, Sweet, do? + The celestial traitress play, + And all mankind to bliss betray; + With sacrosanct cajoleries + And starry treachery of your eyes, + Tempt us back to Paradise! + Make heavenly trespass;--ay, press in + Where faint the fledge-foot seraphin, + Blest Fool! Be ensign of our wars, + And shame us all to warriors! + Unbanner your bright locks,--advance + Girl, their gilded puissance, + I' the mystic vaward, and draw on + After the lovely gonfalon + Us to out-folly the excess + Of your sweet foolhardiness; + To adventure like intense + Assault 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 elate + Thy little breasts knew wax-ed 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! Then + Eden's lopped tree shall shoot again: + For who Christ's eyes shall miss, with those + Eyes for evident nuncios? + Or who be tardy to His call + In your accents augural? + + Who shall not feel the Heavens hid + Impend, at tremble of your lid, + And divine advent shine avowed + Under that dim and lucid cloud; + Yea, 'fore the silver apocalypse + Fail, at the unsealing of your lips? + When to love YOU is (O Christ's Spouse!) + To love the beauty of His house; + Then come the Isaian days; the old + Shall dream; and our young men behold + Vision--yea, the vision of Thabor mount, + Which none to other shall recount, + Because in all men's hearts shall be + The 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. + Until + You and the hour shall be revealed, + This song is sung and sung not, and its words are sealed. + + + + +GRACE OF THE WAY. + + 'My brother!' spake she to the sun; + The kindred kisses of the stars + Were hers; her feet were set upon + The moon. If slumber solved the bars + + Of sense, or sense transpicuous grown + Fulfill-ed seeing unto sight, + I know not; nor if 'twas my own + Ingathered 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 visibleness + That stirred the raiment of her flesh: + + And sensible, as her blown were, + Beyond the precincts of her form + I felt the woman flow from her-- + A calm of intempestuous storm. + + I failed against the affluent tide; + Out of this abject earth of me + I was translated and enskied + Into the heavenly-regioned She. + + Now of that vision I bereaven + This 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 sweet + Direction 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, and + The darkness doth not comprehend: + God hath no haste; and God's sons stand + Yet a Day, tarrying for the end. + + Dishonoured Rahab still hath hid, + Yea still, within her house of shame, + The messengers by Jesus bid + Forerun 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 trust + The 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, unbless-ed, 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. + + + + +RETROSPECT. + + Alas, and I have sung + Much song of matters vain, + And a heaven-sweetened tongue + Turned to unprofiting strain + Of vacant things, which though + Even 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 sun + Put 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 stars + Give tongue before his way + Goldenly as I say, + And each from wide Saturnus to hot Mars + He calleth by its name, + Lest that its bright feet stray; + And thou have lore of all, + But to thine own Sun's call + Thy path disorbed hast never wit to tame; + It profits not withal, + And my rede is but lame. + + Only that, 'mid vain vaunt + Of wisdom ignorant, + A little kiss upon the feet of Love + My hasty verse has stayed + Sometimes a space to plant: + It has not wholly strayed, + Not wholly missed near sweet, fanning proud plumes above. + + Therefore I do repent + That with religion vain, + And misconceiv-ed pain, + I have my music bent + To waste on bootless things its skiey-gendered rain: + Yet shall a wiser day + Fulfil more heavenly way, + And with approv-ed music clear this slip + I trust in God most sweet; + Meantime the silent lip, + Meantime the climbing feet. + + + + + +A NARROW VESSEL. + + + + + +Being a little dramatic sequence on the aspect of primitive girl- + nature + towards a love beyond its capacities. + + + + +A GIRL'S SIN. + + I.--In her eyes. + + Cross child! red, and frowning so? + 'I, the day just over, + Gave a lock of hair to--no! + How DARE you say, my lover?' + + He asked you?--Let me understand; + Come, child, let me sound it! + 'Of course, he WOULD have 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 chastise + Because I gave him it. + + 'Shameless in me the gift, alas! + In him his open bliss: + But for the privilege he has + A thousand he shall miss! + + 'His eyes, where once I dreadless laughed, + Call up a burning blot: + I hate him, for his shameful craft + That asked by asking not!' + + Luckless boy! and all for hair + He never asked, you said? + 'Not just--but then he gazed--I swear + He gazed it from my head! + + 'His silence on my cheek like breath + I felt in subtle way; + More sweet than aught another saith + Was 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 do + Is bold suit's hallowing text; + Each gift a bastion levelled, to + The next one and the next. + + 'Each wish whose grant may him befall + Is 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 enforc-ed steel did grate + To cut; its root-thrills came + Down to my bosom. It might sate + His lust for my poor shame! + + 'His sifted dainty this should be + For a score ambrosial years! + But his too much humility + Alarums me with fears. + + 'My gracious grace a breach he counts + For 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 gleams + Was 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 him + In 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 toyed + With dreamed delight of this: + But ah, in proof, delight was void-- + I could not SEE his kiss!' + + So, fond one, half this agony + Were spared, which my hand hushes, + Could you have played, Sweet, the sweet spy, + And blushed not for your blushes! + + + + +A GIRL'S SIN. + + II.--In his eyes. + + Can I forget her cruelty + Who, brown miracle, gave you me? + Or with unmoisted eyes think on + The 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-expiated + Thy cold outlawry from her head; + How was I trampled and brought low, + Because her virgin neck was so; + How thralled beneath the jealous state + She stood at point to abdicate; + How sacrificed, before to me + She sacrificed her pride and thee; + How did she, struggling to abase + Herself to do me strange, sweet grace, + Enforce unwitting me to share + Her throes and abjectness with her; + Thence heightening that hour when her lover + Her grace, with trembling, should discover, + And in adoring trouble be + Humbled at her humility! + And with what pitilessness was I + After slain, to pacify + The uneasy manes of her shame, + Her haunting blushes!--Mine the blame: + What fair injustice did I rue + For what I--did not tempt her to? + Nor aught the judging maid might win + Me to assoil from HER sweet sin. + But nought were extreme punishment + For that beyond-divine content, + When my with-thee-first-giddied eyes + Stooped ere their due on Paradise! + O hour of consternating bliss + When I heavened me in thy kiss; + Thy softness (daring overmuch!) + Profan-ed with my licensed touch; + Worshipped, with tears, on happy knee, + Her doubt, her trust, her shyness free, + Her timorous audacity! + + + + +LOVE DECLARED. + + I looked, she drooped, and neither spake, and cold, + We stood, how unlike all forecasted thought + Of that desir-ed minute! Then I leaned + Doubting; whereat she lifted--oh, brave eyes + Unfrighted:--forward like a wind-blown flame + Came bosom and mouth to mine! + That falling kiss + Touching long-laid expectance, all went up + Suddenly into passion; yea, the night + Caught, blazed, and wrapt us round in vibrant fire. + + + Time's beating wing subsided, and the winds + Caught up their breathing, and the world's great pulse + Stayed in mid-throb, and the wild train of life + Reeled by, and left us stranded on a hush. + This moment is a statue unto Love + Carved from a fair white silence. + Lo, he stands + Within us--are we not one now, one, one roof, + His roof, and the partition of weak flesh + Gone down before him, and no more, for ever?-- + Stands like a bird new-lit, and as he lit, + Poised in our quiet being; only, only + Within our shaken hearts the air of passion, + Cleft by his sudden coming, eddies still + And whirs round his enchanted movelessness. + + + A film of trance between two stirrings! Lo, + It bursts; yet dream's snapped links cling round the limbs + Of waking: like a running evening stream + Which no man hears, or sees, or knows to run, + (Glazed with dim quiet), save that there the moon + Is shattered to a creamy flicker of flame, + Our eyes' sweet trouble were hid, save that the love + Trembles a little on their impassioned calms. + + + + +THE WAY OF A MAID. + + The lover whose soul shaken is + In some decuman billow of bliss, + Who feels his gradual-wading feet + Sink in some sudden hollow of sweet, + And 'mid love's us-ed converse comes + Sharp on a mood which all joy sums-- + An instant's fine compendium of + The liberal-leav-ed writ of love; + His abashed pulses beating thick + At the exigent joy and quick, + Is dumbed, by aiming utterance great + Up to the miracle of his fate. + The wise girl, such Icarian fall + Saved by her confidence that she's small,-- + As what no kindred word will fit + Is uttered best by opposite, + Love in the tongue of hate exprest, + And deepest anguish in a jest,-- + Feeling the infinite must be + Best said by triviality, + Speaks, where expression bates its wings, + Just happy, alien, little things; + What of all words is in excess + Implies in a sweet nothingness, + With dailiest babble shows her sense + That full speech were full impotence; + And while she feels the heavens lie bare, + She only talks about her hair. + + + BEGINNING OF END. + + + She was aweary of the hovering + Of 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's HIS cot), + 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. + + + PENELOPE. + + + Love, like a wind, shook wide your blosmy eyes, + You trembled, and your breath came sobbing-wise + For that you loved me. + + You were so kind, so sweet, none could withhold + To adore, but that you were so strange, so cold; + For that you loved me. + + Like to a box of spikenard did you break + Your heart about my feet. What words you spake! + For that you loved me. + + Life fell to dust without me; so you tried + All carefullest ways to drive me from your side, + For that you loved me. + + You gave yourself as children give, that weep + And snatch back, with--'I meant you not to keep!' + For that you loved me. + + I am no woman, girl, nor ever knew + That love could teach all ways that hate could do + To her that loved me. + + Have less of love, or less of woman in + Your love, or loss may even from this begin-- + That you so love me. + + For, wild Penelope, the web you wove + You 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! + + + THE END OF IT. + + + She did not love to love; but hated him + For making her to love, and so her whim + From passion taught misprision to begin; + And all this sin + Was because love to cast out had no skill + Self, which was regent still. + Her own self-will made void her own self's will + + + EPILOGUE. + + + If I have studied here in part + A tale as old as maiden's heart, + 'Tis that I do see herein + Shadow of more piteous sin. + + She, that but giving part, not whole, + Took even the part back, is the Soul: + And that so disdain-ed Lover-- + Best unthought, since Love is over. + + Love to invite, desire, and fear, + And Love's exactions cost too dear + Count for Love's possession,--ah, + Thy way, misera Anima! + + To give the pledge, and yet be pined + That a pledge should have force to bind, + This, O Soul, too often still + Is 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. + + + + + +MISCELLANEOUS ODES. + + + + + +ODE TO THE SETTING SUN. + + PRELUDE. + + The wailful sweetness of the violin + Floats down the hush-ed waters of the wind, + The heart-strings of the throbbing harp begin + To long in aching music. Spirit-pined, + + In wafts that poignant sweetness drifts, until + The 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 days + Sinkest in music to thy smooth-ed 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 harmonies + A 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 head + To thee, whose great command upon my veins + Proves 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 thus + A 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? + Is THIS thy secret, then? And is it woe? + + Fling from thine ear the burning curls, and hark + A 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: + I SEE the crimson blaring of thy shawms! + Why do those lucent palms + Strew 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 praise + Will 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 paeans thee, nor serves thy hest, + Be godded not by Heaven! avert thy face, + And leave to blank disgrace + The 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' height + The brawny Titans stood, + And shook the gods' world 'bout their ears, and how + Enceladus (whom Etna cumbers now) + Shouldered me Pelion with its swinging pines, + The river unrecked, that did its broken flood + Spurt on his back: before the mountainous shock + The rank-ed gods dislock, + Scared to their skies; wide o'er rout-trampled night + Flew spurned the pebbled stars: those splendours then + Had tempested on earth, star upon star + Mounded in ruin, if a longer war + Had quaked Olympus and cold-fearing men. + Then did the ample marge + And circuit of thy targe + Sullenly redden all the vaward fight, + Above the blusterous clash + Wheeled thy swung falchion's flash + And 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-chapleted + Sang each to other, + The vaulted blaze overhead + Of 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 side + Thy young Auroral bride, + And lift her veil of night and mystery; + Tellus with baby hands + Shook off her swaddling-bands, + And from the unswath-ed 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 set + Upon her brow the day-fall's carcanet? + Who queened her front with the enrondured moon? + Who dug night's jewels from their vaulty mine + To dower her, past an eastern wizard's dreams, + When hovering on him through his haschish-swoon, + All the rained gems of the old Tartarian line + Shiver in lustrous throbbings of tinged flame? + Whereof a moiety in the Paolis' seams + Statelily builded their Venetian name. + Thou hast enwoof-ed her + An empress of the air, + And all her births are propertied by thee: + Her teeming centuries + Drew 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' ribb-ed flanks? + Who raised the columned ranks + Of that old pre-diluvian forestry, + Which like a continent torn oppressed the sea, + When the ancient heavens did in rains depart, + While the high-danc-ed whirls + Of the tossed scud made hiss thy drench-ed curls? + Thou rear'dst the enormous brood; + Who hast with life imbued + The lion maned in tawny majesty, + The tiger velvet-barred, + The stealthy-stepping pard, + And the lithe panther's flexuous symmetry. + + How came the entomb-ed 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 Titanic + Which rock like a cradle the girth + Of the ether-hung world; + Swart son of the swarthy mine, + When flame on the breath of his nostrils feeds + How is his countenance half-divine, + Like thee in thy sanguine weeds? + Thou gavest him his light, + Though sepultured in night + Beneath the dead bones of a perished world; + Over his prostrate form + Though cold, and heat, and storm, + The mountainous wrack of a creation hurled. + Who made the splendid rose + Saturate with purple glows; + Cupped to the marge with beauty; a perfume-press + Whence the wind vintages + Gushes of warm-ed fragrance richer far + Than all the flavorous ooze of Cyprus' vats? + Lo, in yon gale which waves her green cymar, + With dusky cheeks burnt red + She sways her heavy head, + Drunk with the must of her own odorousness; + While in a moted trouble the vexed gnats + Maze, and vibrate, and tease the noontide hush. + Who girt dissolv-ed 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 moon + Ere Autumn's kiss sultry her cheek with flame? + Thou sway'st thy sceptred beam + O'er all delight and dream, + Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance: + And like a jocund maid + In 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 blown + In smoke and flame about the windy sky, + Where are the wailing voices that should meet + From hill, stream, grove, and all of mortal shape + Who tread thy gifts, in vineyards as stray feet + Pulp the globed weight of juiced Iberia's grape? + Where is the threne o' the sea? + And why not dirges thee + The wind, that sings to himself as he makes stride + Lonely 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 light + On one up-strain-ed 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 made + The earth a living and a radiant thing-- + And leave her corpse in our strained, cheated arms? + Lo ever thus, when Song with chorded charms + Draws 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 kiss + Of reincarnate Beauty, his control + Clasps the cold body, and foregoes the soul! + Whatso looks lovelily + Is 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 through + The scorching dazzle of Heaven; 'gainst which the hill, + Out-flattened sombrely, + Stands black as life against eternity. + Against eternity? + A rifting light in me + Burns through the leaden broodings of the mind: + O bless-ed Sun, thy state + Uprisen or derogate + Dafts me no more with doubt; I seek and find. + + If with exultant tread + Thou foot the Eastern sea, + Or like a golden bee + Sting the West to angry red, + Thou dost image, thou dost follow + That 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 blood + Upon 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 inheriteth + The 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 Song + Sets 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 reap-ed joys thou art the heavy sheaf + Which 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 Antipodes + Our 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 drape + The 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 aerial blossoms on his bier. + + Yon cloud with wrinkled fire is edg-ed sharp; + And once more welling through the air, ah me! + How the sweet viol plains him to the harp, + Whose pang-ed 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 feather + Prove them the brood of immortality. + + My soul is quitted of death-neighbouring swoon, + Who shall not slake her immitigable scars + Until she hear 'My sister!' from the moon, + And take the kindred kisses of the stars. + + + + +A CAPTAIN OF SONG. + + (On a portrait of Coventry Patmore by J. S. Sargent, R.A.) + + Look on him. This is he whose works ye know; + Ye have adored, thanked, loved him,--no, not him! + But that of him which proud portentous woe + To its own grim + Presentment 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 pain-ed greatness are; + Where round and always round + The abhorr-ed words resound, + The words accursed of comfortable men,-- + 'For ever'; and infinite glooms intolerable + With spacious replication give again, + And hollow jar, + The words abhorred of comfortable men. + You the stern pities of the gods debar + To drink where he has drunk + The 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 are + He knows the perilous rout + That all those ways about + Sink into doom, and sinking, still are sunk. + And if his sole and solemn term thereout + He has attained, to love ye shall not dare + One who has journeyed there; + Ye shall mark well + The mighty cruelties which arm and mar + That countenance of control, + With minatory warnings of a soul + That hath to its own selfhood been most fell, + And is not weak to spare: + And lo, that hair + Is blanch-ed with the travel-heats of hell. + + If any be + That shall with rites of reverent piety + Approach this strong + Sad soul of sovereign Song, + Nor fail and falter with the intimidate throng; + If such there be, + These, these are only they + Have trod the self-same way; + The never-twice-revolving portals heard + Behind them clang infernal, and that word + Abhorr-ed sighed of kind mortality, + As he-- + Ah, even as he! + + + + +AGAINST URANIA. + + Lo I, Song's most true lover, plain me sore + That worse than other women she can deceive, + For she being goddess, I have given her more + Than mortal ladies from their loves receive; + And first of her embrace + She was not coy, and gracious were her ways, + That I forgot all virgins to adore; + Nor did I greatly grieve + To bear through arid days + The pretty foil of her divine delays; + And one by one to cast + Life, love, and health, + Content, and wealth, + Before her, thinking ever on her praise, + Until at last + Nought 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-ador-ed favour more refuses, + And leaves me to implore + Remembered boon in bitterness of blood. + + From mortal woman thou may'st know full well, + O poet, that dost deem the fair and tall + Urania of her ways not mutable, + When things shall thee befall + What thou art toil-ed in her sweet, wild spell. + Do they strow for thy feet + A little tender favour and deceit + Over the sudden mouth of hidden hell?-- + As more intolerable + Her 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 learn + How harder than the heart of woman is + The immortal cruelty + Of 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. + + + + +AN ANTHEM OF EARTH. + + Proemion. + + Immeasurable Earth! + Through the loud vast and populacy of Heaven, + Tempested with gold schools of ponderous orbs, + That cleav'st with deep-revolting harmonies + Passage perpetual, and behind thee draw'st + A furrow sweet, a cometary wake + Of trailing music! What large effluence, + Not sole the cloudy sighing of thy seas, + Nor thy blue-coifing air, encases thee + From prying of the stars, and the broad shafts + Of thrusting sunlight tempers? For, dropped near + From my remov-ed tour in the serene + Of 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 close + The 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 take + The 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 demesne + And sphery pleasances,-- + Amazing the unstal-ed eyes of Heaven, + And us that still a precious seeing have + Behind this dim and mortal jelly. + Ah! + If not in all too late and frozen a day + I come in rearward of the throats of song, + Unto the deaf sense of the ag-ed year + Singing with doom upon me; yet give heed! + One poet with sick pinion, that still feels + Breath through the Orient gateways closing fast, + Fast closing t'ward the undelighted night! + + + Anthem. + + + In nescientness, in nescientness, + Mother, we put these fleshly lendings on + Thou yield'st to thy poor children; took thy gift + Of 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 call + The 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 thee + Leave thy great husbandries, thy grave designs, + Thy tedious state which irked my ignorant years, + Thy winter-watches, suckling of the grain, + Severe premeditation taciturn + Upon the brooded Summer, thy chill cares, + And all thy ministries majestical, + To sport with me, thy darling. Thought I not + Thou set'st thy seasons forth processional + To pamper me with pageant,--thou thyself + My 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 shifted + Poise and footing of my thought! + I brake through thy doors of sunset, + Ran before the hooves of sunrise, + Shook thy matron tresses down in fancies + Wild and wilful + As a poet's hand could twine them; + Caught in my fantasy's crystal chalice + The Bow, as its cataract of colours + Plashed to thee downward; + Then when thy circuit swung to nightward, + Night the abhorr-ed, night was a new dawning, + Celestial dawning + Over 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 waken + To a revel, an inexhaustible + Wassail of orgiac imageries; + Then while I wore thy sore insignia + In 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 breathe + New from their mother's morning bosom. So I, + Risen from thee, restless winnower of the heaven, + Most Hermes-like, did keep + My vital and resilient path, and felt + The play of wings about my fledg-ed heel-- + Sure on the verges of precipitous dream, + Swift in its springing + From 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 first + Thou speak'st to us as men: like sons who hear + Newly their mother's history, unthought + Before, and say--'She is not as we dreamed: + Ah me! we are beguiled!' What art thou, then, + That art not our conceiving? Art thou not + Too old for thy young children? Or perchance, + Keep'st thou a youth perpetual-burnishable + Beyond thy sons decrepit? It is long + Since Time was first a fledgling; + Yet thou may'st be but as a pendant bulla + Against his stripling bosom swung. Alack! + For that we seem indeed + To have slipped the world's great leaping-time, and come + Upon 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 off + With hasty tarnished piecings negligent, + Snippets and waste + From old ancestral wearings, + That have seen sorrier usage; remainder-flesh + After our father's surfeits; nay with chinks, + Some of us, that if speech may have free leave + Our souls go out at elbows. We are sad + With more than our sires' heaviness, and with + More than their weakness weak; we shall not be + Mighty with all their mightiness, nor shall not + Rejoice 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 towers + He dogs the secret footsteps of the heavens, + Sifts in his hands the stars, weighs them as gold-dust, + And yet is he successive unto nothing + But patrimony of a little mould, + And entail of four planks. Thou hast made his mouth + Avid 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 empty + What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded + For 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-worm + Statelily lodge. Mother of mysteries! + Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues, + Who bringest forth no saying yet so dark + As 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 one + On a mount standing, and against him stands, + On the mount adverse, crowned with westering rays, + The golden sun, and they two brotherly + Gaze each on each; + He faring down + To the dull vale, his Godhead peels from him + Till he can scarcely spurn the pebble-- + For nothingness of new-found mortality-- + That mutinies against his gall-ed 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 widow-ed, + 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 feel + Break like a clash of cymbals, and my heart + Clang through my shaken body like a gong; + Nor ever more with spurted feet shall tread + I' the winepresses of song; nought's truly lost + That moulds to sprout forth gain: now I have on me + The high Phoebean priesthood, and that craves + An unrash utterance; not with flaunted hem + May the Muse enter in behind the veil, + Nor, though we hold the sacred dances good, + Shall the holy Virgins maenadize: ruled lips + Befit a votaress Muse. + Thence with no mutable, nor no gelid love, + I keep, O Earth, thy worship, + Though life slow, and the sobering Genius change + To a lamp his gusty torch. What though no more + Athwart its roseal glow + Thy face look forth triumphal? Thou put'st on + Strange sanctities of pathos; like this knoll + Made derelict of day, + Couchant and shadow-ed + Under dim Vesper's overloosened hair: + This, where emboss-ed with the half-blown seed + The solemn purple thistle stands in grass + Grey as an exhalation, when the bank + Holds mist for water in the nights of Fall. + Not to the boy, although his eyes be pure + As the prime snowdrop is, + Ere the rash Phoebus break her cloister + Of sanctimonious snow; + Or Winter fasting sole on Himalay + Since those dove-nuncioed days + When Asia rose from bathing; + Not to such eyes, + Uneuphrasied with tears, the hierarchical + Vision lies unoccult, rank under rank + Through all create down-wheeling, from the Throne + Even to the bases of the pregnant ooze. + This is the enchantment, this the exaltation, + The all-compensating wonder, + Giving to common things wild kindred + With the gold-tesserate floors of Jove; + Linking such heights and such humilities + Hand 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 world + Nerves my uncurb-ed 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 credible + The incredible, with bloody clutch and feet + Clinging the painful juts of jagg-ed faith. + Science, old noser in its prideful straw, + That with anatomising scalpel tents + Its 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 will + Ministers poppies to our troublous thought, + A Balaam come to prophecy,--parables, + Nor of its parable itself is ware, + Grossly unwotting; all things has expounded + Reflux and influx, counts the sepulchre + The seminary of being, and extinction + The Ceres of existence: it discovers + Life 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 corruption + As of our health. It grafts upon the cypress + The tree of Life--Death dies on his own dart + Promising to our ashes perpetuity, + And to our perishable elements + Their proper imperishability; extracting + Medicaments from out mortality + Against too mortal cogitation; till + Even of the caput mortuum we do thus + Make a memento vivere. To such uses + I 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 engirdle + All which I am; that am a foreigner + In mine own region? Who the chart shall draw + Of 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 explore + The long arcane of those dim catacombs, + Where the rat memory does its burrows make, + Close-seal them as I may, and my stolen tread + Starts populace, a gens lucifuga; + That too strait seems my mind my mind to hold, + And I myself incontinent of me. + Then go I, my foul-venting ignorance + With 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 divine + Which 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 beside + This slow perpetual Time stand patiently, + In a little sight. + + In a little dust, in a little dust, + Earth, thou reclaim'st us, who do all our lives + Find of thee but Egyptian villeinage. + Thou dost this body, this enhavocked realm, + Subject to ancient and ancestral shadows; + Descended passions sway it; it is distraught + With ghostly usurpation, dinned and fretted + With the still-tyrannous dead; a haunted tenement, + Peopled from barrows and outworn ossuaries. + Thou giv'st us life not half so willingly + As thou undost thy giving; thou that teem'st + The stealthy terror of the sinuous pard, + The lion maned with curl-ed puissance, + The serpent, and all fair strong beasts of ravin, + Thyself most fair and potent beast of ravin; + And thy great eaters thou, the greatest, eat'st. + Thou hast devoured mammoth and mastodon, + And many a floating bank of fangs, + The scaly scourges of thy primal brine, + And the tower-crested plesiosaure. + Thou fill'st thy mouth with nations, gorgest slow + On purple aeons of kings; man's hulking towers + Are carcase for thee, and to modern sun + Disglutt'st their splintered bones. + Rabble of Pharaohs and Arsacidae + Keep their cold house within thee; thou hast sucked down + How many Ninevehs and Hecatompyloi, + And perished cities whose great phantasmata + O'erbrow the silent citizens of Dis:- + Hast not thy fill? + Tarry awhile, lean Earth, for thou shalt drink, + Even till thy dull throat sicken, + The draught thou grow'st most fat on; hear'st thou not + The world's knives bickering in their sheaths? O patience! + Much offal of a foul world comes thy way, + And man's superfluous cloud shall soon be laid + In a little blood. + + In a little peace, in a little peace, + Thou dost rebate thy rigid purposes + Of imposed being, and relenting, mend'st + Too much, with nought. The westering Phoebus' horse + Paws i' the lucent dust as when he shocked + The East with rising; O how may I trace + In this decline that morning when we did + Sport 'twixt the claws of newly-whelped existence, + Which had not yet learned rending? we did then + Divinely stand, not knowing yet against us + Sentence had passed of life, nor commutation + Petitioning into death. What's he that of + The Free State argues? Tellus! bid him stoop, + Even where the low hic jacet answers him; + Thus low, O Man! there's freedom's seignory, + Tellus' most reverend sole free commonweal, + And model deeply-policied: there none + Stands on precedence, nor ambitiously + Woos the impartial worm, whose favours kiss + With liberal largesse all; there each is free + To be e'en what he must, which here did strive + So much to be he could not; there all do + Their uses just, with no flown questioning. + To be took by the hand of equal earth + They doff her livery, slip to the worm, + Which lacqueys them, their suits of maintenance, + And that soiled workaday apparel cast, + Put on condition: Death's ungentle buffet + Alone makes ceremonial manumission; + So are the heavenly statutes set, and those + Uranian tables of the primal Law. + In a little peace, in a little peace, + Like fierce beasts that a common thirst makes brothers, + We draw together to one hid dark lake; + In a little peace, in a little peace, + We drain with all our burthens of dishonour + Into the cleansing sands o' the thirsty grave. + The fiery pomps, brave exhalations, + And all the glistering shows o' the seeming world, + Which the sight aches at, we unwinking see + Through the smoked glass of Death; Death, wherewith's fined + The muddy wine of life; that earth doth purge + Of her plethora of man; Death, that doth flush + The cumbered gutters of humanity; + Nothing, of nothing king, with front uncrowned, + Whose hand holds crownets; playmate swart o' the strong; + Tenebrous moon that flux and refluence draws + Of the high-tided man; skull-hous-ed asp + That stings the heel of kings; true Fount of Youth, + Where he that dips is deathless; being's drone-pipe; + Whose nostril turns to blight the shrivelled stars, + And thicks the lusty breathing of the sun; + Pontifical Death, that doth the crevasse bridge + To the steep and trifid God; one mortal birth + That broker is of immortality. + Under this dreadful brother uterine, + This kinsman feared, Tellus, behold me come, + Thy son stern-nursed; who mortal-motherlike, + To turn thy weanlings' mouth averse, embitter'st + Thine over-childed breast. Now, mortal-sonlike, + I thou hast suckled, Mother, I at last + Shall sustenant be to thee. Here I untrammel, + Here I pluck loose the body's cerementing, + And break the tomb of life; here I shake off + The bur o' the world, man's congregation shun, + And to the antique order of the dead + I take the tongueless vows: my cell is set + Here in thy bosom; my little trouble is ended + In a little peace. + + + + + +MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. + + + + + +'EX ORE INFANTIUM'. + + + Little Jesus, wast Thou shy + Once, and just so small as I? + And what did it feel like to be + Out of Heaven, and just like me? + Didst Thou sometimes think of THERE, + And ask where all the angels were? + I should think that I would cry + For my house all made of sky; + I would look about the air, + And wonder where my angels were; + And at waking 'twould distress me-- + Not an angel there to dress me! + Hadst Thou ever any toys, + Like us little girls and boys? + And didst Thou play in Heaven with all + The angels that were not too tall, + With stars for marbles? Did the things + Play Can you see me? through their wings? + And did Thy Mother let Thee spoil + Thy robes, with playing on OUR soil? + How nice to have them always new + In Heaven, because 'twas quite clean blue! + + Didst Thou kneel at night to pray, + And didst Thou join Thy hands, this way? + And did they tire sometimes, being young, + And make the prayer seem very long? + And dost Thou like it best, that we + Should join our hands to pray to Thee? + I used to think, before I knew, + The prayer not said unless we do. + And did Thy Mother at the night + Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right? + And didst Thou feel quite good in bed, + Kissed, and sweet, and thy prayers said? + + Thou canst not have forgotten all + That it feels like to be small: + And Thou know'st I cannot pray + To Thee in my father's way-- + When Thou wast so little, say, + Couldst Thou talk Thy Father's way?-- + So, a little Child, come down + And hear a child's tongue like Thy own; + Take me by the hand and walk, + And listen to my baby-talk. + To Thy Father show my prayer + (He will look, Thou art so fair), + And say: 'O Father, I, Thy Son, + Bring the prayer of a little one.' + + And He will smile, that children's tongue + Has not changed since Thou wast young! + + + + +A QUESTION. + + O bird with heart of wassail, + That toss the Bacchic branch, + And slip your shaken music, + An elfin avalanche; + + Come tell me, O tell me, + My poet of the blue! + What's YOUR thought of me, Sweet?-- + Here's MY thought of you. + + A small thing, a wee thing, + A brown fleck of nought; + With winging and singing + That who could have thought? + + A small thing, a wee thing, + A brown amaze withal, + That fly a pitch more azure + Because you're so small. + + Bird, I'm a small thing-- + My angel descries; + With winging and singing + That who could surmise? + + Ah, small things, ah, wee things, + Are the poets all, + Whose tour's the more azure + Because they're so small. + + The angels hang watching + The tiny men-things:- + 'The dear speck of flesh, see, + With such daring wings! + + 'Come, tell us, O tell us, + Thou strange mortality! + What's THY thought of us, Dear?-- + Here's OUR thought of thee.' + + 'Alack! you tall angels, + I can't think so high! + I can't think what it feels like + Not to be I.' + + Come tell me, O tell me, + My poet of the blue! + What's YOUR thought of me, Sweet?-- + Here's MY thought of you. + + + + +FIELD-FLOWER. + + A Phantasy. + + God took a fit of Paradise-wind, + A slip of coerule weather, + A thought as simple as Himself, + And ravelled them together. + Unto His eyes He held it there, + To teach it gazing debonair + With memory of what, perdie, + A God's young innocences were. + His fingers pushed it through the sod-- + It came up redolent of God, + Garrulous of the eyes of God + To all the breezes near it; + Musical of the mouth of God + To all had eyes to hear it; + Mystical with the mirth of God, + That glow-like did ensphere it. + And--'Babble! babble! babble!' said; + 'I'll tell the whole world one day!' + There was no blossom half so glad, + Since sun of Christ's first Sunday. + + A poet took a flaw of pain, + A hap of skiey pleasure, + A thought had in his cradle lain, + And mingled them in measure. + That chrism he laid upon his eyes, + And lips, and heart, for euphrasies, + That he might see, feel, sing, perdie, + The simple things that are the wise. + Beside the flower he held his ways, + And leaned him to it gaze for gaze-- + He took its meaning, gaze for gaze, + As baby looks on baby; + Its meaning passed into his gaze, + Native as meaning may be; + He rose with all his shining gaze + As children's eyes at play be. + And--'Babble! babble! babble!' said; + 'I'll tell the whole world one day!' + There was no poet half so glad, + Since man grew God that Sunday. + + + + +THE CLOUD'S SWAN-SONG. + + There is a parable in the pathless cloud, + There's prophecy in heaven,--they did not lie, + The Chaldee shepherds; seal-ed from the proud, + To cheer the weighted heart that mates the seeing eye. + + A lonely man, oppressed with lonely ills, + And all the glory fallen from my song, + Here do I walk among the windy hills, + The wind and I keep both one monotoning tongue. + + Like grey clouds one by one my songs upsoar + Over my soul's cold peaks; and one by one + They loose their little rain, and are no more; + And whether well or ill, to tell me there is none. + + For 'tis an alien tongue, of alien things, + From all men's care, how miserably apart! + Even my friends say: 'Of what is this he sings?' + And barren is my song, and barren is my heart. + + For who can work, unwitting his work's worth? + Better, meseems, to know the work for naught, + Turn my sick course back to the kindly earth, + And leave to ampler plumes the jetting tops of thought. + + And visitations, that do often use, + Remote, unhappy, inauspicious sense + Of doom, and poets widowed of their muse, + And what dark 'gan, dark ended, in me did commence. + + I thought of spirit wronged by mortal ills, + And my flesh rotting on my fate's dull stake; + And how self-scorn-ed they the bounty fills + Of others, and the bread, even of their dearest, take. + + I thought of Keats, that died in perfect time, + In predecease of his just-sickening song; + Of him that set, wrapt in his radiant rhyme, + Sunlike in sea. Life longer had been life too long. + + But I, exanimate of quick Poesy,-- + O then, no more but even a soulless corse! + Nay, my Delight dies not; 'tis I should be + Her dead, a stringless harp on which she had no force. + + Of my wild lot I thought; from place to place, + Apollo's song-bowed Scythian, I go on; + Making in all my home, with pliant ways, + But, provident of change, putting forth root in none. + + Now, with starved brain, sick body, patience galled + With fardels even to wincing; from fair sky + Fell sudden little rain, scarce to be called + A shower, which of the instant was gone wholly by. + + What cloud thus died I saw not; heaven was fair. + Methinks my angel plucked my locks: I bowed + My spirit, shamed; and looking in the air:- + 'Even so,' I said, 'even so, my brother the good Cloud?' + + It was a pilgrim of the fields of air, + Its home was allwheres the wind left it rest, + And in a little forth again did fare, + And in all places was a stranger and a guest. + + It harked all breaths of heaven, and did obey + With sweet peace their uncomprehended wills; + It knew the eyes of stars which made no stay, + And with the thunder walked upon the lonely hills. + + And from the subject earth it seemed to scorn, + It drew the sustenance whereby it grew + Perfect in bosom for the married Morn, + And of his life and light full as a maid kissed new. + + Its also darkness of the face withdrawn, + And the long waiting for the little light, + So long in life so little. Like a fawn + It fled with tempest breathing hard at heel of flight; + + And having known full East, did not disdain + To sit in shadow and oblivious cold, + Save what all loss doth of its loss retain, + And who hath held hath somewhat that he still must hold. + + Right poet! who thy rightness to approve, + Having all liberty, didst keep all measure, + And with a firmament for ranging, move + But at the heavens' uncomprehended pleasure. + + With amplitude unchecked, how sweetly thou + Didst wear the ancient custom of the skies, + And yoke of used prescription; and thence how + Find gay variety no license could devise! + + As we the quested beauties better wit + Of the one grove our own than forests great, + Restraint, by the delighted search of it, + Turns to right scope. For lovely moving intricate + + Is put to fair devising in the curb + Of ordered limit; and all-changeful Hermes + Is Terminus as well. Yet we perturb + Our souls for latitude, whose strength in bound and term is. + + How far am I from heavenly liberty, + That play at policy with change and fate, + Who should my soul from foreign broils keep free, + In the fast-guarded frontiers of its single state! + + Could I face firm the Is, and with To-be + Trust Heaven; to Heaven commit the deed, and do; + In power contained, calm in infirmity, + And fit myself to change with virtue ever new; + + Thou hadst not shamed me, cousin of the sky, + Thou wandering kinsman, that didst sweetly live + Unnoted, and unnoted sweetly die, + Weeping more gracious song than any I can weave; + + Which these gross-tissued words do sorely wrong. + Thou hast taught me on powerlessness a power; + To make song wait on life, not life on song; + To hold sweet not too sweet, and bread for bread though sour; + + By law to wander, to be strictly free. + With tears ascended from the heart's sad sea, + Ah, such a silver song to Death could I + Sing, Pain would list, forgetting Pain to be, + And Death would tarry marvelling, and forget to die! + + + + +TO THE SINKING SUN. + + How graciously thou wear'st the yoke + Of use that does not fail! + The grasses, like an anchored smoke, + Ride in the bending gale; + This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna, + And fire-dropt as a seraph's mail. + + Here every eve thou stretchest out + Untarnishable wing, + And marvellously bring'st about + Newly an olden thing; + Nor ever through like-ordered heaven + Moves largely thy grave progressing. + + Here every eve thou goest down + Behind the self-same hill, + Nor ever twice alike go'st down + Behind the self-same hill; + Nor like-ways is one flame-sopped flower + Possessed with glory past its will. + + Not twice alike! I am not blind, + My sight is live to see; + And yet I do complain of thy + Weary variety. + O Sun! I ask thee less or more, + Change not at all, or utterly! + + O give me unprevisioned new, + Or give to change reprieve! + For new in me is olden too, + That I for sameness grieve. + O flowers! O grasses! be but once + The grass and flower of yester-eve! + + Wonder and sadness are the lot + Of change: thou yield'st mine eyes + Grief of vicissitude, but not + Its penetrant surprise. + Immutability mutable + Burthens my spirit and the skies. + + O altered joy, all joyed of yore, + Plodding in unconned ways! + O grief grieved out, and yet once more + A dull, new, staled amaze! + I dream, and all was dreamed before, + Or dream I so? the dreamer says. + + + + +GRIEF'S HARMONICS. + + At evening, when the lank and rigid trees, + To the mere forms of their sweet day-selves drying, + On heaven's blank leaf seem pressed and flatten-ed; + Or rather, to my sombre thoughts replying, + Of plumes funereal the thin effigies; + That hour when all old dead things seem most dead, + And their death instant most and most undying, + That the flesh aches at them; there stirred in me + The babe of an unborn calamity, + Ere its due time to be deliver-ed. + Dead sorrow and sorrow unborn so blent their pain, + That which more present was were hardly said, + But both more NOW than any Now can be. + My soul like sackcloth did her body rend, + And thus with Heaven contend:- + 'Let pass the chalice of this coming dread, + Or that fore-drained O bid me not re-drain!' + So have I asked, who know my asking vain, + Woe against woe in antiphon set over, + That grief's soul transmigrates, and lives again, + And in new pang old pang's incarnated. + + + + +MEMORAT MEMORIA. + + Come you living or dead to me, out of the silt of the Past, + With the sweet of the piteous first, and the shame of the shameful + last? + Come with your dear and dreadful face through the passes of Sleep, + The terrible mask, and the face it masked--the face you did not + keep? + You are neither two nor one--I would you were one or two, + For your awful self is embalmed in the fragrant self I knew: + And Above may ken, and Beneath may ken, what I mean by these words + of whirl, + But by my sleep that sleepeth not,--O Shadow of a Girl!-- + Nought here but I and my dreams shall know the secret of this + thing:- + For ever the songs I sing are sad with the songs I never sing, + Sad are sung songs, but how more sad the songs we dare not sing! + + Ah, the ill that we do in tenderness, and the hateful horror of + love! + It has sent more souls to the unslaked Pit than it ever will draw + above. + I damned you, girl, with my pity, who had better by far been thwart, + And drave you hard on the track to hell, because I was gentle of + heart. + I shall have no comfort now in scent, no ease in dew, for this; + I shall be afraid of daffodils, and rose-buds are amiss; + You have made a thing of innocence as shameful as a sin, + I shall never feel a girl's soft arms without horror of the skin. + My child! what was it that I sowed, that I so ill should reap? + You have done this to me. And I, what I to you?--It lies with + Sleep. + + + + +JULY FUGITIVE. + + Can you tell me where has hid her + Pretty Maid July? + I would swear one day ago + She passed by, + I would swear that I do know + The blue bliss of her eye: + 'Tarry, maid, maid,' I bid her; + But she hastened by. + Do you know where she has hid her, + Maid July? + + Yet in truth it needs must be + The flight of her is old; + Yet in truth it needs must be, + For her nest, the earth, is cold. + No more in the pool-ed Even + Wade her rosy feet, + Dawn-flakes no more plash from them + To poppies 'mid the wheat. + She has muddied the day's oozes + With her petulant feet; + Scared the clouds that floated, + As sea-birds they were, + Slow on the coerule + Lulls of the air, + Lulled on the luminous + Levels of air: + She has chidden in a pet + All her stars from her; + Now they wander loose and sigh + Through the turbid blue, + Now they wander, weep, and cry-- + Yea, and I too-- + 'Where are you, sweet July, + Where are you?' + + Who hath beheld her footprints, + Or the pathway she goes? + Tell me, wind, tell me, wheat, + Which of you knows? + Sleeps she swathed in the flushed Arctic + Night of the rose? + Or lie her limbs like Alp-glow + On the lily's snows? + Gales, that are all-visitant, + Find the runaway; + And for him who findeth her + (I do charge you say) + I will throw largesse of broom + Of this summer's mintage, + I will broach a honey-bag + Of the bee's best vintage. + Breezes, wheat, flowers sweet, + None of them knows! + How then shall we lure her back + From the way she goes? + For it were a shameful thing, + Saw we not this comer + Ere Autumn camp upon the fields + Red with rout of Summer. + + When the bird quits the cage, + We set the cage outside, + With seed and with water, + And the door wide, + Haply we may win it so + Back to abide. + Hang her cage of earth out + O'er Heaven's sunward wall, + Its four gates open, winds in watch + By rein-ed cars at all; + Relume in hanging hedgerows + The rain-quenched blossom, + And roses sob their tears out + On the gale's warm heaving bosom; + Shake the lilies till their scent + Over-drip their rims; + That our runaway may see + We do know her whims: + Sleek the tumbled waters out + For her travelled limbs; + Strew and smoothe blue night thereon, + There will--O not doubt her!-- + The lovely sleepy lady lie, + With all her stars about her! + + + + +TO A SNOW-FLAKE. + + What heart could have thought you?-- + Past our devisal + (O filigree petal!) + Fashioned so purely, + Fragilely, surely, + From what Paradisal + Imagineless metal, + Too costly for cost? + Who hammered you, wrought you, + From argentine vapour?-- + 'God was my shaper. + Passing surmisal, + He hammered, He wrought me, + From curled silver vapour, + To lust of His mind:- + Thou could'st not have thought me! + So purely, so palely, + Tinily, surely, + Mightily, frailly, + Insculped and embossed, + With His hammer of wind, + And His graver of frost.' + + + + +NOCTURN. + + I walk, I only, + Not I only wake; + Nothing is, this sweet night, + But doth couch and wake + For its love's sake; + Everything, this sweet night, + Couches with its mate. + For whom but for the stealthy-visitant sun + Is the naked moon + Tremulous and elate? + The heaven hath the earth + Its own and all apart; + The hush-ed pool holdeth + A star to its heart. + You may think the rose sleepeth, + But though she folded is, + The wind doubts her sleeping; + Not all the rose sleeps, + But smiles in her sweet heart + For crafty bliss. + The wind lieth with the rose, + And when he stirs, she stirs in her repose: + The wind hath the rose, + And the rose her kiss. + Ah, mouth of me! + Is it then that this + Seemeth much to thee?-- + I wander only. + The rose hath her kiss. + + + + +A MAY BURDEN. + + Through meadow-ways as I did tread, + The corn grew in great lustihead, + And hey! the beeches burgeon-ed. + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! + It is the month, the jolly month, + It is the jolly month of May. + + God ripe the wines and corn, I say + And wenches for the marriage-day, + And boys to teach love's comely play. + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! + It is the month, the jolly month, + It is the jolly month of May. + + As I went down by lane and lea, + The daisies reddened so, pardie! + 'Blushets!' I said, 'I well do see, + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! + The thing ye think of in this month, + Heigho! this jolly month of May.' + + As down I went by rye and oats, + The blossoms smelt of kisses; throats + Of birds turned kisses into notes; + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! + The kiss it is a growing flower, + I trow, this jolly month of May! + + God send a mouth to every kiss, + Seeing the blossom of this bliss + By gathering doth grow, certes! + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! + Thy brow-garland pushed all aslant + Tells--but I tell not, wanton May! + + NOTE. The first two stanzas are from a French original--I have + forgotten what. + + + + +A DEAD ASTRONOMER. + + (Father Perry, S.J.) + + Starry amorist, starward gone, + Thou art--what thou didst gaze upon! + Passed through thy golden garden's bars, + Thou seest the Gardener of the Stars. + + She, about whose moon-ed brows + Seven stars make seven glows, + Seven lights for seven woes; + She, like thine own Galaxy, + All lustres in one purity:- + What said'st thou, Astronomer, + When thou did'st discover HER? + When thy hand its tube let fall, + Thou found'st the fairest Star of all! + + + + +'CHOSE VUE'. + + A metrical caprice. + + Up she rose, fair daughter--well she was graced + As a cloud her going, stept from her chair, + As a summer-soft cloud, in her going paced, + Down dropped her riband-band, and all her waving hair + Shook like loosened music cadent to her waist;-- + Lapsing like music, wavery as water, + Slid to her waist. + + + + +'WHERETO ART THOU COME?' + + 'Friend, whereto art thou come?' Thus Verity; + Of each that to the world's sad Olivet + Comes with no multitude, but alone by night, + Lit with the one torch of his lifted soul, + Seeking her that he may lay hands on her; + Thus: and waits answer from the mouth of deed. + Truth is a maid, whom men woo diversely; + This, as a spouse; that, as a light-o'-love, + To know, and having known, to make his brag. + But woe to him that takes the immortal kiss, + And not estates her in his housing life, + Mother of all his seed! So he betrays, + Not Truth, the unbetrayable, but himself: + And with his kiss's rated traitor-craft, + The Haceldama of a plot of days + He buys, to consummate his Judasry + Therein with Judas' guerdon of despair. + + + + +HEAVEN AND HELL. + + 'Tis said there were no thought of hell, + Save hell were taught; that there should be + A Heaven for all's self-credible. + Not so the thing appears to me. + 'Tis Heaven that lies beyond our sights, + And hell too possible that proves; + For all can feel the God that smites, + But ah, how few the God that loves! + + + + +TO A CHILD. + + Whenas my life shall time with funeral tread + The heavy death-drum of the beaten hours, + Following, sole mourner, mine own manhood dead, + Poor forgot corse, where not a maid strows flowers; + When I you love am no more I you love, + But go with unsubservient feet, behold + Your dear face through changed eyes, all grim change prove;-- + A new man, mock-ed with misname of old; + When shamed Love keep his ruined lodging, elf! + When, ceremented in mouldering memory, + Myself is hears-ed underneath myself, + And I am but the monument of me:- + O to that tomb be tender then, which bears + Only the name of him it sepulchres! + + + + +HERMES. + + Soothsay. Behold, with rod twy-serpented, + Hermes the prophet, twining in one power + The woman with the man. Upon his head + The cloudy cap, wherewith he hath in dower + The cloud's own virtue--change and counterchange, + To show in light, and to withdraw in pall, + As mortal eyes best bear. His lineage strange + From Zeus, Truth's sire, and maiden May--the all- + Illusive Nature. His fledged feet declare + That 'tis the nether self transdeified, + And the thrice-furnaced passions, which do bear + The poet Olympusward. In him allied + Both parents clasp; and from the womb of Nature + Stern Truth takes flesh in shows of lovely feature. + + + + +HOUSE OF BONDAGE. + + I + + When I perceive Love's heavenly reaping still + Regard perforce the clouds' vicissitude, + That the fixed spirit loves not when it will, + But craves its seasons of the flawful blood; + When I perceive that the high poet doth + Oft voiceless stray beneath the uninfluent stars, + That even Urania of her kiss is loath, + And Song's brave wings fret on their sensual bars; + When I perceived the fullest-sail-ed sprite + Lag at most need upon the leth-ed seas, + The provident captainship oft voided quite, + And lam-ed lie deep-draughted argosies; + I scorn myself, that put for such strange toys + The wit of man to purposes of boys. + + II + + The spirit's ark sealed with a little clay, + Was old ere Memphis grew a memory; {2} + The hand pontifical to break away + That seal what shall surrender? Not the sea + Which did englut great Egypt and his war, + Nor all the desert-drown-ed sepulchres. + Love's feet are stained with clay and travel-sore, + And dusty are Song's lucent wing and hairs. + O Love, that must do courtesy to decay, + Eat hasty bread standing with loins up-girt, + How shall this stead thy feet for their sore way? + Ah, Song, what brief embraces balm thy hurt! + Had Jacob's toil full guerdon, casting his + Twice-seven heaped years to burn in Rachel's kiss? + + {2} The Ark of the Egyptian temple was sealed with clay, which the + Pontiff-king broke when he entered the inner shrine to offer + worship. + + + + +THE HEART. + + Two Sonnets. + + (To my Critic, who had objected to the phrase--'The heart's burning + floors.') + + I + + The heart you hold too small and local thing, + Such spacious terms of edifice to bear. + And yet, since Poesy first shook out her wing, + The mighty Love has been impalaced there; + That has she given him as his wide demesne, + And for his sceptre ample empery; + Against its door to knock has Beauty been + Content; it has its purple canopy + A dais for the sovereign lady spread + Of many a lover, who the heaven would think + Too low an awning for her sacred head. + The world, from star to sea, cast down its brink-- + Yet shall that chasm, till He Who these did build + An awful Curtius make Him, yawn unfilled. + + II + + O nothing, in this corporal earth of man, + That to the imminent heaven of his high soul + Responds with colour and with shadow, can + Lack correlated greatness. If the scroll + Where thoughts lie fast in spell of hieroglyph + Be mighty through its mighty habitants; + If God be in His Name; grave potence if + The sounds unbind of hieratic chants; + All's vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirm + Nature is whole in her least things exprest, + Nor know we with what scope God builds the worm. + Our towns are copied fragments from our breast; + And all man's Babylons strive but to impart + The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart. + + + + +A SUNSET. + + From Hugo's 'Feuilles d'Automne'. + + I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens, + Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens, + In numerous leafage bosomed close; + Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, + Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere + On cloudy archipelagos. + + Oh gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion, + Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion, + Their unimagined shapes accord: + Under their waves at intervals flames a pale levin through, + As if some giant of the air amid the vapours drew + A sudden elemental sword. + + The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold; + And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold, + The thatched roof of a cot a-glance; + Or on the blurred horizons joins his battle with the haze; + Or pools the glooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze + Great moveless meres of radiance. + + Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track + Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back, + A triple row of pointed teeth? + Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide, + The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds its tenebrous side + With scales of golden mail ensheathe. + + Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees. + Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice + Ruins immense in mounded wrack: + Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone + Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown + When the earthquake heaves its hugy back. + + These vapours with their leaden, golden, iron, bronz-ed glows, + Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose, + Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms, + 'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep, + As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep + His dreadful and resounding arms! + + All vanishes! The sun, from topmost heaven precipitated, + Like to a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red + Into the furnace stirred to fume, + Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire, + Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire + The vaporous and inflam-ed spume. + + O contemplate the heavens! whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale, + In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil, + With love that has not speech for need; + Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite: + If winter hue them like a pall; or if the summer night + Fantasy them with starry brede. + + + + +HEARD ON THE MOUNTAIN. + + From Hugo's 'Feuilles d'Automne'. + + Have you sometimes, calm, silent, let your tread aspirant rise + Up to the mountain's summit, in the presence of the skies? + Was't on the borders of the South? or on the Bretagne coast? + And at the basis of the mount had you the Ocean tossed? + And there, leaned o'er the wave and o'er the immeasurableness, + Calm, silent, have you harkened what it says? Lo, what it says! + One day at least, whereon my thought, enlicens-ed to muse, + Had drooped its wing above the beach-ed margent of the ooze, + And, plunging from the mountain height into the immensity, + Beheld upon one side the land, on the other side the sea. + I harkened, comprehended,--never, as from those abysses, + No, never issued from a mouth, nor moved an ear, such voice as this + is! + + A sound it was, at outset, vast, immeasurable, confused, + Vaguer than is the wind among the tufted trees effused, + Full of magnificent accords, suave murmurs, sweet as is + The evensong, and mighty as the shock of panoplies + When the hoarse melee in its arms the closing squadrons grips, + And pants, in furious breathings, from the clarions' brazen lips. + Unutterable the harmony, unsearchable its deep, + Whose fluid undulations round the world a girdle keep, + And through the vasty heavens, which by its surges are washed young, + Its infinite volutions roll, enlarging as they throng, + Even to the profound arcane, whose ultimate chasms sombre + Its shattered flood englut with time, with space and form and + number. + Like to another atmosphere with thin o'erflowing robe, + The hymn eternal covers all the inundated globe: + And the world, swathed about with this investuring symphony, + Even as it trepidates in the air, so trepidates in the harmony. + + And pensive, I attended the ethereal lutany, + Lost within this containing voice as if within the sea. + + Soon I distinguished, yet as tone which veils confuse and smother, + Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other, + Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire; + Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. + And I distinguished them amid that deep and rumorous sound, + As who beholds two currents thwart amid the fluctuous profound. + + The one was of the waters; a be-radiant hymnal speech! + That was the voice o' the surges, as they parleyed each with each. + The other, which arose from our abode terranean, + Was sorrowful; and that, alack! the murmur was of man; + And in this mighty quire, whose chantings day and night resound, + Every wave had its utterance, and every man his sound. + + Now, the magnificent Ocean, as I said, unbannering + A voice of joy, a voice of peace, did never stint to sing, + Most like in Sion's temples to a psaltery psaltering, + And to creation's beauty reared the great lauds of his song. + Upon the gale, upon the squall, his clamour borne along + Unpausingly arose to God in more triumphal swell; + And every one among his waves, that God alone can quell, + When the other of its song made end, into the singing pressed. + Like that majestic lion whereof Daniel was the guest, + At intervals the Ocean his tremendous murmur awed; + And I, t'ward where the sunset fires fell shaggily and broad, + Under his golden mane, methought, that I saw pass the hand of God. + + Meanwhile, and side by side with that august fan-faronnade, + The other voice, like the sudden scream of a destrier affrayed, + Like an infernal door that grates ajar its rusty throat, + Like to a bow of iron that gnarls upon an iron rote, + Grinded; and tears, and shriekings, the anathema, the lewd taunt, + Refusal of viaticum, refusal of the font, + And clamour, and malediction, and dread blasphemy, among + That hurtling crowd of rumour from the diverse human tongue, + Went by as who beholdeth, when the valleys thick t'ward night, + The long drifts of the birds of dusk pass, blackening flight on + flight. + What was this sound whose thousand echoes vibrated unsleeping? + Alas! the sound was earth's and man's, for earth and man were + weeping. + + Brothers! of these two voices, strange most unimaginably, + Unceasingly regenerated, dying unceasingly, + Harken-ed of the Eternal throughout His Eternity, + The one voice uttereth: NATURE! and the other voice: HUMANITY! + + Then I alit in reverie; for my ministering sprite + Alack! had never yet deployed a pinion of an ampler flight, + Nor ever had my shadow endured so large a day to burn: + And long I rested dreaming, contemplating turn by turn + Now that abyss obscure which lurked beneath the water's roll, + And now that other untemptable abyss which opened in my soul. + And I made question of me, to what issues are we here, + Whither should tend the thwarting threads of all this ravelled gear; + What doth the soul; to be or live if better worth it is; + And why the Lord, Who, only, reads within that book of His, + In fatal hymeneals hath eternally entwined + The vintage-chant of nature with the dirging cry of humankind? + + (The metre of the second of these two translations is an experiment. + The splendid fourteen-syllable metre of Chapman I have treated after + the manner of Drydenian rhyming heroics; with the occasional + triplet, and even the occasional Alexandrine, represented by a line + of eight accents--a treatment which can well extend, I believe, the + majestic resources of the metre.) + + + + + +ULTIMA. + + + + + +LOVE'S ALMSMAN PLAINETH HIS FARE. + + O you, love's mendicancy who never tried, + How little of your almsman me you know! + Your little languid hand in mine you slide, + Like to a child says--'Kiss me and let me go!' + And night for this is fretted with my tears, + While I:-'How soon this heavenly neck doth tire + Bending to me from its transtellar spheres!' + Ah, heart all kneaded out of honey and fire! + Who bound thee to a body nothing worth, + And shamed thee much with an unlovely soul, + That the most strainedest charity of earth + Distasteth soon to render back the whole + Of thine inflam-ed sweets and gentilesse! + Whereat, like an unpastured Titan, thou + Gnaw'st on thyself for famine's bitterness, + And leap'st against thy chain. Sweet Lady, how + Little a linking of the hand to you! + Though I should touch yours careless for a year, + Not one blue vein would lie divinelier blue + Upon your fragile temple, to unsphere + The seraphim for kisses! Not one curve + Of your sad mouth would droop more sad and sweet. + But little food love's beggars needs must serve, + That eye your plenteous graces from the street. + A hand-clasp I must feed on for a night, + A noon, although the untasted feast you lay, + To mock me, of your beauty. That you might + Be lover for one space, and make essay + What 'tis to pass unsuppered to your couch, + Keep fast from love all day; and so be taught + The famine which these craving lines avouch! + Ah! miser of good things that cost thee naught, + How know'st thou poor men's hunger?--Misery! + When I go doleless and unfed by thee! + + + + +A HOLOCAUST. + + 'No man ever attained supreme knowledge, unless his heart had been + torn up by the roots.' + + + When I presage the time shall come--yea, now + Perchance is come, when you shall fail from me, + Because the mighty spirit, to whom you vow + Faith of kin genius unrebukably, + Scourges my sloth, and from your side dismissed + Henceforth this sad and most, most lonely soul + Must, marching fatally through pain and mist, + The God-bid levy of its powers enrol; + When I presage that none shall hear the voice + From the great Mount that clangs my ordained advance, + That sullen envy bade the churlish choice + Yourself shall say, and turn your altered glance; + O God! Thou knowest if this heart of flesh + Quivers like broken entrails, when the wheel + Rolleth some dog in middle street, or fresh + Fruit when ye tear it bleeding from the peel; + If my soul cries the uncomprehended cry + When the red agony oozed on Olivet! + Yet not for this, a caitiff, falter I, + Beloved whom I must lose, nor thence regret + The doubly-vouched and twin allegiance owed + To you in Heaven, and Heaven in you, Lady. + How could you hope, loose dealer with my God, + That I should keep for you my fealty? + For still 'tis thus:-because I am so true, + My Fair, to Heaven, I am so true to you! + + + + +BENEATH A PHOTOGRAPH. + + Phoebus, who taught me art divine, + Here tried his hand where I did mine; + And his white fingers in this face + Set my Fair's sigh-suggesting grace. + O sweetness past profaning guess, + Grievous with its own exquisiteness! + Vesper-like face, its shadows bright + With meanings of sequestered light; + Drooped with shamefast sanctities + She purely fears eyes cannot miss, + Yet would blush to know she IS. + Ah, who can view with passionless glance + This tear-compelling countenance! + He has cozened it to tell + Almost its own miracle. + Yet I, all-viewing though he be, + Methinks saw further here than he; + And, Master gay! I swear I drew + Something the better of the two! + + + + +AFTER HER GOING. + + The after-even! Ah, did I walk, + Indeed, in her or even? + For nothing of me or around + But absent She did leaven, + Felt in my body as its soul, + And in my soul its heaven. + + 'Ah me! my very flesh turns soul, + Essenced,' I sighed, 'with bliss!' + And the blackbird held his lutany, + All fragrant-through with bliss; + And all things stilled were as a maid + Sweet with a single kiss. + + For grief of perfect fairness, eve + Could nothing do but smile; + The time was far too perfect fair, + Being but for a while; + And ah, in me, too happy grief + Blinded herself with smile! + + The sunset at its radiant heart + Had somewhat unconfest: + The bird was loath of speech, its song + Half-refluent on its breast, + And made melodious toyings with + A note or two at best. + + And she was gone, my sole, my Fair, + Ah, sole my Fair, was gone! + Methinks, throughout the world 'twere right + I had been sad alone; + And yet, such sweet in all things' heart, + And such sweet in my own! + + + + +MY LADY THE TYRANNESS. + + Me since your fair ambition bows + Feodary to those gracious brows, + Is nothing mine will not confess + Your sovran sweet rapaciousness? + Though use to the white yoke inures, + Half-petulant is + Your loving rebel for somewhat his, + Not yours, my love, not yours! + + Behold my skies, which make with me + One passionate tranquillity! + Wrap thyself in them as a robe, + She shares them not; their azures probe, + No countering wings thy flight endures. + Nay, they do stole + Me like an aura of her soul. + I yield them, love, for yours! + + But mine these hills and fields, which put + Not on the sanctity of her foot. + Far off, my dear, far off the sweet + Grave pianissimo of your feet! + My earth, perchance, your sway abjures?-- + Your absence broods + O'er all, a subtler presence. Woods, + Fields, hills, all yours, all yours! + + Nay then, I said, I have my thought, + Which never woman's reaching raught; + Being strong beyond a woman's might, + And high beyond a woman's height, + Shaped to my shape in all contours.-- + I looked, and knew + No thought but you were garden to. + All yours, my love, all yours! + + Meseemeth still, I have my life; + All-clement Her its resolute strife + Evades; contained, relinquishing + Her mitigating eyes; a thing + Which the whole girth of God secures. + Ah, fool, pause! pause! + I had no life, until it was + All yours, my love, all yours! + + Yet, stern possession! I have my death, + Sole yielding up of my sole breath; + Which all within myself I die, + All in myself must cry the cry + Which the deaf body's wall immures.-- + Thought fashioneth + My death without her.--Ah, even death + All yours, my love, all yours! + + Death, then, be hers. I have my heaven, + For which no arm of hers has striven; + Which solitary I must choose, + And solitary win or lose.-- + Ah, but not heaven my own endures! + I must perforce + Taste you, my stream, in God your source,-- + So steep my heaven in yours. + + At last I said--I have my God, + Who doth desire me, though a clod, + And from His liberal Heaven shall He + Bar in mine arms His privacy. + Himself for mine Himself assures.-- + None shall deny + God to be mine, but He and I + All yours, my love, all yours! + + I have no fear at all lest I + Without her draw felicity. + God for His Heaven will not forego + Her whom I found such heaven below, + And she will train Him to her lures. + Nought, lady, I love + In you but more is loved above; + What made me, makes Him yours. + + 'I, thy sought own, am I forgot?' + Ha, thou?--thou liest, I seek thee not. + Why what, thou painted parrot, Fame, + What have I taught thee but her name? + Hear, thou slave Fame, while Time endures, + I give her thee; + Page her triumphal name!--Lady, + Take her, the thrall is yours. + + + + +UNTO THIS LAST. + + A boy's young fancy taketh love + Most simply, with the rind thereof; + A boy's young fancy tasteth more + The rind, than the deific core. + Ah, Sweet! to cast away the slips + Of unessential rind, and lips + Fix on the immortal core, is well; + But heard'st thou ever any tell + Of such a fool would take for food + Aspect and scent, however good, + Of sweetest core Love's orchards grow? + Should such a phantast please him so, + Love where Love's reverent self denies + Love to feed, but with his eyes, + All the savour, all the touch, + Another's--was there ever such? + Such were fool, if fool there be; + Such fool was I, and was for thee! + But if the touch and savour too + Of this fruit--say, Sweet, of you-- + You unto another give + For sacrosanct prerogative, + Yet even scent and aspect were + Some elected Second's share; + And one, gone mad, should rest content + With memory of show and scent; + Would not thyself vow, if there sigh + Such a fool--say, Sweet, as I-- + Treble frenzy it must be + Still to love, and to love thee? + + Yet had I torn (man knoweth not, + Nor scarce the unweeping angels wot + Of such dread task the lightest part) + Her fingers from about my heart. + Heart, did we not think that she + Had surceased her tyranny? + Heart, we bounded, and were free! + O sacrilegious freedom!--Till + She came, and taught my apostate will + The winnowed sweet mirth cannot guess + And tear-fined peace of hopefulness; + Looked, spake, simply touched, and went. + Now old pain is fresh content, + Proved content is unproved pain. + Pangs fore-tempted, which in vain + I, faithless, have denied, now bud + To untempted fragrance and the mood + Of contrite heavenliness; all days + Joy affrights me in my ways; + Extremities of old delight + Afflict me with new exquisite + Virgin piercings of surprise,-- + Stung by those wild brown bees, her eyes! + + + + +ULTIMUM. + + Now in these last spent drops, slow, slower shed, + Love dies, Love dies, Love dies--ah, Love is dead! + Sad Love in life, sore Love in agony, + Pale Love in death; while all his offspring songs, + Like children, versed not in death's chilly wrongs, + About him flit, frighted to see him lie + So still, who did not know that Love could die. + One lifts his wing, where dulls the vermeil all + Like clotting blood, and shrinks to find it cold, + And when she sees its lapse and nerveless fall + Clasps her fans, while her sobs ooze through the webb-ed gold. + Thereat all weep together, and their tears + Make lights like shivered moonlight on long waters. + Have peace, O piteous daughters! + He shall not wake more through the mortal years, + Nor comfort come to my soul widow-ed, + Nor breath to your wild wings; for Love is dead! + + I slew, that moan for him: he lifted me + Above myself, and that I might not be + Less than myself, need was that he should die; + Since Love that first did wing, now clogged me from the sky. + Yet lofty Love being dead thus passeth base-- + There is a soul of nobleness which stays, + The spectre of the rose: be comforted, + Songs, for the dust that dims his sacred head! + The days draw on too dark for Song or Love; + O peace, my songs, nor stir ye any wing! + For lo, the thunder hushing all the grove, + And did Love live, not even Love could sing. + + And, Lady, thus I dare to say, + Not all with you is passed away! + For your love taught me this:-'tis Love's true praise + To be, not staff, but writ of worthy days; + And that high worth in love unfortunate + Should still remain it learned in love elate. + Beyond your star, still, still the stars are bright; + Beyond your highness, still I follow height; + Sole I go forth, yet still to my sad view, + Beyond your trueness, Lady, Truth stands true. + This wisdom sings my song with last firm breath, + Caught from the twisted lore of Love and Death, + The strange inwoven harmony that wakes + From Pallas' straying locks twined with her aegis-snakes. + 'On him the unpetitioned heavens descend, + Who heaven on earth proposes not for end; + The perilous and celestial excess + Taking with peace, lacking with thankfulness. + Bliss in extreme befits thee not, until + Thou'rt not extreme in bliss; be equal still: + Sweets to be granted think thy self unmeet + Till thou have learned to hold sweet not too sweet.' + This thing not far is he from wise in art + Who teacheth; nor who doth, from wise in heart. + + + + +ENVOY. + + Go, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play; + Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow: + And some are sung, and that was yesterday, + And some unsung, and that may be to-morrow. + + Go forth; and if it be o'er stony way, + Old joy can lend what newer grief must borrow: + And it was sweet, and that was yesterday, + And sweet is sweet, though purchas-ed with sorrow. + + Go, songs, and come not back from your far way: + And if men ask you why ye smile and sorrow, + Tell them ye grieve, for your hearts know To-day, + Tell them ye smile, for your eyes know To-morrow. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of New Poems, by Francis Thompson + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW POEMS *** + +***** This file should be named 1471.txt or 1471.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/7/1471/ + +Produced by Les Bowler + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset. + + + + + +New Poems, by Francis Thompson. + + + + +Dedication to Coventry Patmore. + + +Lo, my book thinks to look Time's leaguer down, +Under the banner of your spread renown! +Or if these levies of impuissant rhyme +Fall to the overthrow of assaulting Time, +Yet this one page shall fend oblivious shame, +Armed with your crested and prevailing Name. + + +Note.--This dedication was written while the dear friend and great +Poet to whom it was addressed yet lived. It is left as he saw it-- +the last verses of mine that were ever to pass under his eyes. + + F. T. + + + +Contents. + + +SIGHT AND INSIGHT. + + +The mistress of vision. +Contemplation. +'By reason of Thy law.' +The dread of height. +Orient ode. +New Year's chimes. +From the night of forebeing. +Any saint. +Assumpta Maria. +The after woman. +Grace of the way. +Retrospect. + + + +A NARROW VESSEL. + + +A girl's sin--in her eyes. +A girl's sin--in his eyes. +Love declared. +The way of a maid. +Beginning of the end. +Penelope. +The end of it. +Epilogue. + + + +MISCELLANEOUS ODES. + + +Ode to the setting sun. +A captain of song. +Against Urania. +An anthem of earth. + + + +MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. + + +'Ex ore infantium.' +A question. +Field-flower. +The cloud's swan-song. +To the sinking sun. +Grief's harmonics. +Memorat memoria. +July fugitive. +To a snow-flake. +Nocturn. +A May burden. +A dead astronomer. +'Chose vue.' +'Whereto art thou come.' +Heaven and hell. +To a child. +Hermes. +House of bondage. +The heart. +A sunset. +Heard on the mountain. + + + +ULTIMA. + + +Love's almsman plaineth his fare. +A holocaust. +Beneath a photograph. +After her going. +My lady the tyranness. +Unto this last. +Ultimum. +Envoy. + + + + +SIGHT AND INSIGHT. + + + + +'Wisdom is easily seen by them that love her, and is found + by them that seek her. +To think therefore upon her is perfect understanding.' + + WISDOM, vi. + + +THE MISTRESS OF VISION. + + I + + Secret was the garden; + Set i' the pathless awe + Where no star its breath can draw. + Life, that is its warden, +Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw not, + and I saw. + + II + + It was a mazeful wonder; + Thrice three times it was enwalled + With an emerald-- + Seal-ed so asunder. +All its birds in middle air hung a-dream, their + music thralled. + + III + + The Lady of fair weeping, + At the garden's core, + Sang a song of sweet and sore + And the after-sleeping; +In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore. + + IV + + With sweet-panged singing, + Sang she through a dream-night's day; + That the bowers might stay, + Birds bate their winging, +Nor the wall of emerald float in wreath-ed haze away. + + V + + The lily kept its gleaming, + In her tears (divine conservers!) + Wash-ed with sad art; + And the flowers of dreaming + Pal-ed not their fervours, + For her blood flowed through their nervures; +And the roses were most red, for she dipt them in + her heart. + + VI + + There was never moon, + Save the white sufficing woman: + Light most heavenly-human-- + Like the unseen form of sound, + Sensed invisibly in tune,-- + With a sun-deriv-ed stole + Did inaureole + All her lovely body round; +Lovelily her lucid body with that light was inter- + strewn. + + VII + + The sun which lit that garden wholly, + Low and vibrant visible, + Tempered glory woke; + And it seem-ed solely + Like a silver thurible + Solemnly swung, slowly, +Fuming clouds of golden fire, for a cloud of incense- + smoke. + + VIII + + But woe's me, and woe's me, + For the secrets of her eyes! + In my visions fearfully + They are ever shown to be + As fring-ed pools, whereof each lies + Pallid-dark beneath the skies + Of a night that is + But one blear necropolis. +And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her + own sighs. + + IX + + Many changes rise on + Their phantasmal mysteries. + They grow to an horizon + Where earth and heaven meet; + And like a wing that dies on + The vague twilight-verges, + Many a sinking dream doth fleet + Lessening down their secrecies. + And, as dusk with day converges, + Their orbs are troublously +Over-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fear + of things to be. + + X + + There is a peak on Himalay, + And on the peak undeluged snow, + And on the snow not eagles stray; + There if your strong feet could go,-- + Looking over tow'rd Cathay + From the never-deluged snow-- + Farthest ken might not survey +Where the peoples underground dwell whom + antique fables know. + + XI + + East, ah, east of Himalay, + Dwell the nations underground; + Hiding from the shock of Day, + For the sun's uprising-sound: + Dare not issue from the ground + At the tumults of the Day, + So fearfully the sun doth sound + Clanging up beyond Cathay; +For the great earthquaking sunrise rolling up + beyond Cathay. + + XII + + Lend me, O lend me + The terrors of that sound, + That its music may attend me. + Wrap my chant in thunders round; +While I tell the ancient secrets in that Lady's + singing found. + + XIII + + On Ararat there grew a vine, + When Asia from her bathing rose; + Our first sailor made a twine + Thereof for his prefiguring brows. + Canst divine +Where, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a cluster + grows? + + XIV + + On Golgotha there grew a thorn + Round the long-prefigured Brows. + Mourn, O mourn! +For the vine have we the spine? Is this all the + Heaven allows? + + XV + + On Calvary was shook a spear; + Press the point into thy heart-- + Joy and fear! +All the spines upon the thorn into curling tendrils + start. + + XVI + + O, dismay! + I, a wingless mortal, sporting + With the tresses of the sun? + I, that dare my hand to lay + On the thunder in its snorting? + Ere begun, +Falls my singed song down the sky, even the old + Icarian way. + + XVII + + From the fall precipitant + These dim snatches of her chant + Only have remain-ed mine;-- + That from spear and thorn alone + May be grown +For the front of saint or singer any divinizing twine. + + XVIII + + Her song said that no springing + Paradise but evermore + Hangeth on a singing + That has chords of weeping, + And that sings the after-sleeping + To souls which wake too sore. +'But woe the singer, woe!' she said; 'beyond the + dead his singing-lore, + All its art of sweet and sore, + He learns, in Elenore!' + + XIX + + Where is the land of Luthany, + Where is the tract of Elenore? + I am bound therefor. + + XX + + 'Pierce thy heart to find the key; + With thee take + Only what none else would keep; + Learn to dream when thou dost wake, + Learn to wake when thou dost sleep. + Learn to water joy with tears, + Learn from fears to vanquish fears; + To hope, for thou dar'st not despair, + Exult, for that thou dar'st not grieve; + Plough thou the rock until it bear; + Know, for thou else couldst not believe; + Lose, that the lost thou may'st receive; + Die, for none other way canst live. + When earth and heaven lay down their veil, + And that apocalypse turns thee pale; + When thy seeing blindeth thee + To what thy fellow-mortals see; + When their sight to thee is sightless; + Their living, death; their light, most light- + less; + Search no more-- +Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.' + + XXI + + Where is the land of Luthany, + And where the region Elenore? + I do faint therefor. + 'When to the new eyes of thee + All things by immortal power, + Near or far, + Hiddenly + To each other link-ed are, + That thou canst not stir a flower + Without troubling of a star; + When thy song is shield and mirror + To the fair snake-curl-ed Pain, + Where thou dar'st affront her terror + That on her thou may'st attain + Persean conquest; seek no more, + O seek no more! +Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.' + + XXII + + So sang she, so wept she, + Through a dream-night's day; + And with her magic singing kept she-- + Mystical in music-- + That garden of enchanting + In visionary May; + Swayless for my spirit's haunting, +Thrice-threefold walled with emerald from our mor- + tal mornings grey. + + XXIII + + And as a necromancer + Raises from the rose-ash + The ghost of the rose; + My heart so made answer + To her voice's silver plash,-- + Stirred in reddening flash, +And from out its mortal ruins the purpureal phantom + blows. + + XXIV + + Her tears made dulcet fretting, + Her voice had no word, + More than thunder or the bird. + Yet, unforgetting, +The ravished soul her meanings knew. Mine ears + heard not, and I heard. + + XXV + + When she shall unwind + All those wiles she wound about me, + Tears shall break from out me, + That I cannot find +Music in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt + me! + + + +CONTEMPLATION. + + +This morning saw I, fled the shower, +The earth reclining in a lull of power: +The heavens, pursuing not their path, +Lay stretched out naked after bath, +Or so it seemed; field, water, tree, were still, +Nor was there any purpose on the calm-browed hill. + +The hill, which sometimes visibly is +Wrought with unresting energies, +Looked idly; from the musing wood, +And every rock, a life renewed +Exhaled like an unconscious thought +When poets, dreaming unperplexed, +Dream that they dream of nought. +Nature one hour appears a thing unsexed, +Or to such serene balance brought +That her twin natures cease their sweet alarms, +And sleep in one another's arms. +The sun with resting pulses seems to brood, +And slacken its command upon my unurged blood. + +The river has not any care +Its passionless water to the sea to bear; +The leaves have brown content; +The wall to me has freshness like a scent, +And takes half animate the air, +Making one life with its green moss and stain; +And life with all things seems too perfect blent +For anything of life to be aware. +The very shades on hill, and tree, and plain, +Where they have fallen doze, and where they doze remain. + +No hill can idler be than I; +No stone its inter-particled vibration +Investeth with a stiller lie; +No heaven with a more urgent rest betrays +The eyes that on it gaze. +We are too near akin that thou shouldst cheat +Me, Nature, with thy fair deceit. + +In poets floating like a water-flower +Upon the bosom of the glassy hour, +In skies that no man sees to move, +Lurk untumultuous vortices of power, +For joy too native, and for agitation +Too instant, too entire for sense thereof, +Motion like gnats when autumn suns are low, +Perpetual as the prisoned feet of love +On the heart's floors with pain-ed pace that go. +From stones and poets you may know, +Nothing so active is, as that which least seems so. + +For he, that conduit running wine of song, +Then to himself does most belong, +When he his mortal house unbars +To the importunate and thronging feet +That round our corporal walls unheeded beat; +Till, all containing, he exalt +His stature to the stars, or stars +Narrow their heaven to his fleshly vault: +When, like a city under ocean, +To human things he grows a desolation, +And is made a habitation +For the fluctuous universe +To lave with unimpeded motion. +He scarcely frets the atmosphere +With breathing, and his body shares +The immobility of rocks; +His heart's a drop-well of tranquillity; +His mind more still is than the limbs of fear, +And yet its unperturbed velocity +The spirit of the simoom mocks. +He round the solemn centre of his soul +Wheels like a dervish, while his being is +Streamed with the set of the world's harmonies, +In the long draft of whatsoever sphere +He lists the sweet and clear +Clangour of his high orbit on to roll, +So gracious is his heavenly grace; +And the bold stars does hear, +Every one in his airy soar, +For evermore +Shout to each other from the peaks of space, +As thwart ravines of azure shouts the mountaineer. + + + +'BY REASON OF THY LAW'. + +Here I make oath-- +Although the heart that knows its bitterness +Hear loath, +And credit less-- +That he who kens to meet Pain's kisses fierce +Which hiss against his tears, +Dread, loss, nor love frustrate, +Nor all iniquity of the froward years +Shall his inur-ed wing make idly bate, +Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight +To lose observance quite; +Seal from half-sad and all-elate +Sagacious eyes +Ultimate Paradise; +Nor shake his certitude of haughty fate. + +Pacing the burning shares of many dooms, +I with stern tread do the clear-witting stars +To judgment cite, +If I have borne aright +The proving of their pure-willed ordeal. +From food of all delight +The heavenly Falconer my heart debars, +And tames with fearful glooms +The haggard to His call; +Yet sometimes comes a hand, sometimes a voice withal, +And she sits meek now, and expects the light. + +In this Avernian sky, +This sultry and incumbent canopy +Of dull and doomed regret; +Where on the unseen verges yet, O yet, +At intervals, +Trembles, and falls, +Faint lightning of remembered transient sweet-- +Ah, far too sweet +But to be sweet a little, a little sweet, and fleet; +Leaving this pallid trace, +This loitering and most fitful light a space, +Still some sad space, +For Grief to see her own poor face:- + +Here where I keep my stand +With all o'er-anguished feet, +And no live comfort near on any hand; +Lo, I proclaim the unavoided term, +When this morass of tears, then drained and firm, +Shall be a land-- +Unshaken I affirm-- +Where seven-quired psalterings meet; +And all the gods move with calm hand in hand, +And eyes that know not trouble and the worm. + + + +THE DREAD OF HEIGHT. + + If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say: We + see: your sin remaineth. JOHN ix. 41. + + +Not the Circean wine +Most perilous is for pain: +Grapes of the heavens' star-loaden vine, +Whereto the lofty-placed +Thoughts of fair souls attain, +Tempt with a more retributive delight, +And do disrelish all life's sober taste. +'Tis to have drunk too well +The drink that is divine, +Maketh the kind earth waste, +And breath intolerable. + +Ah me! +How shall my mouth content it with mortality? +Lo, secret music, sweetest music, +From distances of distance drifting its lone flight, +Down the arcane where Night would perish in night, +Like a god's loosened locks slips undulously: +Music that is too grievous of the height +For safe and low delight, +Too infinite, +For bounded hearts which yet would girth the sea! + +So let it be, +Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small: +So let it be, +O music, music, though you wake in me +No joy, no joy at all; +Although you only wake +Uttermost sadness, measure of delight, +Which else I could not credit to the height, +Did I not know, +That ill is statured to its opposite; +Did I not know, +And even of sadness so, +Of utter sadness make, +Of extreme sad a rod to mete +The incredible excess of unsensed sweet, +And mystic wall of strange felicity. +So let it be, +Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small, +And bitter meat +The food of gods for men to eat; +Yea, John ate daintier, and did tread +Less ways of heat, +Than whom to their wind-carpeted +High banquet-hall, +And golden love-feasts, the fair stars entreat. + +But ah withal, +Some hold, some stay, +O difficult Joy, I pray, +Some arms of thine, +Not only, only arms of mine! +Lest like a weary girl I fall +From clasping love so high, +And lacking thus thine arms, then may +Most hapless I +Turn utterly to love of basest rate; +For low they fall whose fall is from the sky. +Yea, who me shall secure +But I of height grown desperate +Surcease my wing, and my lost fate +Be dashed from pure +To broken writhings in the shameful slime: +Lower than man, for I dreamed higher, +Thrust down, by how much I aspire, +And damned with drink of immortality? +For such things be, +Yea, and the lowest reach of reeky Hell +Is but made possible +By forta'en breath of Heaven's austerest clime. + +These tidings from the vast to bring +Needeth not doctor nor divine, +Too well, too well +My flesh doth know the heart-perturbing thing; +That dread theology alone +Is mine, +Most native and my own; +And ever with victorious toil +When I have made +Of the deific peaks dim escalade, +My soul with anguish and recoil +Doth like a city in an earthquake rock, +As at my feet the abyss is cloven then, +With deeper menace than for other men, +Of my potential cousinship with mire; +That all my conquered skies do grow a hollow mock, +My fearful powers retire, +No longer strong, +Reversing the shook banners of their song. + +Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven, +A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint, +Or for a will accipitrine to pursue! +The veil of tutelar flesh to simple livers given, +Or those brave-fledging fervours of the Saint, +Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint, +Nor they in sickest time their ample virtue mew. + + + +ORIENT ODE. + +Lo, in the sanctuaried East, +Day, a dedicated priest +In all his robes pontifical exprest, +Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly, +From out its Orient tabernacle drawn, +Yon orb-ed sacrament confest +Which sprinkles benediction through the dawn; +And when the grave procession's ceased, +The earth with due illustrious rite +Blessed,--ere the frail fingers featly +Of twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte, +His sacerdotal stoles unvest-- +Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast, +The sun in august exposition meetly +Within the flaming monstrance of the West. +O salutaris hostia, +Quae coeli pandis ostium! +Through breach-ed darkness' rampart, a +Divine assaulter, art thou come! +God whom none may live and mark! +Borne within thy radiant ark, +While the Earth, a joyous David, +Dances before thee from the dawn to dark. +The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve; +Behold her fair and greater daughter {1} +Offers to thee her fruitful water, +Which at thy first white Ave shall conceive! +Thy gazes do on simple her +Desirable allures confer; +What happy comelinesses rise +Beneath thy beautifying eyes! +Who was, indeed, at first a maid +Such as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair, +And secret views herself afraid, +Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear: +Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover, +Make the beauties they discover! +What dainty guiles and treacheries caught +From artful prompting of love's artless thought +Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn, +When thy plumes shiver against the conscious gates of morn! + +And so the love which is thy dower, +Earth, though her first-frightened breast +Against the exigent boon protest, +(For she, poor maid, of her own power +Has nothing in herself, not even love, +But an unwitting void thereof), +Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower; +And holy odours do her bosom invest, +That sweeter grows for being prest: +Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, +From thine embrace still startles coy, +Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, +The laughing captive from the wishing West. + +Nor the majestic heavens less +Thy formidable sweets approve, +Thy dreads and thy delights confess, +That do draw, and that remove. +Thou as a lion roar'st, O Sun, +Upon thy satellites' vex-ed heels; +Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run; +Each in his frighted orbit wheels, +Each flies through inassuageable chase, +Since the hunt o' the world begun, +The puissant approaches of thy face, +And yet thy radiant leash he feels. +Since the hunt o' the world begun, +Lashed with terror, leashed with longing, +The mighty course is ever run; +Pricked with terror, leashed with longing, +Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun. +Since the hunt o' the world began, +With love that trembleth, fear that loveth, +Thou join'st the woman to the man; +And Life with Death +In obscure nuptials moveth, +Commingling alien, yet affin-ed breath. + +Thou art the incarnated Light +Whose Sire is aboriginal, and beyond +Death and resurgence of our day and night; +From him is thy vicegerent wand +With double potence of the black and white. +Giver of Love, and Beauty, and Desire, +The terror, and the loveliness, and purging, +The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire! +Samson's riddling meanings merging +In thy twofold sceptre meet: +Out of thy minatory might, +Burning Lion, burning Lion, +Comes the honey of all sweet, +And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat. +And though, by thine alternate breath, +Every kiss thou dost inspire +Echoeth +Back from the windy vaultages of death; +Yet thy clear warranty above +Augurs the wings of death too must +Occult reverberations stir of love +Crescent and life incredible; +That even the kisses of the just +Go down not unresurgent to the dust. +Yea, not a kiss which I have given, +But shall tri-umph upon my lips in heaven, +Or cling a shameful fungus there in hell. +Know'st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, well +Thou know'st the ancient miracle, +The children know'st of Zeus and May; +And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother, +To incarnate, the antique way, +The truth which is their heritage from their Sire +In sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother. +My fingers thou hast taught to con +Thy flame-chorded psalterion, +Till I can translate into mortal wire-- +Till I can translate passing well-- +The heavenly harping harmony, +Melodious, sealed, inaudible, +Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world's desire. +Thou whisperest in the Moon's white ear, +And she does whisper into mine,-- +By night together, I and she-- +With her virgin voice divine, +The things I cannot half so sweetly tell +As she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear. + +By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord, +Yet she for Earth, and both in thee. +Light out of Light! +Resplendent and prevailing Word +Of the Unheard! +Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee +Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee; +And in an age of faith grown frore +If I too shall adore, +Be it accounted unto me +A bright sciential idolatry! +God has given thee visible thunders +To utter thine apocalypse of wonders; +And what want I of prophecy, +That at the sounding from thy station +Of thy flagrant trumpet, see +The seals that melt, the open revelation? +Or who a God-persuading angel needs, +That only heeds +The rhetoric of thy burning deeds? +Which but to sing, if it may be, +In worship-warranting moiety, +So I would win +In such a song as hath within +A smouldering core of mystery, +Brimm-ed with nimbler meanings up +Than hasty Gideons in their hands may sup;-- +Lo, my suit pleads +That thou, Isaian coal of fire, +Touch from yon altar my poor mouth's desire, +And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds. + +To thine own shape +Thou round'st the chrysolite of the grape, +Bind'st thy gold lightnings in his veins; +Thou storest the white garners of the rains. +Destroyer and preserver, thou +Who medicinest sickness, and to health +Art the unthank-ed marrow of its wealth; +To those apparent sovereignties we bow +And bright appurtenances of thy brow! +Thy proper blood dost thou not give, +That Earth, the gusty Maenad, drink and dance? +Art thou not life of them that live? +Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell +Within our body as a tabernacle! +Thou bittest with thine ordinance +The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete +The unsustainable treading of his feet. +Thou to thy spousal universe +Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church; +Who in most dusk and vidual curch, +Her Lord being hence, +Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hearse. +The heavens renew their innocence +And morning state +But by thy sacrament communicate: +Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers, +Our darkened search, +And sinful vigil desolate. +Yea, biune in imploring dumb, +Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await, +The Spirit and the Bride say: Come! +Lo, of thy Magians I the least +Haste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs, +To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced +Regions and odorous of Song's traded East. +Thou, for the life of all that live +The victim daily born and sacrificed; +To whom the pinion of this longing verse +Beats but with fire which first thyself did give, +To thee, O Sun--or is't perchance, to Christ? + +Ay, if men say that on all high heaven's face +The saintly signs I trace +Which round my stol-ed altars hold their solemn place, +Amen, amen! For oh, how could it be,-- +When I with wing-ed feet had run +Through all the windy earth about, +Quested its secret of the sun, +And heard what thing the stars together shout,-- +I should not heed thereout +Consenting counsel won:- +'By this, O Singer, know we if thou see. +When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is here, +When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is there, +Believe them: yea, and this--then art thou seer, +When all thy crying clear +Is but: Lo here! lo there!--ah me, lo everywhere!' + +{1} The earth. + + + +NEW YEAR'S CHIMES. + +What is the song the stars sing? + (And a million songs are as song of one.) +This is the song the stars sing: + Sweeter song's none. + +One to set, and many to sing, + (And a million songs are as song of one), +One to stand, and many to cling, +The many things, and the one Thing, + The one that runs not, the many that run. + +The ever new weaveth the ever old + (And a million songs are as song of one). +Ever telling the never told; +The silver saith, and the said is gold, + And done ever the never done. + +The chase that's chased is the Lord o' the chase + (And a million songs are as song of one), +And the pursued cries on the race; + And the hounds in leash are the hounds that run. + +Hidden stars by the shown stars' sheen; + (And a million suns are but as one); +Colours unseen by the colours seen, +And sounds unheard heard sounds between, + And a night is in the light of the sun. + +An ambuscade of light in night, + (And a million secrets are but as one), +And a night is dark in the sun's light, + And a world in the world man looks upon. + +Hidden stars by the shown stars' wings, + (And a million cycles are but as one), +And a world with unapparent strings +Knits the simulant world of things; + Behold, and vision thereof is none. + +The world above in the world below + (And a million worlds are but as one), +And the One in all; as the sun's strength so +Strives in all strength, glows in all glow + Of the earth that wits not, and man thereon. + +Braced in its own fourfold embrace + (And a million strengths are as strength of one), +And round it all God's arms of grace, +The world, so as the Vision says, + Doth with great lightning-tramples run. + +And thunder bruiteth into thunder, + (And a million sounds are as sound of one), +From stellate peak to peak is tossed a voice of wonder, +And the height stoops down to the depths thereunder, + And sun leans forth to his brother-sun. + +And the more ample years unfold + (With a million songs as song of one), +A little new of the ever old, +A little told of the never told, + Added act of the never done. + +Loud the descant, and low the theme, + (A million songs are as song of one); +And the dream of the world is dream in dream, +But the one Is is, or nought could seem; + And the song runs round to the song begun. + +This is the song the stars sing, + (Ton-ed all in time); +Tintinnabulous, tuned to ring +A multitudinous-single thing, + Rung all in rhyme. + + + +FROM THE NIGHT OF FOREBEING. +An ode after Easter. + +In the chaos of preordination, and night of our forebeings.-- + + SIR THOMAS BROWNE. + +Et lux in tenebris erat, et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt.-- + + ST. JOHN. + +Cast wide the folding doorways of the East, +For now is light increased! +And the wind-besomed chambers of the air, +See they be garnished fair; +And look the ways exhale some precious odours, +And set ye all about wild-breathing spice, +Most fit for Paradise. +Now is no time for sober gravity, +Season enough has Nature to be wise; +But now discinct, with raiment glittering free, +Shake she the ringing rafters of the skies +With festal footing and bold joyance sweet, +And let the earth be drunken and carouse! +For lo, into her house +Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet, +And all things are made young with young desires; +And all for her is light increased +In yellow stars and yellow daffodils, +And East to West, and West to East, +Fling answering welcome-fires, +By dawn and day-fall, on the jocund hills. +And ye, winged minstrels of her fair meinie, +Being newly coated in glad livery, +Upon her steps attend, +And round her treading dance and without end +Reel your shrill lutany. +What popular breath her coming does out-tell +The garrulous leaves among! +What little noises stir and pass +From blade to blade along the voluble grass! +O Nature, never-done +Ungaped-at Pentecostal miracle, +We hear thee, each man in his proper tongue! +Break, elemental children, break ye loose +From the strict frosty rule +Of grey-beard Winter's school. +Vault, O young winds, vault in your tricksome courses +Upon the snowy steeds that reinless use +In coerule pampas of the heaven to run; +Foaled of the white sea-horses, +Washed in the lambent waters of the sun. +Let even the slug-abed snail upon the thorn +Put forth a conscious horn! +Mine elemental co-mates, joy each one; +And ah, my foster-brethren, seem not sad-- +No, seem not sad, +That my strange heart and I should be so little glad. +Suffer me at your leafy feast +To sit apart, a somewhat alien guest, +And watch your mirth, +Unsharing in the liberal laugh of earth; +Yet with a sympathy, +Begot of wholly sad and half-sweet memory-- +The little sweetness making grief complete; +Faint wind of wings from hours that distant beat, +When I, I too, +Was once, O wild companions, as are you, +Ran with such wilful feet. +Wraith of a recent day and dead, +Risen wanly overhead, +Frail, strengthless as a noon-belated moon, +Or as the glazing eyes of watery heaven, +When the sick night sinks into deathly swoon. + +A higher and a solemn voice +I heard through your gay-hearted noise; +A solemn meaning and a stiller voice +Sounds to me from far days when I too shall rejoice, +Nor more be with your jollity at strife. +O prophecy +Of things that are, and are not, and shall be! +The great-vanned Angel March +Hath trumpeted +His clangorous 'Sleep no more' to all the dead-- +Beat his strong vans o'er earth, and air, and sea. +And they have heard; +Hark to the Jubilate of the bird +For them that found the dying way to life! +And they have heard, +And quicken to the great precursive word; +Green spray showers lightly down the cascade of the larch; +The graves are riven, +And the Sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven! +Before his way +Went forth the trumpet of the March; +Before his way, before his way +Dances the pennon of the May! +O earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long +Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree +Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy, +Behold how all things are made true! +Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you, +Exceeding glad and strong. +Raise up your eyes, O raise your eyes abroad! +No more shall you sit sole and vidual, +Searching, in servile pall, +Upon the hieratic night the star-sealed sense of all: +Rejoice, O barren, and look forth abroad! +Your children gathered back to your embrace +See with a mother's face. +Look up, O mortals, and the portent heed; +In very deed, +Washed with new fire to their irradiant birth, +Reintegrated are the heavens and earth! +From sky to sod, +The world's unfolded blossom smells of God. + +O imagery +Of that which was the first, and is the last! +For as the dark, profound nativity, +God saw the end should be, +When the world's infant horoscope He cast. +Unshackled from the bright Phoebean awe, +In leaf, flower, mould, and tree, +Resolved into dividual liberty, +Most strengthless, unparticipant, inane, +Or suffered the ill peace of lethargy, +Lo, the Earth eased of rule: +Unsummered, granted to her own worst smart +The dear wish of the fool-- +Disintegration, merely which man's heart +For freedom understands, +Amid the frog-like errors from the damp +And quaking swamp +Of the low popular levels spawned in all the lands. +But thou, O Earth, dost much disdain +The bondage of thy waste and futile reign, +And sweetly to the great compulsion draw +Of God's alone true-manumitting law, +And Freedom, only which the wise intend, +To work thine innate end. +Over thy vacant counterfeit of death +Broods with soft urgent breath +Love, that is child of Beauty and of Awe: +To intercleavage of sharp warring pain, +As of contending chaos come again, +Thou wak'st, O Earth, +And work'st from change to change and birth to birth +Creation old as hope, and new as sight; +For meed of toil not vain, +Hearing once more the primal fiat toll:- +'Let there be light!' +And there is light! +Light flagrant, manifest; +Light to the zenith, light from pole to pole; +Light from the East that waxeth to the West, +And with its puissant goings-forth +Encroaches on the South and on the North; +And with its great approaches does prevail +Upon the sullen fastness of the height, +And summoning its levied power +Crescent and confident through the crescent hour, +Goes down with laughters on the subject vale. +Light flagrant, manifest; +Light to the sentient closeness of the breast, +Light to the secret chambers of the brain! +And thou up-floatest, warm, and newly-bathed, +Earth, through delicious air, +And with thine own apparent beauties swathed, +Wringing the waters from thine arborous hair; +That all men's hearts, which do behold and see, +Grow weak with their exceeding much desire, +And turn to thee on fire, +Enamoured with their utter wish of thee, +Anadyomene! +What vine-outquickening life all creatures sup, +Feel, for the air within its sapphire cup +How it does leap, and twinkle headily! +Feel, for Earth's bosom pants, and heaves her scarfing sea; +And round and round in bacchanal rout reel the swift spheres +intemperably! + +My little-worlded self! the shadows pass +In this thy sister-world, as in a glass, +Of all processions that revolve in thee: +Not only of cyclic Man +Thou here discern'st the plan, +Not only of cyclic Man, but of the cyclic Me. +Not solely of Mortality's great years +The reflex just appears, +But thine own bosom's year, still circling round +In ample and in ampler gyre +Toward the far completion, wherewith crowned, +Love unconsumed shall chant in his own furnace-fire. +How many trampled and deciduous joys +Enrich thy soul for joys deciduous still, +Before the distance shall fulfil +Cyclic unrest with solemn equipoise! +Happiness is the shadow of things past, +Which fools still take for that which is to be! +And not all foolishly: +For all the past, read true, is prophecy, +And all the firsts are hauntings of some Last, +And all the springs are flash-lights of one Spring. +Then leaf, and flower, and falless fruit +Shall hang together on the unyellowing bough; +And silence shall be Music mute +For her surcharg-ed heart. Hush thou! +These things are far too sure that thou should'st dream +Thereof, lest they appear as things that seem. + +Shade within shade! for deeper in the glass +Now other imaged meanings pass; +And as the man, the poet there is read. +Winter with me, alack! +Winter on every hand I find: +Soul, brain, and pulses dead; +The mind no further by the warm sense fed, +The soul weak-stirring in the arid mind, +More tearless-weak to flash itself abroad +Than the earth's life beneath the frost-scorched sod. +My lips have drought, and crack, +By laving music long unvisited. +Beneath the austere and macerating rime +Draws back constricted in its icy urns +The genial flame of Earth, and there +With torment and with tension does prepare +The lush disclosures of the vernal time. +All joys draw inward to their icy urns, +Tormented by constraining rime, +And there +With undelight and throe prepare +The bounteous efflux of the vernal time. +Nor less beneath compulsive Law +Rebuk-ed draw +The numb-ed musics back upon my heart; +Whose yet-triumphant course I know +And prevalent pulses forth shall start, +Like cataracts that with thunderous hoof charge the disbanding snow. +All power is bound +In quickening refusal so; +And silence is the lair of sound; +In act its impulse to deliver, +With fluctuance and quiver +The endeavouring thew grows rigid; +Strong +From its retracted coil strikes the resilient song. + +Giver of spring, +And song, and every young new thing! +Thou only seest in me, so stripped and bare, +The lyric secret waiting to be born, +The patient term allowed +Before it stretch and flutteringly unfold +Its rumpled webs of amethyst-freaked, diaphanous gold. +And what hard task abstracts me from delight, +Filling with hopeless hope and dear despair +The still-born day and parch-ed fields of night, +That my old way of song, no longer fair, +For lack of serene care, +Is grown a stony and a weed-choked plot, +Thou only know'st aright, +Thou only know'st, for I know not. +How many songs must die that this may live! +And shall this most rash hope and fugitive, +Fulfilled with beauty and with might +In days whose feet are rumorous on the air, +Make me forget to grieve +For songs which might have been, nor ever were? +Stern the denial, the travail slow, +The struggling wall will scantly grow: +And though with that dread rite of sacrifice +Ordained for during edifice, +How long, how long ago! +Into that wall which will not thrive +I build myself alive, +Ah, who shall tell me will the wall uprise? +Thou wilt not tell me, who dost only know! +Yet still in mind I keep, +He which observes the wind shall hardly sow, +He which regards the clouds shall hardly reap. +Thine ancient way! I give, +Nor wit if I receive; +Risk all, who all would gain: and blindly. Be it so. + +'And blindly,' said I?--No! +That saying I unsay: the wings +Hear I not in praevenient winnowings +Of coming songs, that lift my hair and stir it? +What winds with music wet do the sweet storm foreshow! +Utter stagnation +Is the solstitial slumber of the spirit, +The blear and blank negation of all life: +But these sharp questionings mean strife, and strife +Is the negation of negation. +The thing from which I turn my troubled look +Fearing the gods' rebuke; +That perturbation putting glory on, +As is the golden vortex in the West +Over the foundered sun; +That--but low breathe it, lest the Nemesis +Unchild me, vaunting this-- +Is bliss, the hid, hugged, swaddled bliss! +O youngling Joy carest! +That on my now first-mothered breast +Pliest the strange wonder of thine infant lip, +What this aghast surprise of keenest panging, +Wherefrom I blench, and cry thy soft mouth rest? +Ah hold, withhold, and let the sweet mouth slip! +So, with such pain, recoils the woolly dam, +Unused, affrighted, from her yeanling lamb: +I, one with her in cruel fellowship, +Marvel what unmaternal thing I am. + +Nature, enough! within thy glass +Too many and too stern the shadows pass. +In this delighted season, flaming +For thy resurrection-feast, +Ah, more I think the long ensepulture cold, +Than stony winter rolled +From the unsealed mouth of the holy East; +The snowdrop's saintly stoles less heed +Than the snow-cloistered penance of the seed. +'Tis the weak flesh reclaiming +Against the ordinance +Which yet for just the accepting spirit scans. +Earth waits, and patient heaven, +Self-bonded God doth wait +Thrice-promulgated bans +Of his fair nuptial-date. +And power is man's, +With that great word of 'wait,' +To still the sea of tears, +And shake the iron heart of Fate. +In that one word is strong +An else, alas, much-mortal song; +With sight to pass the frontier of all spheres, +And voice which does my sight such wrong. + +Not without fortitude I wait +The dark majestical ensuit +Of destiny, nor peevish rate +Calm-knowledged Fate. +I, that no part have in the time's bragged way, +And its loud bruit +I, in this house so rifted, marred, +So ill to live in, hard to leave; +I, so star-weary, over-warred, +That have no joy in this your day-- +Rather foul fume englutting, that of day +Confounds all ray-- +But only stand aside and grieve; +I yet have sight beyond the smoke, +And kiss the gods' feet, though they wreak +Upon me stroke and again stroke; +And this my seeing is not weak. +The Woman I behold, whose vision seek +All eyes and know not; t'ward whom climb +The steps o' the world, and beats all wing of rhyme, +And knows not; 'twixt the sun and moon +Her inexpressible front enstarred +Tempers the wrangling spheres to tune; +Their divergent harmonies +Concluded in the concord of her eyes, +And vestal dances of her glad regard. +I see, which fretteth with surmise +Much heads grown unsagacious-grey, +The slow aim of wise-hearted Time, +Which folded cycles within cycles cloak: +We pass, we pass, we pass; this does not pass away, +But holds the furrowing earth still harnessed to its yoke. +The stars still write their golden purposes +On heaven's high palimpsest, and no man sees, +Nor any therein Daniel; I do hear +From the revolving year +A voice which cries: +'All dies; +Lo, how all dies! O seer, +And all things too arise: +All dies, and all is born; +But each resurgent morn, behold, more near the Perfect Morn.' + +Firm is the man, and set beyond the cast +Of Fortune's game, and the iniquitous hour, +Whose falcon soul sits fast, +And not intends her high sagacious tour +Or ere the quarry sighted; who looks past +To slow much sweet from little instant sour, +And in the first does always see the last. + + + +ANY SAINT. + +His shoulder did I hold +Too high that I, o'erbold + Weak one, + Should lean thereon. + +But He a little hath +Declined His stately path + And my + Feet set more high; + +That the slack arm may reach +His shoulder, and faint speech + Stir + His unwithering hair. + +And bolder now and bolder +I lean upon that shoulder + So dear + He is and near: + +And with His aureole +The tresses of my soul + Are blent + In wished content. + +Yes, this too gentle Lover +Hath flattering words to move her + To pride + By His sweet side. + +Ah, Love! somewhat let be! +Lest my humility + Grow weak + When thou dost speak! + +Rebate thy tender suit, +Lest to herself impute + Some worth + Thy bride of earth! + +A maid too easily +Conceits herself to be + Those things + Her lover sings; + +And being straitly wooed, +Believes herself the Good + And Fair + He seeks in her. + +Turn something of Thy look, +And fear me with rebuke, + That I + May timorously + +Take tremors in Thy arms, +And with contriv-ed charms + Allure + A 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; + Point + Of the spheres conjoint; + +In whom eternally +Thou, Light, dost focus Thee!-- + Didst pave + The way o' the wave; + +Rivet with stars the Heaven, +For causeways to Thy driven + Car + In its coming far + +Unto him, only him; +In Thy deific whim + Didst bound + Thy works' great round + +In this small ring of flesh; +The sky's gold-knotted mesh + Thy wrist + Did only twist + +To take him in that net.-- +Man! swinging-wicket set + Between + The Unseen and Seen; + +Lo, God's two worlds immense, +Of spirit and of sense, + Wed + In this narrow bed; + +Yea, and the midge's hymn +Answers the seraphim + Athwart + Thy body's court! + +Great arm-fellow of God! +To the ancestral clod + Kin, + And to cherubin; + +Bread predilectedly +O' the worm and Deity! + Hark, + O God's clay-sealed Ark, + +To praise that fits thee, clear +To the ear within the ear, + But dense + To clay-sealed sense. + +All the Omnific made +When in a word he said, + (Mystery!) + He uttered THEE; + +Thee His great utterance bore, +O secret metaphor + Of what + Thou dream'st no jot! + +Cosmic metonymy! +Weak world-unshuttering key! + One + Seal of Solomon! + +Trope that itself not scans +Its huge significance, + Which tries + Cherubic eyes. + +Primer where the angels all +God's grammar spell in small, + Nor spell + The highest too well. + +Point for the great descants +Of starry disputants; + Equation + Of 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 bliss + Within 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 fulfilled +With all sweet things unwilled: + So best + God loves to jest + +With children small--a freak +Of heavenly hide-and-seek + Fit + For thy wayward wit, + +Who art thyself a thing +Of whim and wavering; + Free + When His wings pen thee; + +Sole fully blest, to feel +God whistle thee at heel; + Drunk up + As a dew-drop, + +When He bends down, sun-wise, +Intemperable eyes; + Most proud, + When utterly bowed. + +To feel thyself and be +His dear nonentity-- + Caught + Beyond human thought + +In the thunder-spout of Him, +Until thy being dim, + And be + Dead deathlessly. + +Stoop, stoop; for thou dost fear +The nettle's wrathful spear, + So slight + Art thou of might! + +Rise; for Heaven hath no frown +When thou to thee pluck'st down, + Strong clod! + The neck of God. + + + +ASSUMPTA MARIA. + +'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? an + All 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 graven + Tables of the Law was made; +Man's own heart was one, one Heaven, + Both within my womb were laid. + For there Anteros with Eros + Heaven with man conjoin-ed was,-- + Twin-stone of the Law, Ischyros, + Agios Athanatos. + +I, the flesh-girt Paradises + Gardenered by the Adam new, +Daintied o'er with sweet devices + Which He loveth, for He grew. +I, the boundless strict savannah + Which 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 Angels + Do enwheel their plac-ed 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 outpanted + Lies the slimed Curse shrivelling. + For the brazen Serpent clear on + That old fang-ed knowledge shone; + I to Wisdom rise, Ischyron, + Agion Athanaton! + +See in highest heaven pavilioned + Now the maiden Heaven rest, +The many-breasted sky out-millioned + By the splendours of her vest. +Lo, the Ark this holy tide is + The un-handmade Temple's guest, +And the dark Egyptian bride is + Whitely 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 Belov-ed, + Where Thou dost in mid-day feed! +For my wanderings are reprov-ed, + 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 AEgyptic 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 holden + Like 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 me + He 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 mother + Fell, beneath the apple-tree. + Risen 'twixt Anteros and Eros, + Blood and Water, Moon and Sun, + He upbears me, He Ischyros, + I bear Him, the Athanaton! + +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 was + From 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 gesture + Air, 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; for + Now 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 even + Of 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 woman + Rising 'twixt the Moon and Sun; + Who am I the heavens assume? an + All am I, and I am one. + + + +THE AFTER WOMAN. + +Daughter of the ancient Eve, +We know the gifts ye gave--and give. +Who knows the gifts which YOU shall give, +Daughter of the newer Eve? +You, if my soul be augur, you +Shall--O what shall you not, Sweet, do? +The celestial traitress play, +And all mankind to bliss betray; +With sacrosanct cajoleries +And starry treachery of your eyes, +Tempt us back to Paradise! +Make heavenly trespass;--ay, press in +Where faint the fledge-foot seraphin, +Blest Fool! Be ensign of our wars, +And shame us all to warriors! +Unbanner your bright locks,--advance +Girl, their gilded puissance, +I' the mystic vaward, and draw on +After the lovely gonfalon +Us to out-folly the excess +Of your sweet foolhardiness; +To adventure like intense +Assault 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 elate +Thy little breasts knew wax-ed 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! Then +Eden's lopped tree shall shoot again: +For who Christ's eyes shall miss, with those +Eyes for evident nuncios? +Or who be tardy to His call +In your accents augural? + +Who shall not feel the Heavens hid +Impend, at tremble of your lid, +And divine advent shine avowed +Under that dim and lucid cloud; +Yea, 'fore the silver apocalypse +Fail, at the unsealing of your lips? +When to love YOU is (O Christ's Spouse!) +To love the beauty of His house; +Then come the Isaian days; the old +Shall dream; and our young men behold +Vision--yea, the vision of Thabor mount, +Which none to other shall recount, +Because in all men's hearts shall be +The 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. +Until +You and the hour shall be revealed, +This song is sung and sung not, and its words are sealed. + + + +GRACE OF THE WAY. + +'My brother!' spake she to the sun; + The kindred kisses of the stars +Were hers; her feet were set upon + The moon. If slumber solved the bars + +Of sense, or sense transpicuous grown + Fulfill-ed seeing unto sight, +I know not; nor if 'twas my own + Ingathered 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 visibleness + That stirred the raiment of her flesh: + +And sensible, as her blown were, + Beyond the precincts of her form +I felt the woman flow from her-- + A calm of intempestuous storm. + +I failed against the affluent tide; + Out of this abject earth of me +I was translated and enskied + Into the heavenly-regioned She. + +Now of that vision I bereaven + This 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 sweet + Direction 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, and + The darkness doth not comprehend: +God hath no haste; and God's sons stand + Yet a Day, tarrying for the end. + +Dishonoured Rahab still hath hid, + Yea still, within her house of shame, +The messengers by Jesus bid + Forerun 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 trust +The 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, unbless-ed, 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. + + + +RETROSPECT. + +Alas, and I have sung +Much song of matters vain, +And a heaven-sweetened tongue +Turned to unprofiting strain +Of vacant things, which though +Even 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 sun +Put 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 stars +Give tongue before his way +Goldenly as I say, +And each from wide Saturnus to hot Mars +He calleth by its name, +Lest that its bright feet stray; +And thou have lore of all, +But to thine own Sun's call +Thy path disorbed hast never wit to tame; +It profits not withal, +And my rede is but lame. + +Only that, 'mid vain vaunt +Of wisdom ignorant, +A little kiss upon the feet of Love +My hasty verse has stayed +Sometimes a space to plant: +It has not wholly strayed, +Not wholly missed near sweet, fanning proud plumes above. + +Therefore I do repent +That with religion vain, +And misconceiv-ed pain, +I have my music bent +To waste on bootless things its skiey-gendered rain: +Yet shall a wiser day +Fulfil more heavenly way, +And with approv-ed music clear this slip +I trust in God most sweet; +Meantime the silent lip, +Meantime the climbing feet. + + + + +A NARROW VESSEL. + + + + +Being a little dramatic sequence on the aspect of primitive girl- +nature +towards a love beyond its capacities. + + + +A GIRL'S SIN. + +I.--In her eyes. + +Cross child! red, and frowning so? + 'I, the day just over, +Gave a lock of hair to--no! + How DARE you say, my lover?' + +He asked you?--Let me understand; + Come, child, let me sound it! +'Of course, he WOULD have 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 chastise + Because I gave him it. + +'Shameless in me the gift, alas! + In him his open bliss: +But for the privilege he has + A thousand he shall miss! + +'His eyes, where once I dreadless laughed, + Call up a burning blot: +I hate him, for his shameful craft + That asked by asking not!' + +Luckless boy! and all for hair + He never asked, you said? +'Not just--but then he gazed--I swear + He gazed it from my head! + +'His silence on my cheek like breath + I felt in subtle way; +More sweet than aught another saith + Was 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 do + Is bold suit's hallowing text; +Each gift a bastion levelled, to + The next one and the next. + +'Each wish whose grant may him befall + Is 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 enforc-ed steel did grate + To cut; its root-thrills came +Down to my bosom. It might sate + His lust for my poor shame! + +'His sifted dainty this should be + For a score ambrosial years! +But his too much humility + Alarums me with fears. + +'My gracious grace a breach he counts + For 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 gleams + Was 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 him + In 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 toyed + With dreamed delight of this: +But ah, in proof, delight was void-- + I could not SEE his kiss!' + +So, fond one, half this agony + Were spared, which my hand hushes, +Could you have played, Sweet, the sweet spy, + And blushed not for your blushes! + + + +A GIRL'S SIN. + +II.--In his eyes. + +Can I forget her cruelty +Who, brown miracle, gave you me? +Or with unmoisted eyes think on +The 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-expiated +Thy cold outlawry from her head; +How was I trampled and brought low, +Because her virgin neck was so; +How thralled beneath the jealous state +She stood at point to abdicate; +How sacrificed, before to me +She sacrificed her pride and thee; +How did she, struggling to abase +Herself to do me strange, sweet grace, +Enforce unwitting me to share +Her throes and abjectness with her; +Thence heightening that hour when her lover +Her grace, with trembling, should discover, +And in adoring trouble be +Humbled at her humility! +And with what pitilessness was I +After slain, to pacify +The uneasy manes of her shame, +Her haunting blushes!--Mine the blame: +What fair injustice did I rue +For what I--did not tempt her to? +Nor aught the judging maid might win +Me to assoil from HER sweet sin. +But nought were extreme punishment +For that beyond-divine content, +When my with-thee-first-giddied eyes +Stooped ere their due on Paradise! +O hour of consternating bliss +When I heavened me in thy kiss; +Thy softness (daring overmuch!) +Profan-ed with my licensed touch; +Worshipped, with tears, on happy knee, +Her doubt, her trust, her shyness free, +Her timorous audacity! + + + +LOVE DECLARED. + +I looked, she drooped, and neither spake, and cold, +We stood, how unlike all forecasted thought +Of that desir-ed minute! Then I leaned +Doubting; whereat she lifted--oh, brave eyes +Unfrighted:--forward like a wind-blown flame +Came bosom and mouth to mine! + That falling kiss +Touching long-laid expectance, all went up +Suddenly into passion; yea, the night +Caught, blazed, and wrapt us round in vibrant fire. + + + Time's beating wing subsided, and the winds +Caught up their breathing, and the world's great pulse +Stayed in mid-throb, and the wild train of life +Reeled by, and left us stranded on a hush. +This moment is a statue unto Love +Carved from a fair white silence. + Lo, he stands +Within us--are we not one now, one, one roof, +His roof, and the partition of weak flesh +Gone down before him, and no more, for ever?-- +Stands like a bird new-lit, and as he lit, +Poised in our quiet being; only, only +Within our shaken hearts the air of passion, +Cleft by his sudden coming, eddies still +And whirs round his enchanted movelessness. + + +A film of trance between two stirrings! Lo, +It bursts; yet dream's snapped links cling round the limbs +Of waking: like a running evening stream +Which no man hears, or sees, or knows to run, +(Glazed with dim quiet), save that there the moon +Is shattered to a creamy flicker of flame, +Our eyes' sweet trouble were hid, save that the love +Trembles a little on their impassioned calms. + + + +THE WAY OF A MAID. + +The lover whose soul shaken is +In some decuman billow of bliss, +Who feels his gradual-wading feet +Sink in some sudden hollow of sweet, +And 'mid love's us-ed converse comes +Sharp on a mood which all joy sums-- +An instant's fine compendium of +The liberal-leav-ed writ of love; +His abashed pulses beating thick +At the exigent joy and quick, +Is dumbed, by aiming utterance great +Up to the miracle of his fate. +The wise girl, such Icarian fall +Saved by her confidence that she's small,-- +As what no kindred word will fit +Is uttered best by opposite, +Love in the tongue of hate exprest, +And deepest anguish in a jest,-- +Feeling the infinite must be +Best said by triviality, +Speaks, where expression bates its wings, +Just happy, alien, little things; +What of all words is in excess +Implies in a sweet nothingness, +With dailiest babble shows her sense +That full speech were full impotence; +And while she feels the heavens lie bare, +She only talks about her hair. + + +BEGINNING OF END. + + +She was aweary of the hovering +Of 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's HIS cot), +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. + + +PENELOPE. + + +Love, like a wind, shook wide your blosmy eyes, +You trembled, and your breath came sobbing-wise + For that you loved me. + +You were so kind, so sweet, none could withhold +To adore, but that you were so strange, so cold; + For that you loved me. + +Like to a box of spikenard did you break +Your heart about my feet. What words you spake! + For that you loved me. + +Life fell to dust without me; so you tried +All carefullest ways to drive me from your side, + For that you loved me. + +You gave yourself as children give, that weep +And snatch back, with--'I meant you not to keep!' + For that you loved me. + +I am no woman, girl, nor ever knew +That love could teach all ways that hate could do + To her that loved me. + +Have less of love, or less of woman in +Your love, or loss may even from this begin-- + That you so love me. + +For, wild Penelope, the web you wove +You 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! + + +THE END OF IT. + + +She did not love to love; but hated him +For making her to love, and so her whim +From passion taught misprision to begin; +And all this sin +Was because love to cast out had no skill +Self, which was regent still. +Her own self-will made void her own self's will + + +EPILOGUE. + + +If I have studied here in part +A tale as old as maiden's heart, + 'Tis that I do see herein + Shadow of more piteous sin. + +She, that but giving part, not whole, +Took even the part back, is the Soul: + And that so disdain-ed Lover-- + Best unthought, since Love is over. + +Love to invite, desire, and fear, +And Love's exactions cost too dear + Count for Love's possession,--ah, + Thy way, misera Anima! + +To give the pledge, and yet be pined +That a pledge should have force to bind, + This, O Soul, too often still + Is 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. + + + + +MISCELLANEOUS ODES. + + + + +ODE TO THE SETTING SUN. + +PRELUDE. + +The wailful sweetness of the violin + Floats down the hush-ed waters of the wind, +The heart-strings of the throbbing harp begin + To long in aching music. Spirit-pined, + +In wafts that poignant sweetness drifts, until + The 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 days + Sinkest in music to thy smooth-ed 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 harmonies +A 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 head +To thee, whose great command upon my veins + Proves 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 thus + A 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? + Is THIS thy secret, then? And is it woe? + +Fling from thine ear the burning curls, and hark + A 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: +I SEE the crimson blaring of thy shawms! + Why do those lucent palms +Strew 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 praise +Will 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 paeans thee, nor serves thy hest, +Be godded not by Heaven! avert thy face, + And leave to blank disgrace +The 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' height + The brawny Titans stood, +And shook the gods' world 'bout their ears, and how +Enceladus (whom Etna cumbers now) + Shouldered me Pelion with its swinging pines, +The river unrecked, that did its broken flood +Spurt on his back: before the mountainous shock + The rank-ed gods dislock, +Scared to their skies; wide o'er rout-trampled night +Flew spurned the pebbled stars: those splendours then + Had tempested on earth, star upon star + Mounded in ruin, if a longer war +Had quaked Olympus and cold-fearing men. + Then did the ample marge + And circuit of thy targe + Sullenly redden all the vaward fight, + Above the blusterous clash + Wheeled thy swung falchion's flash + And 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-chapleted + Sang each to other, + The vaulted blaze overhead + Of 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 side + Thy young Auroral bride, + And lift her veil of night and mystery; + Tellus with baby hands + Shook off her swaddling-bands, + And from the unswath-ed 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 set +Upon her brow the day-fall's carcanet? + Who queened her front with the enrondured moon? + Who dug night's jewels from their vaulty mine + To dower her, past an eastern wizard's dreams, + When hovering on him through his haschish-swoon, + All the rained gems of the old Tartarian line +Shiver in lustrous throbbings of tinged flame? + Whereof a moiety in the Paolis' seams + Statelily builded their Venetian name. + Thou hast enwoof-ed her + An empress of the air, +And all her births are propertied by thee: + Her teeming centuries + Drew 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' ribb-ed flanks? + Who raised the columned ranks +Of that old pre-diluvian forestry, +Which like a continent torn oppressed the sea, + When the ancient heavens did in rains depart, + While the high-danc-ed whirls +Of the tossed scud made hiss thy drench-ed curls? + Thou rear'dst the enormous brood; + Who hast with life imbued + The lion maned in tawny majesty, + The tiger velvet-barred, + The stealthy-stepping pard, + And the lithe panther's flexuous symmetry. + +How came the entomb-ed 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 Titanic + Which rock like a cradle the girth + Of the ether-hung world; + Swart son of the swarthy mine, + When flame on the breath of his nostrils feeds + How is his countenance half-divine, + Like thee in thy sanguine weeds? + Thou gavest him his light, + Though sepultured in night + Beneath the dead bones of a perished world; + Over his prostrate form + Though cold, and heat, and storm, + The mountainous wrack of a creation hurled. + Who made the splendid rose + Saturate with purple glows; +Cupped to the marge with beauty; a perfume-press + Whence the wind vintages +Gushes of warm-ed fragrance richer far + Than all the flavorous ooze of Cyprus' vats? +Lo, in yon gale which waves her green cymar, + With dusky cheeks burnt red + She sways her heavy head, +Drunk with the must of her own odorousness; + While in a moted trouble the vexed gnats +Maze, and vibrate, and tease the noontide hush. + Who girt dissolv-ed 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 moon +Ere Autumn's kiss sultry her cheek with flame? + Thou sway'st thy sceptred beam + O'er all delight and dream, + Beauty is beautiful but in thy glance: + And like a jocund maid + In 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 blown + In smoke and flame about the windy sky, +Where are the wailing voices that should meet + From hill, stream, grove, and all of mortal shape +Who tread thy gifts, in vineyards as stray feet + Pulp the globed weight of juiced Iberia's grape? + Where is the threne o' the sea? + And why not dirges thee +The wind, that sings to himself as he makes stride + Lonely 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 light + On one up-strain-ed 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 made + The earth a living and a radiant thing-- + And leave her corpse in our strained, cheated arms? + Lo ever thus, when Song with chorded charms +Draws 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 kiss + Of reincarnate Beauty, his control + Clasps the cold body, and foregoes the soul! + Whatso looks lovelily +Is 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 through + The scorching dazzle of Heaven; 'gainst which the hill, + Out-flattened sombrely, +Stands black as life against eternity. + Against eternity? + A rifting light in me + Burns through the leaden broodings of the mind: + O bless-ed Sun, thy state + Uprisen or derogate + Dafts me no more with doubt; I seek and find. + + If with exultant tread + Thou foot the Eastern sea, + Or like a golden bee + Sting the West to angry red, + Thou dost image, thou dost follow + That 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 blood + Upon 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 inheriteth + The 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 Song + Sets 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 reap-ed joys thou art the heavy sheaf + Which 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 Antipodes + Our 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 drape +The 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 aerial blossoms on his bier. + +Yon cloud with wrinkled fire is edg-ed sharp; + And once more welling through the air, ah me! +How the sweet viol plains him to the harp, + Whose pang-ed 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 feather + Prove them the brood of immortality. + +My soul is quitted of death-neighbouring swoon, + Who shall not slake her immitigable scars +Until she hear 'My sister!' from the moon, + And take the kindred kisses of the stars. + + + +A CAPTAIN OF SONG. + +(On a portrait of Coventry Patmore by J. S. Sargent, R.A.) + +Look on him. This is he whose works ye know; +Ye have adored, thanked, loved him,--no, not him! +But that of him which proud portentous woe +To its own grim +Presentment 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 pain-ed greatness are; +Where round and always round +The abhorr-ed words resound, +The words accursed of comfortable men,-- +'For ever'; and infinite glooms intolerable +With spacious replication give again, +And hollow jar, +The words abhorred of comfortable men. +You the stern pities of the gods debar +To drink where he has drunk +The 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 are +He knows the perilous rout +That all those ways about +Sink into doom, and sinking, still are sunk. +And if his sole and solemn term thereout +He has attained, to love ye shall not dare +One who has journeyed there; +Ye shall mark well +The mighty cruelties which arm and mar +That countenance of control, +With minatory warnings of a soul +That hath to its own selfhood been most fell, +And is not weak to spare: +And lo, that hair +Is blanch-ed with the travel-heats of hell. + +If any be +That shall with rites of reverent piety +Approach this strong +Sad soul of sovereign Song, +Nor fail and falter with the intimidate throng; +If such there be, +These, these are only they +Have trod the self-same way; +The never-twice-revolving portals heard +Behind them clang infernal, and that word +Abhorr-ed sighed of kind mortality, +As he-- +Ah, even as he! + + + +AGAINST URANIA. + +Lo I, Song's most true lover, plain me sore +That worse than other women she can deceive, +For she being goddess, I have given her more +Than mortal ladies from their loves receive; +And first of her embrace +She was not coy, and gracious were her ways, +That I forgot all virgins to adore; +Nor did I greatly grieve +To bear through arid days +The pretty foil of her divine delays; +And one by one to cast +Life, love, and health, +Content, and wealth, +Before her, thinking ever on her praise, +Until at last +Nought 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-ador-ed favour more refuses, +And leaves me to implore +Remembered boon in bitterness of blood. + +From mortal woman thou may'st know full well, +O poet, that dost deem the fair and tall +Urania of her ways not mutable, +When things shall thee befall +What thou art toil-ed in her sweet, wild spell. +Do they strow for thy feet +A little tender favour and deceit +Over the sudden mouth of hidden hell?-- +As more intolerable +Her 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 learn +How harder than the heart of woman is +The immortal cruelty +Of 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. + + + +AN ANTHEM OF EARTH. + +Proemion. + +Immeasurable Earth! +Through the loud vast and populacy of Heaven, +Tempested with gold schools of ponderous orbs, +That cleav'st with deep-revolting harmonies +Passage perpetual, and behind thee draw'st +A furrow sweet, a cometary wake +Of trailing music! What large effluence, +Not sole the cloudy sighing of thy seas, +Nor thy blue-coifing air, encases thee +From prying of the stars, and the broad shafts +Of thrusting sunlight tempers? For, dropped near +From my remov-ed tour in the serene +Of 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 close +The 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 take +The 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 demesne +And sphery pleasances,-- +Amazing the unstal-ed eyes of Heaven, +And us that still a precious seeing have +Behind this dim and mortal jelly. + Ah! +If not in all too late and frozen a day +I come in rearward of the throats of song, +Unto the deaf sense of the ag-ed year +Singing with doom upon me; yet give heed! +One poet with sick pinion, that still feels +Breath through the Orient gateways closing fast, +Fast closing t'ward the undelighted night! + + +Anthem. + + +In nescientness, in nescientness, +Mother, we put these fleshly lendings on +Thou yield'st to thy poor children; took thy gift +Of 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 call +The 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 thee +Leave thy great husbandries, thy grave designs, +Thy tedious state which irked my ignorant years, +Thy winter-watches, suckling of the grain, +Severe premeditation taciturn +Upon the brooded Summer, thy chill cares, +And all thy ministries majestical, +To sport with me, thy darling. Thought I not +Thou set'st thy seasons forth processional +To pamper me with pageant,--thou thyself +My 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 shifted +Poise and footing of my thought! +I brake through thy doors of sunset, +Ran before the hooves of sunrise, +Shook thy matron tresses down in fancies +Wild and wilful +As a poet's hand could twine them; +Caught in my fantasy's crystal chalice +The Bow, as its cataract of colours +Plashed to thee downward; +Then when thy circuit swung to nightward, +Night the abhorr-ed, night was a new dawning, +Celestial dawning +Over 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 waken +To a revel, an inexhaustible +Wassail of orgiac imageries; +Then while I wore thy sore insignia +In 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 breathe +New from their mother's morning bosom. So I, +Risen from thee, restless winnower of the heaven, +Most Hermes-like, did keep +My vital and resilient path, and felt +The play of wings about my fledg-ed heel-- +Sure on the verges of precipitous dream, +Swift in its springing +From 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 first +Thou speak'st to us as men: like sons who hear +Newly their mother's history, unthought +Before, and say--'She is not as we dreamed: +Ah me! we are beguiled!' What art thou, then, +That art not our conceiving? Art thou not +Too old for thy young children? Or perchance, +Keep'st thou a youth perpetual-burnishable +Beyond thy sons decrepit? It is long +Since Time was first a fledgling; +Yet thou may'st be but as a pendant bulla +Against his stripling bosom swung. Alack! +For that we seem indeed +To have slipped the world's great leaping-time, and come +Upon 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 off +With hasty tarnished piecings negligent, +Snippets and waste +From old ancestral wearings, +That have seen sorrier usage; remainder-flesh +After our father's surfeits; nay with chinks, +Some of us, that if speech may have free leave +Our souls go out at elbows. We are sad +With more than our sires' heaviness, and with +More than their weakness weak; we shall not be +Mighty with all their mightiness, nor shall not +Rejoice 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 towers +He dogs the secret footsteps of the heavens, +Sifts in his hands the stars, weighs them as gold-dust, +And yet is he successive unto nothing +But patrimony of a little mould, +And entail of four planks. Thou hast made his mouth +Avid 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 empty +What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded +For 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-worm +Statelily lodge. Mother of mysteries! +Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues, +Who bringest forth no saying yet so dark +As 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 one +On a mount standing, and against him stands, +On the mount adverse, crowned with westering rays, +The golden sun, and they two brotherly +Gaze each on each; +He faring down +To the dull vale, his Godhead peels from him +Till he can scarcely spurn the pebble-- +For nothingness of new-found mortality-- +That mutinies against his gall-ed 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 widow-ed, +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 feel +Break like a clash of cymbals, and my heart +Clang through my shaken body like a gong; +Nor ever more with spurted feet shall tread +I' the winepresses of song; nought's truly lost +That moulds to sprout forth gain: now I have on me +The high Phoebean priesthood, and that craves +An unrash utterance; not with flaunted hem +May the Muse enter in behind the veil, +Nor, though we hold the sacred dances good, +Shall the holy Virgins maenadize: ruled lips +Befit a votaress Muse. +Thence with no mutable, nor no gelid love, +I keep, O Earth, thy worship, +Though life slow, and the sobering Genius change +To a lamp his gusty torch. What though no more +Athwart its roseal glow +Thy face look forth triumphal? Thou put'st on +Strange sanctities of pathos; like this knoll +Made derelict of day, +Couchant and shadow-ed +Under dim Vesper's overloosened hair: +This, where emboss-ed with the half-blown seed +The solemn purple thistle stands in grass +Grey as an exhalation, when the bank +Holds mist for water in the nights of Fall. +Not to the boy, although his eyes be pure +As the prime snowdrop is, +Ere the rash Phoebus break her cloister +Of sanctimonious snow; +Or Winter fasting sole on Himalay +Since those dove-nuncioed days +When Asia rose from bathing; +Not to such eyes, +Uneuphrasied with tears, the hierarchical +Vision lies unoccult, rank under rank +Through all create down-wheeling, from the Throne +Even to the bases of the pregnant ooze. +This is the enchantment, this the exaltation, +The all-compensating wonder, +Giving to common things wild kindred +With the gold-tesserate floors of Jove; +Linking such heights and such humilities +Hand 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 world +Nerves my uncurb-ed 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 credible +The incredible, with bloody clutch and feet +Clinging the painful juts of jagg-ed faith. +Science, old noser in its prideful straw, +That with anatomising scalpel tents +Its 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 will +Ministers poppies to our troublous thought, +A Balaam come to prophecy,--parables, +Nor of its parable itself is ware, +Grossly unwotting; all things has expounded +Reflux and influx, counts the sepulchre +The seminary of being, and extinction +The Ceres of existence: it discovers +Life 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 corruption +As of our health. It grafts upon the cypress +The tree of Life--Death dies on his own dart +Promising to our ashes perpetuity, +And to our perishable elements +Their proper imperishability; extracting +Medicaments from out mortality +Against too mortal cogitation; till +Even of the caput mortuum we do thus +Make a memento vivere. To such uses +I 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 engirdle +All which I am; that am a foreigner +In mine own region? Who the chart shall draw +Of 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 explore +The long arcane of those dim catacombs, +Where the rat memory does its burrows make, +Close-seal them as I may, and my stolen tread +Starts populace, a gens lucifuga; +That too strait seems my mind my mind to hold, +And I myself incontinent of me. +Then go I, my foul-venting ignorance +With 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 divine +Which 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 beside +This slow perpetual Time stand patiently, +In a little sight. + +In a little dust, in a little dust, +Earth, thou reclaim'st us, who do all our lives +Find of thee but Egyptian villeinage. +Thou dost this body, this enhavocked realm, +Subject to ancient and ancestral shadows; +Descended passions sway it; it is distraught +With ghostly usurpation, dinned and fretted +With the still-tyrannous dead; a haunted tenement, +Peopled from barrows and outworn ossuaries. +Thou giv'st us life not half so willingly +As thou undost thy giving; thou that teem'st +The stealthy terror of the sinuous pard, +The lion maned with curl-ed puissance, +The serpent, and all fair strong beasts of ravin, +Thyself most fair and potent beast of ravin; +And thy great eaters thou, the greatest, eat'st. +Thou hast devoured mammoth and mastodon, +And many a floating bank of fangs, +The scaly scourges of thy primal brine, +And the tower-crested plesiosaure. +Thou fill'st thy mouth with nations, gorgest slow +On purple aeons of kings; man's hulking towers +Are carcase for thee, and to modern sun +Disglutt'st their splintered bones. +Rabble of Pharaohs and Arsacidae +Keep their cold house within thee; thou hast sucked down +How many Ninevehs and Hecatompyloi, +And perished cities whose great phantasmata +O'erbrow the silent citizens of Dis:- +Hast not thy fill? +Tarry awhile, lean Earth, for thou shalt drink, +Even till thy dull throat sicken, +The draught thou grow'st most fat on; hear'st thou not +The world's knives bickering in their sheaths? O patience! +Much offal of a foul world comes thy way, +And man's superfluous cloud shall soon be laid +In a little blood. + +In a little peace, in a little peace, +Thou dost rebate thy rigid purposes +Of imposed being, and relenting, mend'st +Too much, with nought. The westering Phoebus' horse +Paws i' the lucent dust as when he shocked +The East with rising; O how may I trace +In this decline that morning when we did +Sport 'twixt the claws of newly-whelped existence, +Which had not yet learned rending? we did then +Divinely stand, not knowing yet against us +Sentence had passed of life, nor commutation +Petitioning into death. What's he that of +The Free State argues? Tellus! bid him stoop, +Even where the low hic jacet answers him; +Thus low, O Man! there's freedom's seignory, +Tellus' most reverend sole free commonweal, +And model deeply-policied: there none +Stands on precedence, nor ambitiously +Woos the impartial worm, whose favours kiss +With liberal largesse all; there each is free +To be e'en what he must, which here did strive +So much to be he could not; there all do +Their uses just, with no flown questioning. +To be took by the hand of equal earth +They doff her livery, slip to the worm, +Which lacqueys them, their suits of maintenance, +And that soiled workaday apparel cast, +Put on condition: Death's ungentle buffet +Alone makes ceremonial manumission; +So are the heavenly statutes set, and those +Uranian tables of the primal Law. +In a little peace, in a little peace, +Like fierce beasts that a common thirst makes brothers, +We draw together to one hid dark lake; +In a little peace, in a little peace, +We drain with all our burthens of dishonour +Into the cleansing sands o' the thirsty grave. +The fiery pomps, brave exhalations, +And all the glistering shows o' the seeming world, +Which the sight aches at, we unwinking see +Through the smoked glass of Death; Death, wherewith's fined +The muddy wine of life; that earth doth purge +Of her plethora of man; Death, that doth flush +The cumbered gutters of humanity; +Nothing, of nothing king, with front uncrowned, +Whose hand holds crownets; playmate swart o' the strong; +Tenebrous moon that flux and refluence draws +Of the high-tided man; skull-hous-ed asp +That stings the heel of kings; true Fount of Youth, +Where he that dips is deathless; being's drone-pipe; +Whose nostril turns to blight the shrivelled stars, +And thicks the lusty breathing of the sun; +Pontifical Death, that doth the crevasse bridge +To the steep and trifid God; one mortal birth +That broker is of immortality. +Under this dreadful brother uterine, +This kinsman feared, Tellus, behold me come, +Thy son stern-nursed; who mortal-motherlike, +To turn thy weanlings' mouth averse, embitter'st +Thine over-childed breast. Now, mortal-sonlike, +I thou hast suckled, Mother, I at last +Shall sustenant be to thee. Here I untrammel, +Here I pluck loose the body's cerementing, +And break the tomb of life; here I shake off +The bur o' the world, man's congregation shun, +And to the antique order of the dead +I take the tongueless vows: my cell is set +Here in thy bosom; my little trouble is ended +In a little peace. + + + + +MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. + + + + +'EX ORE INFANTIUM'. + + +Little Jesus, wast Thou shy +Once, and just so small as I? +And what did it feel like to be +Out of Heaven, and just like me? +Didst Thou sometimes think of THERE, +And ask where all the angels were? +I should think that I would cry +For my house all made of sky; +I would look about the air, +And wonder where my angels were; +And at waking 'twould distress me-- +Not an angel there to dress me! +Hadst Thou ever any toys, +Like us little girls and boys? +And didst Thou play in Heaven with all +The angels that were not too tall, +With stars for marbles? Did the things +Play Can you see me? through their wings? +And did Thy Mother let Thee spoil +Thy robes, with playing on OUR soil? +How nice to have them always new +In Heaven, because 'twas quite clean blue! + +Didst Thou kneel at night to pray, +And didst Thou join Thy hands, this way? +And did they tire sometimes, being young, +And make the prayer seem very long? +And dost Thou like it best, that we +Should join our hands to pray to Thee? +I used to think, before I knew, +The prayer not said unless we do. +And did Thy Mother at the night +Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right? +And didst Thou feel quite good in bed, +Kissed, and sweet, and thy prayers said? + +Thou canst not have forgotten all +That it feels like to be small: +And Thou know'st I cannot pray +To Thee in my father's way-- +When Thou wast so little, say, +Couldst Thou talk Thy Father's way?-- +So, a little Child, come down +And hear a child's tongue like Thy own; +Take me by the hand and walk, +And listen to my baby-talk. +To Thy Father show my prayer +(He will look, Thou art so fair), +And say: 'O Father, I, Thy Son, +Bring the prayer of a little one.' + +And He will smile, that children's tongue +Has not changed since Thou wast young! + + + +A QUESTION. + +O bird with heart of wassail, + That toss the Bacchic branch, +And slip your shaken music, + An elfin avalanche; + +Come tell me, O tell me, + My poet of the blue! +What's YOUR thought of me, Sweet?-- + Here's MY thought of you. + +A small thing, a wee thing, + A brown fleck of nought; +With winging and singing + That who could have thought? + +A small thing, a wee thing, + A brown amaze withal, +That fly a pitch more azure + Because you're so small. + +Bird, I'm a small thing-- + My angel descries; +With winging and singing + That who could surmise? + +Ah, small things, ah, wee things, + Are the poets all, +Whose tour's the more azure + Because they're so small. + +The angels hang watching + The tiny men-things:- +'The dear speck of flesh, see, + With such daring wings! + +'Come, tell us, O tell us, + Thou strange mortality! +What's THY thought of us, Dear?-- + Here's OUR thought of thee.' + +'Alack! you tall angels, + I can't think so high! +I can't think what it feels like + Not to be I.' + +Come tell me, O tell me, + My poet of the blue! +What's YOUR thought of me, Sweet?-- + Here's MY thought of you. + + + +FIELD-FLOWER. + +A Phantasy. + +God took a fit of Paradise-wind, + A slip of coerule weather, +A thought as simple as Himself, + And ravelled them together. +Unto His eyes He held it there, +To teach it gazing debonair + With memory of what, perdie, +A God's young innocences were. +His fingers pushed it through the sod-- +It came up redolent of God, +Garrulous of the eyes of God + To all the breezes near it; +Musical of the mouth of God + To all had eyes to hear it; +Mystical with the mirth of God, + That glow-like did ensphere it. + And--'Babble! babble! babble!' said; + 'I'll tell the whole world one day!' + There was no blossom half so glad, + Since sun of Christ's first Sunday. + +A poet took a flaw of pain, + A hap of skiey pleasure, +A thought had in his cradle lain, + And mingled them in measure. +That chrism he laid upon his eyes, +And lips, and heart, for euphrasies, + That he might see, feel, sing, perdie, +The simple things that are the wise. +Beside the flower he held his ways, +And leaned him to it gaze for gaze-- +He took its meaning, gaze for gaze, + As baby looks on baby; +Its meaning passed into his gaze, + Native as meaning may be; +He rose with all his shining gaze + As children's eyes at play be. + And--'Babble! babble! babble!' said; + 'I'll tell the whole world one day!' + There was no poet half so glad, + Since man grew God that Sunday. + + + +THE CLOUD'S SWAN-SONG. + +There is a parable in the pathless cloud, +There's prophecy in heaven,--they did not lie, +The Chaldee shepherds; seal-ed from the proud, +To cheer the weighted heart that mates the seeing eye. + +A lonely man, oppressed with lonely ills, +And all the glory fallen from my song, +Here do I walk among the windy hills, +The wind and I keep both one monotoning tongue. + +Like grey clouds one by one my songs upsoar +Over my soul's cold peaks; and one by one +They loose their little rain, and are no more; +And whether well or ill, to tell me there is none. + +For 'tis an alien tongue, of alien things, +From all men's care, how miserably apart! +Even my friends say: 'Of what is this he sings?' +And barren is my song, and barren is my heart. + +For who can work, unwitting his work's worth? +Better, meseems, to know the work for naught, +Turn my sick course back to the kindly earth, +And leave to ampler plumes the jetting tops of thought. + +And visitations, that do often use, +Remote, unhappy, inauspicious sense +Of doom, and poets widowed of their muse, +And what dark 'gan, dark ended, in me did commence. + +I thought of spirit wronged by mortal ills, +And my flesh rotting on my fate's dull stake; +And how self-scorn-ed they the bounty fills +Of others, and the bread, even of their dearest, take. + +I thought of Keats, that died in perfect time, +In predecease of his just-sickening song; +Of him that set, wrapt in his radiant rhyme, +Sunlike in sea. Life longer had been life too long. + +But I, exanimate of quick Poesy,-- +O then, no more but even a soulless corse! +Nay, my Delight dies not; 'tis I should be +Her dead, a stringless harp on which she had no force. + +Of my wild lot I thought; from place to place, +Apollo's song-bowed Scythian, I go on; +Making in all my home, with pliant ways, +But, provident of change, putting forth root in none. + +Now, with starved brain, sick body, patience galled +With fardels even to wincing; from fair sky +Fell sudden little rain, scarce to be called +A shower, which of the instant was gone wholly by. + +What cloud thus died I saw not; heaven was fair. +Methinks my angel plucked my locks: I bowed +My spirit, shamed; and looking in the air:- +'Even so,' I said, 'even so, my brother the good Cloud?' + +It was a pilgrim of the fields of air, +Its home was allwheres the wind left it rest, +And in a little forth again did fare, +And in all places was a stranger and a guest. + +It harked all breaths of heaven, and did obey +With sweet peace their uncomprehended wills; +It knew the eyes of stars which made no stay, +And with the thunder walked upon the lonely hills. + +And from the subject earth it seemed to scorn, +It drew the sustenance whereby it grew +Perfect in bosom for the married Morn, +And of his life and light full as a maid kissed new. + +Its also darkness of the face withdrawn, +And the long waiting for the little light, +So long in life so little. Like a fawn +It fled with tempest breathing hard at heel of flight; + +And having known full East, did not disdain +To sit in shadow and oblivious cold, +Save what all loss doth of its loss retain, +And who hath held hath somewhat that he still must hold. + +Right poet! who thy rightness to approve, +Having all liberty, didst keep all measure, +And with a firmament for ranging, move +But at the heavens' uncomprehended pleasure. + +With amplitude unchecked, how sweetly thou +Didst wear the ancient custom of the skies, +And yoke of used prescription; and thence how +Find gay variety no license could devise! + +As we the quested beauties better wit +Of the one grove our own than forests great, +Restraint, by the delighted search of it, +Turns to right scope. For lovely moving intricate + +Is put to fair devising in the curb +Of ordered limit; and all-changeful Hermes +Is Terminus as well. Yet we perturb +Our souls for latitude, whose strength in bound and term is. + +How far am I from heavenly liberty, +That play at policy with change and fate, +Who should my soul from foreign broils keep free, +In the fast-guarded frontiers of its single state! + +Could I face firm the Is, and with To-be +Trust Heaven; to Heaven commit the deed, and do; +In power contained, calm in infirmity, +And fit myself to change with virtue ever new; + +Thou hadst not shamed me, cousin of the sky, +Thou wandering kinsman, that didst sweetly live +Unnoted, and unnoted sweetly die, +Weeping more gracious song than any I can weave; + +Which these gross-tissued words do sorely wrong. +Thou hast taught me on powerlessness a power; +To make song wait on life, not life on song; +To hold sweet not too sweet, and bread for bread though sour; + +By law to wander, to be strictly free. +With tears ascended from the heart's sad sea, +Ah, such a silver song to Death could I +Sing, Pain would list, forgetting Pain to be, +And Death would tarry marvelling, and forget to die! + + + +TO THE SINKING SUN. + +How graciously thou wear'st the yoke + Of use that does not fail! +The grasses, like an anchored smoke, + Ride in the bending gale; +This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna, + And fire-dropt as a seraph's mail. + +Here every eve thou stretchest out + Untarnishable wing, +And marvellously bring'st about + Newly an olden thing; +Nor ever through like-ordered heaven + Moves largely thy grave progressing. + +Here every eve thou goest down + Behind the self-same hill, +Nor ever twice alike go'st down + Behind the self-same hill; +Nor like-ways is one flame-sopped flower + Possessed with glory past its will. + +Not twice alike! I am not blind, + My sight is live to see; +And yet I do complain of thy + Weary variety. +O Sun! I ask thee less or more, + Change not at all, or utterly! + +O give me unprevisioned new, + Or give to change reprieve! +For new in me is olden too, + That I for sameness grieve. +O flowers! O grasses! be but once + The grass and flower of yester-eve! + +Wonder and sadness are the lot + Of change: thou yield'st mine eyes +Grief of vicissitude, but not + Its penetrant surprise. +Immutability mutable + Burthens my spirit and the skies. + +O altered joy, all joyed of yore, + Plodding in unconned ways! +O grief grieved out, and yet once more + A dull, new, staled amaze! +I dream, and all was dreamed before, + Or dream I so? the dreamer says. + + + +GRIEF'S HARMONICS. + +At evening, when the lank and rigid trees, +To the mere forms of their sweet day-selves drying, +On heaven's blank leaf seem pressed and flatten-ed; +Or rather, to my sombre thoughts replying, +Of plumes funereal the thin effigies; +That hour when all old dead things seem most dead, +And their death instant most and most undying, +That the flesh aches at them; there stirred in me +The babe of an unborn calamity, +Ere its due time to be deliver-ed. +Dead sorrow and sorrow unborn so blent their pain, +That which more present was were hardly said, +But both more NOW than any Now can be. +My soul like sackcloth did her body rend, +And thus with Heaven contend:- +'Let pass the chalice of this coming dread, +Or that fore-drained O bid me not re-drain!' +So have I asked, who know my asking vain, +Woe against woe in antiphon set over, +That grief's soul transmigrates, and lives again, +And in new pang old pang's incarnated. + + + +MEMORAT MEMORIA. + +Come you living or dead to me, out of the silt of the Past, +With the sweet of the piteous first, and the shame of the shameful +last? +Come with your dear and dreadful face through the passes of Sleep, +The terrible mask, and the face it masked--the face you did not +keep? +You are neither two nor one--I would you were one or two, +For your awful self is embalmed in the fragrant self I knew: +And Above may ken, and Beneath may ken, what I mean by these words +of whirl, +But by my sleep that sleepeth not,--O Shadow of a Girl!-- +Nought here but I and my dreams shall know the secret of this +thing:- +For ever the songs I sing are sad with the songs I never sing, +Sad are sung songs, but how more sad the songs we dare not sing! + +Ah, the ill that we do in tenderness, and the hateful horror of +love! +It has sent more souls to the unslaked Pit than it ever will draw +above. +I damned you, girl, with my pity, who had better by far been thwart, +And drave you hard on the track to hell, because I was gentle of +heart. +I shall have no comfort now in scent, no ease in dew, for this; +I shall be afraid of daffodils, and rose-buds are amiss; +You have made a thing of innocence as shameful as a sin, +I shall never feel a girl's soft arms without horror of the skin. +My child! what was it that I sowed, that I so ill should reap? +You have done this to me. And I, what I to you?--It lies with +Sleep. + + + +JULY FUGITIVE. + +Can you tell me where has hid her + Pretty Maid July? +I would swear one day ago + She passed by, +I would swear that I do know + The blue bliss of her eye: +'Tarry, maid, maid,' I bid her; + But she hastened by. +Do you know where she has hid her, + Maid July? + +Yet in truth it needs must be + The flight of her is old; +Yet in truth it needs must be, + For her nest, the earth, is cold. +No more in the pool-ed Even + Wade her rosy feet, +Dawn-flakes no more plash from them + To poppies 'mid the wheat. +She has muddied the day's oozes + With her petulant feet; +Scared the clouds that floated, + As sea-birds they were, +Slow on the coerule + Lulls of the air, +Lulled on the luminous + Levels of air: +She has chidden in a pet + All her stars from her; +Now they wander loose and sigh + Through the turbid blue, +Now they wander, weep, and cry-- + Yea, and I too-- +'Where are you, sweet July, + Where are you?' + +Who hath beheld her footprints, + Or the pathway she goes? +Tell me, wind, tell me, wheat, + Which of you knows? +Sleeps she swathed in the flushed Arctic + Night of the rose? +Or lie her limbs like Alp-glow + On the lily's snows? +Gales, that are all-visitant, + Find the runaway; +And for him who findeth her + (I do charge you say) +I will throw largesse of broom + Of this summer's mintage, +I will broach a honey-bag + Of the bee's best vintage. +Breezes, wheat, flowers sweet, + None of them knows! +How then shall we lure her back + From the way she goes? +For it were a shameful thing, + Saw we not this comer +Ere Autumn camp upon the fields + Red with rout of Summer. + +When the bird quits the cage, + We set the cage outside, +With seed and with water, + And the door wide, +Haply we may win it so + Back to abide. +Hang her cage of earth out + O'er Heaven's sunward wall, +Its four gates open, winds in watch + By rein-ed cars at all; +Relume in hanging hedgerows + The rain-quenched blossom, +And roses sob their tears out + On the gale's warm heaving bosom; +Shake the lilies till their scent + Over-drip their rims; +That our runaway may see + We do know her whims: +Sleek the tumbled waters out + For her travelled limbs; +Strew and smoothe blue night thereon, + There will--O not doubt her!-- +The lovely sleepy lady lie, + With all her stars about her! + + + +TO A SNOW-FLAKE. + +What heart could have thought you?-- +Past our devisal +(O filigree petal!) +Fashioned so purely, +Fragilely, surely, +From what Paradisal +Imagineless metal, +Too costly for cost? +Who hammered you, wrought you, +From argentine vapour?-- +'God was my shaper. +Passing surmisal, +He hammered, He wrought me, +From curled silver vapour, +To lust of His mind:- +Thou could'st not have thought me! +So purely, so palely, +Tinily, surely, +Mightily, frailly, +Insculped and embossed, +With His hammer of wind, +And His graver of frost.' + + + +NOCTURN. + +I walk, I only, +Not I only wake; +Nothing is, this sweet night, +But doth couch and wake +For its love's sake; +Everything, this sweet night, +Couches with its mate. +For whom but for the stealthy-visitant sun +Is the naked moon +Tremulous and elate? +The heaven hath the earth +Its own and all apart; +The hush-ed pool holdeth +A star to its heart. +You may think the rose sleepeth, +But though she folded is, +The wind doubts her sleeping; +Not all the rose sleeps, +But smiles in her sweet heart +For crafty bliss. +The wind lieth with the rose, +And when he stirs, she stirs in her repose: +The wind hath the rose, +And the rose her kiss. +Ah, mouth of me! +Is it then that this +Seemeth much to thee?-- +I wander only. +The rose hath her kiss. + + + +A MAY BURDEN. + +Through meadow-ways as I did tread, +The corn grew in great lustihead, +And hey! the beeches burgeon-ed. + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! +It is the month, the jolly month, +It is the jolly month of May. + +God ripe the wines and corn, I say +And wenches for the marriage-day, +And boys to teach love's comely play. + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! +It is the month, the jolly month, +It is the jolly month of May. + +As I went down by lane and lea, +The daisies reddened so, pardie! +'Blushets!' I said, 'I well do see, + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! +The thing ye think of in this month, +Heigho! this jolly month of May.' + +As down I went by rye and oats, +The blossoms smelt of kisses; throats +Of birds turned kisses into notes; + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! +The kiss it is a growing flower, +I trow, this jolly month of May! + +God send a mouth to every kiss, +Seeing the blossom of this bliss +By gathering doth grow, certes! + By Godd-es fay, by Godd-es fay! +Thy brow-garland pushed all aslant +Tells--but I tell not, wanton May! + +NOTE. The first two stanzas are from a French original--I have +forgotten what. + + + +A DEAD ASTRONOMER. + +(Father Perry, S.J.) + +Starry amorist, starward gone, +Thou art--what thou didst gaze upon! +Passed through thy golden garden's bars, +Thou seest the Gardener of the Stars. + +She, about whose moon-ed brows +Seven stars make seven glows, +Seven lights for seven woes; +She, like thine own Galaxy, +All lustres in one purity:- +What said'st thou, Astronomer, +When thou did'st discover HER? +When thy hand its tube let fall, +Thou found'st the fairest Star of all! + + + +'CHOSE VUE'. + +A metrical caprice. + +Up she rose, fair daughter--well she was graced +As a cloud her going, stept from her chair, +As a summer-soft cloud, in her going paced, +Down dropped her riband-band, and all her waving hair +Shook like loosened music cadent to her waist;-- +Lapsing like music, wavery as water, + Slid to her waist. + + + +'WHERETO ART THOU COME?' + +'Friend, whereto art thou come?' Thus Verity; +Of each that to the world's sad Olivet +Comes with no multitude, but alone by night, +Lit with the one torch of his lifted soul, +Seeking her that he may lay hands on her; +Thus: and waits answer from the mouth of deed. +Truth is a maid, whom men woo diversely; +This, as a spouse; that, as a light-o'-love, +To know, and having known, to make his brag. +But woe to him that takes the immortal kiss, +And not estates her in his housing life, +Mother of all his seed! So he betrays, +Not Truth, the unbetrayable, but himself: +And with his kiss's rated traitor-craft, +The Haceldama of a plot of days +He buys, to consummate his Judasry +Therein with Judas' guerdon of despair. + + + +HEAVEN AND HELL. + +'Tis said there were no thought of hell, + Save hell were taught; that there should be +A Heaven for all's self-credible. + Not so the thing appears to me. +'Tis Heaven that lies beyond our sights, + And hell too possible that proves; +For all can feel the God that smites, + But ah, how few the God that loves! + + + +TO A CHILD. + +Whenas my life shall time with funeral tread +The heavy death-drum of the beaten hours, +Following, sole mourner, mine own manhood dead, +Poor forgot corse, where not a maid strows flowers; +When I you love am no more I you love, +But go with unsubservient feet, behold +Your dear face through changed eyes, all grim change prove;-- +A new man, mock-ed with misname of old; +When shamed Love keep his ruined lodging, elf! +When, ceremented in mouldering memory, +Myself is hears-ed underneath myself, +And I am but the monument of me:- + O to that tomb be tender then, which bears + Only the name of him it sepulchres! + + + +HERMES. + +Soothsay. Behold, with rod twy-serpented, +Hermes the prophet, twining in one power +The woman with the man. Upon his head +The cloudy cap, wherewith he hath in dower +The cloud's own virtue--change and counterchange, +To show in light, and to withdraw in pall, +As mortal eyes best bear. His lineage strange +From Zeus, Truth's sire, and maiden May--the all- +Illusive Nature. His fledged feet declare +That 'tis the nether self transdeified, +And the thrice-furnaced passions, which do bear +The poet Olympusward. In him allied + Both parents clasp; and from the womb of Nature + Stern Truth takes flesh in shows of lovely feature. + + + +HOUSE OF BONDAGE. + + I + +When I perceive Love's heavenly reaping still +Regard perforce the clouds' vicissitude, +That the fixed spirit loves not when it will, +But craves its seasons of the flawful blood; +When I perceive that the high poet doth +Oft voiceless stray beneath the uninfluent stars, +That even Urania of her kiss is loath, +And Song's brave wings fret on their sensual bars; +When I perceived the fullest-sail-ed sprite +Lag at most need upon the leth-ed seas, +The provident captainship oft voided quite, +And lam-ed lie deep-draughted argosies; + I scorn myself, that put for such strange toys + The wit of man to purposes of boys. + + II + +The spirit's ark sealed with a little clay, +Was old ere Memphis grew a memory; {2} +The hand pontifical to break away +That seal what shall surrender? Not the sea +Which did englut great Egypt and his war, +Nor all the desert-drown-ed sepulchres. +Love's feet are stained with clay and travel-sore, +And dusty are Song's lucent wing and hairs. +O Love, that must do courtesy to decay, +Eat hasty bread standing with loins up-girt, +How shall this stead thy feet for their sore way? +Ah, Song, what brief embraces balm thy hurt! + Had Jacob's toil full guerdon, casting his + Twice-seven heaped years to burn in Rachel's kiss? + +{2} The Ark of the Egyptian temple was sealed with clay, which the +Pontiff-king broke when he entered the inner shrine to offer +worship. + + + +THE HEART. + +Two Sonnets. + +(To my Critic, who had objected to the phrase--'The heart's burning +floors.') + + I + +The heart you hold too small and local thing, +Such spacious terms of edifice to bear. +And yet, since Poesy first shook out her wing, +The mighty Love has been impalaced there; +That has she given him as his wide demesne, +And for his sceptre ample empery; +Against its door to knock has Beauty been +Content; it has its purple canopy +A dais for the sovereign lady spread +Of many a lover, who the heaven would think +Too low an awning for her sacred head. +The world, from star to sea, cast down its brink-- + Yet shall that chasm, till He Who these did build + An awful Curtius make Him, yawn unfilled. + + II + +O nothing, in this corporal earth of man, +That to the imminent heaven of his high soul +Responds with colour and with shadow, can +Lack correlated greatness. If the scroll +Where thoughts lie fast in spell of hieroglyph +Be mighty through its mighty habitants; +If God be in His Name; grave potence if +The sounds unbind of hieratic chants; +All's vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirm +Nature is whole in her least things exprest, +Nor know we with what scope God builds the worm. +Our towns are copied fragments from our breast; + And all man's Babylons strive but to impart + The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart. + + + +A SUNSET. + +From Hugo's 'Feuilles d'Automne'. + +I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens, +Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens, + In numerous leafage bosomed close; +Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, +Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere + On cloudy archipelagos. + +Oh gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion, +Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion, + Their unimagined shapes accord: +Under their waves at intervals flames a pale levin through, +As if some giant of the air amid the vapours drew + A sudden elemental sword. + +The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold; +And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold, + The thatched roof of a cot a-glance; +Or on the blurred horizons joins his battle with the haze; +Or pools the glooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze + Great moveless meres of radiance. + +Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track +Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back, + A triple row of pointed teeth? +Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide, +The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds its tenebrous side + With scales of golden mail ensheathe. + +Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees. +Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice + Ruins immense in mounded wrack: +Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone +Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown + When the earthquake heaves its hugy back. + +These vapours with their leaden, golden, iron, bronz-ed glows, +Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose, + Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms, +'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep, +As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep + His dreadful and resounding arms! + +All vanishes! The sun, from topmost heaven precipitated, +Like to a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red + Into the furnace stirred to fume, +Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire, +Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire + The vaporous and inflam-ed spume. + +O contemplate the heavens! whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale, +In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil, + With love that has not speech for need; +Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite: +If winter hue them like a pall; or if the summer night + Fantasy them with starry brede. + + + +HEARD ON THE MOUNTAIN. + +From Hugo's 'Feuilles d'Automne'. + +Have you sometimes, calm, silent, let your tread aspirant rise +Up to the mountain's summit, in the presence of the skies? +Was't on the borders of the South? or on the Bretagne coast? +And at the basis of the mount had you the Ocean tossed? +And there, leaned o'er the wave and o'er the immeasurableness, +Calm, silent, have you harkened what it says? Lo, what it says! +One day at least, whereon my thought, enlicens-ed to muse, +Had drooped its wing above the beach-ed margent of the ooze, +And, plunging from the mountain height into the immensity, +Beheld upon one side the land, on the other side the sea. +I harkened, comprehended,--never, as from those abysses, +No, never issued from a mouth, nor moved an ear, such voice as this +is! + +A sound it was, at outset, vast, immeasurable, confused, +Vaguer than is the wind among the tufted trees effused, +Full of magnificent accords, suave murmurs, sweet as is +The evensong, and mighty as the shock of panoplies +When the hoarse melee in its arms the closing squadrons grips, +And pants, in furious breathings, from the clarions' brazen lips. +Unutterable the harmony, unsearchable its deep, +Whose fluid undulations round the world a girdle keep, +And through the vasty heavens, which by its surges are washed young, +Its infinite volutions roll, enlarging as they throng, +Even to the profound arcane, whose ultimate chasms sombre +Its shattered flood englut with time, with space and form and +number. +Like to another atmosphere with thin o'erflowing robe, +The hymn eternal covers all the inundated globe: +And the world, swathed about with this investuring symphony, +Even as it trepidates in the air, so trepidates in the harmony. + +And pensive, I attended the ethereal lutany, +Lost within this containing voice as if within the sea. + +Soon I distinguished, yet as tone which veils confuse and smother, +Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other, +Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire; +Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. +And I distinguished them amid that deep and rumorous sound, +As who beholds two currents thwart amid the fluctuous profound. + +The one was of the waters; a be-radiant hymnal speech! +That was the voice o' the surges, as they parleyed each with each. +The other, which arose from our abode terranean, +Was sorrowful; and that, alack! the murmur was of man; +And in this mighty quire, whose chantings day and night resound, +Every wave had its utterance, and every man his sound. + +Now, the magnificent Ocean, as I said, unbannering +A voice of joy, a voice of peace, did never stint to sing, +Most like in Sion's temples to a psaltery psaltering, +And to creation's beauty reared the great lauds of his song. +Upon the gale, upon the squall, his clamour borne along +Unpausingly arose to God in more triumphal swell; +And every one among his waves, that God alone can quell, +When the other of its song made end, into the singing pressed. +Like that majestic lion whereof Daniel was the guest, +At intervals the Ocean his tremendous murmur awed; +And I, t'ward where the sunset fires fell shaggily and broad, +Under his golden mane, methought, that I saw pass the hand of God. + +Meanwhile, and side by side with that august fan-faronnade, +The other voice, like the sudden scream of a destrier affrayed, +Like an infernal door that grates ajar its rusty throat, +Like to a bow of iron that gnarls upon an iron rote, +Grinded; and tears, and shriekings, the anathema, the lewd taunt, +Refusal of viaticum, refusal of the font, +And clamour, and malediction, and dread blasphemy, among +That hurtling crowd of rumour from the diverse human tongue, +Went by as who beholdeth, when the valleys thick t'ward night, +The long drifts of the birds of dusk pass, blackening flight on +flight. +What was this sound whose thousand echoes vibrated unsleeping? +Alas! the sound was earth's and man's, for earth and man were +weeping. + +Brothers! of these two voices, strange most unimaginably, +Unceasingly regenerated, dying unceasingly, +Harken-ed of the Eternal throughout His Eternity, +The one voice uttereth: NATURE! and the other voice: HUMANITY! + +Then I alit in reverie; for my ministering sprite +Alack! had never yet deployed a pinion of an ampler flight, +Nor ever had my shadow endured so large a day to burn: +And long I rested dreaming, contemplating turn by turn +Now that abyss obscure which lurked beneath the water's roll, +And now that other untemptable abyss which opened in my soul. +And I made question of me, to what issues are we here, +Whither should tend the thwarting threads of all this ravelled gear; +What doth the soul; to be or live if better worth it is; +And why the Lord, Who, only, reads within that book of His, +In fatal hymeneals hath eternally entwined +The vintage-chant of nature with the dirging cry of humankind? + +(The metre of the second of these two translations is an experiment. +The splendid fourteen-syllable metre of Chapman I have treated after +the manner of Drydenian rhyming heroics; with the occasional +triplet, and even the occasional Alexandrine, represented by a line +of eight accents--a treatment which can well extend, I believe, the +majestic resources of the metre.) + + + + +ULTIMA. + + + + +LOVE'S ALMSMAN PLAINETH HIS FARE. + +O you, love's mendicancy who never tried, + How little of your almsman me you know! +Your little languid hand in mine you slide, + Like to a child says--'Kiss me and let me go!' +And night for this is fretted with my tears, + While I:-'How soon this heavenly neck doth tire +Bending to me from its transtellar spheres!' + Ah, heart all kneaded out of honey and fire! +Who bound thee to a body nothing worth, + And shamed thee much with an unlovely soul, +That the most strainedest charity of earth + Distasteth soon to render back the whole +Of thine inflam-ed sweets and gentilesse! + Whereat, like an unpastured Titan, thou +Gnaw'st on thyself for famine's bitterness, + And leap'st against thy chain. Sweet Lady, how +Little a linking of the hand to you! + Though I should touch yours careless for a year, +Not one blue vein would lie divinelier blue + Upon your fragile temple, to unsphere +The seraphim for kisses! Not one curve + Of your sad mouth would droop more sad and sweet. +But little food love's beggars needs must serve, + That eye your plenteous graces from the street. +A hand-clasp I must feed on for a night, + A noon, although the untasted feast you lay, +To mock me, of your beauty. That you might + Be lover for one space, and make essay +What 'tis to pass unsuppered to your couch, + Keep fast from love all day; and so be taught +The famine which these craving lines avouch! + Ah! miser of good things that cost thee naught, +How know'st thou poor men's hunger?--Misery! +When I go doleless and unfed by thee! + + + +A HOLOCAUST. + +'No man ever attained supreme knowledge, unless his heart had been +torn up by the roots.' + + +When I presage the time shall come--yea, now + Perchance is come, when you shall fail from me, +Because the mighty spirit, to whom you vow + Faith of kin genius unrebukably, +Scourges my sloth, and from your side dismissed + Henceforth this sad and most, most lonely soul +Must, marching fatally through pain and mist, + The God-bid levy of its powers enrol; +When I presage that none shall hear the voice + From the great Mount that clangs my ordained advance, +That sullen envy bade the churlish choice + Yourself shall say, and turn your altered glance; +O God! Thou knowest if this heart of flesh + Quivers like broken entrails, when the wheel +Rolleth some dog in middle street, or fresh + Fruit when ye tear it bleeding from the peel; +If my soul cries the uncomprehended cry + When the red agony oozed on Olivet! +Yet not for this, a caitiff, falter I, + Beloved whom I must lose, nor thence regret +The doubly-vouched and twin allegiance owed + To you in Heaven, and Heaven in you, Lady. +How could you hope, loose dealer with my God, + That I should keep for you my fealty? +For still 'tis thus:-because I am so true, +My Fair, to Heaven, I am so true to you! + + + +BENEATH A PHOTOGRAPH. + +Phoebus, who taught me art divine, +Here tried his hand where I did mine; +And his white fingers in this face +Set my Fair's sigh-suggesting grace. +O sweetness past profaning guess, +Grievous with its own exquisiteness! +Vesper-like face, its shadows bright +With meanings of sequestered light; +Drooped with shamefast sanctities +She purely fears eyes cannot miss, +Yet would blush to know she IS. +Ah, who can view with passionless glance +This tear-compelling countenance! +He has cozened it to tell +Almost its own miracle. +Yet I, all-viewing though he be, +Methinks saw further here than he; +And, Master gay! I swear I drew +Something the better of the two! + + + +AFTER HER GOING. + +The after-even! Ah, did I walk, + Indeed, in her or even? +For nothing of me or around + But absent She did leaven, +Felt in my body as its soul, + And in my soul its heaven. + +'Ah me! my very flesh turns soul, + Essenced,' I sighed, 'with bliss!' +And the blackbird held his lutany, + All fragrant-through with bliss; +And all things stilled were as a maid + Sweet with a single kiss. + +For grief of perfect fairness, eve + Could nothing do but smile; +The time was far too perfect fair, + Being but for a while; +And ah, in me, too happy grief + Blinded herself with smile! + +The sunset at its radiant heart + Had somewhat unconfest: +The bird was loath of speech, its song + Half-refluent on its breast, +And made melodious toyings with + A note or two at best. + +And she was gone, my sole, my Fair, + Ah, sole my Fair, was gone! +Methinks, throughout the world 'twere right + I had been sad alone; +And yet, such sweet in all things' heart, + And such sweet in my own! + + + +MY LADY THE TYRANNESS. + +Me since your fair ambition bows +Feodary to those gracious brows, +Is nothing mine will not confess +Your sovran sweet rapaciousness? +Though use to the white yoke inures, +Half-petulant is +Your loving rebel for somewhat his, +Not yours, my love, not yours! + +Behold my skies, which make with me +One passionate tranquillity! +Wrap thyself in them as a robe, +She shares them not; their azures probe, +No countering wings thy flight endures. +Nay, they do stole +Me like an aura of her soul. +I yield them, love, for yours! + +But mine these hills and fields, which put +Not on the sanctity of her foot. +Far off, my dear, far off the sweet +Grave pianissimo of your feet! +My earth, perchance, your sway abjures?-- +Your absence broods +O'er all, a subtler presence. Woods, +Fields, hills, all yours, all yours! + +Nay then, I said, I have my thought, +Which never woman's reaching raught; +Being strong beyond a woman's might, +And high beyond a woman's height, +Shaped to my shape in all contours.-- +I looked, and knew +No thought but you were garden to. +All yours, my love, all yours! + +Meseemeth still, I have my life; +All-clement Her its resolute strife +Evades; contained, relinquishing +Her mitigating eyes; a thing +Which the whole girth of God secures. +Ah, fool, pause! pause! +I had no life, until it was +All yours, my love, all yours! + +Yet, stern possession! I have my death, +Sole yielding up of my sole breath; +Which all within myself I die, +All in myself must cry the cry +Which the deaf body's wall immures.-- +Thought fashioneth +My death without her.--Ah, even death +All yours, my love, all yours! + +Death, then, he hers. I have my heaven, +For which no arm of hers has striven; +Which solitary I must choose, +And solitary win or lose.-- +Ah, but not heaven my own endures! +I must perforce +Taste you, my stream, in God your source,-- +So steep my heaven in yours. + +At last I said--I have my God, +Who doth desire me, though a clod, +And from His liberal Heaven shall He +Bar in mine arms His privacy. +Himself for mine Himself assures.-- +None shall deny +God to be mine, but He and I +All yours, my love, all yours! + +I have no fear at all lest I +Without her draw felicity. +God for His Heaven will not forego +Her whom I found such heaven below, +And she will train Him to her lures. +Nought, lady, I love +In you but more is loved above; +What made me, makes Him yours. + +'I, thy sought own, am I forgot?' +Ha, thou?--thou liest, I seek thee not. +Why what, thou painted parrot, Fame, +What have I taught thee but her name? +Hear, thou slave Fame, while Time endures, +I give her thee; +Page her triumphal name!--Lady, +Take her, the thrall is yours. + + + +UNTO THIS LAST. + +A boy's young fancy taketh love +Most simply, with the rind thereof; +A boy's young fancy tasteth more +The rind, than the deific core. +Ah, Sweet! to cast away the slips +Of unessential rind, and lips +Fix on the immortal core, is well; +But heard'st thou ever any tell +Of such a fool would take for food +Aspect and scent, however good, +Of sweetest core Love's orchards grow? +Should such a phantast please him so, +Love where Love's reverent self denies +Love to feed, but with his eyes, +All the savour, all the touch, +Another's--was there ever such? +Such were fool, if fool there be; +Such fool was I, and was for thee! +But if the touch and savour too +Of this fruit--say, Sweet, of you-- +You unto another give +For sacrosanct prerogative, +Yet even scent and aspect were +Some elected Second's share; +And one, gone mad, should rest content +With memory of show and scent; +Would not thyself vow, if there sigh +Such a fool--say, Sweet, as I-- +Treble frenzy it must be +Still to love, and to love thee? + +Yet had I torn (man knoweth not, +Nor scarce the unweeping angels wot +Of such dread task the lightest part) +Her fingers from about my heart. +Heart, did we not think that she +Had surceased her tyranny? +Heart, we bounded, and were free! +O sacrilegious freedom!--Till +She came, and taught my apostate will +The winnowed sweet mirth cannot guess +And tear-fined peace of hopefulness; +Looked, spake, simply touched, and went. +Now old pain is fresh content, +Proved content is unproved pain. +Pangs fore-tempted, which in vain +I, faithless, have denied, now bud +To untempted fragrance and the mood +Of contrite heavenliness; all days +Joy affrights me in my ways; +Extremities of old delight +Afflict me with new exquisite +Virgin piercings of surprise,-- +Stung by those wild brown bees, her eyes! + + + +ULTIMUM. + +Now in these last spent drops, slow, slower shed, +Love dies, Love dies, Love dies--ah, Love is dead! +Sad Love in life, sore Love in agony, +Pale Love in death; while all his offspring songs, +Like children, versed not in death's chilly wrongs, +About him flit, frighted to see him lie +So still, who did not know that Love could die. +One lifts his wing, where dulls the vermeil all +Like clotting blood, and shrinks to find it cold, +And when she sees its lapse and nerveless fall +Clasps her fans, while her sobs ooze through the webb-ed gold. +Thereat all weep together, and their tears +Make lights like shivered moonlight on long waters. +Have peace, O piteous daughters! +He shall not wake more through the mortal years, +Nor comfort come to my soul widow-ed, +Nor breath to your wild wings; for Love is dead! + +I slew, that moan for him: he lifted me +Above myself, and that I might not be +Less than myself, need was that he should die; +Since Love that first did wing, now clogged me from the sky. +Yet lofty Love being dead thus passeth base-- +There is a soul of nobleness which stays, +The spectre of the rose: be comforted, +Songs, for the dust that dims his sacred head! +The days draw on too dark for Song or Love; +O peace, my songs, nor stir ye any wing! +For lo, the thunder hushing all the grove, +And did Love live, not even Love could sing. + +And, Lady, thus I dare to say, +Not all with you is passed away! +For your love taught me this:-'tis Love's true praise +To be, not staff, but writ of worthy days; +And that high worth in love unfortunate +Should still remain it learned in love elate. +Beyond your star, still, still the stars are bright; +Beyond your highness, still I follow height; +Sole I go forth, yet still to my sad view, +Beyond your trueness, Lady, Truth stands true. +This wisdom sings my song with last firm breath, +Caught from the twisted lore of Love and Death, +The strange inwoven harmony that wakes +From Pallas' straying locks twined with her aegis-snakes. +'On him the unpetitioned heavens descend, +Who heaven on earth proposes not for end; +The perilous and celestial excess +Taking with peace, lacking with thankfulness. +Bliss in extreme befits thee not, until +Thou'rt not extreme in bliss; be equal still: +Sweets to be granted think thy self unmeet +Till thou have learned to hold sweet not too sweet.' +This thing not far is he from wise in art +Who teacheth; nor who doth, from wise in heart. + + + +ENVOY. + +Go, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play; + Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow: +And some are sung, and that was yesterday, + And some unsung, and that may be to-morrow. + +Go forth; and if it be o'er stony way, + Old joy can lend what newer grief must borrow: +And it was sweet, and that was yesterday, + And sweet is sweet, though purchas-ed with sorrow. + +Go, songs, and come not back from your far way: + And if men ask you why ye smile and sorrow, +Tell them ye grieve, for your hearts know To-day, + Tell them ye smile, for your eyes know To-morrow. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg etext of New Poems, by Francis Thompson + diff --git a/old/npbft10.zip b/old/npbft10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c6bf2e5 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/npbft10.zip |
