Part 15

UP she rose, fair daughter—well she was graced As a cloud her going, stept from her chair, As a summer-soft cloud, in her going paced, Down dropped her riband-band, and all her waving hair Shook like loosened music cadent to her waist;— Lapsing like music, wavery as water, Slid to her waist.

‘WHERETO ART THOU COME?’

‘FRIEND, whereto art thou come?’ Thus Verity; Of each that to the world’s sad Olivet Comes with no multitude, but alone by night, Lit with the one torch of his lifted soul, Seeking her that he may lay hands on her; Thus: and waits answer from the mouth of deed. Truth is a maid, whom men woo diversely; This, as a spouse; that, as a light-o’-love, To know, and having known, to make his brag. But woe to him that takes the immortal kiss, And not estates her in his housing life, Mother of all his seed! So he betrays, Not Truth, the unbetrayable, but himself: And with his kiss’s rated traitor-craft, The Haceldama of a plot of days He buys, to consummate his Judasry Therein with Judas’ guerdon of despair.

HEAVEN AND HELL

’TIS said there were no thought of hell, Save hell were taught; that there should be A Heaven for all’s self-credible. Not so the thing appears to me. ’Tis Heaven that lies beyond our sights, And hell too possible that proves; For all can feel the God that smites, But ah, how few the God that loves!

TO A CHILD

WHENAS my life shall time with funeral tread The heavy death-drum of the beaten hours, Following, sole mourner, mine own manhood dead, Poor forgot corse, where not a maid strows flowers; When I you love am no more I you love, But go with unsubservient feet, behold Your dear face through changed eyes, all grim change prove;— A new man, mockèd with misname of old; When shamed Love keep his ruined lodging, elf! When, ceremented in mouldering memory, Myself is hearsèd underneath myself, And I am but the monument of me:— O to that tomb be tender then, which bears Only the name of him it sepulchres!

HERMES

SOOTHSAY. Behold, with rod twy-serpented, Hermes the prophet, twining in one power The woman with the man. Upon his head The cloudy cap, wherewith he hath in dower The cloud’s own virtue—change and counterchange, To show in light, and to withdraw in pall, As mortal eyes best bear. His lineage strange From Zeus, Truth’s sire, and maiden May—the all- Illusive Nature. His fledged feet declare That ’tis the nether self transdeified, And the thrice-furnaced passions, which do bear The poet Olympusward. In him allied Both parents clasp; and from the womb of Nature Stern Truth takes flesh in shows of lovely feature.

HOUSE OF BONDAGE

WHEN I perceive Love’s heavenly reaping still Regard perforce the clouds’ vicissitude, That the fixed spirit loves not when it will, But craves its seasons of the flawful blood; When I perceive that the high poet doth Oft voiceless stray beneath the uninfluent stars, That even Urania of her kiss is loath, And Song’s brave wings fret on their sensual bars; When I perceived the fullest-sailèd sprite Lag at most need upon the lethèd seas, The provident captainship oft voided quite, And lamèd lie deep-draughted argosies; I scorn myself, that put for such strange toys The wit of man to purposes of boys.

The spirit’s ark sealed with a little clay, Was old ere Memphis grew a memory; {190} The hand pontifical to break away That seal what shall surrender? Not the sea Which did englut great Egypt and his war, Nor all the desert-drownèd sepulchres. Love’s feet are stained with clay and travel-sore, And dusty are Song’s lucent wing and hairs. O Love, that must do courtesy to decay, Eat hasty bread standing with loins up-girt, How shall this stead thy feet for their sore way? Ah, Song, what brief embraces balm thy hurt! Had Jacob’s toil full guerdon, casting his Twice-seven heaped years to burn in Rachel’s kiss?

THE HEART

TWO SONNETS

(To my Critic, who had objected to the phrase—‘The heart’s burning floors.’)

THE heart you hold too small and local thing, Such spacious terms of edifice to bear. And yet, since Poesy first shook out her wing, The mighty Love has been impalaced there; That has she given him as his wide demesne, And for his sceptre ample empery; Against its door to knock has Beauty been Content; it has its purple canopy A dais for the sovereign lady spread Of many a lover, who the heaven would think Too low an awning for her sacred head. The world, from star to sea, cast down its brink— Yet shall that chasm, till He Who these did build An awful Curtius make Him, yawn unfilled.

O nothing, in this corporal earth of man, That to the imminent heaven of his high soul Responds with colour and with shadow, can Lack correlated greatness. If the scroll Where thoughts lie fast in spell of hieroglyph Be mighty through its mighty habitants; If God be in His Name; grave potence if The sounds unbind of hieratic chants; All’s vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirm Nature is whole in her least things exprest, Nor know we with what scope God builds the worm. Our towns are copied fragments from our breast; And all man’s Babylons strive but to impart The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.

A SUNSET

FROM HUGO’S ‘FEUILLES D’AUTOMNE’

I LOVE the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens, Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens, In numerous leafage bosomed close; Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere On cloudy archipelagos.

Oh gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion, Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds’ commotion, Their unimagined shapes accord: Under their waves at intervals flames a pale levin through, As if some giant of the air amid the vapours drew A sudden elemental sword.

The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold; And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold, The thatched roof of a cot a-glance; Or on the blurred horizons joins his battle with the haze; Or pools the glooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze Great moveless meres of radiance.

Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament’s swept track Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back, A triple row of pointed teeth? Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide, The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds its tenebrous side With scales of golden mail ensheathe.

Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates—the vision flees. Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice Ruins immense in mounded wrack: Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.

These vapours with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzèd glows, Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose, Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms, ’Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep, As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep His dreadful and resounding arms!

All vanishes! The sun, from topmost heaven precipitated, Like to a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red Into the furnace stirred to fume, Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire, Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire The vaporous and inflamèd spume.

O contemplate the heavens! whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale, In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil, With love that has not speech for need; Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite: If winter hue them like a pall; or if the summer night Fantasy them with starry brede.

HEARD ON THE MOUNTAIN