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Title: An Epic of Women, and Other Poems

Author: Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy

Release date: August 6, 2021 [eBook #66002]

Language: English

Credits: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN EPIC OF WOMEN, AND OTHER POEMS ***
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AN EPIC OF WOMEN

AND

OTHER POEMS.

BY ARTHUR W. E. O’SHAUGHNESSY.
LONDON:
JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY.
1870.

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{iii} 

I Dedicate this Book

TO MY FRIEND,

J O H N   P A Y N E.

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CONTENTS.

EXILE9
A NEGLECTED HARP13
I. IANOULA17
II. THE FAIR MAID AND THE SUN20
III. THE CYPRESS23
A PRECIOUS URN25
SERAPHITUS26
THE LOVER34
A WHISPER FROM THE GRAVE46
BISCLAVARET55
THOUGHT65
THE STORY OF THE KING66 {vi}
PALM FLOWERS71
I. CREATION81
II. THE WIFE OF HEPHÆSTUS86
III. CLEOPATRA, 193
IV. CLEOPATRA, 298
V. THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS105
VI. HELEN133
VII. A TROTH FOR ETERNITY141
SONNET (1867)162
DEATH165
THE FOUNTAIN OF TEARS166
LOVE AFTER DEATH170
SOWN SEED171
A DISCORD174
GALANTERIE175
THE GLORIOUS LADY178
LOST BLISSES190
THE SPECTRE OF THE PAST192
A FADING FACE203
THE HEART’S QUESTIONS204
(Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 15, No. 3.) {vii}
BARCAROLLE207
THE MINER: BALLAD211
A WASTED LAND214
CHARMED MOMENTS217
(Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 37, No. 1.)
A LIFE-TOMB219
THE SLAVE OF APOLLO221
THE POET’S GRAVE227

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EXILE.

Des voluptés intérieures
 Le sourire mystérieux.
 Victor Hugo.
A COMMON folk I walk among;
 I speak dull things in their own tongue:
 But all the while within I hear
 A song I do not sing for fear—
 How sweet, how different a thing!
 And when I come where none are near
 I open all my heart and sing.{10}
I am made one with these indeed,
 And give them all the love they need—
 Such love as they would have of me:
 But in my heart—ah, let it be!—
 I think of it when none is nigh—
 There is a love they shall not see;
 For it I live—for it will die.
And oft-times, though I share their joys,
 And seem to praise them with my voice,
 Do I not celebrate my own,
 Ay, down in some far inward zone
 Of thoughts in which they have no part?
 Do I not feel—ah, quite alone
 With all the secret of my heart?
O when the shroud of night is spread
 On these, as Death is on the dead,
 So that no sight of them shall mar
 The blessèd rapture of a star—
 Then I draw forth those thoughts at will;
 And like the stars those bright thoughts are;
 And boundless seems the heart they fill:{11}
For every one is as a link;
 And I enchain them as I think;
 Till present, and remembered bliss,
 And better, worlds on after this,
 I have—led on from each to each
 Athwart the limitless abyss—
 In some surpassing sphere I reach.
I draw a veil across my face
 Before I come back to the place
 And dull obscurity of these;
 I hide my face, and no man sees;
 I learn to smile a lighter smile,
 And change, and look just what they please.
 It is but for a little while.
I go with them; and in their sight
 I would not scorn their little light,
 Nor mock the things they hold divine;
 But when I kneel before the shrine
 Of some base deity of theirs,
 I pray all inwardly to mine,
 And send my soul up with my prayers:{12}
For I—ah, to myself I say—
 I have a heaven though far away;
 And there my Love went long ago,
 With all the things my heart loves so;
 And there my songs fly, every one:
 And I shall find them there I know
 When this sad pilgrimage is done.
 {13}

A NEGLECTED HARP.

O HUSHED and shrouded room!
 O silence that enchains!
 O me—of many melodies
 The cold and voiceless tomb;
 What sweet impassioned strains,
 What fair unearthly things,
 Sealed up in frozen cadences,
 Are aching in my strings!{14}
Each time the setting sun,
 At eve when all is still,
 Doth reach a pale faint finger in
 To touch them one by one;
 O what an inward thrill
 Of music makes them swell!
 The prisoned song-pulse beats within
 And almost breaks the spell.
Each time the ghostly moon
 Among the shadows gleams,
 And leads them in a mournful dance
 To some mysterious tune;
 O then, indeed, it seems
 Strange muffled tones repeat
 The wail within me, and perchance
 The measure of the feet.
But often when the ring
 Of some sweet voice is near,
 Or past me the light garments brush
 Soft as a spirit’s wing,{15}—
 O, more than I can bear,
 I feel, intense, the throb
 Of some rich inward music gush
 That comes out in a sob.
For am I not—alas,
 The quick days come and go—
 A weak and songless instrument
 Through which the song-breaths pass?
 I would a heart might know,
 I would a hand might free
 These wondrous melodies up-pent
 And languishing in me.
* * *
A sharp strange music smote
 The night.—In yon recess
 The shrouded harp from all its strings
 Gave forth a piercing note:{16}
 With that long bitterness
 The stricken air still aches;
 ’Twas like the one true word that sings
 Some poet whose heart breaks.
[Image unavailable.]

{17}

THREE FLOWERS OF MODERN GREECE.

I.

IANOULA.

O SISTERS! fairly have ye to rejoice,
 Who of your weakness wed
 With lordly might: yea, now I praise your choice.
 As the vine clingeth with fair fingers spread
 Over some dark tree-stem,
 So on your goodly husbands with no dread
 Ye cling, and your fair fingers hold on them.{18}
For godlike stature, and unchanging brow
 Broad as the heaven above,
 Yea, for fair mighty looks ye chose, I trow;
 And prided you to see, in strivings rough,
 Dauntless, their strong arms raised;
 And little loth were ye to give your love
 To husbands such as these whom all men praised.
But I, indeed, of many wooers, took
 None such for boast or stay,
 But a pale lover with a sweet sad look:
 The smile he wed me with was like some ray
 Shining on dust of death;
 And Death stood near him on my wedding day,
 And blanched his forehead with a fatal breath.
I loved to feel his weak arm lean on mine,
 Yea, and to give him rest,
 Bidding his pale and languid face recline
 Softly upon my shoulder or my breast,—
 Thinking, alas, how sweet
 To hold his spirit in my arms so press’d,
 That even Death’s hard omens I might cheat.{19}
I found his drooping hand the warmest place
 Here where my warm heart is;
 I said, “Dear love, what thoughts are in thy face?
 Has Death as fair a bosom, then, as this?”
 —O sisters, do not start!
 His cold lips answered with a fainting kiss,
 And his hand struck its death chill to my heart.
 {20}

II.

THE FAIR MAID AND THE SUN.

O SONS of men, that toil, and love with tears!
Know ye, O sons of men, the maid who dwells
 Between the two seas at the Dardanelles?
 Her face hath charmed away the change of years,
 And all the world is fillèd with her spells.
No task is hers for ever, but the play
 Of setting forth her beauty day by day:
 There in your midst, O sons of men that toil,
 She laughs the long eternity away.{21}
The chains about her neck are many-pearled,
 Rare gems are those round which her hair is curled;
 She hath all flesh for captive, and for spoil,
 The fruit of all the labour of the world.
She getteth up and maketh herself bare,
 And letteth down the wonder of her hair
 Before the sun; the heavy golden locks
 Fall in the hollow of her shoulders fair.
She taketh from the lands, as she may please,
 All jewels, and all corals from the seas;
 She layeth them in rows upon the rocks;
 Laugheth, and bringeth fairer ones than these.
Five are the goodly necklaces that deck
 The place between her bosom and her neck;
 She passeth many a bracelet o’er her hands;
 And, seeing she is white without a fleck,
And, seeing she is fairer than the tide,
 And of a beauty no man can abide—
 Proudly she standeth as a goddess stands,
 And mocketh at the sun and sea for pride:{22}
And to the sea she saith: “O silver sea,
 Fair art thou, but thou art not fair like me;
 Open thy white-toothed dimpled mouths and try;
 They laugh not the soft way I laugh at thee.”
And to the sun she saith: “O golden sun,
 Fierce is thy burning till the day is done;
 But thou shalt burn mere grass and leaves, while I
 Shall burn the hearts of men up everyone.”
O fair and dreadful is the maid who dwells
 Between the two seas at the Dardanelles:
 As fair and dread as in the ancient years;
 And still the world is fillèd with her spells,
O sons of men, that toil, and love with tears!
 {23}

III.

THE CYPRESS.

O IVORY bird, that shakest thy wan plumes,
 And dost forget the sweetness of thy throat
 For a most strange and melancholy note—
 That wilt forsake the summer and the blooms
 And go to winter in a place remote!
The country where thou goest, Ivory bird!
 It hath no pleasant nesting-place for thee;
 There are no skies nor flowers fair to see,
 Nor any shade at noon—as I have heard—
 But the black shadow of the Cypress tree.{24}
Cypress tree, it groweth on a mound;
 And sickly are the flowers it hath of May,
 Full of a false and subtle spell are they;
 For whoso breathes the scent of them around,
 He shall not see the happy Summer day.
In June, it bringeth forth, O Ivory bird!
 A winter berry, bitter as the sea;
 And whoso eateth of it, woe is he—
 He shall fall pale, and sleep—as I have heard—
 Long in the shadow of the Cypress tree.
 {25}

A PRECIOUS URN.

THE great effulgence of the early days
 Of one first summer, whose bright joys, it seems,
 Have been to all my songs their golden themes;
 The rose leaves gathered from the faded ways
 I wandered in when they were all a-blaze
 With living flowers and flame of the sunbeams;
 And, more than all, that ending of my dreams
 Divinely, in a dream-like thing,—the face
 Of one belovèd lady once possest
 In one long kiss that made my whole life burn:
 What of all these remains to me?—At best,
 A heap of fragrant ashes now, that turn
 My heavy heart into a funeral urn
 Which I have buried deep within my breast.
 {26}

SERAPHITUS.

ALAS! that we should not have known,
 For all his strange ethereal calm,
 And thoughts so little like our own
 And presence like a shed-forth balm,
 He was some Spirit from a zone
 Of light, and ecstasy, and psalm,
 Radiant and near about God’s throne:
 Now he hath flown!
The heaven did cleave on him alway;
 And for what thing he chose to dwell
 In a mere tenement of clay
 With mortal seeming—who can tell?{27}
 But there in some unearthly way
 He wrought, and, with an inner spell,
 Miraculously did array
 That house of clay.
The very walls were in some sort
 Made beautiful, with many a fresque
 Or carven filigree of Thought,
 Now seen a clear and statuesque
 Accomplishment of dreams—now sought
 Through many a lovely arabesque
 And metaphor, that seemed to sport
 With what it taught.
Most bright and marvellously fair
 Those things did seem to all mankind;
 And some indeed, with no cold stare
 Beholding them, could lift their mind
 Through sweet transfigurement to share
 Their inward light: the rest were blind,
 And wondered much, yet had small care
 Whence such things were.{28}
And, day by day, he did invent
 —As though nought golden were enough,
 In manner of an ornament—
 Some high chivalrous deed, above
 All price, whereof the element
 Was the most stainless ore of Love;
 A boundless store of it he spent
 With lavishment.
And when therewith that house became
 All in a strange sort glorified;
 For through whole beauty, as of flame,
 Those things, resplendent far and wide,
 Did draw unto them great acclaim;
 Lo, many a man there was who tried
 With base alloys to do the same,
 And gat men’s shame.
But all about that house he set
 A wondrous flowering thing—his speech,
 That without ceasing did beget
 Such fair unearthly blossoms, each{29}
 Seemed from some paradise, and wet
 As with an angel’s tears, and each
 Gave forth some long perfume to let
 No man forget.
A new delicious music erred
 For ever through the devious ways
 Tangled with blooming of each word;
 As though in that enchanted maze
 Some sweet and most celestial bird
 Were caught, and, hid from every gaze,
 Did there pour forth such song as stirred
 All men who heard.
Before him was perpetual birth
 Of flowers whereof, aye, more and more,
 The world begetteth a sad dearth;
 And those rare balms man searcheth for,
 Fair ecstasy, and the soul’s mirth:
 Half grudgingly the angels bore
 That one should waste on a lost earth
 Things of such worth.{30}
It may be, with a strange delight,
 After an age of gazing through
 That mirror of things infinite
 That well nigh burns the veil of blue
 Drawn down between it and our sight—
 It may be, with a joy all new,
 He sought the darkness and the light
 Of day and night.
It may be, that, upon some wave
 Which through the incense-laden skies
 Scarce forced its ripple, there once clave
 A thin earth-fragrance—in such wise
 It smote his sense and made him crave
 For that strange sweet: maybe, likewise,
 The leaves their subtle perfume gave
 Up from some grave:
And pleasant did it seem to heap
 About the heart dim spells that lull
 Profoundly between death and sleep,
 To feel mid earthly soothings, dull{31}
 And sweet, upon the whole sense creep
 The dream—life-long and wonderful,
 That hath all souls of men to keep
 Lest they should weep.
But often, when there seemed to fall
 Bright shadows of half-blindness, thin,
 And like fine films wrought over all
 The flashing sights of Heaven within;
 While that fair perishable wall
 Of flesh so barred and shut him in
 That scarce a silver spirit-call
 Reached him at all—
O then the Earth failed not to bring,
 Indeed through many a day and eve—
 The strength of all her flowering
 About him; nor forgot to weave,
 With soft perpetual murmuring,
 Her spells, that such a sweet way grieve,
 And hold the heart to each fair thing,
 Yea, with a sting:{32}
And, sometimes, with strange prevalence
 He felt those dim enchantments float
 Most soothingly upon his sense;
 While faint in memory remote,
 Brought down the heart knew not from whence,
 The thought of heaven within him smote—
 And many a yearning did commence
 Vague and intense—
Fair part of that unknown disease
 Of dull material love, whereby
 The luring flower-semblances
 Of earthliness and death would try
 To bind his heart beyond release
 To each fair mortal sympathy,
 That Death at length might wholly seize
 Him with all these.
And, surely, on some shining bed
 Of flowers in full summer’s gleam;
 Or when the autumn time had shed
 Its wealth of perfume and its dream{33}
 On some rich eve—no thing of dread
 To all his spirit did it seem,
 To dream on, feeling sweet earth spread
 Over his head.
* * *
But, one long twilight—hushed and dim—
 The blue unfathomable clime
 Of heaven seemed wholly to o’erbrim
 With presence of the Lord—sublime;
 And voices of the Seraphim
 Fell through the ether like a chime:
 He rose: his past way seemed to him
 Like a child’s whim.
 {34}

THE LOVER.

I WAS not with the rest at play;
 My brothers laughed in joyous mood:
 But I—I wandered far away
 Into the fair and silent wood;
 And with the trees and flowers I stood,
 As dumb and full of dreams as they:
 —For One it seemed my whole heart knew,
 Or One my heart had known long since,
 Was peeping at me through the dew;
 And with bright laughter seemed to woo
 My beauty, like a Fairy prince.{35}
Oh, what a soft enchantment filled
 The lonely paths and places dim!
 It was as though the whole wood thrilled,
 And a dumb joy, because of him,
 Weighed down the lilies tall and slim,
 And made the roses blush, and stilled
 The great wild voices in half fear:
 It was as though his smile did hold
 All things in trances manifold;
 And in each place as he drew near
 The leaves were touched and turned to gold.
And well I seemed to know, the while,
 It was for me and for my sake,
 He wrought that magic with his smile,
 And set the unseen spells to make
 The lonely ways I loved to take
 So full of sweetness, to beguile
 My heart and keep me there for hours;
 And sometimes I was sure he lay
 Beside me hid among the flowers,
 Or climbed above me, and in play
 Shook down the white tree-bloom in showers.{36}
But more and more he seemed to seek
 My heart: till, dreaming of all this,
 I thought one day to hear him speak,
 Or feel, indeed, his sudden kiss
 Bind me to some great unknown bliss:
 Then there would stay upon my cheek
 Full many a light and honied stain,
 That told indeed how I had lain
 Deep in the flowery banks all day;
 And round me too there would remain
 Some strange wood-blossom’s scent alway.
’Twas not the bright and fond deceit
 Of that first summer,—whose great bloom
 Quite overcame me with its sweet,
 And seemed to fill me and consume
 My very brain with its perfume;—
 ’Twas no false spell made my heart beat
 With such a joy to be alone
 With all the bloom and all the scent:
 It was a thing I dared not own,
 Already whispered there and known,
 Already with my whole life blent.{37}
It was this secret, vast, sublime,
 Too full of wonder to be told—
 Whose extreme rapture from that time
 Doth ever more and more enfold
 My spirit, like a robe of gold,
 Or, as it were, the magic clime
 Of some fair heaven about me shed—
 Wherein are songs of unseen birds,
 And whispers of delicious words
 More sweet than any man hath said
 Of all the living or the dead.
—O, the incomparable love
 Of him, my Lover!—O, to tell
 Its way and measure were above
 The throbbing chords of speech that swell
 Within me!—Doth it not excel
 All other, sung or written of?
 Yea now, O all ye fair mankind—
 Consider well the gracious line
 Of those your lovers; call to mind
 Their love of you, and ye shall find
 Not one among them all like mine.{38}
It seems as though, from calm to calm,
 A whole fair age had passed me by,
 Since first this Lover, through a charm
 Of flowers, wooed so tenderly,
 I had no fear of drawing nigh,
 Nor knew, indeed, that—with an arm
 Closed round and holding me—he led
 My eager way from sight to sight
 Of all the summer magic—right
 To where himself had surely spread
 Some pleasant snare for my delight.
And now, in an eternal sphere,
 Beneath one flooding look of his—
 Wherein, all beautiful and dear,
 That endless melting gold that is
 His love, with flawless memories
 Grows ever richer and more clear—
 My life seems held, as some faint star
 Beneath its sun: and through the far
 Celestial distances for miles,
 To where vast mirage futures are,
 I trace the gilding of his smiles.{39}
And, in the long enthralling dream,
 That, ever—through each purer zone
 Of love translating me—doth seem
 To bring my spirit near his own,
 I hear the veiled angelic tone
 Of many voices; as I deem,
 Assuring me of something sweet,
 And strange, and wondrous, and intense;
 Which thing they evermore repeat
 In fair half parables, from whence
 I draw a vague all-blissful sense.
For, one by one, e’en as I rise,
 And feel the pure Ethereal
 Refining all before my eyes:
 Whole beauteous worlds material
 Are seen to enter gradual
 The great transparent paradise
 Of this my dream; and, all revealed,
 To break upon me more and more
 Their inward singing souls, and yield
 A wondrous secret half concealed
 In all their loveliness before.{40}
And so, when, through unmeasured days,
 The far effulgence of the sea
 Is holding me in long amaze,
 And stealing with strange ecstasy
 My heart all opened silently;—
 There reach me, from among the sprays,
 Ineffable faint words that sing
 Within me,—how, for me alone,
 One who is lover—who is King,
 Hath dropt, as ’twere a precious stone,
 That sea—a symbol of his throne.
And now, indeed, some precious time
 It hath,—all inexpressible!
 All rapture!—yea, through many a rhyme
 Of wordless speech made fairly well,
 And beauteous worlds’ whole visible
 Unbosomings of love sublime—
 It hath some blessèd while become
 Familiar, how all things take part
 For him to whose love I am come,
 And in their ways—not weak nor dumb—
 Are ever calling on my heart.{41}
And, through the long charmed solitude
 Of throbbing moments, whose strong link
 Is one delicious hope pursued
 From trance to trance, the while I think
 And know myself upon the brink
 Of His eternal kiss,—endued
 With part of him, the very wind
 Hath power to ravish me in sips
 Or long mad wooings that unbind
 My hair,—wherein I truly find
 The magic of his unseen lips.
And, so almighty is the thrill
 I feel at many a faintest breath
 Or stir of sound—as ’twere a rill
 Of joy traversing me, or death
 Dissolving all that hindereth
 My thought from power to fulfil
 Some new embodiment of bliss,—
 I do consume with the immense
 Delight as of some secret kiss,
 And am become like one whose sense
 Is used with raptures too intense!{42}
O like some soft insidious breath,
 Whose first invasion winneth quite
 To all its madness or its death
 The heart, resisting not the might
 And poison of its new delight,—
 E’en so is this that entereth
 In whispers, or through subtly wrought
 Enchantment snaring every thought;
 Yea, by the whole mysterious pore
 Of life,—this joy surpassing aught
 That heart of man hath known before.
And, though, indeed, a hapless end
 Of damning ruin were but sure,
 Yet could I none of me defend
 From such a sweet and perfect lure;
 But must, as long as they endure,
 To all these sorceries still lend
 My heart; believing how I stand
 Nigh some unearthly bliss that lies
 Dissembled all before my eyes;—
 Do I not see a radiant Hand
 Transmuting earth, and air, and skies?{43}
—And is not the great language mute
 The stars’ deep looks are wont to melt
 Upon my soul, the very suit
 Of this unearthly wooer—felt
 So clearly pleading—I have knelt
 Full oft, most dreading to pollute
 The holy rapture with a sigh?
 And doth not every accent nigh
 Consume each Past to a thin shred;
 While endless visions glorify
 My sight, and haloes touch my head?
Yea, mystic consummation! yea,
 O Wondrous suitor,—whosoe’er
 Thou art; that in such mighty way,
 In distant realms, athwart the air
 And lands and seas, with all things fair,
 Hast wooed me even till this day;—
 It seems thou drawest near to me;
 Or I, indeed, so nigh to thee,
 I catch rare breaths of a delight
 From thy most glorious country, see
 Its distant glow upon some height.{44}
At times there is vouchsafed me, e’en
 Some sign that certainly foretells
 Of thee at hand: so I have seen—
 Caught by no earthly clash of bells—
 A gleam of silver citadels;
 Distant, and radiant with such sheen
 As only on high virgin snows,
 Or from the diamond one knows;
 Displayed a moment, without shroud,
 Eclipsing all the night’s fair shows
 From some dim pinnacle of cloud:
Or, through a calm hushed interval
 Of most charmed thinking, there hath passed,
 And with no rumour or footfall,
 A troop of blonde ones who surpassed
 All tales of loveliness amassed
 In my child’s dreamland; costumed all
 As for a bridal; who did shine
 With such a splendour on each face,
 And light upon the garments fine,
 I knew them surely of a race
 That dwells in that fair realm of thine.{45}
O thou my Destiny! O thou
 My own—my very Love—my Lord!
 Whom from the first day until now
 My heart, divining, hath adored
 So perfectly it hath abhorred
 The tie of each frail human vow—
 O I would whisper in thine ear—
 Yea, may I not, once, in the clear
 Pure night, when, only, silver shod
 The angels walk?—thy name, I fear
 And love, and tremble saying—GOD!
[Image unavailable.]

{46}

A WHISPER FROM THE GRAVE.

MY life points with a radiant hand,
 Along a golden ray of sun
 That lights some distant promised land,
 A fair way for my feet to run:
 My Death stands heavily in gloom,
 And digs a soft bed in the tomb
 Where I may sleep when all is done.
The flowers take hold upon my feet;
 Fair fingers beckon me along;
 I find Life’s promises so sweet
 Each thought within me turns to song:
 But Death stands digging for me—lest
 Some day I need a little rest,
 And come to think the way too long.{47}
O seems there not beneath each rose
 A face?—the blush comes burning through;
 And eyes my heart already knows
 Are filling themselves from the blue,
 Above the world; and One, whose hair
 Holds all my sun, is coming, fair,
 And must bring heaven if all be true:
And now I have face, hair, and eyes;
 And lo, the Woman that these make
 Is more than flower, and sun, and skies!
 Her slender fingers seem to take
 My whole fair life, as ’twere a bowl,
 Wherein she pours me forth her soul,
 And bids me drink it for her sake.
Methinks the world becomes an isle;
 And there—immortal, as it seems—
 I gaze upon her face, whose smile
 Flows round the world in golden streams:
 Ah, Death is digging for me deep,
 Lest some day I should need to sleep
 And solace me with other dreams!{48}
But now I feel as though a kiss
 Of hers should ever give me birth
 In some new heaven of life-long bliss;
 And heedlessly, athwart my mirth,
 I see Death digging day by day
 A grave; and, very far away,
 I hear the falling of the earth.
Ho there, if thou wilt wait for me
 Thou Death!—I say—keep in thy shade;
 Crouch down behind the willow tree,
 Lest thou shouldst make my love afraid;
 If thou hast aught with me, pale friend,
 Some flitting leaf its sigh shall lend
 To tell me when the grave is made!
And lo, e’en while I now rejoice,
 Encircled by my love’s fair arm,
 There cometh up to me a voice,
 Yea, through the fragrance and the charm;
 Quite like some sigh the forest heaves
 Quite soft—a murmur of dead leaves,
 And not a voice that bodeth harm:{49}
O lover, fear not—have thou joy;
 For life and love are in thy hands:
 I seek in no wise to destroy
 The peace thou hast, nor make the sands
 Run quicker through thy pleasant span;
 Blest art thou above many a man,
 And fair is She who with thee stands:
I only keep for thee out here—
 O far away, as thou hast said,
 Among the willow trees—a clear
 Soft space for slumber, and a bed;
 That after all, if life be vain,
 And love turn at the last to pain,
 Thou mayst have ease when thou art dead.
O grieve not: back to thy love’s lips
 Let her embrace thee more and more,
 Consume that sweet of hers in sips:
 I only wait till it is o’er;
 For fear thou’lt weary of her kiss,
 And come to need a bed like this
 Where none shall kiss thee evermore.{50}
Believe each pleasant muttered vow
 She makes to thee, and see with ease
 Each promised heaven before thee now;
 I only think, if one of these
 Should fail thee—O thou wouldst need then
 To come away right far from men,
 And weep beneath the willow trees.
And, therefore, have I made this place,
 Where thou shouldst come on that hard day,
 Full of a sad and weary grace;
 For here the drear wind hath its way
 With grass, and flowers, and withered tree—
 As sorrow shall that day with thee,
 If it should happen as I say.
And, therefore, have I kept the ground,
 As ’twere quite holy, year by year;
 The great wind lowers to a sound
 Of sighing as it passes near;
 And seldom doth a man intrude
 Upon the hallowed solitude,
 And never but to shed a tear.{51}
So, if it be thou come, alas,
 For sake of sorrow long and deep,
 I—Death, the flowers, and leaves, and grass—
 Thy grief-fellows, do mourn and weep:
 Or if thou come, with life’s whole need
 To rest a life-long space indeed,
 I too and they do guard thy sleep.
Moreover, sometimes, while all we
 Have kept the grave with heaviness,
 The weary place hath seemed to be
 Not barren of all blessedness:
 Spent sunbeams rest them here at noon,
 And grieving spirits from the moon
 Walk here at night in shining dress.
And there is gazing down on all
 Some great and love-like eye of blue,
 Wherefrom, at times, there seem to fall
 Strange looks that soothe the place quite through;
 As though indeed, if all love’s sweet
 And all life’s good should prove a cheat,
 They knew some heaven that might be true.{52}
—It is a tender voice like this
 That comes to me in accents fair:
 Well; and through much of love and bliss,
 It seemeth not a thing quite bare
 Of comfort, e’en to be possest
 Of that one spot of earth for rest,
 Among the willow trees down there.
 {54}{53}
[Image unavailable.]

{55}

BISCLAVARET.

Bisclaveret ad nun en Bretan,
 Garwall l’apelent li Norman.
 Jadis le poët-hum oïr,
 E souvent suleit avenir,
 Humes plusurs Garwall devindrent
 E es boscages meisun tindrent.
 Marie de France: Lais.
IN either mood, to bless or curse,
 God bringeth forth the breath of man;
 No angel sire, no woman nurse
 Shall change the work that God began:
One spirit shall be like a star,
 He shall delight to honour one;
 Another spirit he shall mar;
 None shall undo what God hath done.{56}
The weaker holier season wanes;
 Night comes with darkness and with sins;
 And, in all forests, hills, and plains,
 A keener, fiercer life begins.
And, sitting by the low hearth fires,
 I start and shiver fearfully;
 For thoughts all strange and new desires
 Of distant things take hold on me;
And many a feint of touch or sound
 Assails me, and my senses leap
 As in pursuit of false things found
 And lost in some dim path of sleep.
But, momently, there seems restored
 A triple strength of life and pain;
 I thrill, as though a wine were poured
 Upon the pore of every vein:
I burn—as though keen wine were shed
 On all the sunken flames of sense—
 Yea, till the red flame grows more red,
 And all the burning more intense,{57}
And, sloughing weaker lives grown wan
 With needs of sleep and weariness,
 I quit the hallowed haunts of man
 And seek the mighty wilderness.
—Now over intervening waste
 Of lowland drear, and barren wold,
 I scour, and ne’er assuage my haste,
 Inflamed with yearnings manifold;
Drinking a distant sound that seems
 To come around me like a flood;
 While all the track of moonlight gleams
 Before me like a streak of blood;
And bitter stifling scents are past
 A-dying on the night behind,
 And sudden piercing stings are cast
 Against me in the tainted wind.
And lo, afar, the gradual stir,
 And rising of the stray wild leaves;
 The swaying pine, and shivering fir,
 And windy sound that moans and heaves{58}
In first fits, till with utter throes
 The whole wild forest lolls about:
 And all the fiercer clamour grows,
 And all the moan becomes a shout;
And mountains near and mountains far
 Breathe freely: and the mingled roar
 Is as of floods beneath some star
 Of storms, when shore cries unto shore.
But soon, from every hidden lair
 Beyond the forest tracts, in thick
 Wild coverts, or in deserts bare,
 Behold They come—renewed and quick—
The splendid fearful herds that stray
 By midnight, when tempestuous moons
 Light them to many a shadowy prey,
 And earth beneath the thunder swoons.
—O who at any time hath seen
 Sight all so fearful and so fair,
 Unstricken at his heart with keen
 Whole envy in that hour to share{59}
Their unknown curse and all the strength
 Of the wild thirsts and lusts they know,
 The sharp joys sating them at length,
 The new and greater lusts that grow?
But who of mortals shall rehearse
 How fair and dreadfully they stand,
 Each marked with an eternal curse,
 Alien from every kin and land?
—Along the bright and blasted heights
 Loudly their cloven footsteps ring!
 Full on their fronts the lightning smites,
 And falls like some dazed baffled thing.
Now through the mountain clouds they break,
 With many a crest high-antlered, reared
 Athwart the storm: now they outshake
 Fierce locks or manes, glossy and weird,
That sweep with sharp perpetual sound
 The arid heights where the snows drift,
 And drag the slain pines to the ground,
 And all into the whirlwind lift{60}
The heavy sinking slopes of shade
 From hidden hills of monstrous girth,
 Till new unearthly lights have flayed
 The draping darkness from the earth.
Henceforth what hiding-place shall hide
 All hallowed spirits that in form
 Of mortal stand beneath the wide
 And wandering pale eye of the storm?
The beadsman in his lonely cell
 Hath cast one boding timorous look
 Toward the heights; then loud and well,
 —Kneeling before the open book—
All night he prayeth in one breath,
 Nor spareth now his sins to own:
 And through his prayer he shuddereth
 To hear how loud the forests groan.
For all abroad the lightnings reign,
 And rally, with their lurid spell,
 The multitudinous campaign
 Of hosts not yet made fast in hell:{61}
And us indeed no common arm,
 Nor magic of the dark may smite,
 But, through all elements of harm,
 Across the strange fields of the night—
Enrolled with the whole giant host
 Of shadowy, cloud-outstripping things
 Whose vengeful spells are uppermost,
 And convoyed by unmeasured wings,
We foil the thin dust of fatigue
 With bright-shod phantom feet that dare
 All pathless places and the league
 Of the light shifting soils of air;
And loud, mid fearful echoings,
 Our throats, aroused with hell’s own thirst,
 Outbay the eternal trumpetings;
 The while, all impious and accurst,
Revealed and perfected at length
 In whole and dire transfigurement,
 With miracle of growing strength
 We win upon a keen warm scent.{62}
Before us each cloud fastness breaks;
 And o’er slant inward wastes of light,
 And past the moving mirage lakes,
 And on within the Lord’s own sight—
We hunt the chosen of the Lord;
 And cease not, in wild course elate,
 Until we see the flaming sword
 And Gabriel before His gate!
O many a fair and noble prey
 Falls bitterly beneath our chase;
 And no man till the judgment day,
 Hath power to give these burial place;
But down in many a stricken home
 About the world, for these they mourn;
 And seek them yet through Christendom
 In all the lands where they were born.
And oft, when Hell’s dread prevalence
 Is past, and once more to the earth
 In chains of narrowed human sense
 We turn,—around our place of birth,{63}
We hear the new and piercing wail;
 And, through the haunted day’s long glare,
 In fearful lassitudes turn pale
 With thought of all the curse we bear.
But, for long seasons of the moon,
 When the whole giant earth, stretched low,
 Seems straightening in a silent swoon
 Beneath the close grip of the snow,
We well nigh cheat the hideous spells
 That force our souls resistless back,
 With languorous torments worse than hell’s
 To the frail body’s fleshly rack:
And with our brotherhood the storms,
 Whose mighty revelry unchains
 The avalanches, and deforms
 The ancient mountains and the plains,—
We hold high orgies of the things,
 Strange and accursèd of all flesh,
 Whereto the quick sense ever brings
 The sharp forbidden thrill afresh.{64}
And far away, among our kin,
 Already they account our place
 With all the slain ones, and begin
 The Masses for our soul’s full grace.
 {65}

THOUGHT.

THERE is no place at all by night or day,
 Where I—who am of that hard tyrant Thought
 The slave—can find security in aught,
 But He, almighty, reaching me, doth lay
 His hand upon me there, so rough a way
 Assaulting me,—however I am caught,
 Walking or standing still—that for support
 I sometimes lean on anything I may:
 Then when he hath me, ease is none from him
 Till he do out his strength with me; cold sweat
 Comes o’er my body and on every limb;
 My arm falls weak as from a fierce embrace;
 And, ere he leaveth me, he will have set
 A great eternal mark upon my face.
 {66}

THE STORY OF THE KING.

THIS is the story of the King:
 Was he not great in everything?
He built him dwelling-places three:
 In one of them his Youth should be;
 To make it fair for many a feast
 He conquered the whole East;
 He brought delight from every land,
 And gold from many a river’s strand,
 And all things precious he could find
 In Perse, or utmost Ind.{67}
There, brazen guarded were the doors;
 And o’er the many painted floors
 The captive women came and went;
 Or, with bright ornament,
 Sat in the pillared places gay,
 And feasted with him every day,
 And fed him with their rosy kiss:
 O there he had all bliss!
Then afterward, when he did hear
 There was none like him anywhere,
 He would behold the sight so sweet
 Of all men at his feet:
 And, since he heard that certainly
 Not like a man was he to die,
 For all his lust that palace vast
 It seemed too small at last.
Therefore, another house he made,
 So wide that it might hold arrayed
 The thousands peers of his domain
 And last his godlike reign;{68}
 And here he was a goodly span,
 While before him came every man
 To kneel and worship in his sight:
 O there he had all might!
And yet, most surely, it befel
 He tired of this house as well:
 Was it too mighty after all?
 Or still perhaps too small?
 Strangely in all men’s wonderment,
 He left it for a tenement
 He had all builded in one year:
 Now he is dwelling there.
He took full little of his gold;
 And of his pleasures manifold
 He had but a small heed, they say,
 That day he went away:
 —O, the new dwelling he hath found
 Is but a man’s grave in the ground,
 And taketh up but one man’s space
 In the burial place.{69}
And now, indeed, that he is dead,
 The nations have they no more dread?
 Lo, is not this the King they swore
 To worship evermore?
 Will no one Love of his come near
 And kiss him where he lieth there,
 And warm his freezing lips again?
 —Is this then all his reign?
He must have longed ere this to rise
 And be again in all men’s eyes;
 For the place where he dwelleth now
 Lonely it is I trow:
 But, just to stand in his own hall
 And feel the warmth there once for all—
 O would he not give crowns of gold?
 For the place is so cold!
But over him a tomb doth stand,
 The costliest in all the land;
 And of the glory that he bore
 It telleth evermore.{70}—
 So these three dwellings he hath had,
 And mighty he hath been and glad,
 O hath he not been sad as well?
 Perhaps—but who can tell?
This is the story of the King:
 Was he not great in everything?
 {71}

PALM FLOWERS.

IN a land of the sun’s blessing,
 Where the passion-flower grows,
 My heart keeps all worth possessing;
 And the way there no man knows.
—Unknown wonder of new beauty!
 There my Love lives all for me;
 To love me is her whole duty,
 Just as I would have it be.
All the perfumes and perfections
 Of that clime have met with grace
 In her body, and complexions
 Of its flowers are on her face.{72}
All soft tints of flowers most vernal,
 Tints that make each other fade:
 In her eyes they are eternal,
 Set in some mysterious shade.
Full of dreams are the abysses
 Of the night beneath her hair;
 But an open dawn of kisses
 Is her mouth: O she is fair.
And she has so sweet a fashion
 With her languid loving eyes,
 That she stirs my soul with passion,
 And renews my breath with sighs.
Now she twines her hair in tresses
 With some long red lustrous vine;
 Now she weaves strange glossy dresses
 From the leafy fabrics fine:
And upon her neck there mingle
 Corals and quaint serpent charms,
 And bright beaded sea-shells jingle
 Set in circlets round her arms.{73}
There—in solitudes sweet smelling,
 Where the mighty Banyan stands,
 I and she have found a dwelling
 Shadowed by its giant hands:
All around our banyan bowers
 Shine the reddening palm-tree ranks,
 And the wild rare forest flowers
 Crowded on high purple banks.
Through the long enchanted weather
 —Ere the swollen fruits yet fall,
 While red love-birds sit together
 In thick green, and voices call
From the hidden forest places,
 And are answered with strange shout
 By the folk whose myriad faces
 All day long are peeping out
From shy loopholes all above us
 In the leafy hollows green,
 —While all creatures seem to love us,
 And the lofty boughs are seen{74}
Gilded and for ever haunted
 By the far ethereal smiles—
 Through the long bright time enchanted,
 In those solitudes for miles,
I and She—at heart possessing
 Rhapsodies of tender thought—
 Wander, till our thoughts too pressing
 Into new sweet words are wrought.
And at length, with full hearts sinking
 Back to silence and the maze
 Of immeasurable thinking,
 In those inward forest ways,
We recline on mossy couches,
 Vanquished by mysterious calms,
 All beneath the soothing touches
 Of the feather-leaved fan-palms.
Strangely, with a mighty hushing,
 Falls the sudden hour of noon;
 When the flowers droop with blushing,
 And a deep miraculous swoon{75}
Seems subduing the whole forest;
 Or some distant joyous rite
 Draws away each bright-hued chorist:
 Then we yield with long delight
Each to each, our souls deep thirsting;
 And no sound at all is nigh,
 Save from time to time the bursting
 Of some fire-fed fruit on high.
Then with sudden overshrouding
 Of impenetrable wings,
 Comes the darkness and the crowding
 Mysteries of the unseen things.
O how happy are we lovers
 In weak wanderings hand in hand!—
 Whom the immense palm forest covers
 In that strange enchanted land;
Whom its thousand sights stupendous
 Hold in breathless charmed suspense;
 Whom its hidden sounds tremendous
 And its throbbing hues intense{76}
And the mystery of each glaring
 Flower o’erwhelm with wonder dim;—
 We, who see all things preparing
 Some Great Spirit’s world for him!
Under pomps and splendid glamour
 Of the night skies limitless;
 Through the weird and growing clamour
 Of the swaying wilderness;
Through each shock of sound that shivers
 The serene palms to their height,
 By white rolling tongues of rivers
 Launched with foam athwart the night;
Lost and safe amid such wonders,
 We prolong our human bliss;
 Drown the terrors of the thunders
 In the rapture of our kiss.
By some moon-haunted savanna,
 In thick scented mid-air bowers
 Draped about with some liana,
 O what passionate nights are ours!{77}
O’er our heads the squadron dances
 Of the fire-fly wheel and poise;
 And dim phantoms charm our trances,
 And link’d dreams prolong our joys—
Till around us creeps the early
 Sweet discordance of the dawn,
 And the moonlight pales, and pearly
 Haloes settle round the morn;
And from remnants of the hoary
 Mists, where now the sunshine glows,
 Starts at length in crimson glory
 Some bright flock of flamingoes.
 ———
 O that land where the suns linger
 And the passion-flowers grow
 Is the land for me the Singer:
 There I made me, years ago,
Many a golden habitation,
 Full of things most fair to see;
 And the fond imagination
 Of my heart dwells there with me.{78}
Now, farewell, all shameful sorrow!
 Farewell, troublous world of men!
 I shall meet you on some morrow,
 But forget you quite till then.
 {79}

{80} 

{81} 

AN EPIC OF WOMEN.

I.

CREATION.

Nam non in hac ærumnosa miseriarum valle, in qua ad laborem ceteri mortales nascimur, producta est.

Boccaccio: De claris mulieribus.

AND God said, “Let us make a thing most fair,—
 A Woman with gold hair, and eyes all blue:”
 He took from the sun gold and made her hair,
 And for her eyes He took His heaven’s own hue.{82}
He sought in every precious place and store,
 And gathered all sweet essences that are
 In all the bodies: so He made one more
 Her body, the most beautiful by far.
Pure coral with pure pearl engendering,
 Bore Her the fairest flower of the sea;
 And for the wonder of that new-made thing
 God ceaséd then, and nothing more made He.
So the beginning of her was this way:
 Full of sea savours, beautiful and good,
 Made of sun, sky, and sea,—more fair than they—
 On the green margin of the sea she stood.
The coral colour lasted in her veins,
 Made her lips rosy like a sea-shell’s rims;
 The purple stained her cheeks with splendid stains,
 And the pearl’s colour clung upon her limbs.
She took her golden hair between her hands;
 The faded gold and amber of the seas
 Dropped from it in a shower upon the sands;
 The crispéd hair enwrapped her like a fleece;{83}
And through the threads of it the sun lost gold,
 And fell all pale upon her throat and breast
 With play of lights and tracings manifold:
 But the whole heaven shone full upon the rest.
Her curvéd shapes of shoulder and of limb,
 Wrought fairly round or dwindling delicate,
 Were carven in some substance made to dim
 With whiteness all things carven or create.
And every sort of fairness that was yet
 In work of man or God was perfected
 Upon that work her bosom, where were set
 In snows two wondrous jewelries of red.
The sun and sea made haloes of a light
 Most soft and glimmering, and wreathed her close
 Round all her wondrous shapes, and kept her bright
 In a fair mystery of pearl and rose.
The waves fell fawning all about her there
 Down to her ancles; then, with kissing sweet,
 Slackened and waned away in love and fear
 From the bright presence of her new-formed feet.{84}
The green-gray mists were gathering away
 In distant hollows underneath the sun
 Behind the round sea; and upon that day
 The work of all the world-making was done.
The world beheld, and hailed her, form and face;
 The ocean spray, the sunlight, the pure blue
 Of heaven beheld and wondered at her grace;
 And God looked out of heaven and wondered too.
And ere a man could see her with desire,
 Himself looked on her so, and loved her first,
 And came upon her in a mist, like fire,
 And of her beauty quenched his god-like thirst.
He touched her wholly with his naked soul,
 At once sufficing all the new-made sense
 For ever: so the Giver Himself stole
 The gift, and left indeed no recompense.
All lavishly at first He did entreat
 His leman; yea, the world of things create
 He rolled like any jewel at her feet,
 And of her changeful whim He made a fate.{85}
He feasted her with ease and idle food
 Of gods, and taught her lusts to fill the whole
 Of life; withal He gave her nothing good,
 And left her as He made her—without soul.
And lo, when he had held her for a season
 In His own pleasure-palaces above,
 He gave her unto man; this is the reason
 She is so fair to see, so false to love.
 {86}

II.

THE WIFE OF HEPHÆSTUS.

HE was not fair to look on as a god—
 Her husband whom God gave her; for his face,
 Not as the golden face of Phœbus glowed;
 Nor in his body was there light or grace;
But he was rugged-seeming; all his brows
 Were changed and smeared with the great human toil;
 His limbs all gnarled and knotted as the boughs
 And limbs of mighty oaks are: many a soil{87}
Was on his skin, coarse-coloured as a bark;
 Yea, he was shorn of beauty from the birth;
 But strong, and of a mighty soul to work
 With Fate and all the iron of the earth.
Thereto he had a heart even to love
 That woman whom God gave him; and his part
 Of fate had been quite blest—ay, sweet enough,
 Having her beautiful and whole of heart.
But when he knew she was quite false and vain,
 He slew her not because she was so fair;
 Yea, spite of all the rest, had rather slain
 Himself, than lost the looking on her hair.
For then the labouring days had seemed to last
 Longer than ever: all had been too sore,
 Not to be borne as erst,—the world so vast—
 Vaster than ever it had seemed before!
But, when he knew it, heavily the ire—
 Darkly the sorrow of it wrought on him;
 The hollows of his eyes were filled with fire;
 The fruitless sweat was dried upon each limb:{88}
Raging he went, and full of lust to kill:
 O he was fillèd with a great despair;
 But added labour unto labour still,
 And slew her not because she was so fair.
In all of life was nothing that atoned
 For that hard fate: in hearing of all heaven,
 About the iron mountain world he groaned;
 But no return of pitying was given.
The iron echoes in a mighty blast
 Flung up his voice toward the sweet abodes
 In the blue heaven: his pain was known at last
 In every palace of the painless gods.
He had no part but wholly to upbraid
 Them,—meters of his evil measured fate,
 Who first made fair, then spoiled the thing they made,
 And mingled all their gifts with love and hate.
Yet he was moved at length some way to win
 Vengeance, and all at once, on her and Him—
 That god with whom she rather chose to sin
 Than with a man to love: when earth was dim{89}—
Full of unearthly shadows in the night,
 He came upon those lovers unaware;
 And fairly caught them locked in their delight:
 Limb over limb he bound them in a snare.
For first with all his craft he did invent
 A curious toil of meshes, strongly set
 With supple fibrous thread and branches bent:
 Full tightly they were bounden in that net.
Yet, not until with many a growing gray
 And change that wrought among the shifting shade,
 Day—softly changing all things—warned away
 Their loves and sins, knew they the fate they had.
And when they were but striving to undo
 Delicious bonds of love that needs no chain,
 Then were they held:—though love had let them go
 A stronger bond than love’s bade them remain.
And, spite of many a throe of sudden strength,
 And all their tortuous striving to be free;
 Yea, they were held:—till the sun came at length,
 And all the gods came out of heaven to see.{90}
For there they saw and knew Him from afar,
 Vanquished and in no honourable plight,
 No less a god than Ares god of war,
 Ares the red and royal in all fight;
But now quite shorn indeed of arms and fame,
 Spoiled of his helm and harness of each limb;
 Yea, quite inglorious and brought to shame
 For a mere love, with such rude stratagem!
The golden peals of god-like laughter brake
 And rang down beautiful beneath the sun;
 For well they saw, indeed, for whose fair sake
 Their brother was so fallen and undone.
Phœbus himself, with many a secret pride
 Of love—unshamed in any of his loves—
 Leant on his golden bow, and laughed aside,
 And made some fair light saying that still moves
From lips to lips at all the mirthful feasts
 Of them above who have eternal rights
 To joys and loves, and wine that never wastes,
 And life never to end their days or nights.{91}
And well they knew Hephæstus where, hard by,
 He stood, inglorious, daring all their eyes:
 The gods all beautiful—they laughed on high
 At him, his woes and all his blasphemies.
But surely never was there such a play
 For mirth of idle gods!—Nor such a shame
 Ever become of love, as on that day
 In sight of all the gods their love became!
Who were betrayed so,—in whatever sin
 Lips could with lips, face could with face commit,
 Yea lips or limbs of lovers could begin,—
 That they were bound and kept quite close in it:
For vainly in the meshes of that snare
 They strove, with shuddering limbs and starting cries,
 Entangled more with many a mesh of hair
 Caught in the manifold intricacies!
So She was found indeed most beautiful,
 Yet full of shame and false in all she was;
 So before gods who make and gods who rule,
 And him her husband, she was found, alas!{92}
Yet, after all, Hephæstus—he, her lord—
 For all that sin, her death he would not have;
 But, for his love’s sake and great Phœbus’ word,
 Loosed her, and made her free, and all forgave.
 {93}

III.

CLEOPATRA.

1.

Cleopatra Egyptia femina fuit, totius orbis fabula.

SHE made a feast for great Marc Antony:
 Her galley was arrayed in gold and light;
 That evening, in the purple sea and sky,
 It shone green-golden like a chrysolite.
She was reclined upon a Tyrian couch
 Of crimson wools: out of her loosened vest
 Set on one shoulder with a serpent brooch
 Fell one arm white and half her foamy breast.{94}
And, with the breath of many a fanning plume,
 That wonder of her hair that was like wine—
 Of mingled fires and purples that consume,
 Moved all its mystery of threads most fine—
Moved like some threaded instrument that thrills,
 Played on with unseen kisses in the air
 Weaving a music from it, working spells
 We feel and know not of—so moved her hair:
And under saffron canopies all bright
 With clash of lights, e’en to the amber prow,
 Crept like enchantments subtle passing sight,
 Fragrance and siren music soft and slow.
Amid the thousand viands of the feast,
 And Nile fruits piled in panniers, where they vied
 With palm-tree dates and melons of the East,
 She waited for Marc Antony and sighed.
—Where tarries he?—What gift doth he invent
 For costly greeting?—How with look or smile,
 Out of love treasures not already spent
 Prepares he now her fondness to beguile?{95}
—But lo, he came between the whiles she sighed;
 Scarce the wave murmurs troubling,—lo, most dear,
 His galley, with the oars all softly plied,
 Warned her with music distant, and drew near.
And on that night—for present,—he did bring
 A pearl; and gave it her with kissing sweet:
 “Would half the Roman empires were this thing,”
 He said, “that I might lay them at your feet.”
Fairly then moved the magic all arrayed
 About that fragrant feast; in every part
 The soft Egyptian spells did lend their aid
 To work some strange enamouring of the heart.
It was her whim to show him on that night
 All she was queen of; like a perfect dream,
 Wherein there should be gathered in one sight
 The gold of many lives, as it might seem
Spent and lived through at once,—so she made pass
 A splendid pageantry of all her East
 Beauteous and captive,—so she did amass
 The richness of each land in that one feast.{96}
More jewelries than one could name or know,
 Set in a thousand trinkets or in crowns
 Each one a sovereignty, in glittering row
 Numbered the suppliant lands and all her thrones.
And fairest handmaidens in gracious rank,
 Their captive arms enchained with links of gold,
 Knelt and poured forth the purple wine she drank,
 Or served her there in postures manifold.
And beaded women of a yellow Ind
 Stood at the couch, with bended hand to ply
 Great silver feathered fans wherein the wind
 Gat all the choicest fumes of Araby.
There in the midst, of shape uncouth and hard,
 Juggled his arts some Ethiopian churl;
 Changing fierce natures of the spotted pard
 Or serpents of the Nile that creep and curl.
And many a minstrelsy of voice and string,
 Twining sweet sounds like tendrils delicate,
 Seemed to ensnare the moments—seemed to cling
 Upon their pleasure all interminate.{97}
But now at length she made them serve her wine
 In the most precious goblet,—wine that shed
 Great fragrance, in a goblet fair with shine
 Of jewels: so they poured the wine out red:
And lo, to mark that more than any feast
 And honour Antony,—or for mere pride
 To do so proud a vanity, at least
 The proudest, vainest, woman ever tried—
She took the unmatched pearl, and, taking, laughed;
 And when they served her now that wine of worth
 She cast it gleaming in; then with the draught
 Mingling she drank it in their midst with mirth.
And all that while upon the ocean high,
 The golden galley, heavy in its light,
 Ruled the hoarse sea-sounds with its revelry—
 Changing afar the purples of the night!
 {98}

IV.

CLEOPATRA.

2.

WHEN Cleopatra saw ’twas time to yield
 Even that love, to smite nor be afraid,
 Since love shared loss,—yea, when the thing was sealed,
 And all the trust of Antony betrayed;
And when, before his eyes and in full sight
 Of the still striving ships, that gleaming line
 Of galleys decked for no rude field of fight
 Fled fair and unashamed in the sunshine;{99}
Then, surely, he fell down as one but blind
 Through sudden fallen darkness, even to grope
 If haply some least broken he might find
 Of all the broken ends of life and hope.
Well, out of all his fates now was there none
 But Death, the utter end; and for no sake,
 Save for some last love-look beneath the sun,
 Had he delayed that end of all to take!
But now, because love—armed indeed of him
 With utter rule of all his destinies—
 Had chosen even to slay him for a whim,
 And the mere remnant was none else than his,
And since, for sure, the sorest way of death
 Were but to die not falling at the feet
 Of that one woman who with look or breath
 Could change it if she would and make it sweet;
He chose before all fame he might have caught
 With death in foremost fighting, now to cling
 Upon her steps who at this last had wrought
 His death-wound shameful with a lover’s sting.{100}
O how the memories seemed to throb and start
 Welling from out the unstanched past!—seemed nigh
 Already opening there in all his heart
 The canker wound wherewith he was to die!
And so, though she were quite estranged, and now
 He held no costlier gift to win her with;
 Yet, following, he would find her, and, somehow,
 Lay in her hands that latest gift—his death:
For now all piteously his heart relied
 On a mere hope of love dwindled to this—
 To fall some fair waste moment at her side
 And feel perhaps a tear or even a kiss;
Since surely, in some waste of day or night,
 He thought, the face of love out of the Past,
 With look of his, should rise up in her sight
 And make some kind of pleading at the last.
Therefore, when all the heavy heated day
 Of rowing on the waters was nigh done,
 And like a track of sweetness past away
 Waned on the wave the last track of the sun,{101}
At length with scarce a sound or warning cry,
 Save of the rowers ceasing from the oar,
 He reached her side and prayed her pass not by;
 Yea, prayed her bear him yet a little more.
But truly this well-nigh availed to move
 Her—Cleopatra—with remorse for all:
 She knew not of such pardon, e’en from love;
 Nor craved to look upon his utter fall.
And, first, when it was told her how he came
 And sought to reach the galley where she was,
 She faltered for a while with fear and shame,
 And bade them scarce give way to let him pass:
Only at length he showed them the plain sight
 How he was broken and so soon to die;
 Then they fell back all grieved and gave him right,
 And scarce believed the man was Antony.
And yet he could not speak; but lay forlorn
 Crouched up about the gilded quivering prow,
 Three days, from morn to night and night to morn,
 As one whom a sore burden boweth low.{102}
Harshly the sea-sounds taunted him at will,
 And seemed in mocking choruses combined;
 Each bitter inward thought was uttered shrill
 On shrieking tongues of many a thwart-blown wind.
And where with onward beak the galley clave
 Full many a silver mouth in the blue mere,
 The turned up whitened lips of every wave
 Rang out a bitter cadence on his ear.
But first awhile his thoughts were taking leave
 Sadly of Rome, and all the pageant days;
 For now at length he saw and would believe
 The end of triumphs and the end of praise.
And now he did survey, apart from wrath,
 The various fates of men both great and small;
 How little reign or glory any hath;
 And how one end comes quickly upon all;
And thought if love had been—had been quite love,
 One little thing in each man’s life for bliss,
 Then had the grief been paid with sweet enough
 And a lost crown forgotten for a kiss;{103}
While now, as though men played with fall and rise
 Of mere base monies of the common mart,
 To-day they strove for love as for a prize,
 To-morrow compassed fame with every art;
And one who should but half trust any face
 Of seeming fame, or follow love too well,
 To set his heart a moment in love’s place—
 That man should fall,—yea, even as he fell.
And he thought how, since the first fate began,
 The lot of every one hath been so cast:
 One woman bears and brings him up a man,
 Another woman slays him at the last;
While all so hardly leaguered are men’s ways
 And love so sharp a snare for them contrives,
 The fleeting span of one fair woman’s days
 Sufficeth many heroes’ loves and lives!
—But now, when he had thought all this and more,
 He lay there and yet moved not from his place;
 The love of her was in him like a sore,
 And he lived waiting to behold her face.{104}
At length they drew nigh to a land by name
 Tænarus; and the third day, at its eve,
 In guise of one who mourneth the Queen came
 Weeping, and prayed him rise up and forgive.
 {105}

V.

THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS.

MY heart is heavy for each goodly man
 Whom crownéd woman or sweet courtezan
 Hath slain or brought to greater shames than death.
 But now, O Daughter of Herodias!
 I weep for him, of whom the story saith,
 Thou didst procure his bitter fate:—Alas,
 He seems so fair!—May thy curse never pass!{106}
Where art thou writhing? Herod’s palace-floor
 Has fallen through: there shalt thou dance no more;
 And Herod is a worm now. In thy place,
 —Salome, Viper!—do thy coils yet keep
 That woman’s flesh they bore with such a grace?
 Have thine eyes still the love-lure hidden deep,
 The ornament of tears, they could not weep?
Thou wast quite perfect in the splendid guile
 Of woman’s beauty; thou hadst the whole smile
 That can dishonour heroes, and recal
 Fair saints prepared for heaven back to hell:
 And He, whose unlived glory thou mad’st fall
 All beautiful and spotless, at thy spell,
 Was great and fit for thee by whom he fell.
O, is it now sufficing sweet to thee—
 Through all the long uncounted years that see
 The undistinguished lost ones waste away—
 To twine thee, biting, on those locks that bleed,
 As bled they through thy fingers on that day?
 Or hast thou, all unhallowed, some fierce need
 Thy soul on his anointed grace to feed?{107}
Or hast thou, rather, for that serpent’s task
 Thou didst accomplish in thy woman-mask,
 Some perfect inconceivable reward
 Of serpent’s slimy pleasure?—all the thing
 Thou didst beseech thy master, who is Lord
 Of those accursèd hosts that creep and sting,
 To give thee for the spoil thou shouldest bring?
He was a goodly spoil for thee to win!
 —Men’s souls and lives were wholly dark with sin;
 And so God’s world was changed with wars and gold,
 No part of it was holy; save, maybe,
 The desert and the ocean as of old:—
 But such a spotless way of life had he,
 His soul was as the desert or the sea.
I think he had not heard of the far towns;
 Nor of the deeds of men, nor of kings’ crowns;
 Before the thought of God took hold of him,
 As he was sitting dreaming in the calm
 Of one first noon, upon the desert’s rim,
 Beneath the tall fair shadows of the palm,
 All overcome with some strange inward balm.{108}
But then, so wonderful and lovely seemed
 That thought, he straight became as though he dreamed
 A vast thing false and fair, which day and night
 Absorbed him in some rapture—very high
 Above the common swayings of delight
 And general yearnings, that quite occupy
 Men’s passions, and suffice them till they die:
Yea, soon as it had entered him—that thought
 Of God—he felt that he was being wrought
 All holy: more and more it filled his heart;
 And seemed, indeed, a spirit of pure flame
 Set burning in his soul’s most inward part.
 And from the Lord’s great wilderness there came
 A mighty voice calling on him by name.
He numbered not the changes of the year,
 The days, the nights, and he forgot all fear
 Of death: each day he thought there should have been
 A shining ladder set for him to climb
 Athwart some opening in the heavens, e’en
 To God’s eternity, and see, sublime—
 His face whose shadow passing fills all time.{109}
But he walked through the ancient wilderness.
 O, there the prints of feet were numberless
 And holy all about him! And quite plain
 He saw each spot an angel silvershod
 Had lit upon; where Jacob too had lain
 The place seemed fresh,—and, bright and lately trod,
 A long track showed where Enoch walked with God.
And often, while the sacred darkness trailed
 Along the mountains smitten and unveiled
 By rending lightnings,—over all the noise
 Of thunders and the earth that quaked and bowed
 From its foundations—he could hear the voice
 Of great Elias prophesying loud
 To Him whose face was covered by a cloud.
Already he was shown so perfectly
 The awful mystic grace and sanctity
 Of all the earth, there was no part his feet
 With sandal covering might dare to tread;
 Because that in it he was sure to meet
 The fair sword-bearing angels, or some dread
 Eternal prophet numbered with the dead.{110}
So he believed that he should purify
 His body, till the sin of it should die,
 And the unfailing spirit and great word
 Of One—who is too bright to be beheld,
 And in his speech too fearful to be heard
 By mortal man—should come down and be held
 In him as in those holy ones of eld.
And to believe in this was rapture more
 Than any that the thought of living bore
 To tempt him: so the pleasant days of youth
 Were but the days of striving and of prayer;
 And all the beauty of those days, forsooth,
 He counted as an evil or a snare,
 And would have left it in the desert there.
Ah, spite of all the scourges that had bit
 So fiercely his fair body, branding it
 With many a painful over-written vow
 Of perfect sanctity—what man shall say
 How often, weak with groanings, he would bow
 Before the angels of the place, and pray
 That all his body might consume away?{111}
For through whole bitter days it seemed in vain
 That all the mighty desert had no stain
 Of sin around him; that the burning breaths
 Went forth from the eternal One, and rolled
 For ever through it, filling it with deaths,
 And plagues, and fires; that he did behold
 The earthquakes and the wonders manifold:
It seemed in vain that all the place was bright
 Ineffably with that unfading light
 No man who worketh evil can abide;
 That he could see too with his open eyes
 Fair troops of deathless ones, and those that died
 In martyrdoms, or went up to the skies
 In fiery cars—walk there with no disguise;—
It seemed in vain that he was there alone
 With no man’s sin to tempt him but his own;—
 Since in his body he did bear about
 A seeming endless sin he could not quell
 With the most sharp coercement, nor cast out
 Through any might of prayer. O, who can tell—
 Save God—how often in despair he fell?{112}
 The very stones seemed purer far than he;
 And every naked rock and every tree
 Looked great and calm, composed in one long thought
 Of holiness; each bird and creeping thing
 Rejoiced in bearing some bright sign that taught
 The legend of an ancient minist’ring
 To some fair saint of old there sojourning.
Yea, all the dumb things and the creatures there
 Were grand, and some way sanctified; most fair
 The very lions stood, and had no shame
 Before the angels; and what time were poured
 The floods of the Lord’s anger forth, they came
 Quite nigh the lightnings of the Mount and roared
 Among the roaring thunders of the Lord:
Yet He—while in him day by day, divine,
 The clear inspirèd thought went on to shine,
 And heaven was opening every radiant door
 Upon his spirit—He, in that fair dress
 Of weak humanity his senses bore,
 Did feel scarce worthy to be there, and less
 Than any dweller in the wilderness.{113}
Wherefore his limbs were galled with many a stone;
 And often he had wrestled all alone
 With their fair beauty, conquering the pride
 And various pleasure of them with some quick
 And hard inflicted pain that might abide,—
 Assailing all the sense with constant prick
 Until the lust or pride fell faint and sick.
Natheless there grew and stayed upon his face
 The wonderful unconquerable grace
 Of a young man made beautiful with love;
 Because the thought of God was wholly spread
 Like love upon it; and still fair above
 All crownèd heads of kings remained his head
 Whereon the halo of the Lord was shed.
Ah, how long was it, since the first red rush
 Of that surpassing thought made his cheek blush
 With pleasure, as he sat—a tender child—
 And wondered at the desert, and the long
 Rough prickly paths that led out to the wild
 Where all the men of God, holy and strong,
 Had dwelt and purified themselves—how long?{114}—
Before he rose up from his knees one day,
 And felt that he was purified as they;
 That he had trodden out the sin at last,
 And that the light was filling him within?
 How many of the months and years had past
 Uncounted?—But the place he was born in
 No longer knew him: no man was his kin.
O then it was a most sweet, holy will
 That came upon him, making his soul thrill
 With joy indeed, and with a perfect trust,—
 For he soon thought of men and of the king
 All tempted in the world, with gold and lust,
 And women there, and every fatal thing,
 And none to save their souls from perishing—
And so he vowed that he would go forth straight
 From God there in the desert, with the great
 Unearthliness upon him, and adjure
 The nations of the whole world with his voice;
 Until they should resist each pleasant lure
 Of gold and woman, and make such a choice
 As his, that they might evermore rejoice.{115}
Thus beautiful and good was He, at length,
 Who came before King Herod in his strength,
 And shouted to him with a great command
 To purify himself, and put away
 That unclean woman set at his right hand;
 And after all to bow himself and pray,
 And be in terror of the Judgment Day!
He never had seen houses like to that
 Fair-columned, cedar-builded one where sat
 King Herod. Flawless cedar was each beam,
 Wrought o’er with flaming brass: along the wall
 Great brazen images of beasts did gleam,
 With wondrous flower-works and palm trees tall;
 And folded purples hung about it all.
He never had beheld so many thrones,
 As those of ivory and precious stones
 Whereon the noble company was raised
 About the king:—he never had seen gems
 So costly, nor so wonderful as blazed
 Upon their many crowns and diadems,
 And trailed upon their garments’ trodden hems:{116}
But he had seen in mighty Lebanon
 The cedars no man’s axe hath lit upon;
 And he had often worshipped, falling down
 In dazzling temples opened straight to him,
 Where One who had great lightnings for His crown
 Was suddenly made present, vast and dim
 Through crowded pinions of the Cherubim!
Wherefore he had no fear to stand and shout
 To all men in the place, and there to flout
 Those fair and fearful women who were seen
 Quite triumphing in that work of their smile
 To shame a goodly king. And he cast, e’en
 A sudden awe that undid for a while
 The made-up shameless visages of guile.
And when Herodias—that many times
 Polluted one, assured now in all crimes
 Past fear or turning—when she, her fierce tongue
 Thrice forked with indignation, hotly spoke
 Quick wild beseeching words, wherewith she clung
 To Herod, praying him by some death-stroke
 To do her vengeance there before all folk{117}—
Ah, spite of every urging that her hate
 Did put into her lips,—so fair and great
 Seemed that accuser standing weaponless,
 Yet wholly terrible with his bright speech
 As ’twere some sword of flaming holiness,
 That no man dared to join her and beseech
 His death; but dread came somehow upon each.
For he was surely terrible to see
 So plainly sinless, so divinely free
 To judge them; being in a perfect youth,
 Yet walking like an angel in a man
 Reproving all men with inspired truth.
 And Herod himself spoke not, but began
 To tremble: through his soul the warning ran.
—Then that Salome did put off the shame
 Of her mere virgin girlhood, and became
 A woman! Then she did at once essay
 Her beauty’s magic, and unfold the wings
 Of her enchanted feet,—to have men say
 She slew him—born indeed for wondrous things.
 Her dance was fit to ruin saints or kings.{118}
O, her new beauty was above all praise!
 She came with dancing in shy devious ways,
 And while she danced she sang.
 The virgin bandlet of her forehead brake,
 Her hair came round her like a shining snake;
 To loving her men’s hearts within them sprang
 The while she danced and sang.
Her long black hair danced round her like a snake
 Allured to each charmed movement she did make;
 Her voice came strangely sweet;
 She sang, “O, Herod, wilt thou look on me—
 Have I no beauty thy heart cares to see?”
 And what her voice did sing her dancing feet
 Seemed ever to repeat.
She sang, “O, Herod, wilt thou look on me?
 What sweet I have, I have it all for thee;”
 And through the dance and song
 She freed and floated on the air her arms
 Above dim veils that hid her bosom’s charms:
 The passion of her singing was so strong
 It drew all hearts along.{119}
Her sweet arms were unfolded on the air,
 They seemed like floating flowers the most fair—
 White lilies the most choice;
 And in the gradual bending of her hand
 There lurked a grace that no man could withstand;
 Yea, none knew whether hands, or feet, or voice,
 Most made his heart rejoice.
The veils fell round her like thin coiling mists
 Shot through by topaz suns, and amethysts,
 And rubies she had on;
 And out of them her jewelled body came,
 And seemed to all quite like a slender flame
 That curled and glided, and that burnt and shone
 Most fair to look upon.
Then she began, on that well-polished floor,
 Whose stones seemed taking radiance more and more
 From steps too bright to see,
 A certain measure that was like some spell
 Of winding magic, wherein heaven and hell
 Were joined to lull men’s souls eternally
 In some mid ecstasy:{120}
For it was so inexplicably wrought
 Of soft alternate motions, that she taught
 Each sweeping supple limb,
 And in such intricate and wondrous ways
 With bendings of her body, that the praise
 Lost breath upon men’s lips, and all grew dim
 Save her so bright and slim.
And through the swift mesh’d serpents of her hair
 That lash’d and leapt on each place white and fair
 Of bosom or of arm,
 And through the blazing of the numberless
 And whirling jewelled fires of her dress,
 Her perfect face no passion could disarm
 Of its reposeful charm.
Her head oft drooped as in some languid death
 Beneath brim tastes of joy, and her rich breath
 Heaved faintly from her breast;
 Her long eyes, opened fervently and wide,
 Did seem with endless rapture to abide
 In some fair trance through which the soul possest
 Love, ecstasy, and rest.{121}
But lo—while each man fixed his eyes on her,
 And was himself quite fillèd with the stir
 His heart did make within—
 The place was full of devils everywhere:
 They came in from the desert and the air;
 They came from all the palaces of sin,
 And each heart they were in:
They lurked beneath the purples, and did crawl
 Or crouch in unseen corners of the hall,
 Among the brass and gold;
 They climbed the brazen pillars till they lined
 The chamber fair; and one went up behind
 The throne of Herod—fearful to behold—
 The Serpent king of old.
Yea, too, before those blinded men there went
 Some even to Salome; and they lent
 Strange charms she did not shun.
 She stretched her hand forth, and inclined her ear;
 She knew those men would neither see nor hear:
 A devil did support her head, and one
 Her steps’ light fabric spun.{122}
O, then her voice with singing all unveiled,
 In no trained timid accents, straight assailed
 King Herod’s open heart:
 The amorous supplication wove and wound
 Soft deadly sins about it; the words found
 Fair traitor thoughts there,—singing snakes did dart
 Their poison in each part.
She sang, “O look on me, and look on Love:
 We three are here together, and above—
 What heaven may there be?
 None for thine heart without this spell of mine,
 Yea, this my beauty, yea, these limbs that shine
 And make thy senses shudder; and for me,
 No heaven without thee!
“O, all the passion in me on this day
 Rises into one song to sweep away
 The breakers of Love’s bond;
 For is it not a pleasant bond indeed,
 And made of all the flowers in life’s mead?
 And is not Love a master fair and fond?
 And is not Death beyond?{123}
“O, who are these that will adjure thee, King,
 To put away this tender flower-thing,
 This love that is thy bliss?
 Dost thou think thou canst live indeed, and dare
 The joyless remnant of pale days, the bare
 Hard tomb, and feed through cold eternities
 Thy heart without one kiss?
“Dost thou think empty prayers shall glad thy lips
 Kept red and living with perpetual sips
 Of Love’s rich cup of wine?
 That thy fair body shall not fall away,
 And waste among the worms that bitter day
 Thou hast no lover round thy neck to twine
 Fond arms like these of mine?
“I say they are no prophets,—very deaths,
 And plagues, and rottenness, do use their breaths
 Who speak against delight;
 Pale distant slayers of humanity
 Have tainted them, and sent them forth to try
 Weak lures to make man give up joyous right
 Of days for empty night.{124}
“I tell thee, in their wilderness shall be
 No herbs enough for food for them and thee,
 No rock to give thee drink;
 I tell thee, all their heavens are a cheat,
 Or but a mirage to betray thy feet,
 And draw thee quicker to some grave’s dread brink
 Where thou shalt fall and sink.
“Turn rather unto me, and hear my voice
 Against these desert howlings, and rejoice:
 Now surely do I crave
 To treble this my beauty, and embalm
 My words with deathless thrill, singing the psalm
 Of pleasure to thee, King,—so I may save
 Thy fair days from this grave.
“Yea, now of all my beauty will I strive
 With these mad prophesiers till I drive
 Their ravings from thine ear:
 Against their rudeness I will set my grace,
 My softness, and the magic of my face;
 And spite of all their curses thou shalt hear
 And let my voice draw near:{125}
“Against their loud revilings I will try
 The long low-speaking pleadings of my sigh,
 All my heart’s tender way;
 Against their deserts—here, before thine eyes
 My love shall open thee a paradise,
 Where, if thou comest, thou shalt surely stay
 And seek no better way:
“And rather than these haters of thy joy
 Should anyhow allure thee to destroy
 Thy heart’s prosperity,—
 O, I will throw my woman’s arms entwined
 About thy body; ere thy lips can find
 One word of yielding, I will kiss them dry:
 —And failing, let me die!
“But look on me, for it is in my soul
 To make the measure of thy glory whole—
 With many goodly things
 To crown thee, yea, with pleasure and with love,
 Till there shall scarcely be a name above
 King Herod’s, in the mouth of one who sings
 The fame of mighty kings:{126}
“For see how great and fair a realm is this—
 My untried love—the never conquered bliss
 All hoarded in my breast;
 My beauty and my love were jewels meet
 To make the glory of a king complete,
 And I,—O thou of kingship half-possest—
 Can crown thee with the rest!
“I stand before thee—on my head the crown
 Of all thou lackest yet in thy renown—
 Ah, King, take this of me!
 And in my hand I bear a brimming cup
 That sparkles; to thine eyes I hold it up:
 A royal draught of life-long pleasure—see,
 The wine is fit for thee!
“Ah, wilt thou pass me? Wilt thou let me give
 Thy fair life to some meaner man to live?
 Nay, here—if I am sweet—
 Thou shalt not. I will save thee with the sight
 Of all my sweetness, save thee with the might
 And charm of all my singing lips’ deceit,
 Or with my dancing feet.{127}
“I have indeed some power. A lure lies
 Within my tender lips—behind my eyes—
 Concealed in all my way;
 And while I seem entreating, I compel,
 Yea, while I do but plead, I use a spell—
 Ah secretly—but surely. Who are they
 That ever turn away?
“Now, thou hast barely seen bright glittering
 The gilded cup of pleasures that I swung
 Before thy reeling gaze,—
 The deep beginnings of sweet drunkenness
 Are in thy heart already, more or less,
 And on thy soul deliciously there preys
 A thirst no joy allays.
“Dost thou not feel, each time my long hair sweeps
 The glowing floor, how through thy being creeps
 A vague yet sweet desire?—
 How writhes in every sense a tiny snake
 Of pleasure biting till it seems to wake
 A fever of sharp lusts that never tire,
 Unquenchable as fire?{128}
“Is there not wrought a madness in thy brain
 Each time my thin veils part and close again—
 Each time their flying ring
 Is seen a moment’s space encircling me
 With filmy changes—each time, rapidly
 Rolled down, their cloud-like gauzes billowing
 About my limbs they fling?
“Ah, seek not in this moment some cold will;
 Attend to no false pratings that would kill
 Thy heart, and make thee fall:
 But now a little lean to me, and fear
 My charming. Ah, thy fame to me is dear!
 Some wound of mine, when me thou couldst not call,
 Might slay thee after all.
“For even while I sing, the unseen grace
 Of Love descending hath filled all this place
 With most strong prevalence;
 His miracle is raging in the breasts
 Of all these men, and mightily he rests
 On me and thee. His power is too intense,
 No curse shall drive him hence.{129}
“—O, Love, invisible, eternal God,
 In whose delicious ways all men have trod,
 This day Thou truly hast
 My heart: thy inspiration fills my tongue
 With great angelic madness; I have sung
 Set words that in my bosom thou hast cast—
 Thine am I to the last!
“My feet are like two liquid flames that leap
 For joy at thee; I feel thy spirit sweep—
 Yea, like a southern wind—
 Through all the enchanted fibres of my soul;
 I am a harp o’er which thy vast breaths roll,
 And one day thou shalt break me: none shall find
 A wreck of me behind.
“And now all palpitating, O I pray
 Thy utmost passion while I cry—away
 With all Love’s enemies!
 A man—borne up between the closing wings
 Of two eternities of unknown things,
 May catch this seraph charmer as he flies,
 And hold him till he dies;{130}
“And yet some bitter ones, whom coming night
 Hath wholly entered, grudge man this small right
 Of joy, and seek to fill
 His rushing moment with the monstrous hiss
 Of shapeless terrors, poisoning the bliss
 Brief nestled in his bosom—merely till
 Forced out by its death chill!
“What voice is this the envious wilderness
 Hath sent among us foully to distress
 And haunt our lives with fear?
 What vulture, shrieking on the scent of death—
 What yelping jackal—what insidious breath
 Of pestilence hath ventured to draw near,
 And enter even here?
“No kindred flesh of fair humanity
 Yon fiend hath, seeking through lives doomed to die
 Death’s foretaste to infuse:
 His body is but raised up from the slain
 Unburied thousands that long years have lain
 About the desert: Death himself doth choose
 His pale disguise to use.{131}
“But, even though he be from some new God,
 He shall not turn us who love’s ways have trod,
 Nor make us break love’s vow.
 Nay, rather, if a single beauty dwells
 In me, if in that beauty there be spells
 To win my will of any man—O thou,
 King Herod, hear me now!—
“Let it be for his ruin! Ah, let me,
 With all in me thou countest fair to see,
 Procure this and no more!
 If yet, with tender prevalence, my voice
 May ask a thing of thee—this is my choice,
 Though thou wouldst buy my sweets with all thy store—
 This all I sell them for.
“Yea, are there lures of softness in my eyes?
 My eyes are—for his death. Is my heart’s prize
 A seeming fair reward?
 My virgin heart is—for his blood here shed;
 Its passion—for the falling of his head;
 And on that man my kiss shall be outpoured
 Who slays him with the sword!{132}”
Invisible—in supernatural haze,
 Of shapes that seem not shapes to human gaze—
 The devils were half awed as they did stand
 Around her; each one in his separate hell
 All inwardly was forced to praise her well:
 And every man was fain to lose his hand
 Or do all that sweet woman might command.
There was a tumult.—Cloven foot and scale
 Of fiend with iron heel and coat of mail
 Were rolled and hustled in the rage to slay
 That fair young Saviour: when they murdered him
 And brought his head, still beautiful—though dim
 And drenched with blood—the aureole did play
 Above it, slowly vanishing away.
I weep to think of him and his fair light
 So quenched—of him thrust into some long night
 Of unaccomplishment so soon, alas!
 And Thou, who on that ancient palace floor
 Didst dance, where dost thou writhe now evermore—
 Salome, Daughter of Herodias?
 O woman-viper—may thy curse ne’er pass!
 {133}

VI

HELEN.

AFTER long years of all that too sweet sin
 That held her ever in the far strange land,
 She felt her heart was stricken, felt begin
 Great strokes of sorrow smiting like a hand.
She turned away from all the long delight
 Which had so filled and blinded all the past;
 The sweet sin rose up bitter in the night
 And turned the love to sickness at the last.
She and her lover in their goodly halls
 Gazed on each other no more the old way;
 About the face of each clung shadowy palls
 Of sadness all unchanged through many a day.{134}
And now, along the fair courts marble-floored,
 Each met the looks of other all aghast
 With rueful thoughts unstanched yet ne’er outpoured;
 And their trailed robes touched mournful as they passed.
Into the lonely paths of Ida sweet
 For sorrow, dark and very sweet with leaves,
 Came Helen: weary at her bosom beat
 The sad thoughts all the summer noons and eves.
Strange: as her eyes sought where the sea was held
 Gathered into dim distances of blue,
 Down in her heart a dim Past she beheld,
 Wherein were memories like an ocean too.
And strange, there, long up-pent, the memories stirred
 Like waves long rolling: in her heart at length
 All the fair time from which her years had erred
 Came up against her now with all its strength.{135}
Back from the earliest love-time there was sent
 A tide of all the long untasted sweet
 Of days forgotten, summers that were spent,
 And eves when love and lover used to meet;
And heavy wafts of perfume that was known
 E’en from those dark familiar laurel trees
 That hid where love and lover were alone
 Rolled back upon the heart with sore disease:
And from the early home there came no less
 Than the reproach of each remembered gaze
 Of friends, and want of all the happiness
 They gave her in their simple Spartan ways.
And now her heart strove, longing, to divine
 The several thoughts of her they had devised
 In separate years that passed by with no sign;
 Yea, to have known their pain she would have prized:
For now when toward them her heart was wrought
 Quite weak, and from no tenderness forbore,
 They seemed all strong against her, with hard thought
 And faces turning from her evermore.{136}
And with the vision of them so deceived
 Came piteous memories of the waning face
 Of the Old man who sat all shamed and grieved
 Lonely beside the hearth’s familiar place.
Before her soon in very semblance gleamed
 The Spartan homestead there unaltered, plain,
 With all the household things; yea, till she dreamed
 All were yet to begin that way again,
And Menelaus the next golden morn
 Were still to come for her with wedlock blest,
 As though not all deserted and forlorn
 He strayed—the lone man without love or rest.
But most she yearned between her fear and love,
 To see him now—divining what was due
 To wrath and sorrowing to change and move
 His features from the fashion that she knew:
For now the first time after all those years
 The face seemed anyhow her way to seek;
 —But turned upon her now with all its tears
 And vengeance of reproach at length to wreak;{137}
—And seemed to hold her through her love come back,
 Unforeseen, and how come, she could not tell;
 So that the wrath of it, the grief could rack
 Her heart,—yet her heart craved therewith to dwell.
He was her husband—it should ever seem;
 And that home, surely it was still her home;
 And years since some long voyage or a dream;
 And now no more the heart was fain to roam:
Nay, but was true to where it felt begin
 Love and the rosy ecstasies so brief;
 And that was surely love and the rest sin,
 That all delight and all the other grief.
And now though none should render her heart’s right
 In any fair place where she used to sit,
 She would have prayed for a mere alien’s sight
 Of all it was so little pain to quit:{138}
Just to draw near, some silent hour, alone,
 Unheralded, unwelcomed, and behold
 Her husband and remember him her own,
 And be quite near him only as of old:
And perchance, for some grief that was exprest
 Plainly upon his face, she might have dared
 To enter in, and after all been blest
 Some remnant of his pity to have shared.
—Alas, too surely, for long years, all thought
 And love of her had perished from his heart;
 Until on all her memory were wrought
 Dishonour, and with him she had no part;
—And this the while, so held of alien joys,
 She spared no thought for him and for his pain,
 Nor fancied the least echo of his voice
 Sent forth a thousand times to her in vain;
When, might-be many a time, his earnest grief
 Sent it so truly seeking her quite near,
 Vainly it fell on some dumb flower or leaf
 Beside her, never cherished in her ear.{139}
And she thought how one day—she heeding nought—
 The last voice on the fruitless air was borne
 And died almost a taunt, and the last thought
 Of her was changed to hate or utter scorn.
And she thought how since that time, day by day,
 The man had learnt to live without her need,
 And been quite happy perhaps many a way,
 All without loving her or taking heed.
And that which was the great woe had scarce grown
 In any gradual way; but with a burst
 Her life was torn apart from peace, and thrown
 Far from the love that seemed its own at first
All for a mere girl’s fancy too—a whim
 For foreign faces and some ruddier south,
 And no real choice to die away from him
 Who won the truest troth in love and youth.
Now it was bitter to be quite outcast,
 And bitter—when this thought of dying crost
 Her heart—to reach him no more at the last
 Than in mere rumour, as of one long lost.{140}
She looked upon the great sea rolled between
 Herself and Lacedæmon: but the Past,
 The sins and all the falseness that had been
 Seemed like an ocean deeper and more vast.
 {141}

VII.

A TROTH FOR ETERNITY.

—SO, Woman! I possess you. Yes, at length.
 Once wholly and for ever you are mine!
That cursèd burden on my memory,
 Your whole past life’s betrayal—let it go:
 Ay, let it perish, and, for me at least,
 Let life begin this moment, though we die
 But three hours hence!
Is this your little voice
 My Love, enthralling, winning my whole faith
 With mere increasing sweetness in its tones,
 Dissolving, exorcising, as it used,{142}
 Ah too infallibly, the phantom thing,
 The doubt, the dread within me? ah, my Sweet,
 Is this once more your voice assuring me—
 With some rare music rather than one word
 Of those fair whispered oaths of constancy;
 Yea, till, as ever, I am come to smile
 And glory in you, and believe you pure—
 All mine, for ever, past a change in thought?
But no! It is the little voice of the Steel
 Here safe against my breast and fairly hid:
 The Steel is singing to me, very low,
 A tender song entrancing me;—O joy!
 The Steel says you will ne’er escape me more;
 You will be true to me; you will be mine;
 No man shall touch you after me; no face,
 However strangely fair, shall have the art
 To draw one look from you, to charm and rouse
 That wondrous little snake of treachery
 That was for ever lurking for me—sure
 To spring upon me out of the least look
 Or promise, safe to be curled up beneath{143}
 The simplest seeming offering in your hand.
Yes, ’tis a thing at length as good as this
 The steel is singing to me: did you hear,
 You should but love it—since it pleads so well
 It makes me put whole faith in you once more.
 For now three days and nights indeed—while I,
 Contending for you with the love I gave
 Against the curse I owed you, raged and thought
 It was my madness—O this little voice
 Was striving with me, singing all the time,
 Upon a low sweet soothing tune, strange words
 Of promise that seemed like the distant taunts
 Of all my past beliefs, and that I sought
 To cover with my curses; till, last night,
 My soul grew faint with hearing them—how sweet,
 How full of good they were. Then I fell still,
 Yea, stunned, and with my head upon the ground;
 And through the shut bleared darkness of my eyes,
 I seemed to see the room about me lit
 And fearful, and the Sword from off the wall
 Unscabbarded before me in the midst,
 Most terrible and living, and in light{144}—
 Just like a great archangel with the glare
 Of burning expiations full on him.
O then my soul did call upon the Steel;
 And the Steel heard and swore to me. My soul
 Tore forth the hidden-rooted love of thee,
 Thy treasured words—each one a cruel worm
 That gnaws me through for ever, thy fair face
 From the first inmost shrine, thy early kiss,
 Thy separate falsenesses, all my despair,
 My utter helplessness—and flung them down,
 The very writhing entrails of my life
 Become one inward horror to be borne
 No longer. And there came about me, loud,
 The mocking of a thousand impious tongues,
 That seemed to clash and rattle hideously
 From ancient hollow sepulchres of men
 Long buried and forgotten; for my love
 Their gibe was, for my faith, for my despair,
 For my long blindness: and at last I knew,
 And, understanding, called with a great voice
 Upon the Steel: and the Steel heard me there,
 And swore to me—for you and me and God!{145}
Sing on, O little voice: She cannot hear;
 There is a pact between us.
Now I stand
 And feel her eyes’ soft element within,
 Upon, around me, melting away life
 Into these few full throbbing moments.—Lo!
 Her tears again—her disavowal clean
 Of any thought of falseness. Lo! her words—
 I might have lived beside her all these days
 In perfect joy; words, blandishments and tears
 Already staggering me with their old might
 Of coiling fascinations; and one tear
 A drop that, falling straight into my heart,
 Fills it too full for speaking a long time
 The ready thing of pardon and of love.
See! am I Lord here?—This fair sight of Her,
 Working the whole impassioned prodigy
 As ’twere of all her beauty, just to win
 Me this time and, at any cost, be queen
 Of this one present, as of many pasts—
 Hath ever it been fairer, more complete?{146}
Who else hath had her more and called her his
 Than here I have her calling herself mine?
 I would indeed he might draw near just now,
 Yea, void of feigning, in some wonted way,
 And feel a cold look from her plant him there
 Outside the circle where this molten love
 Of her whole smile is showered upon me,
 And know her no more his now than mine then.
But what do I here with a thought like this?
 Those men I deemed my rivals—what are they
 To me now? Why I could put them to shame
 And taunt them now myself for insolent
 Pretenders who have never known what ’tis
 To conquer love.—Ay, what compared with me
 Seem all the famous lovers of great queens
 Or splendid cruel mistresses, whose woes—
 Deceived, betrayed, reviled—have made them shine
 With some bright share of every age’s tears?
 What but mere fools? weak sufferers of wrong
 From creatures whom they held in their own hands?{147}
 Or passionless, or lacking any strength
 To seize their fair worlds passing them so nigh
 Rather than linger in some sickly trail
 Of sweetness left behind and die of shame?
 O all ye Messalinas of old time—
 Ye Helens, Cleopatras, ye Dalilahs,
 Ye Maries, ye Lucrezias, Catharines—
 Fair crowned or uncrowned—courtezans alike
 Who played with men a calculated game—
 Your moves their heart-wounds, deaths and ruins—sure
 Of your inconstancy and their soft loves,
 Had I been lover in the stead of them,
 Methinks the histories of you had been changed,
 And some of your worst falsenesses redeemed
 By flawless faithfulness to one last love.
But now I am content, I have love here;
 And I thank God for love—yea, is it sweet?
 Yea, is it best of all his gifts to man?
 —I see her splendid smile there—feel her arms
 Already coming round me!—Who but I
 Can answer? Who but I have had it whole{148}
 Like this? (The Steel is singing to me now,
 Still hidden in my breast—a low sweet song.)
Ah, this time there is no doubt! ’tis all true:
 Her arms may fold me—fondle me, and I
 May wholly yield myself to their caress
 Quite sure it leaves no atom in reserve
 For any other after me. And lo,
 She is right worthy of a greater one
 Than all the lovers that have ever loved
 And, trembling, lost their women and themselves:
 For splendour—such as stains for me and turns
 My eyes disgusted from the vaunted white
 Of many a bosom impudently bared—
 Is in that bosom closely veiled, whose veils
 I may undo—yea now, and with these hands;
 It is my right. And then, O joy, to know
 That this, so much more wonderful than those,
 Shall ne’er be seen by anyone but me!
 (Ah, sing on little voice!) But, as I said,
 —Yes, she is worthy!—Come to me, my Sweet:
 You have the greatest beauty God has made.{149}
 I think that. Let me kiss your forehead once,
 Twice, thrice, and say it is diviner white,
 And hallowed with a brighter radiant grace
 Than Cleopatra’s was, and swear therewith
 I kiss it with a passion greater far
 Than Antony’s was: yea, let me write there
 This thing in kisses that none can efface.
 “Ah, you believe me now, dear love?” she says:
 Yes: I say yes. (Sing on! ’Twas you sang: yes;
 You bade me answer so. I trust you most.)
“Dear Love, let us go lie upon that bed.
 I should delight to know it just the grave,
 So I might keep this faith and happiness,
 That yours—this mine—both safe for evermore,
 So I might lie down sure that no mischance,
 No doubt, no calumny, could come to change
 Me—yours, you—mine, and peace for evermore.”
She says this, and she leads me by the hand.
Her head is like a lily drooping down.
—My passion! Yea I will not baulk thee now:{150}
 I need not: for I feel that what I am
 Is something more than man, that conquers man.
 What is it? I know not: a flame, a thought;
 But cold, but calm, unalterable, pure,
 As far above the fume of the base lust
 That dulls and levels all men, as, perhaps,
 Was that strange flame or thought that made Man first
 And Woman then to bring the man to nought,
 Which fate I, who indeed am not a god,
 Who am not Hercules, nor Samson, no,
 Nor Antony—which fate I yet will change.
 Nay, passion, rather I will urge thee on;
 For I shall be above thee all the time
 A cold impartial watcher, hard to foil,
 Attentive that thou gettest all thine own
 Not tampered with—lest, in some little thing,
 Thou art betrayed, or with a semblance served,
 Yea, for a blind fool as thou ever wert.
—O take thy fill of looking on this snow
 In which thy heart finds such delicious death;{151}
 Do out thine utmost revel on the bloom
 Of this rare flower’s beauty, now at full;
 Whose summer is just perfected to-night
 And laid before thee, heightened with the tint
 Of first mysterious sadness, like a touch
 Of far-off autumns. Do not shun that mouth:
 For there, indeed, a thing most dainty-sweet—
 The last kiss that was sown a precious seed
 By Love at the beginning—waits for thee,
 The fullest, the most perfect of them all.
 The earth will never fashion forth, and Love
 Will never with his summer paint again
 So beautiful a flower.
I am clasped
 With such arms as I would might hold me so
 For evermore in heaven. All around,
 The strange unearthly fragrance of her hair
 Is coming up, and, with an element
 Divine as some transparent rosy cloud,
 Enwrapping both of us; ay, and, as though—
 A very cloud of magic—it had borne{152}
 Us, lifted far away from thought, and life,
 And days, and earthliness—we seem to voyage
 Through most ethereal atmospheres, and seas
 Upon whose soft sustaining waves we drift,
 And draw no sound from either distant shore
 Of ending or beginning: and the bliss,
 Unspeakable and perfect, that we feel
 Seems making and remaking evermore
 Our souls through this eternity.
Alas!
 One little thread—I strive in vain to break—
 Is holding me: a memory, a thought,
 The pricking of a half-numbed wound through sleep,
 The constant teazing of a wingéd thing,
 The bitterness wherewith some ceaseless fang
 Of life gnaws through, and breaks our dream of it—
 Some such pursues and racks me. But ’tis well:
 I know the dream is mine to make my own;
 I know what dragon guards this paradise,
 And with what paltry lies he fools mankind.
 Ah, how the universe must jeer to see{153}
 All men so smoothly cheated of their own!—
 And when I slay this dragon, I have all.
I cannot stir now. Many a knotted tress
 Is on me, like a thousand-threaded chain
 Twined many times about my limbs. I dream
 No more: I feel her small and gliding hands
 Seek mine; and while the burning rapid words
 Her full heart furnishes hiss in mine ear,
 My sight is peering blindly through the dark
 Of her vast hair—a cavernous abyss
 Of blackness traversed by mad shooting sparks
 Or fearful gleams of blood.—What things she says!
 “—Let this be as it were my bridal night,
 If you doubt all the Past. I am yours now;
 Take this for the beginning, and trust me;
 I will be yours for ever,—not a look,
 A word, a thought shall e’er dishonour you.”—
 And, if I had not heard this very thing
 Before, once, twice, innumerable times,
 I should not plunge as I do now, my head
 Still deeper in the fathomless dark hair,{154}
 And see tears falling from me—as it seems—
 To fall on through a drear eternity.
But, hark, another voice! Whence comes it?—Whence?
 From here, beneath the pillow; yes, ’tis harsh
 And not like hers; but speaks a sweet thing—this:
 I swear for Her it shall be so: trust Me!
Ah, yes—my Love, my own, I answer you;
 I part with all the Past, forgive, deny,
 Refuse to see it. All my soul is yours;
 I never loved a moment in this world,
 But what was love was wholly meant for you.
 Yea, even before I saw you as you are,
 Or knew your name, the vaguest breaths of love
 Were but sent forward to me from the days
 When you should come, preparing me for you.
 I know in truth there never was a time
 Wherein I saw no part of you—nor sign
 To love you by; for all my sun, my light,
 My flowers, my world would be the saddest blank,{155}
 The day you were not; you have these in you,
 And are yourself in them; and, on the day
 You go, you take them all away with you;
 And so ’twas you I saw when I saw them
 And said:—“That Lady mine shall have a head
 Like yonder drooping lily on whose white
 The summer’s breath may never set a stain;
 And She shall have a heaven for her hair
 As deep, and dark, and splendid, as the one
 I dream beneath; and She shall have such eyes
 As ever seem to me those still blue lakes
 I come on in the twilight of the woods
 And find wide open under the thick fringe
 Of violets—that fascinate me so
 With gazing on me; yes, and, for her smile,
 She shall but use that magic of the sun
 That so transfigures all the day with light,
 And gives my heart already such a thrill
 As if She smiled at me:”—my Love, ’twas you
 I saw then, dreamed of, waited for; ’twas you;
 My heart attests it, looking on you now.—
 So this of mine is such a perfect love{156}
 You see, it could not change nor turn away;—
 It is the only love God made for you,
 As you He made for me and from the first
 Revealed to me. Therefore it cannot be
 That you are false to me,—that I no way
 Can save and keep you mine—you whom He gave
 To me for ever, to be brought as mine
 Before Him at the last. My precious one,
 You are all worthy of me—are my crown
 Untarnished, perfect, for you have not sinned;
 ’Tis I have sinned,—not being strong at once
 To save both pure in you. Did not your lips
 Completely make you mine of your own will?
 Did you not swear yourself to me at first,
 Yea, in God’s name, before him? So that I—
 Yes, I, have let you, all against your heart,
 Be brought to do sad things you would have shunned;
 Because I had the way, and used it not,
 To keep you from them.—Ah, I curse myself!
 —My own, my Love!—those gentle words of yours,
 Those promises—repeat them; yes, once more:{157}
You will be mine; you are mine; yes, my Love,
 I do believe you now; I may, I can—
 (For that sings under the pillow; believe Me!—)
 I bless and kiss you for them all.
She sleeps.
The Steel is singing to me now; its voice
 Creeps through and through;—go on, she cannot hear—
 The things it sings are death and love; ay, love
 That death keeps true;—She sleeps, she cannot hear.
There is no sort of madness in my brain;
 But rather a great strength, a calm, as though
 A more than human spirit dwelt with mine.
 And yet I do perceive that, since last night,
 My eyes have been bewildered with the glare
 Of mighty blades and swords that seem to whirl
 And strike around me, and transform the world
 With an exceeding splendour cold and bare;
 A thousand films are as it were cut through;
 And all the beauty, supernatural{158}
 And real of things seems only to endure.
 The Steel is an immense magician: yes—
 Love, Beauty, Life—a touch can change them all
 And make them wholly fit for me and great.
 See now where it is gleaming through her hair!
 ’Tis like a fair barbaric ornament
 Ablaze with glancing points of diamonds
 Stuck in and out between the writhing black.
 Or, rather, ’tis as fearful and as bright
 As some fierce snake of azure lightning curled
 Sinister under the dark mass of night,
 That ever, with his sudden forkéd flash
 Piercing some crevice, doth illumine it.
I could be gazing on this sight for hours.
O, Woman!—you are greatest in the world:
 You have all fairest things; all joy is yours
 To give and take away; you have all love;
 Your beauty is to man’s heart as the sun
 That doles out day and night to the whole earth;
 You have strange gifts of passion and sweet words:
 In truth you are right splendid,—and well fit,{159}
 I think, to be the leman of a god;
 But all too fair, and yet not good enough,
 To be the spouse and helpmate of one man.
 —For this: there is a serpent in you hid;
 It dwells in the invisible of thought,
 Or crouches in some corner of your heart,
 Or is engendered in the ardent flame
 Of your quick passions,—where, it matters not;
 But never doth it cease so to distil
 Its wily poison into all you are
 Or do or feel, it makes you turn and stab
 Where most you thought to love,—it sets your lips
 In league with falsehood to betray your heart,
 Puts plotting in your heart against your lips.
You cannot will your heart to any man
 But you must seek, for very wantonness—
 As tempts the snake within you—just the straight
 Betrayal of that man—his love, his faith,
 As though you had not willed yourself at first:
 And if you did not this somehow, your life
 Would seem to you a nipped and withered thing,
 Your beauty good for nought. You are made so.{160}
 —Therefore, my Love, I will not let you wake.
 Nay—though you are so pure now and have sworn—
 Lest you betray me as you did last time,
 And times before that, having sworn as now.
 But you are mine—my beautiful, my own!
 And your lips said it while your heart beat here
 Against mine—thrilling with a thought of me;
 Your looks were almost piteous with a prayer
 That I—that God would save you. Shall your mouth,
 The chaste, the holy one that I have kissed
 Be desecrate once more? Shall your own arms
 Embrace and hug the very shame of you?
 Shall this, your heart that made you mine, be false
 —Go once more seeking out adulteries?
Not so: I strike the holy steel in it.
—It was the only way to keep her mine.
 {161}
[Image unavailable.]

{162}

(1867.)

O WOMAN whose familiar face I hold
 In my most sacred thought as in a shrine,
 Who in my memories art become divine—
 Dost thou remember now those years of old
 When out of all thine own life thou didst mould
 This life and breathe thy heart in this of mine,
 Winning, for faith in that fair work of thine,
 To rest and be in heaven?—Alas, behold!—
 Another woman coming after thee
 Hath had small pity,—with a wanton kiss
 Hath quite consumed my heart and ruined this
 The life that was thy work: O, Mother, see;
 Thou hast lived all in vain, done all amiss;
 Come down from heaven again, and die with me!
 {165}{164}{163}

DEATH.

I CLOSE my eyes and see the inward things:
 The strange averted spectre of my soul
 Is sitting undivulged, angelic, whole,
 Beside the dim internal flood that brings
 Mysterious thought or dreams or murmurings,
 From the immense Unknown: beneath him roll
 The urging formless waves beyond control
 And darkened by the vague foreshadowings
 As heretofore; yea, for He hath not stirred.
 Too weak was that my life, too poor each word
 To lure my soul from all it waiteth for:
 —I am with God who holds His purpose still
 And maketh and remaketh evermore;
 I am with God and waiting for His will.
 {166}

THE FOUNTAIN OF TEARS.

IF you go over desert and mountain,
 Far into the country of sorrow,
 To-day and to-night and to-morrow,
 And maybe for months and for years;
 You shall come, with a heart that is bursting
 For trouble and toiling and thirsting,
 You shall certainly come to the fountain
 At length,—to the Fountain of Tears.
Very peaceful the place is, and solely
 For piteous lamenting and sighing,
 And those who come living or dying
 Alike from their hopes and their fears;{167}
 Full of cypress-like shadows the place is,
 And statues that cover their faces:
 But out of the gloom springs the holy
 And beautiful Fountain of Tears.
And it flows and it flows with a motion
 So gentle and lovely and listless,
 And murmurs a tune so resistless
 To him who hath suffered and hears—
 You shall surely—without a word spoken,
 Kneel down there and know your heart broken,
 And yield to the long curb’d emotion
 That day by the Fountain of Tears.
For it grows and it grows, as though leaping
 Up higher the more one is thinking;
 And ever its tunes go on sinking
 More poignantly into the ears:
 Yea, so blesséd and good seems that fountain,
 Reached after dry desert and mountain,
 You shall fall down at length in your weeping
 And bathe your sad face in the tears.{168}
Then, alas! while you lie there a season,
 And sob between living and dying,
 And give up the land you were trying
 To find mid your hopes and your fears;
 —O the world shall come up and pass o’er you;
 Strong men shall not stay to care for you,
 Nor wonder indeed for what reason
 Your way should seem harder than theirs.
But perhaps, while you lie, never lifting
 Your cheek from the wet leaves it presses,
 Nor caring to raise your wet tresses.
 And look how the cold world appears,—
 O perhaps the mere silences round you—
 All things in that place grief hath found you,
 Yea, e’en to the clouds o’er you drifting,
 May soothe you somewhat through your tears.
You may feel, when a falling leaf brushes
 Your face, as though some one had kissed you;
 Or think at least some one who missed you
 Hath sent you a thought,—if that cheers;{169}
 Or a bird’s little song, faint and broken,
 May pass for a tender word spoken:
 —Enough, while around you there rushes
 That life-drowning torrent of tears.
And the tears shall flow faster and faster,
 Brim over, and baffle resistance,
 And roll down bleared roads to each distance
 Of past desolation and years;
 Till they cover the place of each sorrow,
 And leave you no Past and no morrow:
 For what man is able to master
 And stem the great Fountain of Tears?
But the floods of the tears meet and gather;
 The sound of them all grows like thunder:
 —O into what bosom, I wonder,
 Is poured the whole sorrow of years?
 For Eternity only seems keeping
 Account of the great human weeping:
 May God then, the Maker and Father—
 May He find a place for the tears!
 {170}

LOVE AFTER DEATH.

THERE is an earthly glimmer in the Tomb:
 And, healed in their own tears and with long sleep,
 My eyes unclose and feel no need to weep;
 But, in the corner of the narrow room,
 Behold Love’s spirit standeth, with the bloom
 That things made deathless by Death’s self may keep.
 O what a change! for now his looks are deep,
 And a long patient smile he can assume:
 While Memory, in some soft low monotone,
 Is pouring like an oil into mine ear
 The tale of a most short and hollow bliss,
 That I once throbbed indeed to call my own,
 Holding it hardly between joy and fear,—
 And how that broke, and how it came to this.
 {171}

SOWN SEED.

I WANDERED dreaming through a mead;
 And it was sowing-season there;
 As one who sows and takes no heed
 I cast my dreams upon the air:
 And each dream was a golden seed
 That in my life some flower should bear.
—O sowing-season bright and gay,
 To have you back I am most fain!
 O sowing season find some way
 To bring me here each golden grain
 I cast upon the air that day,
 That I may sow them all again.{172}
For some, that fairest should have been,
 About the world they have been tost
 And borne no flowers that I have seen;
 And some have taken wing and crost
 The sea, or through the blue serene
 Gone up to heaven and been lost.
O, sowing season, come once more,
 Bring back each golden seed to me!
 For one, indeed, grew up and bore
 No flower of gladness, good to see—
 A thing to look upon right sore
 —A grief that in my life should be.
One other truly did beget
 Some blossom of the June that fell
 In May; and one, a violet
 Whose death upon my heart doth dwell;
 The last seed hath not blossomed yet:
 Come back and bring this one as well.{173}
—What! the whole sudden summer? Yea;
 The last one hath come up a rose!
 O sowing season, you may stay;
 It is in my Love’s heart it grows;
 And she hath shown it me to-day:
 I keep this one and give up those.
 {174}

A DISCORD.

IT came to pass upon a summer’s day,
 When from the flowers indeed my soul had caught
 Fresh bloom, and turned their richness into thought,
 That—having made my footsteps free to stray—
 They brought me wandering by some sudden way
 Back to the bloomless city, and athwart
 The doleful streets and many a closed-up court
 That prisoned here and there a spent noon-ray.
 O how most bitterly upon me broke
 The sight of all the summerless lost folk!—
 For verily their music and their gladness
 Could only seem to me like so much sadness,
 Beside the inward rhapsody of art
 And flowers and Chopin-echoes at my heart.
 {175}

GALANTERIE.

O ANGEL, that in some unmeasured region
 Keepest the store of beauteous things unsaid!
 Once more do thou take even from their legion
 Verse of the sweetest, verse no man hath read;
 And go with that—saying thou art from me—
 Unto my Love wherever she may be;
 And speak therewith all tender things and fair
 Touching the beauty of her eyes and hair,
 Her hands, her feet—all of Her thou may’st see,
 E’en to the jewels she shall chance to wear.{176}
As to her eyes, I think thou shalt have reason
 Setting the azure of them far above
 God’s blue of heaven; yea, who shall know thy treason
 But I who teach it thee and She my love?
 And therefore, fear thou nowise to express,
 Touching her hair, how much its every tress
 Doth shine above all gold that the sun yields
 And the fair colour of the harvest fields:
 But scarce shalt thou be slow to praise, I guess,
 Soon as thou know’st what spell her beauty wields.
And, if so be she cease that she is doing,
 And give thee welcome for thy verses’ sake,
 Do thou with some most tender sort of wooing
 Engage her hand, and cause it to forsake
 Its silken task or pastime on the lute;
 For of its beauty thou shouldst not be mute,
 But celebrate it soon in such a strain
 Thenceforward it shall be no longer fain
 To do its lightest toil: so for thy suit
 My Lady’s whole attendance thou shalt gain.{177}
Then, howsoe’er thou dost behold that wonder,
 The rare imperial foot of Her my queen;
 —Yea, if thou may’st but glimpse it nestled under
 The broidered border of her robe, or e’en
 If haply, some unguarded hour of rest,
 Thou hast such bliss as I have never possest,
 To see that spotless Lady all reclined
 And through dim tumbled veils with thine eye find
 Her spirit-slender foot,—then do thy best,
 And be thou neither faint of heart nor blind!
But so with every spell of piteous pleading,
 And the full magic that was wont of old
 To fill my verse and charm all men to heeding,
 Frame thou thy praise of that thou dost behold—
 That her most matchless foot shall even start
 Out of its languishment and take my part,
 To bring my Love not otherwhere than here,
 To me, and to the place where she is dear:
 Go now and do this, if thou still hast art;
 And I shall wait the while in love and fear.
 {178}

THE GLORIOUS LADY.

“La gloriosa donna della mia mente.”
 Dante.

I.

I SEE You in the time that’s fled,
 Long dead;
 I see you in the years to be
 After me;
 And for all solace I am given,
 Night or day,
 To dream or think of you in heaven
 Far away.{179}
I have the colour of your hair
 Everywhere;
 I have your beauty all by heart,
 Cannot part
 From aught of you—I love you so—
 Though I try,
 I know I shall not find you though
 Till I die.
When I have darkened all the day,
 Put away
 The world and the world’s sights and sweets
 —Mere deceits,
 The blinding blaze of the false lights
 That arise
 Between my spirit and the heights
 And the skies—
When I have turned from the pale face,
 Sickly grace,
 Faint hair and hue of heart, thin smiles
 That cover wiles{180}
 Of looks that fail and lips that chill,
 —All the drear
 And pallid cheats of love that kill
 The heart here—
Then do I dream—oh far away—
 Another day;
 Another light where truer hues,
 Reds and blues,
 Live as in living eyes and cheeks;
 Where love lives,
 And all my spirit loves and seeks
 Love gives.
Nay, your true heart is not this pale
 Thing to fail
 Short of such promised love as dies
 In such eyes:
 I build up all the world anew,—
 Nay, above,
 I make another world—where You
 Build up Love;{181}
Behold your eyes are in the stead
 Of these dead,—
 Pure seas of looks, with many a shore
 Of worlds more;
 Behold, instead of these poor moulds,
 These mere casts
 In some first clay—no stuff that holds
 Love that lasts—
Why! life—that love; and then its fresh
 Robe of flesh,
 With—O what chords of sense that thrill
 With love’s will,
 Unchecked by death or weariness,
 Those dull foes
 Of every feeling, more or less,
 The world knows!
In place of all the glassy cheats—
 Your true sweets,
 —Of all the lives with which Death plays,
 All the days{182}
 Left dim and void when Hope’s own sun
 Dare not shine—
 In place of all and every one,
 You divine!
I know the splendour that you were—
 —You shall be;
 I see that nothing is so fair
 As you there;
 I know that you—the thing I crave—
 Men shall see
 Again, when I am in the grave,
 —After me.
O, whose shall be the barren years?
 Whose the tears?
 God, who of all this world of ours
 Gathers flowers
 —Taketh and maketh heaven, and faileth
 Not at all,
 Maketh a heaven that prevaileth
 Out of all{183}—
Shall God have care for this and this
 —Flowers that miss
 The love that gathers and that saves?
 For these graves,
 Shall love to be, or love that’s past,
 Safe above,
 Be less than perfected at last,
 Less than Love?
O, who shall have the barren years?
 Who the tears?
 You, World that gave me a false kiss,
 Shall have this:
 But I—I know that Love hath been,
 And shall be
 Again, when I am no more seen,
 —After me.
 {184}

II.

I SEE You with the face they paint
 For some saint
 Born and saved in some sublime
 Olden time,
 Crowned with the gorgeous golden-waved
 Aureole;
 Just such a saint as should have saved
 My own soul.
Yes; for you have the human grace
 In your face
 Painted upon the panel there,
 And what hair!{185}
 ‘Fra’—who was he? I forget—
 Who could paint
 Such a woman wholly, and yet
 Such a saint?
From the dim cathedral height
 Falls the light;
 I could think it for a while
 Christ’s smile
 From the great window-scene above
 Strangely shed
 Toward you, resting like Christ’s love
 On your head.
O the splendid purple niche
 Deep and rich,
 Stained of the colour of your soul
 Strong and whole,
 Full of the prevalence of prayers
 And piteous plaint
 You made for men and sins all theirs
 {186} —You a saint!
The niche a little narrow: well,
 As the cell
 Your world, your body—all things seen—
 Must have been
 About the soul that day by day
 Groped and felt
 To God’s own house and found the way
 As you knelt:
In an attitude of prayer
 O how fair!
 All the body crouched, constrained
 As if pained
 With the spirit’s inward groan
 To entreat
 For a sin you could not own,
 O how sweet!
Hands God making must have praised;
 Clasped and raised
 Holy mediæval way
 Used to pray;{187}
 Sky all wrapped about your head
 Blue and sweet,
 Earth all golden from the tread
 Of your feet.
God, who of all this world of ours
 Gathers flowers,
 Gathered you in the old sublime
 Flower time:
 If God had left some flowers like you—
 Who can tell?—
 He might have had yet one or two
 Flowers that fell.
O then there were great sins of course;
 Men were worse
 Some ways no doubt; at any rate
 Men were great:
 We cannot bear their mail, much less
 Lose or win
 Their heavens, through their great holiness
 Or great sin.{188}
There were high things for men to see,
 Do, or be;
 Fair struggles after every throne:
 And to atone
 Fair crowns and kingdoms for the best;
 All men strove,
 And, loss or gain, for each man’s rest
 There was love.
And men and women bore their part
 Heart to heart,
 For oh! the women and the men
 Loved then;
 And love from love you could not break,
 Half to save;
 If one sinned, for the other’s sake
 God forgave.
Would thou wert yet, thou great and old
 Time of gold!
 Wert thou with me, or could I flee
 Back to thee,{189}
 God might have had one other flower
 Nigh to fall,
 And I known love at least one hour
 —Once for all.
O who shall have the barren years?
 Who the tears?
 One with false bosom and cold kiss
 May have this:
 But somewhere, unless love forget
 His old way,
 There shall be something better yet
 —Ay, some day.
 {190}

LOST BLISSES.

THINK, O Heart, what sweet—had you waited
 A moment, on such a day—
 Had yet been to do or to say
 That shall never be said now or done!
Think what beautiful worlds uncreated
 The clouds then bore back to the sun;
 What blisses were all frustrated;
 What loves, that were almost begun!
Think, O Life,—had your stream but drifted
 To this or that holier Past,
 Or Future that must come at last—
 Think, O sorrowful Life, and repent{191}—
How the sorrowful days had been gifted
 With solace and ravishment,
 And year after year slowly lifted
 To heavens of golden content!
 {192}

THE SPECTRE OF THE PAST.

ON the great day of my life—
 On the memorable day—
 Just as the long inward strife
 Of the echoes died away,
 Just as on my couch I lay
 Thinking thought away;
 Came a Man into my room,
 Bringing with him gloom.{193}
Midnight stood upon the clock,
 And the street sound ceased to rise;
 Suddenly, and with no knock,
 Came that Man before my eyes:
 Yet he seemed not anywise
 My heart to surprise,
 And he sat down to abide
 At my fireside.
But he stirred within my heart
 Memories of the ancient days;
 And strange visions seemed to start
 Vividly before my gaze,
 Yea, from the most distant haze
 Of forgotten ways:
 And he looked on me the while
 With a most strange smile.
But my heart seemed well to know
 That his face the semblance had
 Of my own face long ago
 Ere the years had made it sad,{194}
 When my youthful looks were clad
 In a smile half glad;
 To my heart he seemed in truth
 All my vanished youth.
Then he named me by a name
 Long since unfamiliar grown,
 But remembered for the same
 That my childhood’s ears had known;
 And his voice was like my own
 In a sadder tone
 Coming from the happy years
 Choked, alas, with tears.
And, as though he nothing knew
 Of that day’s fair triumphing,
 Or the Present were not true,
 Or not worth remembering,
 All the Past he seemed to bring
 As a piteous thing
 Back upon my heart again,
 Yea, with a great pain:{195}
“Do you still remember the winding street
 In the grey old village?” He seemed to say;
 “And the long school days that the sun made sweet
 And the thought of the flowers from far away?
 And the faces of friends whom you used to meet
 In that village day by day,
 —Ay, the face of this one or of that?” he said,
 And the names he named were names of the dead
 Who all in the churchyard lay.
“Do you still remember your brother’s face,
 And his soft light hair, and his eyes’ deep blue,
 And the child’s pet name that in every place
 Was once so familiar to him and to you?
 And the innocent sports and the butterfly chase
 That lasted the bright day through?”
 —O this time, I thought of the churchyard and sighed,
 For I thought of the dead lying side by side,
 And my brother who lay there too.{196}
“And do you remember the far green hills;
 Or the long straight path by the side of the stream;
 Or the road that led to the farm and the mills,
 And the fields where you oft used to wander or dream
 Or follow each change of your childish wills
 Like the dance of some gay sunbeam?”—
 Then, alas, from right weeping I could not refrain,
 For indeed all those things I remembered again,—
 As of yesterday they did seem.
And I thought of a day in a far lost Spring,
 When the sun with a kiss set the wild flowers free;
 When my heart felt the kiss and the shadowy wing
 Of some beautiful spirit of things to be,
 Who breathed in the song that the wild birds sing
 Some deep tender meaning for me,—
 Who undid a strange spell in the world as it were,
 Who set wide sweet whispers abroad in the air,—
 Made a presence I could not see.{197}
O that whisper my heart seemed to understand!
 O that spell it took hold on right willing feet!
 To that beautiful spirit I gave my hand,
 And he led me that day up the village street,
 And out through the fields and the fragrant land,
 And on through the pathways sweet;
 Yea, still on, with a semblance of some new bliss,
 Through the world he has led me from that day to this
 With a tender and fair deceit.
“O for what have you wandered so far—so long?”
 Said the voice that was e’en as my voice of old:
 “O for what have you done to the Past such wrong?
 Was there no fair dream on your own threshold?
 In your childhood’s home was there no fresh song?
 —Was your heart then all so cold?
 Why, at length, are you weary and lone and sad,
 But for casting away all the good that you had
 With the peace that was yours of old?{198}
“Have you wholly forgotten the words you said,
 When you stood by a certain mound of earth,
 When you vowed with your heart that that place you made
 The last burial place for your love and your mirth,
 For the pure past blisses you therein laid
 Were surely your whole life’s worth?—
 O, the angels who deck the lone graves with their tears
 Have cared for this, morning and evening, for years,
 But of yours there has been long dearth:
“In the pure pale sheen of a hallowed night,
 When the graves are looking their holiest,
 You may see it more glistering and more bright
 And holier-looking than all the rest;
 You may see that the dews and the stars’ strange light
 Are loving that grave the best;
 But, perhaps, if you went in the clear noon-day,
 After so many years you might scarce find the way
 Ere you tired indeed of the quest:{199}
“For the path that leads to it is almost lost;
 And quite tall grass-flowers of sickly blue
 Have grown up there and gathered for years, and tost
 Bitter germs all around them to grow up too;
 For indeed all these years not a man has crost
 That pathway—not even You!”—
 But alas! for these words to my heart he sent,
 For I knew it was Marguérite’s grave that he meant,
 And I felt that the words were true.
Then the dim sweet faces of them of yore
 Seemed to start from the mist where the memory lies;
 And each one was as sweet and as dear as before;
 But a piteous look was in all their eyes—
 Yea, the long smile of sadness; and each one bore
 A reproach in some tender wise:
 Till my bosom was troubled and sorely thrilled
 With the thought of them all, and my ears were filled
 With a sound of the mingling of sighs.{200}
And my heart, where the memories of them were cast
 And as buried and choked in the dust of the years,
 Became peopled, it seemed, with the shapes of the Past;
 And the voice of my brother grew fresh in my ears:
 So my dried up eyes were softened at last
 To weeping some few sweet tears;
 But the Man who was sitting at my fireside—
 He covered his face with his hands and cried
 As I did in those earlier years.
Then I faltered,—“O Spectre of my lost Youth!
 All too well at thy pleading the sad thoughts wake,
 With the bitter regret of the Past, and in truth
 The whole love of the fair things that all men forsake;
 And for this thy reproach I am filléd with ruth—
 My heart seemeth nigh to break:
 Ah! right gladly would I now return with thee
 To those loves and those lovers, if that might be,
 And be happy for their sweet sake.{201}
“And, O Spectre that wearest my look—my face,
 And art ever with them as the thought they keep
 To remind them of me in the changeless place
 In the changeless Past where the memories sleep,—
 Do thou tell them I am not all barren of grace,
 Nor have buried their love so deep,
 But that now after so long toward them I yearn,
 And that often the thought of them all may return,
 And that often it makes me weep.”
Then, alas! I was troubled and filled with shame,
 As I looked on His face and beheld him fair;
 For his locks were as gold, and his eyes as a flame;
 And I knew that one winter had blanched my hair,
 And that surely my looks were no longer the same
 As in earlier days they were:
 For I feared he should mock me and tell them of this,
 And that even my tears were but scant beside his.
 O, this thought was a hard one to bear!{202}
But at length I fell dreaming beneath the might
 Of each spell of the Past whence I cared not to start;
 And I saw Him some time by the flickering light,
 As the one in my dream who was playing my part;
 Till his semblance grew dim and was gone from my sight
 As a dream of the Past will depart.
 Then the Spirit whose beauty has led me till now,
 Came and breathed a sweet breath on my feverish brow,
 And the strain of this verse in my heart.
 {203}

A FADING FACE.

OUT of a dim and slowly fading place
 In the deep dwelling mem’ries,—as it seems,
 Mingled of purple mem’ries and of dreams—
 The perfect marble features of Your face
 Shine and are seen: each brow is like the space
 Pearly in heaven after the sun-beams;
 And all the curving of the mouth still gleams
 Where many a gracious smile hath left a grace;
 But the eyes are within, or all too far,
 Or changed now to some element of heaven
 Purer and subtler than the blue they were;
 They meet me not. I know not where you are;
 With God most—wholly in the grave,—or even
 In the remembrance of you that is here.
 {204}

THE HEART’S QUESTIONS.

Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 15, no. 3.

WHEN the heaven is blue,
 Or the stars look down,
 Or the golden crown
 Glows upon the hills,—
When the sky of tears
 Lets the sunlight through,
 And the heart a moment thrills,
 Yea, and utters too,—
Who discerns? who hears?
 Who but I—and perhaps You?{205}
When some thin thought-wave
 From the shadow shore
 Brings the Voice once more
 From beyond the grave;
When some pain is prest
 Deep into the breast,
 And the inward thoughts are swords
 Killing one with sadness;
Most when love is strong,
 And the anguish long
 Rolls up in a haste of words
 Ending all in madness—
Who is he that soothes or cheers?
 Who believes? who hears?
Ay, when the Heart grieves,
 Pants, prays—who believes?{206}—
Ay, when the Heart cries,
 When it breaks, when it dies,—
 (Ah, why was the Heart born!—)
 Who shall save? who shall mourn?
 {207}

BARCAROLLE.

THE stars are dimly seen among the shadows of the bay,
 And lights that win are seen in strife with lights that die away:
The wave is very still—the rudder loosens in our hand,
 The zephyr will not fill our sail and waft us to the land;
 O precious is the pause between the winds that come and go,
 And sweet the silence of the shores between the ebb and flow.{208}
No sound but sound of rest is on the bosom of the deep,
 Soft as the breathing of a breast serenely hushed with sleep:
 Lay by the oar; there is a voice at heart to sing or sigh—
 O what shall be the choice of barcarolle or lullaby?
Say shall we sing of day or night, fair land or mighty ocean,
 Of any rapturous delight or any dear emotion,
 Of any joy that is on Earth, or hope that is above—
 The holy country of our birth, or any song of love?
Our heart in all our life is like the hand of one who steers
 A bark upon an ocean rife with dangers and with fears;
 The joys, the hopes, like waves or wings, bear up this life of ours—
 Short as a song of all these things that make up all its hours.{209}
Spread sail! for it is Hope to-day that like a wind new-risen
 Doth waft us on a golden wing towards a new horizon,
 That is the sun before our sight, the beacon for us burning,
 That is the star in all our night of watching and of yearning.
Love is this thing that we pursue to-day, to-night, for ever,
 We care not whither, know not who shall be at length the giver:
 For Love,—our life and all our years are cast upon the waves;
 Our heart is as the hand that steers;—but who is He that saves?
We ply with oars, we strive with every sail upon our mast—
 We never tire, never fail—and Love is seen at last:{210}
 A low and purple mirage like a coast where day is breaking—
 Sink sail!—for such a dream as Love is lost before the waking.
 {211}

THE MINER.

BALLAD.

HO, I sing and I sing!
 Digging jewels for the King;—
 Till I tire of the measure
 I sing and I sing:
 Here’s a diamond true bright;
 Here’s a ruby worth a treasure:
 So I labour, and my sight
 Surely fails, and I get gray
 Digging jewels for the King:
 I have toiled so many a day,
 I have found so many a treasure,{212}
 Yet,—ah’s me!—I dare to say
 That I could not earn my way
 To the palace of the King.
I was a miner—doomed
 With a fate branded at birth
 To serve the King entombed
 In this dungeon of the Earth:
 They gave me a thing called Hope,
 A word written in gold
 On a talent—precious I’m told;
 But, if I am to grope
 All my life long in a mine,
 What were the use at best
 Of a bauble just to shine
 And dangle at my breast?
So I sing, so I sing
 Here’s a jewel for the King!—
 Let me clear it of the rust;
 Wrap the gold thing in gold dust:{213}
 ’Tis a perfect bauble—see,
 A truly precious thing,
 Far fitter for a king
 Than a prisoner like me.
 {214}

A WASTED LAND.

ALAS, for a sound is heard
 Of a bitterly broken song;
 Grievous is every word;
 And the burden is weary and long
 Like the waves between ebb and flow;
 And it comes when the winds are low,
 Or whenever the night is nigh,
 And the world hath space for a sigh.{215}
It was in the time of fruit;
 When the peach began to pout,
 And the purple grape to shine,
 And the leaves were a threadbare suit
 For the blushing blood of the vine,
 And the spoilers were about
 And the viper glode at the root:
—She came, and with her hand,
 With her mouth, yea, and her eyes
 She hath ravaged all the land;
 Its beauty shall no more rise:
 She hath drawn the wine to her lip.
 For a mere wanton sip:
 Lo, where the vine-branch lies;
 Lo, where the drained grapes drip.
Her feet left many a stain;
 And her lips left many a sting;
 She will never come again,
 And the fruit of everything
 Is a canker or a pain:{216}
 And a memory doth crouch
 Like an asp,—yea, in each part
 Where she hath left her touch,—
 Lying in wait for the heart.
 {217}

CHARMED MOMENTS.

Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 37, no. 1.

THE sky is a brilliant enamel;
 The sea is a beautiful gem;
 The hours are beautiful flowers
 That pass, and we keep none of them;
 They bear not the thing we would cherish,
 Those beautiful fruitless flowers;
 Each comes up to blossom and perish;
 We wait, and another is ours:
We wait till the heavens above us,
 The flowering earth, or the seas
 Shall bring us the soul meant to love us,
 And hours much sweeter than these.{218}
How thrill we, when heavenly hushes
 Come over the sea and the land!—
 Soft kissings of waves among rushes,
 Footfalls of a bird on the sand,
 Or least little stirs in the bushes
 Take hold on the heart like a hand
 Arresting—we know not for what—
 But little we care to withstand:
How thrill we!—We think that some Spirit
 Is speaking each moment like that;—
 O faint not, strained ear, till you hear it,—
 Heart, break not till you understand!
 {219}

A LIFE-TOMB.

THE house is haunted and rife
 With Her touch behind panel and door
 And her footfalls under the floor;
 O the house is filled with gloom:
 —Is She here dead in my life?
 Am I here alive in her tomb?—
Ah fain am I still to track
 And to walk along the ways
 Sown with flowers by her feet;
 And to gather, following back,
 All the purple nights and days
 She slew passing; or, half sweet,{220}
 To sit with dull eyes cast
 On slowly dying embers
 Of things the heart remembers
 Right fair in the heart’s past,
 —Till tones, that seem to start
 From the shadows in the room,
 Move round about the heart,
 And a love-glow fills the gloom;
 And her soul seems to look out
 As from dim and distant eyes,
 And a shade of lips to pout
 With some remnant of her sighs.
And often too, in the night,
 The flame in famished eyes
 Re-kindles an old delight
 At some dream-sight of her;
 The heart with tremulous stir
 Lives a moment and then dies.
 {221}

THE SLAVE OF APOLLO.

“HOW shall I rid myself from thee,
 Apollo? Give me leave to be
 No more than flower, or wind, or thought,
 —Only a fragrant memory, nought,
 Or anything that’s free:
“Give me—O pitying—some power
 To cease; make me a gentle shower;
 A hidden fount that murmureth
 In some sweet glimmer all apart
 From sounds of living: give me death!
 Or loose me for your love of me;
 My bosom faileth and my heart
 No more a prisoner will be
 —Will be free!{222}
Shall I not cry to ye aloud
 O clouds! My spirit was a cloud
 Like one of you,—was free, I say,
 To loiter o’er the tremulous lakes
 Loving, to cling upon the wane
 Of every fair thing that forsakes
 The light and luxury of day;
 To bear me over hill and plain
 Upon the winds’ unfooted way:
Ah, I was fearless then and pure;
 And my sight touched all things obscure
 Beneath dim masks of change or sleep:
 And read the tender meanings writ
 For full new heavens down in deep
 Horizons, over which stood knit
 The storms’ dark brows; I saw what cleaves
 In the far corners of sun-smiles,
 And I could send my breath for miles
 Among the flowers and the leaves.{223}
O bosom of my mother Heaven,
 Was not I purer than the dew?
 Was not my spirit of the leaven
 Of your own high eternal blue
 Unspotted by one part of earth?
 O, wherefore this dull flesh that wraps
 My sense in shame,—O, why this birth
 Among hard human sights and mirth!
 Hear now, and draw me back to you.
 Call to me through the silent gaps
 In some great tempest cloud above,
 Steal me when, gasping in the laps
 Of these that sicken me of love,
 I lie and think of my lost bliss:
 O can you not in one long kiss
 Absorb my spirit back to you?
But thou, Apollo, who prevailest!
 Hast thou made me thine envy? choosing,
 Out of all creatures, me the frailest;
 Me the most piteous, for the loosing{224}
 Of thy swift amorous looks like hounds
 That hunt my soul—heavy and rife
 With bodiless delights and sounds,
 And knowledge of a goodlier life?
—O, not until some fate shall darken
 This soul with death, shall any scorn
 Or hate of heaven make me mute:
 Rather, through hot days, will I hearken
 For quick breaths panting in pursuit,
 And the swift feet of some sweet fawn
 Crashing among the fallen fruit:
 And him—making my whole blood blush—
 I will all languishing beseech,—
 Crush me, O God, as thou wouldst crush
 Some fire-fed fruit, some fallen peach,
 Some swollen skin of purple wine;
 Care not to spare me,—nor refuse me;
 Take me, to use me or abuse me,
 And slay me taking me for thine!{225}—
 So—till he seize me with a shout,
 Tear me, and sear me with his breath;
 Yea, till he tread my heart quite out,
 And give me Death!
And if not Death!—
 O all the night I shall be free
 To steep me and to stifle me
 In dew, and cool dew-dropping hair,
 In every shadowy haunt and lair
 Where most forgetfulness may be;
 And, all on flame, my soul shall flare
 Into the chillest of the dark,
 And there be quenchéd, spark by spark.
 To the last faintest spark of me.
I will be wasted as a spoil
 On all things of the woods and winds;
 Earned with no eagerness or toil
 I will be for the first who finds{226}—
 A revel for mad zephyr lips,
 A soft eternity of sips:
 I will no sweet of mine detain;
 But wholly be to them a prey,
 Used lavishly or cast away
 For the whole rout of them to drain.
 Or I will give myself to make
 Sport for the green gods of the lake;
 —All fierce are they with foamy breath,
 And rainbow eyes, and watery souls,
 Quaint things, half deity, half snake;
 —O, I shall lay me in the shoals
 Of waves: or any way get Death!—
So I shall rid myself from thee,
 Apollo!—So at length be free!
 {227}

THE POET’S GRAVE.

IN a lonely spot that was filled with leaves,
 And the wild waste plants without scent or name,
 Where never a mourner came,—
 That was far from the ground where the false world grieves,{228}
 And far from the shade of the church’s eaves—
 They buried the Poet with thoughts of shame,
 And not as one who believes.
Then the tall grass flower with lolling head,
 Who is king of all flowers that twine or creep
 On graves where few come to weep,
 To the briar, and bindweed, and vetch, he said,
 “Lo, here is a grave of the lonely dead;
 Let us go up and haste while his soul may sleep,
 To make the fresh earth our bed.”
Then the rootless briar and bindweed mean,
 And the grovelling vetch, with the pale trefoil
 That cumbers the fruitless soil,
 Yea, the whole strange rout of the earth’s unclean
 Went up to the grave that was fresh and green;
 And together they wrought there so dense a coil
 The grave was no longer seen.{229}
But the tall mad flower whose head is crowned
 With the long lax petals that fall and flap
 Like the ears of a fool’s bell-cap,
 He stood higher than all on the fameless mound;
 And nodded his head to each passing sound,
 Darting this way and that, as in sport to trap
 Each laugh of the winds around.
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JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, 74 & 75, PICCADILLY, LONDON.