Part 3

Her tears made dulcet fretting, Her voice had no word, More than thunder or the bird. Yet, unforgetting, The ravished soul her meanings knew. Mine ears heard not, and I heard.

XXV

When she shall unwind All those wiles she wound about me, Tears shall break from out me, That I cannot find Music in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt me!

CONTEMPLATION

THIS morning saw I, fled the shower, The earth reclining in a lull of power: The heavens, pursuing not their path, Lay stretched out naked after bath, Or so it seemed; field, water, tree, were still, Nor was there any purpose on the calm-browed hill.

The hill, which sometimes visibly is Wrought with unresting energies, Looked idly; from the musing wood, And every rock, a life renewed Exhaled like an unconscious thought When poets, dreaming unperplexed, Dream that they dream of nought. Nature one hour appears a thing unsexed, Or to such serene balance brought That her twin natures cease their sweet alarms, And sleep in one another’s arms. The sun with resting pulses seems to brood, And slacken its command upon my unurged blood.

The river has not any care Its passionless water to the sea to bear; The leaves have brown content; The wall to me has freshness like a scent, And takes half animate the air, Making one life with its green moss and stain; And life with all things seems too perfect blent For anything of life to be aware. The very shades on hill, and tree, and plain, Where they have fallen doze, and where they doze remain.

No hill can idler be than I; No stone its inter-particled vibration Investeth with a stiller lie; No heaven with a more urgent rest betrays The eyes that on it gaze. We are too near akin that thou shouldst cheat Me, Nature, with thy fair deceit.

In poets floating like a water-flower Upon the bosom of the glassy hour, In skies that no man sees to move, Lurk untumultuous vortices of power, For joy too native, and for agitation Too instant, too entire for sense thereof, Motion like gnats when autumn suns are low, Perpetual as the prisoned feet of love On the heart’s floors with painèd pace that go. From stones and poets you may know, Nothing so active is, as that which least seems so.

For he, that conduit running wine of song, Then to himself does most belong, When he his mortal house unbars To the importunate and thronging feet That round our corporal walls unheeded beat; Till, all containing, he exalt His stature to the stars, or stars Narrow their heaven to his fleshly vault: When, like a city under ocean, To human things he grows a desolation, And is made a habitation For the fluctuous universe To lave with unimpeded motion. He scarcely frets the atmosphere With breathing, and his body shares The immobility of rocks; His heart’s a drop-well of tranquillity; His mind more still is than the limbs of fear, And yet its unperturbed velocity The spirit of the simoom mocks. He round the solemn centre of his soul Wheels like a dervish, while his being is Streamed with the set of the world’s harmonies, In the long draft of whatsoever sphere He lists the sweet and clear Clangour of his high orbit on to roll, So gracious is his heavenly grace; And the bold stars does hear, Every one in his airy soar, For evermore Shout to each other from the peaks of space, As thwart ravines of azure shouts the mountaineer.

‘BY REASON OF THY LAW’

HERE I make oath— Although the heart that knows its bitterness Hear loath, And credit less— That he who kens to meet Pain’s kisses fierce Which hiss against his tears, Dread, loss, nor love frustrate, Nor all iniquity of the froward years Shall his inurèd wing make idly bate, Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight To lose observance quite; Seal from half-sad and all-elate Sagacious eyes Ultimate Paradise; Nor shake his certitude of haughty fate.

Pacing the burning shares of many dooms, I with stern tread do the clear-witting stars To judgment cite, If I have borne aright The proving of their pure-willed ordeal. From food of all delight The heavenly Falconer my heart debars, And tames with fearful glooms The haggard to His call; Yet sometimes comes a hand, sometimes a voice withal, And she sits meek now, and expects the light.

In this Avernian sky, This sultry and incumbent canopy Of dull and doomed regret; Where on the unseen verges yet, O yet, At intervals, Trembles, and falls, Faint lightning of remembered transient sweet— Ah, far too sweet But to be sweet a little, a little sweet, and fleet; Leaving this pallid trace, This loitering and most fitful light a space, Still some sad space, For Grief to see her own poor face:—

Here where I keep my stand With all o’er-anguished feet, And no live comfort near on any hand; Lo, I proclaim the unavoided term, When this morass of tears, then drained and firm, Shall be a land— Unshaken I affirm— Where seven-quired psalterings meet; And all the gods move with calm hand in hand, And eyes that know not trouble and the worm.

THE DREAD OF HEIGHT

If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say: We see: your sin remaineth.

JOHN ix. 41.

NOT the Circean wine Most perilous is for pain: Grapes of the heavens’ star-loaden vine, Whereto the lofty-placed Thoughts of fair souls attain, Tempt with a more retributive delight, And do disrelish all life’s sober taste. ’Tis to have drunk too well The drink that is divine, Maketh the kind earth waste, And breath intolerable.

Ah me! How shall my mouth content it with mortality? Lo, secret music, sweetest music, From distances of distance drifting its lone flight, Down the arcane where Night would perish in night, Like a god’s loosened locks slips undulously: Music that is too grievous of the height For safe and low delight, Too infinite, For bounded hearts which yet would girth the sea!

So let it be, Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small: So let it be, O music, music, though you wake in me No joy, no joy at all; Although you only wake Uttermost sadness, measure of delight, Which else I could not credit to the height, Did I not know, That ill is statured to its opposite; Did I not know, And even of sadness so, Of utter sadness make, Of extreme sad a rod to mete The incredible excess of unsensed sweet, And mystic wall of strange felicity. So let it be, Though sweet be great, and though my heart be small, And bitter meat The food of gods for men to eat; Yea, John ate daintier, and did tread Less ways of heat, Than whom to their wind-carpeted High banquet-hall, And golden love-feasts, the fair stars entreat.

But ah withal, Some hold, some stay, O difficult Joy, I pray, Some arms of thine, Not only, only arms of mine! Lest like a weary girl I fall From clasping love so high, And lacking thus thine arms, then may Most hapless I Turn utterly to love of basest rate; For low they fall whose fall is from the sky. Yea, who me shall secure But I of height grown desperate Surcease my wing, and my lost fate Be dashed from pure To broken writhings in the shameful slime: Lower than man, for I dreamed higher, Thrust down, by how much I aspire, And damned with drink of immortality? For such things be, Yea, and the lowest reach of reeky Hell Is but made possible By forta’en breath of Heaven’s austerest clime.

These tidings from the vast to bring Needeth not doctor nor divine, Too well, too well My flesh doth know the heart-perturbing thing; That dread theology alone Is mine, Most native and my own; And ever with victorious toil When I have made Of the deific peaks dim escalade, My soul with anguish and recoil Doth like a city in an earthquake rock, As at my feet the abyss is cloven then, With deeper menace than for other men, Of my potential cousinship with mire; That all my conquered skies do grow a hollow mock, My fearful powers retire, No longer strong, Reversing the shook banners of their song.

Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven, A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint, Or for a will accipitrine to pursue! The veil of tutelar flesh to simple livers given, Or those brave-fledging fervours of the Saint, Whose heavenly falcon-craft doth never taint, Nor they in sickest time their ample virtue mew.

ORIENT ODE

LO, in the sanctuaried East, Day, a dedicated priest In all his robes pontifical exprest, Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly, From out its Orient tabernacle drawn, Yon orbèd sacrament confest Which sprinkles benediction through the dawn; And when the grave procession’s ceased, The earth with due illustrious rite Blessed,—ere the frail fingers featly Of twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte, His sacerdotal stoles unvest— Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast, The sun in august exposition meetly Within the flaming monstrance of the West. O salutaris hostia, Quæ coeli pandis ostium! Through breachèd darkness’ rampart, a Divine assaulter, art thou come! God whom none may live and mark! Borne within thy radiant ark, While the Earth, a joyous David, Dances before thee from the dawn to dark. The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve; Behold her fair and greater daughter {27} Offers to thee her fruitful water, Which at thy first white Ave shall conceive! Thy gazes do on simple her Desirable allures confer; What happy comelinesses rise Beneath thy beautifying eyes! Who was, indeed, at first a maid Such as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair, And secret views herself afraid, Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear: Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover, Make the beauties they discover! What dainty guiles and treacheries caught From artful prompting of love’s artless thought Her lowly loveliness teach her to adorn, When thy plumes shiver against the conscious gates of morn!

And so the love which is thy dower, Earth, though her first-frightened breast Against the exigent boon protest, (For she, poor maid, of her own power Has nothing in herself, not even love, But an unwitting void thereof), Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower; And holy odours do her bosom invest, That sweeter grows for being prest: Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, From thine embrace still startles coy, Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, The laughing captive from the wishing West.

Nor the majestic heavens less Thy formidable sweets approve, Thy dreads and thy delights confess, That do draw, and that remove. Thou as a lion roar’st, O Sun, Upon thy satellites’ vexèd heels; Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run; Each in his frighted orbit wheels, Each flies through inassuageable chase, Since the hunt o’ the world begun, The puissant approaches of thy face, And yet thy radiant leash he feels. Since the hunt o’ the world begun, Lashed with terror, leashed with longing, The mighty course is ever run; Pricked with terror, leashed with longing, Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun. Since the hunt o’ the world began, With love that trembleth, fear that loveth, Thou join’st the woman to the man; And Life with Death In obscure nuptials moveth, Commingling alien, yet affinèd breath.