page: [i]
Manuscript Addition: EE 391 / $185.00 / H E
Transcription Gap: 2 letters (image unclear)
/ ‘Hayward Cat., 283 / R's first vol. of original poems / Binding
designed by Rossetti—with the / terminal blanks / Fredeman 23.8 /
preceded by / privately printed eds. 1869, 70
Editorial Description: Pencil notes across top and centre of page. Not in DGR's penmanship
POEMS.
page: [ii]
page: [iii]
POEMS
BY
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
LONDON:
F. S. ELLIS, 33 KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1870.
page: [iv]
Note: blank page
Note: A rough circular impression about two centimeters in diameter lies 4
centimeters from the right side and 4.5 centimeters from the bottom of the page.
There is a similar mark at the bottom of page 281.
page: [v]
TO
WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI,
THESE POEMS,
TO SO MANY OF WHICH, SO MANY YEARS BACK,
HE GAVE THE FIRST BROTHERLY HEARING,
ARE NOW AT LAST DEDICATED.
page: [vi]
page: [vii]
page: xi
page: [xii]
[Many poems in this volume were written between
1847 and 1853. Others are of
recent date, and a few belong
to the intervening period. It has been thought
unnecessary
to specify the earlier work, as nothing is included which
the
author believes to be immature.]
page: [1]
Sig. B
Note: Two indecipherable pencil marks, in the left and bottom margins of the page,
have been partially erased.
- The blessed damozel leaned out
- From the gold bar of Heaven;
- Her eyes were deeper than the depth
- Of waters stilled at even;
- She had three lilies in her hand,
- And the stars in her hair were seven.
- Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
- No wrought flowers did adorn,
- But a white rose of Mary's gift,
-
10 For service meetly worn;
- Her hair that lay along her back
- Was yellow like ripe corn.
- Herseemed she scarce had been a day
- One of God's choristers;
page: 2
- The wonder was not yet quite gone
- From that still look of hers;
- Albeit, to them she left, her day
- Had counted as ten years.
- (To one, it is ten years of years.
-
20 . . . Yet now, and in this place,
- Surely she leaned o'er me—her hair
- Fell all about my face. . . .
- Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.
- The whole year sets apace.)
- It was the rampart of God's house
- That she was standing on;
- By God built over the sheer depth
- The which is Space begun;
- So high, that looking downward thence
-
30 She scarce could see the sun.
- It lies in Heaven, across the flood
- Of ether, as a bridge.
- Beneath, the tides of day and night
- With flame and darkness ridge
- The void, as low as where this earth
- Spins like a fretful midge.
page: 3
- Heard hardly, some of her new friends
- Amid their loving games
- Spake evermore among themselves
-
40 Their virginal chaste names;
- And the souls mounting up to God
- Went by her like thin flames.
- And still she bowed herself and stooped
- Out of the circling charm;
- Until her bosom must have made
- The bar she leaned on warm,
- And the lilies lay as if asleep
- Along her bended arm.
- From the fixed place of Heaven she saw
-
50 Time like a pulse shake fierce
- Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
- Within the gulf to pierce
- Its path; and now she spoke as when
- The stars sang in their spheres.
- The sun was gone now; the curled moon
- Was like a little feather
- Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
- She spoke through the still weather.
page: 4
- Her voice was like the voice the stars
-
60 Had when they sang together.
- (Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song,
- Strove not her accents there,
- Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
- Possessed the mid-day air,
- Strove not her steps to reach my side
- Down all the echoing stair?)
- ‘I wish that he were come to me,
- For he will come,’ she said.
- ‘Have I not prayed in Heaven?—on earth,
-
70 Lord, Lord, has he not pray'd?
- Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
- And shall I feel afraid?
- ‘When round his head the aureole clings,
- And he is clothed in white,
- I'll take his hand and go with him
- To the deep wells of light;
- We will step down as to a stream,
- And bathe there in God's sight.
- ‘We two will stand beside that shrine,
-
80 Occult, withheld, untrod,
page: 5
- Whose lamps are stirred continually
- With prayer sent up to God;
- And see our old prayers, granted, melt
- Each like a little cloud.
- ‘We two will lie i'the shadow of
- That living mystic tree
- Within whose secret growth the Dove
- Is sometimes felt to be,
- While every leaf that His plumes touch
-
90 Saith His Name audibly.
- ‘And I myself will teach to him,
- I myself, lying so,
- The songs I sing here; which his voice
- Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
- And find some knowledge at each pause,
- Or some new thing to know.’
- (Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st!
- Yea, one wast thou with me
- That once of old. But shall God lift
-
100 To endless unity
- The soul whose likeness with thy soul
- Was but its love for thee?)
page: 6
- ‘We two,’ she said, ‘will seek the groves
- Where the lady Mary is,
- With her five handmaidens, whose names
- Are five sweet symphonies,
- Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
- Margaret and Rosalys.
- ‘Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
-
110 And foreheads garlanded;
- Into the fine cloth white like flame
- Weaving the golden thread,
- To fashion the birth-robes for them
- Who are just born, being dead.
- ‘He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:
- Then will I lay my cheek
- To his, and tell about our love,
- Not once abashed or weak:
- And the dear Mother will approve
-
120 My pride, and let me speak.
- ‘Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
- To Him round whom all souls
- Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
- Bowed with their aureoles:
page: 7
- And angels meeting us shall sing
- To their citherns and citoles.
- ‘There will I ask of Christ the Lord
- Thus much for him and me:—
- Only to live as once on earth
-
130 With Love,—only to be,
- As then awhile, for ever now
- Together, I and he.’
- She gazed and listened and then said,
- Less sad of speech than mild,—
- ‘All this is when he comes.’ She ceased.
- The light thrilled towards her, fill'd
- With angels in strong level flight.
- Her eyes prayed, and she smil'd.
- (I saw her smile.) But soon their path
-
140 Was vague in distant spheres:
- And then she cast her arms along
- The golden barriers,
- And laid her face between her hands,
- And wept. (I heard her tears.)
page: 8
- Master of the murmuring courts
- Where the shapes of sleep convene!—
- Lo! my spirit here exhorts
- All the powers of thy demesne
- For their aid to woo my queen.
- What reports
- Yield thy jealous courts unseen?
- Vaporous, unaccountable,
- Dreamland lies forlorn of light,
-
10Hollow like a breathing shell.
- Ah! that from all dreams I might
- Choose one dream and guide its flight!
- I know well
- What her sleep should tell to-night.
page: 9
- There the dreams are multitudes:
- Some whose buoyance waits not sleep,
- Deep within the August woods;
- Some that hum while rest may steep
- Weary labour laid a-heap;
-
20 Interludes,
- Some, of grievous moods that weep.
- Poets' fancies all are there:
- There the elf-girls flood with wings
- Valleys full of plaintive air;
- There breathe perfumes; there in rings
- Whirl the foam-bewildered springs;
- Siren there
- Winds her dizzy hair and sings.
- Thence the one dream mutually
-
30 Dreamed in bridal unison,
- Less than waking ecstasy;
- Half-formed visions that make moan
- In the house of birth alone;
- And what we
- At death's wicket see, unknown.
page: 10
- But for mine own sleep, it lies
- In one gracious form's control,
- Fair with honorable eyes,
- Lamps of an auspicious soul:
-
40 O their glance is loftiest dole,
- Sweet and wise,
- Wherein Love descries his goal.
- Reft of her, my dreams are all
- Clammy trance that fears the sky:
- Changing footpaths shift and fall;
- From polluted coverts nigh,
- Miserable phantoms sigh;
- Quakes the pall,
- And the funeral goes by.
-
50Master, is it soothly said
- That, as echoes of man's speech
- Far in secret clefts are made,
- So do all men's bodies reach
- Shadows o'er thy sunken beach,—
- Shape or shade
- In those halls pourtrayed of each?
page: 11
- Ah! might I, by thy good grace
- Groping in the windy stair,
- (Darkness and the breath of space
-
60 Like loud waters everywhere,)
- Meeting mine own image there
- Face to face,
- Send it from that place to her!
- Nay, not I; but oh! do thou,
- Master, from thy shadowkind
- Call my body's phantom now:
- Bid it bear its face declin'd
- Till its flight her slumbers find,
- And her brow
-
70Feel its presence bow like wind.
- Where in groves the gracile Spring
- Trembles, with mute orison
- Confidently strengthening,
- Water's voice and wind's as one
- Shed an echo in the sun.
- Soft as Spring,
- Master, bid it sing and moan.
page: 12
- Song shall tell how glad and strong
- Is the night she soothes alway;
-
80Moan shall grieve with that parched tongue
- Of the brazen hours of day:
- Sounds as of the springtide they,
- Moan and song,
- While the chill months long for May.
- Not the prayers which with all leave
- The world's fluent woes prefer,—
- Not the praise the world doth give,
- Dulcet fulsome whisperer;—
- Let it yield my love to her,
-
90 And achieve
- Strength that shall not grieve or err.
- Wheresoe'er my dreams befall,
- Both at night-watch, (let it say,)
- And where round the sundial
- The reluctant hours of day,
- Heartless, hopeless of their way,
- Rest and call;—
- There her glance doth fall and stay.
page: 13
- Suddenly her face is there:
-
100 So do mounting vapours wreathe
- Subtle-scented transports where
- The black firwood sets its teeth.
- Part the boughs and look beneath,—
- Lilies share
- Secret waters there, and breathe.
- Master, bid my shadow bend
- Whispering thus till birth of light,
- Lest new shapes that sleep may send
- Scatter all its work to flight;—
-
110 Master, master of the night,
- Bid it spend
- Speech, song, prayer, and end aright.
- Yet, ah me! if at her head
- There another phantom lean
- Murmuring o'er the fragrant bed,—
- Ah! and if my spirit's queen
- Smile those alien words between,—
- Ah! poor shade!
- Shall it strive, or fade unseen?
page: 14
-
120How should love's own messenger
- Strive with love and be love's foe?
- Master, nay! If thus, in her,
- Sleep a wedded heart should show,—
- Silent let mine image go,
- Its old share
- Of thy sunken air to know.
- Like a vapour wan and mute,
- Like a flame, so let it pass;
- One low sigh across her lute,
-
130 One dull breath against her glass;
- And to my sad soul, alas!
- One salute
- Cold as when death's foot shall pass.
- Then, too, let all hopes of mine,
- All vain hopes by night and day,
- Slowly at thy summoning sign
- Rise up pallid and obey.
- Dreams, if this is thus, were they:—
- Be they thine,
-
140 And to dreamland pine away.
page: 15
- Yet from old time, life, not death,
- Master, in thy rule is rife:
- Lo! through thee, with mingling breath,
- Adam woke beside his wife.
- O Love bring me so, for strife,
- Force and faith,
- Bring me so not death but life!
- Yea, to Love himself is pour'd
- This frail song of hope and fear.
-
150Thou art Love, of one accord
- With kind Sleep to bring her near,
- Still-eyed, deep-eyed, ah how dear!
- Master, Lord,
- In her name implor'd, O hear!
page: 16
- Heavenborn Helen, Sparta's queen,
- (
O Troy Town!)
- Had two breasts of heavenly sheen,
- The sun and moon of the heart's desire:
- All Love's lordship lay between.
- (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
- Helen knelt at Venus' shrine,
- (
O Troy Town!)
-
10Saying, ‘A little gift is mine,
- A little gift for a heart's desire.
- Hear me speak and make me a sign!
- (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
page: 17
- ‘Look, I bring thee a carven cup;
- (
O Troy Town!)
- See it here as I hold it up,—
- Shaped it is to the heart's desire,
- Fit to fill when the gods would sup.
-
20 (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
- ‘It was moulded like my breast;
- (
O Troy Town!)
- He that sees it may not rest,
- Rest at all for his heart's desire.
- O give ear to my heart's behest!
- (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
- ‘See my breast, how like it is;
-
30 (
O Troy Town!)
- See it bare for the air to kiss!
- Is the cup to thy heart's desire?
- O for the breast, O make it his!
- (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
page: 18
- ‘Yea, for my bosom here I sue;
- (
O Troy Town!)
- Thou must give it where 'tis due,
- Give it there to the heart's desire.
-
40Whom do I give my bosom to?
- (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
- ‘Each twin breast is an apple sweet!
- (
O Troy Town!)
- Once an apple stirred the beat
- Of thy heart with the heart's desire:—
- Say, who brought it then to thy feet?
- (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
-
50‘They that claimed it then were three:
- (
O Troy Town!)
- For thy sake two hearts did he
- Make forlorn of the heart's desire.
- Do for him as he did for thee!
- (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
page: 19
- ‘Mine are apples grown to the south,
- (
O Troy Town!)
- Grown to taste in the days of drouth,
-
60Taste and waste to the heart's desire:
- Mine are apples meet for his mouth!’
- (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
- Venus looked on Helen's gift,
- (
O Troy Town!)
- Looked and smiled with subtle drift,
- Saw the work of her heart's desire:—
- ‘There thou kneel'st for Love to lift!’
- (
O Troy's down,
-
70
Tall Troy's on fire!)
- Venus looked in Helen's face,
- (
O Troy Town!)
- Knew far off an hour and place,
- And fire lit from the heart's desire;
- Laughed and said, ‘Thy gift hath grace!’
- (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
page: 20
- Cupid looked on Helen's breast,
- (
O Troy Town!)
-
80Saw the heart within its nest,
- Saw the flame of the heart's desire,—
- Marked his arrow's burning crest.
- (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
- Cupid took another dart,
- (
O Troy Town!)
- Fledged it for another heart,
- Winged the shaft with the heart's desire,
- Drew the string and said, ‘Depart!’
-
90 (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
- Paris turned upon his bed,
- (
O Troy Town!)
- Turned upon his bed and said,
- Dead at heart with the heart's desire,—
- ‘O to clasp her golden head!’
- (
O Troy's down,
-
Tall Troy's on fire!)
page: 21
- In our Museum galleries
- To-day I lingered o'er the prize
- Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,—
- Her Art for ever in fresh wise
- From hour to hour rejoicing me.
- Sighing I turned at last to win
- Once more the London dirt and din;
- And as I made the swing-door spin
- And issued, they were hoisting in
-
10 A wingèd beast from Nineveh.
- A human face the creature wore,
- And hoofs behind and hoofs before,
- And flanks with dark runes fretted o'er.
- 'Twas bull, 'twas mitred Minotaur,
- A dead disbowelled mystery;
page: 22
- The mummy of a buried faith
- Stark from the charnel without scathe,
- Its wings stood for the light to bathe,—
- Such fossil cerements as might swathe
-
20 The very corpse of Nineveh.
- The print of its first rush-wrapping,
- Wound ere it dried, still ribbed the thing.
- What song did the brown maidens sing,
- From purple mouths alternating,
- When that was woven languidly?
- What vows, what rites, what prayers preferr'd,
- What songs has the strange image heard?
- In what blind vigil stood interr'd
- For ages, till an English word
-
30 Broke silence first at Nineveh?
- Oh when upon each sculptured court,
- Where even the wind might not resort,—
- O'er which Time passed, of like import
- With the wild Arab boys at sport,—
- A living face looked in to see:—
- Oh seemed it not—the spell once broke—
- As though the carven warriors woke,
page: 23
- As though the shaft the string forsook,
- The cymbals clashed, the chariots shook,
-
40 And there was life in Nineveh?
- On London stones our sun anew
- The beast's recovered shadow threw.
- (No shade that plague of darkness knew,
- No light, no shade, while older grew
- By ages the old earth and sea.)
- Lo thou! could all thy priests have shown
- Such proof to make thy godhead known?
- From their dead Past thou liv'st alone;
- And still thy shadow is thine own
-
50 Even as of yore in Nineveh.
- That day whereof we keep record,
- When near thy city-gates the Lord
- Sheltered his Jonah with a gourd,
- This sun, (I said) here present, pour'd
- Even thus this shadow that I see.
- This shadow has been shed the same
- From sun and moon,—from lamps which came
- For prayer,—from fifteen days of flame,
- The last, while smouldered to a name
-
60 Sardanapalus' Nineveh.
page: 24
- Within thy shadow, haply, once
- Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons
- Smote him between the altar-stones:
- Or pale Semiramis her zones
- Of gold, her incense brought to thee,
- In love for grace, in war for aid: . . . .
- Ay, and who else? . . . . till 'neath thy shade
- Within his trenches newly made
- Last year the Christian knelt and pray'd—
-
70 Not to thy strength—in Nineveh.*
- Now, thou poor god, within this hall
- Where the blank windows blind the wall
- From pedestal to pedestal,
- The kind of light shall on thee fall
- Which London takes the day to be:
- While school-foundations in the act
- Of holiday, three files compact,
- Shall learn to view thee as a fact
- Connected with that zealous tract:
-
80 ‘Rome,—Babylon and Nineveh.’
Transcribed Footnote (page 24):
* During the excavations, the Tiyari workmen held their ser-
vices in
the shadow of the great bulls. (
Layard's ‘Nineveh,’ ch. ix.)
page: 25
- Deemed they of this, those worshippers,
- When, in some mythic chain of verse
- Which man shall not again rehearse,
- The faces of thy ministers
- Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy?
- Greece, Egypt, Rome,—did any god
- Before whose feet men knelt unshod
- Deem that in this unblest abode
- Another scarce more unknown god
-
90 Should house with him, from Nineveh?
- Ah! in what quarries lay the stone
- From which this pigmy pile has grown,
- Unto man's need how long unknown,
- Since thy vast temples, court and cone,
- Rose far in desert history?
- Ah! what is here that does not lie
- All strange to thine awakened eye?
- Ah! what is here can testify
- (Save that dumb presence of the sky)
-
100 Unto thy day and Nineveh?
- Why, of those mummies in the room
- Above, there might indeed have come
page: 26
- One out of Egypt to thy home,
- An alien. Nay, but were not some
- Of these thine own ‘antiquity?’
- And now,—they and their gods and thou
- All relics here together,—now
- Whose profit? whether bull or cow,
- Isis or Ibis, who or how,
-
110 Whether of Thebes or Nineveh?
- The consecrated metals found,
- And ivory tablets, underground,
- Winged teraphim and creatures crown'd,
- When air and daylight filled the mound,
- Fell into dust immediately.
- And even as these, the images
- Of awe and worship,—even as these,—
- So, smitten with the sun's increase,
- Her glory mouldered and did cease
-
120 From immemorial Nineveh.
- The day her builders made their halt,
- Those cities of the lake of salt
- Stood firmly 'stablished without fault,
- Made proud with pillars of basalt,
- With sardonyx and porphyry.
page: 27
- The day that Jonah bore abroad
- To Nineveh the voice of God,
- A brackish lake lay in his road,
- Where erst Pride fixed her sure abode,
-
130 As then in royal Nineveh.
- The day when he, Pride's lord and Man's,
- Showed all the kingdoms at a glance
- To Him before whose countenance
- The years recede, the years advance,
- And said, Fall down and worship me:—
- 'Mid all the pomp beneath that look,
- Then stirred there, haply, some rebuke,
- Where to the wind the salt pools shook,
- And in those tracts, of life forsook,
-
140 That knew thee not, O Nineveh!
- Delicate harlot! On thy throne
- Thou with a world beneath thee prone
- In state for ages sat'st alone;
- And needs were years and lustres flown
- Ere strength of man could vanquish thee:
- Whom even thy victor foes must bring,
- Still royal, among maids that sing
page: 28
- As with doves' voices, taboring
- Upon their breasts, unto the King,—
-
150 A kingly conquest, Nineveh!
- . . . Here woke my thought. The wind's slow sway
- Had waxed; and like the human play
- Of scorn that smiling spreads away,
- The sunshine shivered off the day:
- The callous wind, it seemed to me,
- Swept up the shadow from the ground:
- And pale as whom the Fates astound,
- The god forlorn stood winged and crown'd:
- Within I knew the cry lay bound
-
160 Of the dumb soul of Nineveh.
- And as I turned, my sense half shut
- Still saw the crowds of kerb and rut
- Go past as marshalled to the strut
- Of ranks in gypsum quaintly cut.
- It seemed in one same pageantry
- They followed forms which had been erst;
- To pass, till on my sight should burst
- That future of the best or worst
- When some may question which was first,
-
170 Of London or of Nineveh.
page: 29
- For as that Bull-god once did stand
- And watched the burial-clouds of sand,
- Till these at last without a hand
- Rose o'er his eyes, another land,
- And blinded him with destiny:—
- So may he stand again; till now,
- In ships of unknown sail and prow,
- Some tribe of the Australian plough
- Bear him afar,—a relic now
-
180 Of London, not of Nineveh!
- Or it may chance indeed that when
- Man's age is hoary among men,—
- His centuries threescore and ten,—
- His furthest childhood shall seem then
- More clear than later times may be:
- Who, finding in this desert place
- This form, shall hold us for some race
- That walked not in Christ's lowly ways,
- But bowed its pride and vowed its praise
-
190 Unto the God of Nineveh.
- The smile rose first,—anon drew nigh
- The thought: . . . Those heavy wings spread high
page: 30
- So sure of flight, which do not fly;
- That set gaze never on the sky;
- Those scriptured flanks it cannot see;
- Its crown, a brow-contracting load;
- Its planted feet which trust the sod: . . .
- (So grew the image as I trod:)
- O Nineveh, was this thy God,—
-
200 Thine also, mighty Nineveh?
page: 31
- It was Lilith the wife of Adam:
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Not a drop of her blood was human,
- But she was made like a soft sweet woman.
- Lilith stood on the skirts of Eden;
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- She was the first that thence was driven;
- With her was hell and with Eve was heaven.
- In the ear of the Snake said Lilith:—
-
10 (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- ‘To thee I come when the rest is over;
- A snake was I when thou wast my lover.
- ‘I was the fairest snake in Eden:
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- By the earth's will, new form and feature
- Made me a wife for the earth's new creature.
page: 32
- ‘Take me thou as I come from Adam:
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Once again shall my love subdue thee;
-
20The past is past and I am come to thee.
- ‘O but Adam was thrall to Lilith!
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- All the threads of my hair are golden,
- And there in a net his heart was holden.
- ‘O and Lilith was queen of Adam!
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- All the day and the night together
- My breath could shake his soul like a feather.
- ‘What great joys had Adam and Lilith!—
-
30 (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- Sweet close rings of the serpent's twining,
- As heart in heart lay sighing and pining.
- ‘What bright babes had Lilith and Adam!—
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters,
- Glittering sons and radiant daughters.
page: 33
- ‘O thou God, the Lord God of Eden!
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- Say, was this fair body for no man,
-
40That of Adam's flesh thou mak'st him a woman?
- ‘O thou Snake, the King-snake of Eden!
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- God's strong will our necks are under,
- But thou and I may cleave it in sunder.
- ‘Help, sweet Snake, sweet lover of Lilith!
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- And let God learn how I loved and hated
- Man in the image of God created.
- ‘Help me once against Eve and Adam!
-
50 (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Help me once for this one endeavour,
- And then my love shall be thine for ever!
- ‘Strong is God, the fell foe of Lilith:
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- Nought in heaven or earth may affright him;
- But join thou with me and we will smite him.
page: 34
- ‘Strong is God, the great God of Eden:
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Over all He made He hath power;
-
60But lend me thou thy shape for an hour!
- ‘Lend thy shape for the love of Lilith!
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- Look, my mouth and my cheek are ruddy,
- And thou art cold, and fire is my body.
- ‘Lend thy shape for the hate of Adam!
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- That he may wail my joy that forsook him,
- And curse the day when the bride-sleep took him.
- ‘Lend thy shape for the shame of Eden!
-
70 (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- Is not the foe-God weak as the foeman
- When love grows hate in the heart of a woman?
- ‘Would'st thou know the heart's hope of Lilith?
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Then bring thou close thine head till it glisten
- Along my breast, and lip me and listen.
page: 35
- ‘Am I sweet, O sweet Snake of Eden?
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- Then ope thine ear to my warm mouth's cooing
-
80And learn what deed remains for our doing.
- ‘Thou didst hear when God said to Adam:—
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- “Of all this wealth I have made thee warden;
- Thou'rt free to eat of the trees of the garden:
- ‘“Only of one tree eat not in Eden;
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- All save one I give to thy freewill,—
- The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
- ‘O my love, come nearer to Lilith!
-
90 (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- In thy sweet folds bind me and bend me,
- And let me feel the shape thou shalt lend me!
- ‘In thy shape I'll go back to Eden;
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- In these coils that Tree will I grapple,
- And stretch this crowned head forth by the apple.
page: 36
- ‘Lo, Eve bends to the breath of Lilith!
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- O how then shall my heart desire
-
100All her blood as food to its fire!
- ‘Lo, Eve bends to the words of Lilith!—
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- “Nay, this Tree's fruit,—why should ye hate it,
- Or Death be born the day that ye ate it?
- ‘“Nay, but on that great day in Eden,
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- By the help that in this wise Tree is,
- God knows well ye shall be as He is.”
- ‘Then Eve shall eat and give unto Adam;
-
110 (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- And then they both shall know they are naked,
- And their hearts ache as my heart hath achèd.
- ‘Aye, let them hide in the trees of Eden,
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- As in the cool of the day in the garden
- God shall walk without pity or pardon.
page: 37
- ‘Hear, thou Eve, the man's heart in Adam!
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- Of his brave words hark to the bravest:—
-
120“This the woman gave that thou gavest.”
- ‘Hear Eve speak, yea, list to her, Lilith!
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Feast thine heart with words that shall sate it—
- “This the serpent gave and I ate it.”
- ‘O proud Eve, cling close to thine Adam,
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- Driven forth as the beasts of his naming
- By the sword that for ever is flaming.
- ‘Know, thy path is known unto Lilith!
-
130 (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- While the blithe birds sang at thy wedding,
- There her tears grew thorns for thy treading.
- ‘O my love, thou Love-snake of Eden!
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- O to-day and the day to come after!
- Loose me, love,—give breath to my laughter!
page: 38
- ‘O bright Snake, the Death-worm of Adam!
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Wreathe thy neck with my hair's bright tether,
-
140And wear my gold and thy gold together!
- ‘On that day on the skirts of Eden,
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- In thy shape shall I glide back to thee,
- And in my shape for an instant view thee.
- ‘But when thou'rt thou and Lilith is Lilith,
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- In what bliss past hearing or seeing
- Shall each one drink of the other's being!
- ‘With cries of “Eve!” and “Eden!” and “Adam!”
-
150 (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- How shall we mingle our love's caresses,
- I in thy coils, and thou in my tresses!
- ‘With those names, ye echoes of Eden,
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Fire shall cry from my heart that burneth,—
- “Dust he is and to dust returneth!”
page: 39
- ‘Yet to-day, thou master of Lilith,—
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- Wrap me round in the form I'll borrow
-
160And let me tell thee of sweet to-morrow.
- ‘In the planted garden eastward in Eden,
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Where the river goes forth to water the garden,
- The springs shall dry and the soil shall harden.
- ‘Yea, where the bride-sleep fell upon Adam,
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- None shall hear when the storm-wind whistles
- Through roses choked among thorns and thistles.
- ‘Yea, beside the east-gate of Eden,
-
170 (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Where God joined them and none might sever,
- The sword turns this way and that for ever.
- ‘What of Adam cast out of Eden?
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- Lo! with care like a shadow shaken,
- He tills the hard earth whence he was taken.
page: 40
- ‘What of Eve too, cast out of Eden?
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- Nay, but she, the bride of God's giving,
-
180Must yet be mother of all men living.
- ‘Lo, God's grace, by the grace of Lilith!
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- To Eve's womb, from our sweet to-morrow,
- God shall greatly multiply sorrow.
- ‘Fold me fast, O God-snake of Eden!
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- What more prize than love to impel thee?
- Grip and lip my limbs as I tell thee!
- ‘Lo! two babes for Eve and for Adam!
-
190 (
And O the bower and the hour!)
- Lo! sweet Snake, the travail and treasure,—
- Two men-children born for their pleasure!
- ‘The first is Cain and the second Abel:
- (
Eden bower's in flower.)
- The soul of one shall be made thy brother,
- And thy tongue shall lap the blood of the other.’
- (
And O the bower and the hour!)
page: 41
- Mother of the Fair Delight,
- Thou handmaid perfect in God's sight,
- Now sitting fourth beside the Three,
- Thyself a woman-Trinity,—
- Being a daughter borne to God,
- Mother of Christ from stall to rood,
- And wife unto the Holy Ghost:—
- Oh when our need is uttermost,
- Think that to such as death may strike
-
10Thou once wert sister sisterlike!
- Thou headstone of humanity,
- Groundstone of the great Mystery,
- Fashioned like us, yet more than we!
- Mind'st thou not (when June's heavy breath
page: 42
- Warmed the long days in Nazareth,)
- That eve thou didst go forth to give
- Thy flowers some drink that they might live
- One faint night more amid the sands?
- Far off the trees were as pale wands
-
20Against the fervid sky: the sea
- Sighed further off eternally
- As human sorrow sighs in sleep.
- Then suddenly the awe grew deep,
- As of a day to which all days
- Were footsteps in God's secret ways:
- Until a folding sense, like prayer,
- Which is, as God is, everywhere,
- Gathered about thee; and a voice
- Spake to thee without any noise,
-
30Being of the silence:—‘Hail,’ it said,
- ‘Thou that art highly favourèd;
- The Lord is with thee here and now;
- Blessed among all women thou.’
- Ah! knew'st thou of the end, when first
- That Babe was on thy bosom nurs'd?—
- Or when He tottered round thy knee
- Did thy great sorrow dawn on thee?—
page: 43
- And through His boyhood, year by year
- Eating with Him the Passover,
-
40Didst thou discern confusedly
- That holier sacrament, when He,
- The bitter cup about to quaff,
- Should break the bread and eat thereof?—
- Or came not yet the knowledge, even
- Till on some day forecast in Heaven
- His feet passed through thy door to press
- Upon His Father's business?—
- Or still was God's high secret kept?
- Nay, but I think the whisper crept
-
50Like growth through childhood. Work and play,
- Things common to the course of day,
- Awed thee with meanings unfulfill'd;
- And all through girlhood, something still'd
- Thy senses like the birth of light,
- When thou hast trimmed thy lamp at night
- Or washed thy garments in the stream;
- To whose white bed had come the dream
- That He was thine and thou wast His
- Who feeds among the field-lilies.
-
60O solemn shadow of the end
page: 44
- In that wise spirit long contain'd!
- O awful end! and those unsaid
- Long years when It was Finishèd!
- Mind'st thou not (when the twilight gone
- Left darkness in the house of John,)
- Between the naked window-bars
- That spacious vigil of the stars?—
- For thou, a watcher even as they,
- Wouldst rise from where throughout the day
-
70Thou wroughtest raiment for His poor;
- And, finding the fixed terms endure
- Of day and night which never brought
- Sounds of His coming chariot,
- Wouldst lift through cloud-waste unexplor'd
- Those eyes which said, ‘How long, O Lord?’
- Then that disciple whom He loved,
- Well heeding, haply would be moved
- To ask thy blessing in His name;
- And that one thought in both, the same
-
80Though silent, then would clasp ye round
- To weep together,—tears long bound,
- Sick tears of patience, dumb and slow.
- Yet, ‘Surely I come quickly,’—so
page: 45
- He said, from life and death gone home.
- Amen: even so, Lord Jesus, come!
- But oh! what human tongue can speak
- That day when death was sent to break
- From the tir'd spirit, like a veil,
- Its covenant with Gabriel
-
90Endured at length unto the end?
- What human thought can apprehend
- That mystery of motherhood
- When thy Beloved at length renew'd
- The sweet communion severèd,—
- His left hand underneath thine head
- And His right hand embracing thee?—
- Lo! He was thine, and this is He!
- Soul, is it Faith, or Love, or Hope,
- That lets me see her standing up
-
100Where the light of the Throne is bright?
- Unto the left, unto the right,
- The cherubim, arrayed, conjoint,
- Float inward to a golden point,
- And from between the seraphim
- The glory issues for a hymn.
page: 46
- O Mary Mother, be not loth
- To listen,—thou whom the stars clothe,
- Who seëst and mayst not be seen!
- Hear us at last, O Mary Queen!
-
110Into our shadow bend thy face,
- Bowing thee from the secret place,
- O Mary Virgin, full of grace!
page: 47
- ‘Who owns these lands?’ the Pilgrim said.
- ‘Stranger, Queen Blanchelys.’
- ‘And who has thus harried them?’ he said.
- ‘It was Duke Luke did this:
- God's ban be his!’
- The Pilgrim said: ‘Where is your house?
- I'll rest there, with your will.’
- ‘You've but to climb these blackened boughs
- And you'll see it over the hill,
-
10 For it burns still.’
- ‘Which road, to seek your Queen?’ said he.
- ‘Nay, nay, but with some wound
- You'll fly back hither, it may be,
- And by your blood i'the ground
- My place be found.’
page: 48
- ‘Friend, stay in peace. God keep your head,
- And mine, where I will go;
- For He is here and there,’ he said.
- He passed the hill-side, slow,
-
20 And stood below.
- The Queen sat idle by her loom:
- She heard the arras stir,
- And looked up sadly: through the room
- The sweetness sickened her
- Of musk and myrrh.
- Her women, standing two and two,
- In silence combed the fleece.
- The pilgrim said, ‘Peace be with you,
- Lady;’ and bent his knees.
-
30 She answered, ‘Peace.’
- Her eyes were like the wave within;
- Like water-reeds the poise
- Of her soft body, dainty thin;
- And like the water's noise
- Her plaintive voice.
page: 49
- For him, the stream had never well'd
- In desert tracts malign
- So sweet; nor had he ever felt
- So faint in the sunshine
-
40 Of Palestine.
- Right so, he knew that he saw weep
- Each night through every dream
- The Queen's own face, confused in sleep
- With visages supreme
- Not known to him.
- ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘your lands lie burnt
- And waste: to meet your foe
- All fear: this I have seen and learnt.
- Say that it shall be so,
-
50 And I will go.’
- She gazed at him. ‘Your cause is just,
- For I have heard the same:’
- He said: ‘God's strength shall be my trust.
- Fall it to good or grame,
- 'Tis in His name.’
page: 50
- ‘Sir, you are thanked. My cause is dead.
- Why should you toil to break
- A grave, and fall therein?’ she said.
- He did not pause but spake:
-
60 ‘For my vow's sake.’
- ‘Can such vows be, Sir—to God's ear,
- Not to God's will?’ ‘My vow
- Remains: God heard me there as here,’
- He said with reverent brow,
- ‘Both then and now.’
- They gazed together, he and she,
- The minute while he spoke;
- And when he ceased, she suddenly
- Looked round upon her folk
-
70 As though she woke.
- ‘Fight, Sir,’ she said: ‘my prayers in pain
- Shall be your fellowship.’
- He whispered one among her train,—
- ‘To-morrow bid her keep
- This staff and scrip.’
page: 51
- She sent him a sharp sword, whose belt
- About his body there
- As sweet as her own arms he felt.
- He kissed its blade, all bare,
-
80 Instead of her.
- She sent him a green banner wrought
- With one white lily stem,
- To bind his lance with when he fought.
- He writ upon the same
- And kissed her name.
- She sent him a white shield, whereon
- She bade that he should trace
- His will. He blent fair hues that shone,
- And in a golden space
-
90 He kissed her face.
- Right so, the sunset skies unseal'd,
- Like lands he never knew,
- Beyond to-morrow's battle-field
- Lay open out of view
- To ride into.
page: 52
- Next day till dark the women pray'd:
- Nor any might know there
- How the fight went: the Queen has bade
- That there do come to her
-
100 No messenger.
- Weak now to them the voice o' the priest
- As any trance affords;
- And when each anthem failed and ceas'd,
- It seemed that the last chords
- Still sang the words.
- ‘Oh what is the light that shines so red?
- 'Tis long since the sun set;’
- Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid:
- ‘'Twas dim but now, and yet
-
110 The light is great.’
- Quoth the other: ‘'Tis our sight is dazed
- That we see flame i' the air.’
- But the Queen held her brows and gazed,
- And said, ‘It is the glare
- Of torches there.’
page: 53
- ‘Oh what are the sounds that rise and spread?
- All day it was so still;’
- Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid;
- ‘Unto the furthest hill
-
120 The air they fill.’
- Quoth the other; ‘'Tis our sense is blurr'd
- With all the chants gone by.’
- But the Queen held her breath and heard,
- And said, ‘It is the cry
- Of Victory.’
- The first of all the rout was sound,
- The next were dust and flame,
- And then the horses shook the ground:
- And in the thick of them
-
130 A still band came.
- ‘Oh what do ye bring out of the fight,
- Thus hid beneath these boughs?’
- ‘One that shall be thy guest to-night,
- And yet shall not carouse,
- Queen, in thy house.’
page: 54
- ‘Uncover ye his face,’ she said.
- ‘O changed in little space!’
- She cried, ‘O pale that was so red!
- O God, O God of grace!
-
140 Cover his face.’
- His sword was broken in his hand
- Where he had kissed the blade.
- ‘O soft steel that could not withstand!
- O my hard heart unstayed,
- That prayed and prayed!’
- His bloodied banner crossed his mouth
- Where he had kissed her name.
- ‘O east, and west, and north, and south,
- Fair flew my web, for shame,
-
150 To guide Death's aim!’
- The tints were shredded from his shield
- Where he had kissed her face.
- ‘Oh, of all gifts that I could yield,
- Death only keeps its place,
- My gift and grace!’
page: 55
- Then stepped a damsel to her side,
- And spoke, and needs must weep:
- ‘For his sake, lady, if he died,
- He prayed of thee to keep
-
160 This staff and scrip.’
- That night they hung above her bed,
- Till morning wet with tears.
- Year after year above her head
- Her bed his token wears,
- Five years, ten years.
- That night the passion of her grief
- Shook them as there they hung.
- Each year the wind that shed the leaf
- Shook them and in its tongue
-
170 A message flung.
- And once she woke with a clear mind
- That letters writ to calm
- Her soul lay in the scrip; to find
- Only a torpid balm
- And dust of palm.
page: 56
- They shook far off with palace sport
- When joust and dance were rife;
- And the hunt shook them from the court;
- For hers, in peace or strife,
-
180 Was a Queen's life.
- A Queen's death now: as now they shake
- To gusts in chapel dim,—
- Hung where she sleeps, not seen to wake,
- (Carved lovely white and slim),
- With them by him.
- Stand up to-day, still armed, with her,
- Good knight, before His brow
- Who then as now was here and there,
- Who had in mind thy vow
-
190 Then even as now.
- The lists are set in Heaven to-day,
- The bright pavilions shine;
- Fair hangs thy shield, and none gainsay;
- The trumpets sound in sign
- That she is thine.
page: 57
- Not tithed with days' and years' decease
- He pays thy wage He owed,
- But with imperishable peace
- Here in His own abode,
-
200 Thy jealous God.
page: 58
- Our Lombard country-girls along the coast
- Wear daggers in their garters; for they know
- That they might hate another girl to death
- Or meet a German lover. Such a knife
- I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.
- Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts
- That day in going to meet her,—that last day
- For the last time, she said;—of all the love
- And all the hopeless hope that she might change
-
10And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,
- At places we both knew along the road,
- Some fresh shape of herself as once she was
- Grew present at my side; until it seemed—
page: 59
- So close they gathered round me—they would all
- Be with me when I reached the spot at last,
- To plead my cause with her against herself
- So changed. O Father, if you knew all this
- You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
- And only then, if God can pardon me.
-
20What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.
- I passed a village-fair upon my road,
- And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
- Some little present: such might prove, I said,
- Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
- A parting gift. And there it was I bought
- The knife I spoke of, such as women wear.
- That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
- For certain, it must be a parting gift.
- And, standing silent now at last, I looked
-
30Into her scornful face; and heard the sea
- Still trying hard to din into my ears
- Some speech it knew which still might change her heart
- If only it could make me understand.
- One moment thus. Another, and her face
- Seemed further off than the last line of sea,
page: 60
- So that I thought, if now she were to speak
- I could not hear her. Then again I knew
- All, as we stood together on the sand
- At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills.
-
40 ‘Take it,’ I said, and held it out to her,
- While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;
- ‘Take it and keep it for my sake,’ I said.
- Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes
- Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand;
- Only she put it by from her and laughed.
- Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;
- But God heard that. Will God remember all?
- It was another laugh than the sweet sound
- Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day
-
50Eleven years before, when first I found her
- Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls
- Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up
- Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers.
- She might have served a painter to pourtray
- That heavenly child which in the latter days
- Shall walk between the lion and the lamb.
page: 61
- I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick
- And hardly fed; and so her words at first
- Seemed fitful like the talking of the trees
-
60And voices in the air that knew my name.
- And I remember that I sat me down
- Upon the slope with her, and thought the world
- Must be all over or had never been,
- We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me
- Her parents both were gone away from her.
- I thought perhaps she meant that they had died;
- But when I asked her this, she looked again
- Into my face, and said that yestereve
- They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,
-
70And gave her all the bread they had with them,
- And then had gone together up the hill
- Where we were sitting now, and had walked on
- Into the great red light: ‘and so,’ she said,
- ‘I have come up here too; and when this evening
- They step out of the light as they stepped in,
- I shall be here to kiss them.’ And she laughed.
- Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine;
- And how the church-steps throughout all the town,
- When last I had been there a month ago,
page: 62
-
80Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was weighed
- By Austrians armed; and women that I knew
- For wives and mothers walked the public street,
- Saying aloud that if their husbands feared
- To snatch the children's food, themselves would stay
- Till they had earned it there. So then this child
- Was piteous to me; for all told me then
- Her parents must have left her to God's chance,
- To man's or to the Church's charity,
- Because of the great famine, rather than
-
90To watch her growing thin between their knees.
- With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke,
- And sights and sounds came back and things long since,
- And all my childhood found me on the hills;
- And so I took her with me.
- I was young,
- Scarce man then, Father; but the cause which gave
- The wounds I die of now had brought me then
- Some wounds already; and I lived alone,
- As any hiding hunted man must live.
- It was no easy thing to keep a child
-
100In safety; for herself it was not safe,
- And doubled my own danger: but I knew
- That God would help me.
page: 63
- Yet a little while
- Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think
- I have been speaking to you of some matters
- There was no need to speak of, have I not?
- You do not know how clearly those things stood
- Within my mind, which I have spoken of,
- Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past
- Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,
-
110Clearest where furthest off.
- I told you how
- She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet
- A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes:
- I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night
- I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,
- Where women walked whose painted images
- I have seen with candles round them in the church.
- They bent this way and that, one to another,
- Playing: and over the long golden hair
- Of each there floated like a ring of fire
-
120Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when she rose
- Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,
- As if a window had been opened in heaven
- For God to give his blessing from, before
- This world of ours should set; (for in my dream
page: 64
- I thought our world was setting, and the sun
- Flared, a spent taper;) and beneath that gust
- The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
- Then all the blessed maidens who were there
- Stood up together, as it were a voice
-
130That called them; and they threw their tresses back,
- And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
- For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
- To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:
- And looking round, I saw as usual
- That she was standing there with her long locks
- Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.
- For always when I see her now, she laughs.
- And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,
- The life of this dead terror; as in days
-
140When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell
- Something of those days yet before the end.
- I brought her from the city—one such day
- When she was still a merry loving child,—
- The earliest gift I mind my giving her;
- A little image of a flying Love
- Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands
page: 65
- A dart of gilded metal and a torch.
- And him she kissed and me, and fain would know
- Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
-
150And why the arrow. What I knew I told
- Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales.
- And when she heard that he could rule the loves
- Of men and women, still she shook her head
- And wondered; and, ‘Nay, nay,’ she murmured still,
- ‘So strong, and he a younger child than I!’
- And then she'd have me fix him on the wall
- Fronting her little bed; and then again
- She needs must fix him there herself, because
- I gave him to her and she loved him so,
-
160And he should make her love me better yet,
- If women loved the more, the more they grew.
- But the fit place upon the wall was high
- For her, and so I held her in my arms:
- And each time that the heavy pruning-hook
- I gave her for a hammer slipped away
- As it would often, still she laughed and laughed
- And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,
- Just as she hung the image on the nail,
- It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:
-
170And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand
page: 66
- The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.
- And so her laughter turned to tears: and ‘Oh!’
- I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—
- ‘That I should be the first to make you bleed,
- Who love and love and love you!’—kissing still
- The fingers till I got her safe to bed.
- And still she sobbed,—‘not for the pain at all,’
- She said, ‘but for the Love, the poor good Love
- You gave me.’ So she cried herself to sleep.
-
180 Another later thing comes back to me.
- 'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,
- When still from his shut palace, sitting clean
- Above the splash of blood, old Metternich
- (May his soul die, and never-dying worms
- Feast on its pain for ever!) used to thin
- His year's doomed hundreds daintily, each month
- Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,
- Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take
- That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks
-
190Keep all through winter when the sea draws in.
- The first I heard of it was a chance shot
- In the street here and there, and on the stones
page: 67
- A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.
- Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,
- My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife
- Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair
- And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped
- Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still
- A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips
-
200So hot all day where the smoke shut us in.
- For now, being always with her, the first love
- I had—the father's, brother's love—was changed,
- I think, in somewise; like a holy thought
- Which is a prayer before one knows of it.
- The first time I perceived this, I remember,
- Was once when after hunting I came home
- Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me,
- And sat down at my feet upon the floor
- Leaning against my side. But when I felt
-
210Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers
- So high as to be laid upon my heart,
- I turned and looked upon my darling there
- And marked for the first time how tall she was;
- And my heart beat with so much violence
page: 68
- Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose
- But wonder at it soon and ask me why;
- And so I bade her rise and eat with me.
- And when, remembering all and counting back
- The time, I made out fourteen years for her
-
220And told her so, she gazed at me with eyes
- As of the sky and sea on a grey day,
- And drew her long hands through her hair, and asked me
- If she was not a woman; and then laughed:
- And as she stooped in laughing, I could see
- Beneath the growing throat the breasts half globed
- Like folded lilies deepset in the stream.
- Yes, let me think of her as then; for so
- Her image, Father, is not like the sights
- Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth
-
230Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
- Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.
- Her face was ever pale, as when one stoops
- Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair
- And the hair's shadow made it paler still:—
- Deep-serried locks, the darkness of the cloud
- Where the moon's gaze is set in eddying gloom.
page: 69
- Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem
- Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains
- The flower of the year's pride, her high neck bore
-
240That face made wonderful with night and day.
- Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words
- Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips
- She had, that clung a little where they touched
- And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,
- That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath
- The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak,
- Had also in them hidden springs of mirth,
- Which under the dark lashes evermore
- Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low
-
250Between the water and the willow-leaves,
- And the shade quivers till he wins the light.
- I was a moody comrade to her then,
- For all the love I bore her. Italy,
- The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed
- Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands
- To lop the poisonous thicket from her path,
- Cleaving her way to light. And from her need
- Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life
page: 70
- Which I was proud to yield her, as my father
-
260Had yielded his. And this had come to be
- A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate
- To wreak, all things together that a man
- Needs for his blood to ripen: till at times
- All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still
- To see such life pass muster and be deemed
- Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,
- To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—
- Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.
- And though she ruled me always, I remember
-
270That once when I was thus and she still kept
- Leaping about the place and laughing, I
- Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt
- And putting her two hands into my breast
- Sang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes?
- 'Tis long since I have wept for anything.
- I thought that song forgotten out of mind,
- And now, just as I spoke of it, it came
- All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,
- Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears
-
280Holding the platter, when the children run
- To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—
page: 71
Note: Pagenote formatted in two columns at bottom of page.
- La bella donna*
- Piangendo disse:
- ‘Come son fisse
- Le stelle in cielo!
- Quel fiato anelo
- Dello stanco sole,
- Quanto m' assonna!
- E la luna, macchiata
Transcribed Footnote (page 71):
Note: The following poem is formatted in two columns
- * She wept, sweet lady,
- And said in weeping:
- ‘What spell is keeping
- The stars so steady?
- Why does the power
- Of the sun's noon-hour
- To sleep so move me?
- And the moon in heaven,
- Stained where she passes
-
10 As a worn-out glass is,—
- Wearily driven,
- Why walks she above me?
- ‘Stars, moon, and sun too,
- I'm tired of either
- And all together!
- Whom speak they unto
- That I should listen?
- For very surely,
- Though my arms and shoulders
-
20 Dazzle beholders,
- And my eyes glisten,
- All's nothing purely!
- What are words said for
- At all about them,
- If he they are made for
- Can do without them?’
- She laughed, sweet lady,
- And said in laughing:
- ‘His hand clings half in
Column Break
-
30 My own already!
- Oh! do you love me?
- Oh! speak of passion
- In no new fashion,
- No loud inveighings,
- But the old sayings
- You once said of me.
- ‘You said: “As summer,
- Through boughs grown brittle,
- Comes back a little
-
40 Ere frosts benumb her,—
- So bring'st thou to me
- All leaves and flowers,
- Though autumn's gloomy
- To-day in the bowers.”
- ‘Oh! does he love me,
- When my voice teaches
- The very speeches
- He then spoke of me?
- Alas! what flavour
-
50 Still with me lingers?’
- (But she laughed as my kisses
- Glowed in her fingers
- With love's old blisses.)
- ‘Oh! what one favour
- Remains to woo him,
- Whose whole poor savour
- Belongs not to him?’
page: 72
-
290Come uno specchio
- Logoro e vecchio,—
- Faccia affannata,
- Che cosa vuole?
- ‘Chè stelle, luna, e sole,
- Ciascun m' annoja
- E m' annojano insieme;
- Non me ne preme
- Nè ci prendo gioja.
- E veramente,
-
300Che le spalle sien franche
- E le braccia bianche
- E il seno caldo e tondo,
- Non mi fa niente.
- Chè cosa al mondo
- Posso più far di questi
- Se non piacciono a te, come
dicesti?’
- La donna rise
- E riprese ridendo:—
- ‘Questa mano che prendo
-
310E dunque mia?
- Tu m'ami dunque?
- Dimmelo ancora,
- Non in modo qualunque,
- Ma le parole
- Belle e precise
- Che dicesti pria.
- ‘
Siccome suole
-
La state talora
page: 73
- (Dicesti)
un qualche
istante
-
320
Tornare innanzi inverno,
-
Così tu fai ch'io scerno
-
Le foglie tutte quante,
-
Ben ch'io certo tenessi
-
Per passato l'autunno.
- ‘Eccolo il mio alunno!
- Io debbo insegnargli
- Quei cari detti istessi
- Ch'ei mi disse una volta!
- Oimè! Che cosa dargli,’
-
330(Ma ridea piano piano
- Dei baci in sulla mano,)
- ‘Ch'ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo
tolta?’
- That I should sing upon this bed!—with you
- To listen, and such words still left to say!
- Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers,
- As on the very day she sang to me;
- When, having done, she took out of my hand
- Something that I had played with all the while
- And laid it down beyond my reach; and so
-
340Turning my face round till it fronted hers,—
- ‘Weeping or laughing, which was best?’ she said.
- But these are foolish tales. How should I show
page: 74
- The heart that glowed then with love's heat, each day
- More and more brightly?—when for long years now
- The very flame that flew about the heart,
- And gave it fiery wings, has come to be
- The lapping blaze of hell's environment
- Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.
- Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night
-
350Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul
- Dread firstlings of the brood that rend it now.
- It chanced that in our last year's wanderings
- We dwelt at Monza, far away from home,
- If home we had: and in the Duomo there
- I sometimes entered with her when she prayed.
- An image of Our Lady stands there, wrought
- In marble by some great Italian hand
- In the great days when she and Italy
- Sat on one throne together: and to her
-
360And to none else my loved one told her heart.
- She was a woman then; and as she knelt,—
- Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,—
- They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land
- (Whose work still serves the world for miracle)
- Made manifest herself in womanhood.
page: 75
- Father, the day I speak of was the first
- For weeks that I had borne her company
- Into the Duomo; and those weeks had been
- Much troubled, for then first the glimpses came
-
370Of some impenetrable restlessness
- Growing in her to make her changed and cold.
- And as we entered there that day, I bent
- My eyes on the fair Image, and I said
- Within my heart, ‘Oh turn her heart to me!’
- And so I left her to her prayers, and went
- To gaze upon the pride of Monza's shrine,
- Where in the sacristy the light still falls
- Upon the Iron Crown of Italy,
- On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet
-
380The daybreak gilds another head to crown.
- But coming back, I wondered when I saw
- That the sweet Lady of her prayers now stood
- Alone without her; until further off,
- Before some new Madonna gaily decked,
- Tinselled and gewgawed, a slight German toy,
- I saw her kneel, still praying. At my step
- She rose, and side by side we left the church.
- I was much moved, and sharply questioned her
- Of her transferred devotion; but she seemed
page: 76
-
390Stubborn and heedless; till she lightly laughed
- And said: ‘The old Madonna? Aye indeed,
- She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.’
- Then silent to the soul I held my way:
- And from the fountains of the public place
- Unto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles,
- Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air;
- And stately with her laugh's subsiding smile
- She went, with clear-swayed waist and towering neck
- And hands held light before her; and the face
-
400Which long had made a day in my life's night
- Was night in day to me; as all men's eyes
- Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread
- Beyond my heart to the world made for her.
- Ah there! my wounds will snatch my sense again:
- The pain comes billowing on like a full cloud
- Of thunder, and the flash that breaks from it
- Leaves my brain burning. That's the wound he gave,
- The Austrian whose white coat I still made match
- With his white face, only the two were red
-
410As suits his trade. The devil makes them wear
- White for a livery, that the blood may show
- Braver that brings them to him. So he looks
page: 77
- Sheer o'er the field and knows his own at once.
- Give me a draught of water in that cup;
- My voice feels thick; perhaps you do not hear;
- But you
must hear. If you mistake my words
- And so absolve me, I am sure the blessing
- Will burn my soul. If you mistake my words
- And so absolve me, Father, the great sin
-
420Is yours, not mine: mark this: your soul shall burn
- With mine for it. I have seen pictures where
- Souls burned with Latin shriekings in their mouths:
- Shall my end be as theirs? Nay, but I know
- 'Tis you shall shriek in Latin. Some bell rings,
- Rings through my brain: it strikes the hour in hell.
- You see I cannot, Father; I have tried,
- But cannot, as you see. These twenty times
- Beginning, I have come to the same point
- And stopped. Beyond, there are but broken words
-
430Which will not let you understand my tale.
- It is that then we have her with us here,
- As when she wrung her hair out in my dream
- To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.
- Her hair is always wet, for she has kept
page: 78
- Its tresses wrapped about her side for years;
- And when she wrung them round over the floor,
- I heard the blood between her fingers hiss;
- So that I sat up in my bed and screamed
- Once and again; and once to once, she laughed.
-
440Look that you turn not now,—she's at your back:
- Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close,
- Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad.
- At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills
- The sand is black and red. The black was black
- When what was spilt that day sank into it,
- And the red scarcely darkened. There I stood
- This night with her, and saw the sand the same.
- What would you have me tell you? Father, father,
- How shall I make you know? You have not known
-
450The dreadful soul of woman, who one day
- Forgets the old and takes the new to heart,
- Forgets what man remembers, and therewith
- Forgets the man. Nor can I clearly tell
- How the change happened between her and me.
- Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heart
page: 79
- When most my heart was full of her; and still
- In every corner of myself I sought
- To find what service failed her; and no less
- Than in the good time past, there all was hers.
-
460What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spread
- For one first year of all eternity
- All round you with all joys and gifts of God;
- And then when most your soul is blent with it
- And all yields song together,—then it stands
- O' the sudden like a pool that once gave back
- Your image, but now drowns it and is clear
- Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns
- Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight.
- How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
-
470Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
- That hear no more your voice you hear the same,—
- ‘God! what is left but hell for company,
- But hell, hell, hell?’—until the name so breathed
- Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire?
- Even so I stood the day her empty heart
- Left her place empty in our home, while yet
- I knew not why she went nor where she went
- Nor how to reach her: so I stood the day
- When to my prayers at last one sight of her
page: 80
-
480Was granted, and I looked on heaven made pale
- With scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh.
- O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you
- Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapes
- Of fear and hatred? May I find you yet
- Mine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame,
- We may have sweetness yet, if you but say
- As once in childish sorrow: ‘Not my pain,
- My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love,
- Your broken love!’
- My Father, have I not
-
490Yet told you the last things of that last day
- On which I went to meet her by the sea?
- O God, O God! but I must tell you all.
- Midway upon my journey, when I stopped
- To buy the dagger at the village fair,
- I saw two cursed rats about the place
- I knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That day
- Was not yet over; for three hours to come
- I prized my life: and so I looked around
- For safety. A poor painted mountebank
-
500Was playing tricks and shouting in a crowd.
page: 81
- I knew he must have heard my name, so I
- Pushed past and whispered to him who I was,
- And of my danger. Straight he hustled me
- Into his booth, as it were in the trick,
- And brought me out next minute with my face
- All smeared in patches and a zany's gown;
- And there I handed him his cups and balls
- And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring
- For half an hour. The spies came once and looked;
-
510And while they stopped, and made all sights and sounds
- Sharp to my startled senses, I remember
- A woman laughed above me. I looked up
- And saw where a brown-shouldered harlot leaned
- Half through a tavern window thick with vine.
- Some man had come behind her in the room
- And caught her by her arms, and she had turned
- With that coarse empty laugh on him, as now
- He munched her neck with kisses, while the vine
- Crawled in her back.
- And three hours afterwards,
-
520When she that I had run all risks to meet
- Laughed as I told you, my life burned to death
- Within me, for I thought it like the laugh
- Heard at the fair. She had not left me long;
page: 82
- But all she might have changed to, or might change to,
- (I know nought since—she never speaks a word—)
- Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet,
- Not told you all this time what happened, Father,
- When I had offered her the little knife,
- And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,
-
530And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet?
- ‘Take it,’ I said to her the second time,
- ‘Take it and keep it.’ And then came a fire
- That burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood,
- And sea and sky were blood and fire, and all
- The day was one red blindness; till it seemed
- Within the whirling brain's entanglement
- That she or I or all things bled to death.
- And then I found her lying at my feet
- And knew that I had stabbed her, and saw still
-
540The look she gave me when she took the knife
- Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then,
- And fell, and her stiff bodice scooped the sand
- Into her bosom.
- And she keeps it, see,
- Do you not see she keeps it?—there, beneath
- Wet fingers and wet tresses, in her heart.
page: 83
- For look you, when she stirs her hand, it shows
- The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such
- A dagger as our women of the coast
- Twist in their garters.
- Father, I have done:
-
550And from her side now she unwinds the thick
- Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through,
- But like the sand at Iglio does not change.
- Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,
- I have told all: tell me at once what hope
- Can reach me still. For now she draws it out
- Slowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father,
- She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh
- Soon, when she shows the crimson blade to God.
page: 84
- ‘Yea, thou shalt learn how salt his food who fares
- Upon another's bread,—how steep his path
- Who treadeth up and down another's stairs.’
(
Div. Com. Parad. xvii.)
- ‘Behold, even I, even I am Beatrice.’
(
Div. Com. Purg. xxx.)
- Of Florence and of Beatrice
- Servant and singer from of old,
- O'er Dante's heart in youth had toll'd
- The knell that gave his Lady peace;
- And now in manhood flew the dart
- Wherewith his City pierced his heart.
- Yet if his Lady's home above
- Was Heaven, on earth she filled his soul;
- And if his City held control
-
10To cast the body forth to rove,
- The soul could soar from earth's vain throng,
- And Heaven and Hell fulfil the song.
page: 85
- Follow his feet's appointed way;—
- But little light we find that clears
- The darkness of the exiled years.
- Follow his spirit's journey:—nay,
- What fires are blent, what winds are blown
- On paths his feet may tread alone?
- Yet of the twofold life he led
-
20 In chainless thought and fettered will
- Some glimpses reach us,—somewhat still
- Of the steep stairs and bitter bread,—
- Of the soul's quest whose stern avow
- For years had made him haggard now.
- Alas! the Sacred Song whereto
- Both heaven and earth had set their hand
- Not only at Fame's gate did stand
- Knocking to claim the passage through,
- But toiled to ope that heavier door
-
30 Which Florence shut for evermore.
- Shall not his birth's baptismal Town
- One last high presage yet fulfil,
- And at that font in Florence still
page: 86
- His forehead take the laurel-crown?
- O God! or shall dead souls deny
- The undying soul its prophecy?
- Aye, 'tis their hour. Not yet forgot
- The bitter words he spoke that day
- When for some great charge far away
-
40Her rulers his acceptance sought.
- ‘And if I go, who stays?’—so rose
- His scorn:—‘and if I stay, who goes?’
- ‘Lo! thou art gone now, and we stay:’
- (The curled lips mutter): ‘and no star
- Is from thy mortal path so far
- As streets where childhood knew the way.
- To Heaven and Hell thy feet may win,
- But thine own house they come not in.’
- Therefore, the loftier rose the song
-
50 To touch the secret things of God,
- The deeper pierced the hate that trod
- On base men's track who wrought the wrong;
- Till the soul's effluence came to be
- Its own exceeding agony.
page: 87
- Arriving only to depart,
- From court to court, from land to land,
- Like flame within the naked hand
- His body bore his burning heart
- That still on Florence strove to bring
-
60 God's fire for a burnt offering.
- Even such was Dante's mood, when now,
- Mocked for long years with Fortune's sport,
- He dwelt at yet another court,
- There where Verona's knee did bow
- And her voice hailed with all acclaim
- Can Grande della Scala's name.
- As that lord's kingly guest awhile
- His life we follow; through the days
- Which walked in exile's barren ways,—
-
70The nights which still beneath one smile
- Heard through all spheres one song increase,—
- ‘Even I, even I am Beatrice.’
- At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
- Due reverence did his steps attend;
- The ushers on his path would bend
page: 88
- At ingoing as at going out;
- The penmen waited on his call
- At council-board, the grooms in hall.
- And pages hushed their laughter down,
-
80 And gay squires stilled the merry stir,
- When he passed up the dais-chamber
- With set brows lordlier than a frown;
- And tire-maids hidden among these
- Drew close their loosened bodices.
- Perhaps the priests, (exact to span
- All God's circumference,) if at whiles
- They found him wandering in their aisles,
- Grudged ghostly greeting to the man
- By whom, though not of ghostly guild,
-
90 With Heaven and Hell men's hearts were fill'd.
- And the court-poets (he, forsooth,
- A whole world's poet strayed to court!)
- Had for his scorn their hate's retort.
- He'd meet them flushed with easy youth,
- Hot on their errands. Like noon-flies
- They vexed him in the ears and eyes.
page: 89
- But at this court, peace still must wrench
- Her chaplet from the teeth of war:
- By day they held high watch afar,
-
100At night they cried across the trench;
- And still, in Dante's path, the fierce
- Gaunt soldiers wrangled o'er their spears.
- But vain seemed all the strength to him,
- As golden convoys sunk at sea
- Whose wealth might root out penury:
- Because it was not, limb with limb,
- Knit like his heart-strings round the wall
- Of Florence, that ill pride might fall.
- Yet in the tiltyard, when the dust
-
110 Cleared from the sundered press of knights
- Ere yet again it swoops and smites,
- He almost deemed his longing must
- Find force to wield that multitude
- And hurl that strength the way he would.
- How should he move them,—fame and gain
- On all hands calling them at strife?
- He still might find but his one life
page: 90
- To give, by Florence counted vain;
- One heart the false hearts made her doubt;
-
120 One voice she heard once and cast out.
- Oh! if his Florence could but come,
- A lily-sceptred damsel fair,
- As her own Giotto painted her
- On many shields and gates at home,—
- A lady crowned, at a soft pace
- Riding the lists round to the dais:
- Till where Can Grande rules the lists,
- As young as Truth, as calm as Force,
- She draws her rein now, while her horse
-
130Bows at the turn of the white wrists;
- And when each knight within his stall
- Gives ear, she speaks and tells them all:
- All the foul tale,—truth sworn untrue
- And falsehood's triumph. All the tale?
- Great God! and must she not prevail
- To fire them ere they heard it through,—
- And hand achieve ere heart could rest
- That high adventure of her quest?
page: 91
- How would his Florence lead them forth,
-
140 Her bridle ringing as she went;
- And at the last within her tent,
- 'Neath golden lilies worship-worth,
- How queenly would she bend the while
- And thank the victors with her smile!
- Also her lips should turn his way
- And murmur: ‘O thou tried and true,
- With whom I wept the long years through!
- What shall it profit if I say,
- Thee I remember? Nay, through thee
-
150 All ages shall remember me.’
- Peace, Dante, peace! The task is long,
- The time wears short to compass it.
- Within thine heart such hopes may flit
- And find a voice in deathless song:
- But lo! as children of man's earth,
- Those hopes are dead before their birth.
- Fame tells us that Verona's court
- Was a fair place. The feet might still
- Wander for ever at their will
page: 92
-
160In many ways of sweet resort;
- And still in many a heart around
- The Poet's name due honour found.
- Watch we his steps. He comes upon
- The women at their palm-playing.
- The conduits round the gardens sing
- And meet in scoops of milk-white stone,
- Where wearied damsels rest and hold
- Their hands in the wet spurt of gold.
- One of whom, knowing well that he,
-
170 By some found stern, was mild with them,
- Would run and pluck his garment's hem,
- Saying, ‘Messer Dante, pardon me,’—
- Praying that they might hear the song
- Which first of all he made, when young.
- ‘Donne che avete’* . . . Thereunto
- Thus would he murmur, having first
- Drawn near the fountain, while she nurs'd
Transcribed Footnote (page 92):
*‘Donne che avete intelletto
d'amore:’—the first canzone of
the ‘Vita Nuova.’
page: 93
- His hand against her side: a few
- Sweet words, and scarcely those, half said:
-
180 Then turned, and changed, and bowed his head.
- For then the voice said in his heart,
- ‘Even I, even I am Beatrice;’
- And his whole life would yearn to cease:
- Till having reached his room, apart
- Beyond vast lengths of palace-floor,
- He drew the arras round his door.
- At such times, Dante, thou hast set
- Thy forehead to the painted pane
- Full oft, I know; and if the rain
-
190Smote it outside, her fingers met
- Thy brow; and if the sun fell there,
- Her breath was on thy face and hair.
- Then, weeping, I think certainly
- Thou hast beheld, past sight of eyne,—
- Within another room of thine
- Where now thy body may not be
- But where in thought thou still remain'st,—
- A window often wept against:
page: 94
- The window thou, a youth, hast sought,
-
200 Flushed in the limpid eventime,
- Ending with daylight the day's rhyme
- Of her; where oftenwhiles her thought
- Held thee—the lamp untrimmed to write—
- In joy through the blue lapse of night.
- At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
- Guests seldom wept. It was brave sport,
- No doubt, at Can La Scala's court,
- Within the palace and without;
- Where music, set to madrigals,
-
210 Loitered all day through groves and halls.
- Because Can Grande of his life
- Had not had six-and-twenty years
- As yet. And when the chroniclers
- Tell you of that Vicenza strife
- And of strifes elsewhere,—you must not
- Conceive for church-sooth he had got
- Just nothing in his wits but war:
- Though doubtless 'twas the young man's joy
- (Grown with his growth from a mere boy,)
page: 95
-
220To mark his ‘Viva Cane!’ scare
- The foe's shut front, till it would reel
- All blind with shaken points of steel.
- But there were places—held too sweet
- For eyes that had not the due veil
- Of lashes and clear lids—as well
- In favour as his saddle-seat:
- Breath of low speech he scorned not there
- Nor light cool fingers in his hair.
- Yet if the child whom the sire's plan
-
230 Made free of a deep treasure-chest
- Scoffed it with ill-conditioned jest,—
- We may be sure too that the man
- Was not mere thews, nor all content
- With lewdness swathed in sentiment.
- So you may read and marvel not
- That such a man as Dante—one
- Who, while Can Grande's deeds were done,
- Had drawn his robe round him and thought—
page: 96
- Now at the same guest-table far'd
-
240 Where keen Uguccio wiped his beard.*
- Through leaves and trellis-work the sun
- Left the wine cool within the glass,—
- They feasting where no sun could pass:
- And when the women, all as one,
- Rose up with brightened cheeks to go,
- It was a comely thing, we know.
- But Dante recked not of the wine;
- Whether the women stayed or went,
- His visage held one stern intent:
-
250And when the music had its sign
- To breathe upon them for more ease,
- Sometimes he turned and bade it cease.
- And as he spared not to rebuke
- The mirth, so oft in council he
- To bitter truth bore testimony:
- And when the crafty balance shook
- Well poised to make the wrong prevail,
- Then Dante's hand would turn the scale.
Transcribed Footnote (page 96):
* Uguccione della Faggiuola, Dante's former protector, was
now his
fellow-guest at Verona.
page: 97
- And if some envoy from afar
-
260 Sailed to Verona's sovereign port
- For aid or peace, and all the court
- Fawned on its lord, ‘the Mars of war,
- Sole arbiter of life and death,’—
- Be sure that Dante saved his breath.
- And Can La Scala marked askance
- These things, accepting them for shame
- And scorn, till Dante's guestship came
- To be a peevish sufferance:
- His host sought ways to make his days
-
270 Hateful; and such have many ways.
- There was a Jester, a foul lout
- Whom the court loved for graceless arts;
- Sworn scholiast of the bestial parts
- Of speech; a ribald mouth to shout
- In Folly's horny tympanum
- Such things as make the wise man dumb.
- Much loved, him Dante loathed. And so,
- One day when Dante felt perplex'd
- If any day that could come next
page: 98
-
280Were worth the waiting for or no,
- And mute he sat amid their din,—
- Can Grande called the Jester in.
- Rank words, with such, are wit's best wealth.
- Lords mouthed approval; ladies kept
- Twittering with clustered heads, except
- Some few that took their trains by stealth
- And went. Can Grande shook his hair
- And smote his thighs and laughed i' the air.
- Then, facing on his guest, he cried,—
-
290 ‘Say, Messer Dante, how it is
- I get out of a clown like this
- More than your wisdom can provide.’
- And Dante: ‘'Tis man's ancient whim
- That still his like seems good to him.’
- Also a tale is told, how once,
- At clearing tables after meat,
- Piled for a jest at Dante's feet
- Were found the dinner's well-picked bones;
- So laid, to please the banquet's lord,
-
300 By one who crouched beneath the board.
page: 99
- Then smiled Can Grande to the rest:—
- ‘Our Dante's tuneful mouth indeed
- Lacks not the gift on flesh to feed!’
- ‘Fair host of mine,’ replied the guest,
- ‘So many bones you'd not descry
- If so it chanced the
dog
were I.’*
- But wherefore should we turn the grout
- In a drained cup, or be at strife
- From the worn garment of a life
-
310To rip the twisted ravel out?
- Good needs expounding; but of ill
- Each hath enough to guess his fill.
- They named him Justicer-at-Law:
- Each month to bear the tale in mind
- Of hues a wench might wear unfin'd
- And of the load an ox might draw;
- To cavil in the weight of bread
- And to see purse-thieves gibbeted.
Transcribed Footnote (page 99):
* ‘
Messere, voi non vedreste tant 'ossa se cane io
fossi.
’ The
point of the reproach is difficult to render,
depending as it does
on the literal meaning of the name
Cane.
page: 100
- And when his spirit wove the spell
-
320 (From under even to over-noon
- In converse with itself alone,)
- As high as Heaven, as low as Hell,—
- He would be summoned and must go:
- For had not Gian stabbed Giacomo?
- Therefore the bread he had to eat
- Seemed brackish, less like corn than tares;
- And the rush-strown accustomed stairs
- Each day were steeper to his feet;
- And when the night-vigil was done,
-
330 His brows would ache to feel the sun.
- Nevertheless, when from his kin
- There came the tidings how at last
- In Florence a decree was pass'd
- Whereby all banished folk might win
- Free pardon, so a fine were paid
- And act of public penance made,—
- This Dante writ in answer thus,
- Words such as these: ‘That clearly they
- In Florence must not have to say,—
page: 101
-
340The man abode aloof from us
- Nigh fifteen years, yet lastly skulk'd
- Hither to candleshrift and mulct.
- ‘That he was one the Heavens forbid
- To traffic in God's justice sold
- By market-weight of earthly gold,
- Or to bow down over the lid
- Of steaming censers, and so be
- Made clean of manhood's obloquy.
- ‘That since no gate led, by God's will,
-
350 To Florence, but the one whereat
- The priests and money-changers sat,
- He still would wander; for that still,
- Even through the body's prison-bars,
- His soul possessed the sun and stars.’
- Such were his words. It is indeed
- For ever well our singers should
- Utter good words and know them good
- Not through song only; with close heed
- Lest, having spent for the work's sake
-
360 Six days, the man be left to make.
page: 102
- Months o'er Verona, till the feast
- Was come for Florence the Free Town:
- And at the shrine of Baptist John
- The exiles, girt with many a priest
- And carrying candles as they went,
- Were held to mercy of the saint.
- On the high seats in sober state,—
- Gold neck-chains range o'er range below
- Gold screen-work where the lilies grow,—
-
370The Heads of the Republic sate,
- Marking the humbled face go by
- Each one of his house-enemy.
- And as each proscript rose and stood
- From kneeling in the ashen dust
- On the shrine-steps, some magnate thrust
- A beard into the velvet hood
- Of his front colleague's gown, to see
- The cinders stuck in the bare knee.
- Tosinghi passed, Manelli passed,
-
380 Rinucci passed, each in his place
- But not an Alighieri's face
page: 103
- Went by that day from first to last
- In the Republic's triumph; nor
- A foot came home to Dante's door.
- (Respublica—a public thing:
- A shameful shameless prostitute,
- Whose lust with one lord may not suit,
- So takes by turns its revelling
- A night with each, till he at morn
-
390 Is stripped and beaten forth forlorn,
- And leaves her, cursing her. If she,
- Indeed, have not some spice-draught, hid
- In scent under a silver lid,
- To drench his open throat with—he
- Once hard asleep; and thrust him not
- At dawn beneath the boards to rot.)
- Years filled out their twelve moons, and ceased
- One in another; and alway
- There were the whole twelve hours each day
-
400And each night as the years increased;
- And rising moon and setting sun
- Beheld that Dante's work was done.
page: 104
- What of his work for Florence? Well
- It was, he knew, and well must be.
- Yet evermore her hate's decree
- Dwelt in his thought intolerable:—
- His body to be burned,*—his soul
- To beat its wings at hope's vain goal.
- What of his work for Beatrice?
-
410 Now well-nigh was the third song writ,—
- The stars a third time sealing it
- With sudden music of pure peace:
- For echoing thrice the threefold song,
- The unnumbered stars the tone
prolong.†
- Each hour, as then the Vision pass'd,
- He heard the utter harmony
- Of the nine trembling spheres, till she
- Bowed her eyes towards him in the last,
- So that all ended with her eyes,
-
420 Hell, Purgatory, Paradise.
Transcribed Footnote (page 104):
* Such was the last sentence passed by Florence against Dante,
as a
recalcitrant exile.
Transcribed Footnote (page 104):
†‘E quindi uscimmo a riveder le
stelle.’ Inferno.
‘Puro e disposto a salire alle
stelle.’ Purgatorio.
‘L'amor che muove il sole e l'altre
stelle.’ Paradiso.
page: 105
- ‘It is my trust, as the years fall,
- To write more worthily of her
- Who now, being made God's minister,
- Looks on His visage and knows all.’
- Such was the hope that love did blend
- With grief's slow fires, to make an end
- Of the ‘New Life,’ his youth's dear book:
- Adding thereunto: ‘In such trust
- I labour, and believe I must
-
430Accomplish this which my soul took
- In charge, if God, my Lord and hers,
- Leave my life with me a few years.’
- The trust which he had borne in youth
- Was all at length accomplished. He
- At length had written worthily—
- Yea even of her; no rhymes uncouth
- 'Twixt tongue and tongue; but by God's aid
- The first words Italy had said.
- Ah! haply now the heavenly guide
-
440 Was not the last form seen by him:
- But there that Beatrice stood slim
- And bowed in passing at his side,
page: 106
- For whom in youth his heart made moan
- Then when the city sat alone.*
- Clearly herself; the same whom he
- Met, not past girlhood, in the street,
- Low-bosomed and with hidden feet;
- And then as woman perfectly,
- In years that followed, many an once,—
-
450 And now at last among the suns
- In that high vision. But indeed
- It may be memory did recall
- Last to him then the first of all,—
- The child his boyhood bore in heed
- Nine years. At length the voice brought
peace,—
- ‘Even I, even I am Beatrice.’
- All this, being there, we had not seen.
- Seen only was the shadow wrought
- On the strong features bound in thought;
-
460The vagueness gaining gait and mien;
- The white streaks gathering clear to view
- In the burnt beard the women knew.
Transcribed Footnote (page 106):
* ‘
Quomodo sedet sola
civitas!
’—the words quoted by Dante in
the ‘Vita Nuova’ when he speaks of the death of Beatrice.
page: 107
- For a tale tells that on his track,
- As through Verona's streets he went,
- This saying certain women sent:—
- ‘Lo, he that strolls to Hell and back
- At will! Behold him, how Hell's reek
- Has crisped his beard and singed his
cheek.’
- ‘Whereat’ (Boccaccio's words) ‘he smil'd
-
470 For pride in fame.’ It might be so:
- Nevertheless we cannot know
- If haply he were not beguil'd
- To bitterer mirth, who scarce could tell
- If he indeed were back from Hell.
- So the day came, after a space,
- When Dante felt assured that there
- The sunshine must lie sicklier
- Even than in any other place,
- Save only Florence. When that day
-
480 Had come, he rose and went his way.
- He went and turned not. From his shoes
- It may be that he shook the dust,
- As every righteous dealer must
page: 108
- Once and again ere life can close:
- And unaccomplished destiny
- Struck cold his forehead, it may be.
- No book keeps record how the Prince
- Sunned himself out of Dante's reach,
- Nor how the Jester stank in speech;
-
490While courtiers, used to smile and wince,
- Poets and harlots, all the throng,
- Let loose their scandal and their song.
- No book keeps record if the seat
- Which Dante held at his host's board
- Were sat in next by clerk or lord,—
- If leman lolled with dainty feet
- At ease, or hostage brooded there,
- Or priest lacked silence for his prayer.
- Eat and wash hands, Can Grande;—scarce
-
500 We know their deeds now: hands which fed
- Our Dante with that bitter bread;
- And thou the watch-dog of those stairs
- Which, of all paths his feet knew well,
- Were steeper found than Heaven or Hell.
page: 109
“Vengeance of Jenny's case! Fie on her! Never name her,
child!”—(
Mrs. Quickly.)
- Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
- Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
- Whose head upon my knee to-night
- Rests for a while, as if grown light
- With all our dances and the sound
- To which the wild tunes spun you round:
- Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen
- Of kisses which the blush between
- Could hardly make much daintier;
-
10Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair
- Is countless gold incomparable:
- Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell
- Of Love's exuberant hotbed:—Nay,
- Poor flower left torn since yesterday
- Until to-morrow leave you bare;
- Poor handful of bright spring-water
- Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face;
page: 110
- Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
- Thus with your head upon my knee;—
-
20Whose person or whose purse may be
- The lodestar of your reverie?
- This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
- A change from mine so full of books,
- Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
- So many captive hours of youth,—
- The hours they thieve from day and night
- To make one's cherished work come right,
- And leave it wrong for all their theft,
- Even as to-night my work was left:
-
30Until I vowed that since my brain
- And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
- My feet should have some dancing too:—
- And thus it was I met with you.
- Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part,
- For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
- You seem too tired to get to bed.
- It was a careless life I led
- When rooms like this were scarce so strange
- Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
page: 111
-
40The many aims or the few years?
- Because to-night it all appears
- Something I do not know again.
- The cloud's not danced out of my brain,—
- The cloud that made it turn and swim
- While hour by hour the books grew dim.
- Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
- For all your wealth of loosened hair,
- Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd
- And warm sweets open to the waist,
-
50All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—
- You know not what a book you seem,
- Half-read by lightning in a dream!
- How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
- And I should be ashamed to say:—
- Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!
- But while my thought runs on like this
- With wasteful whims more than enough,
- I wonder what you're thinking of.
- If of myself you think at all,
-
60What is the thought?—conjectural
- On sorry matters best unsolved?—
page: 112
- Or inly is each grace revolved
- To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
- To think!) perhaps you're merely glad
- That I'm not drunk or ruffianly
- And let you rest upon my knee.
- For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
- You're thankful for a little rest,—
- Glad from the crush to rest within,
-
70From the heart-sickness and the din
- Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch
- Mocks you because your gown is rich;
- And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,
- Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
- Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak
- And other nights than yours bespeak;
- And from the wise unchildish elf,
- To schoolmate lesser than himself
- Pointing you out, what thing you are:—
-
80Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
- From shame and shame's outbraving too,
- Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
- But most from the hatefulness of man
- Who spares not to end what he began,
page: 113
- Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,
- Who, having used you at his will,
- Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
- I serve the dishes and the wine.
- Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up,
-
90I've filled our glasses, let us sup,
- And do not let me think of you,
- Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
- What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
- Your head there, so you do not sleep;
- But that the weariness may pass
- And leave you merry, take this glass.
- Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
- If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd
- Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!
-
100 Behold the lilies of the field,
- They toil not neither do they spin;
- (So doth the ancient text begin,—
- Not of such rest as one of these
- Can share.) Another rest and ease
- Along each summer-sated path
- From its new lord the garden hath,
page: 114
- Than that whose spring in blessings ran
- Which praised the bounteous husbandman,
- Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
-
110The lilies sickened unto death.
- What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
- Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
- Like winter on the garden-bed.
- But you had roses left in May,—
- They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
- But must your roses die, and those
- Their purfled buds that should unclose?
- Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
- Still red as from the broken heart,
-
120And here's the naked stem of thorns.
- Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns
- As yet of winter. Sickness here
- Or want alone could waken fear,—
- Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
- Except when there may rise unsought
- Haply at times a passing thought
- Of the old days which seem to be
- Much older than any history
page: 115
- That is written in any book;
-
130When she would lie in fields and look
- Along the ground through the blown grass,
- And wonder where the city was,
- Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
- They told her then for a child's tale.
- Jenny, you know the city now.
- A child can tell the tale there, how
- Some things which are not yet enroll'd
- In market-lists are bought and sold
- Even till the early Sunday light,
-
140When Saturday night is market-night
- Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
- And market-night in the Haymarket.
- Our learned London children know,
- Poor Jenny, all your mirth and woe;
- Have seen your lifted silken skirt
- Advertize dainties through the dirt;
- Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
- On virtue; and have learned your look
- When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
-
150Along the streets alone, and there,
- Round the long park, across the bridge,
page: 116
- The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
- Wind on together and apart,
- A fiery serpent for your heart.
- Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
- Suppose I were to think aloud,—
- What if to her all this were said?
- Why, as a volume seldom read
- Being opened halfway shuts again,
-
160So might the pages of her brain
- Be parted at such words, and thence
- Close back upon the dusty sense.
- For is there hue or shape defin'd
- In Jenny's desecrated mind,
- Where all contagious currents meet,
- A Lethe of the middle street?
- Nay, it reflects not any face,
- Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
- But as they coil those eddies clot,
-
170And night and day remember not.
- Why, Jenny, you're asleep at last!—
- Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—
- So young and soft and tired; so fair,
page: 117
- With chin thus nestled in your hair,
- Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue
- As if some sky of dreams shone through!
- Just as another woman sleeps!
- Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps
- Of doubt and horror,—what to say
-
180Or think,—this awful secret sway,
- The potter's power over the clay!
- Of the same lump (it has been said)
- For honour and dishonour made,
- Two sister vessels. Here is one.
- My cousin Nell is fond of fun,
- And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
- So mere a woman in her ways:
- And if her sweet eyes rich in youth
- Are like her lips that tell the truth,
-
190My cousin Nell is fond of love.
- And she's the girl I'm proudest of.
- Who does not prize her, guard her well?
- The love of change, in cousin Nell,
- Shall find the best and hold it dear:
- The unconquered mirth turn quieter
page: 118
- Not through her own, through others' woe:
- The conscious pride of beauty glow
- Beside another's pride in her,
- One little part of all they share.
-
200For Love himself shall ripen these
- In a kind soil to just increase
- Through years of fertilizing peace.
- Of the same lump (as it is said)
- For honour and dishonour made,
- Two sister vessels. Here is one.
- It makes a goblin of the sun.
- So pure,—so fall'n! How dare to think
- Of the first common kindred link?
- Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn
-
210It seems that all things take their turn;
- And who shall say but this fair tree
- May need, in changes that may be,
- Your children's children's charity?
- Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!
- Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd
- Till in the end, the Day of Days,
page: 119
- At Judgment, one of his own race,
- As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—
- His daughter, with his mother's eyes?
-
220 How Jenny's clock ticks on the shelf!
- Might not the dial scorn itself
- That has such hours to register?
- Yet as to me, even so to her
- Are golden sun and silver moon,
- In daily largesse of earth's boon,
- Counted for life-coins to one tune.
- And if, as blindfold fates are toss'd,
- Through some one man this life be lost,
- Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?
-
230 Fair shines the gilded aureole
- In which our highest painters place
- Some living woman's simple face.
- And the stilled features thus descried
- As Jenny's long throat droops aside,—
- The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
- And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
- With Raffael's or Da Vinci's hand
- To show them to men's souls, might stand,
page: 120
- Whole ages long, the whole world through,
-
240For preachings of what God can do.
- What has man done here? How atone,
- Great God, for this which man has done?
- And for the body and soul which by
- Man's pitiless doom must now comply
- With lifelong hell, what lullaby
- Of sweet forgetful second birth
- Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
- What measure of God's rest endows
- The many mansions of his house.
-
250 If but a woman's heart might see
- Such erring heart unerringly
- For once! But that can never be.
- Like a rose shut in a book
- In which pure women may not look,
- For its base pages claim control
- To crush the flower within the soul;
- Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,
- Pale as transparent psyche-wings,
- To the vile text, are traced such things
-
260As might make lady's cheek indeed
page: 121
- More than a living rose to read;
- So nought save foolish foulness may
- Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
- And so the life-blood of this rose,
- Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows
- Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
- Yet still it keeps such faded show
- Of when 'twas gathered long ago,
- That the crushed petals' lovely grain,
-
270The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
- Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
- Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
- Love roses better for its sake:—
- Only that this can never be:—
- Even so unto her sex is she.
- Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
- The woman almost fades from view.
- A cipher of man's changeless sum
- Of lust, past, present, and to come,
-
280Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
- To challenge from the scornful sphinx.
- Like a toad within a stone
- Seated while Time crumbles on;
page: 122
- Which sits there since the earth was curs'd
- For Man's transgression at the first;
- Which, living through all centuries,
- Not once has seen the sun arise;
- Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
- The earth's whole summers have not warmed;
-
290Which always—whitherso the stone
- Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
- Aye, and shall not be driven out
- Till that which shuts him round about
- Break at the very Master's stroke,
- And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
- And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
- Even so within this world is Lust.
- Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
- Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
-
300You'd not believe by what strange roads
- Thought travels, when your beauty goads
- A man to-night to think of toads!
- Jenny, wake up. . . . Why, there's the dawn!
- And there's an early waggon drawn
- To market, and some sheep that jog
page: 123
- Bleating before a barking dog;
- And the old streets come peering through
- Another night that London knew;
- And all as ghostlike as the lamps.
-
310 So on the wings of day decamps
- My last night's frolic. Glooms begin
- To shiver off as lights creep in
- Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
- And the lamp's doubled shade grows blue,—
- Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,
- Like a wise virgin's, all one night!
- And in the alcove coolly spread
- Glimmers with dawn your empty bed;
- And yonder your fair face I see
-
320Reflected lying on my knee,
- Where teems with first foreshadowings
- Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings.
- And now without, as if some word
- Had called upon them that they heard,
- The London sparrows far and nigh
- Clamour together suddenly;
- And Jenny's cage-bird grown awake
page: 124
- Here in their song his part must take,
- Because here too the day doth break.
-
330 And somehow in myself the dawn
- Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn
- Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.
- But will it wake her if I heap
- These cushions thus beneath her head
- Where my knee was? No,—there's your bed,
- My Jenny, while you dream. And there
- I lay among your golden hair
- Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
- These golden coins.
- For still one deems
-
340That Jenny's flattering sleep confers
- New magic on the magic purse,—
- Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
- Between the threads fine fumes arise
- And shape their pictures in the brain.
- There roll no streets in glare and rain,
- Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
- But delicately sighs in musk
- The homage of the dim boudoir;
- Or like a palpitating star
page: 125
-
350Thrilled into song, the opera-night
- Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
- Or at the carriage-window shine
- Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
- Whirls through its hour of health (divine
- For her) the concourse of the Park.
- And though in the discounted dark
- Her functions there and here are one,
- Beneath the lamps and in the sun
- There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
-
360Apparelled beyond parallel.
- Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.
- For even the Paphian Venus seems
- A goddess o'er the realms of love,
- When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:
- Aye, or let offerings nicely placed
- But hide Priapus to the waist,
- And whoso looks on him shall see
- An eligible deity.
- Why, Jenny, waking here alone
-
370May help you to remember one,
- Though all the memory's long outworn
page: 126
- Of many a double-pillowed morn.
- I think I see you when you wake,
- And rub your eyes for me, and shake
- My gold, in rising, from your hair,
- A Danaë for a moment there.
- Jenny, my love rang true! for still
- Love at first sight is vague, until
- That tinkling makes him audible.
-
380 And must I mock you to the last,
- Ashamed of my own shame,—aghast
- Because some thoughts not born amiss
- Rose at a poor fair face like this?
- Well, of such thoughts so much I know:
- In my life, as in hers, they show,
- By a far gleam which I may near,
- A dark path I can strive to clear.
- Only one kiss. Goodbye, my dear.
page: 127
- This is her picture as she was:
- It seems a thing to wonder on,
- As though mine image in the glass
- Should tarry when myself am gone.
- I gaze until she seems to stir,—
- Until mine eyes almost aver
- That now, even now, the sweet lips part
- To breathe the words of the sweet heart:—
- And yet the earth is over her.
-
10Alas! even such the thin-drawn ray
- That makes the prison-depths more rude,—
- The drip of water night and day
- Giving a tongue to solitude.
- Yet this, of all love's perfect prize,
- Remains; save what in mournful guise
page: 128
- Takes counsel with my soul alone,—
- Save what is secret and unknown,
- Below the earth, above the skies.
- In painting her I shrined her face
-
20 Mid mystic trees, where light falls in
- Hardly at all; a covert place
- Where you might think to find a din
- Of doubtful talk, and a live flame
- Wandering, and many a shape whose name
- Not itself knoweth, and old dew,
- And your own footsteps meeting you,
- And all things going as they came.
- A deep dim wood; and there she stands
- As in that wood that day: for so
-
30Was the still movement of her hands
- And such the pure line's gracious flow.
- And passing fair the type must seem,
- Unknown the presence and the dream.
- 'Tis she: though of herself, alas!
- Less than her shadow on the grass
- Or than her image in the stream.
page: 129
- That day we met there, I and she
- One with the other all alone;
- And we were blithe; yet memory
-
40 Saddens those hours, as when the moon
- Looks upon daylight. And with her
- I stooped to drink the spring-water,
- Athirst where other waters sprang;
- And where the echo is, she sang,—
- My soul another echo there.
- But when that hour my soul won strength
- For words whose silence wastes and kills,
- Dull raindrops smote us, and at length
- Thundered the heat within the hills.
-
50That eve I spoke those words again
- Beside the pelted window-pane;
- And there she hearkened what I said,
- With under-glances that surveyed
- The empty pastures blind with rain.
- Next day the memories of these things,
- Like leaves through which a bird has flown,
- Still vibrated with Love's warm wings;
- Till I must make them all my own
page: 130
- And paint this picture. So, 'twixt ease
-
60Of talk and sweet long silences,
- She stood among the plants in bloom
- At windows of a summer room,
- To feign the shadow of the trees.
- And as I wrought, while all above
- And all around was fragrant air,
- In the sick burthen of my love
- It seemed each sun-thrilled blossom there
- Beat like a heart among the leaves.
- O heart that never beats nor heaves,
-
70 In that one darkness lying still,
- What now to thee my love's great will
- Or the fine web the sunshine weaves?
- For now doth daylight disavow
- Those days,—nought left to see or hear.
- Only in solemn whispers now
- At night-time these things reach mine ear,
- When the leaf-shadows at a breath
- Shrink in the road, and all the heath,
- Forest and water, far and wide,
-
80 In limpid starlight glorified,
- Lie like the mystery of death.
page: 131
- Last night at last I could have slept,
- And yet delayed my sleep till dawn,
- Still wandering. Then it was I wept:
- For unawares I came upon
- Those glades where once she walked with me:
- And as I stood there suddenly,
- All wan with traversing the night,
- Upon the desolate verge of light
-
90Yearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.
- Even so, where Heaven holds breath and hears
- The beating heart of Love's own breast,—
- Where round the secret of all spheres
- All angels lay their wings to rest,—
- How shall my soul stand rapt and awed,
- When, by the new birth borne abroad
- Throughout the music of the suns,
- It enters in her soul at once
- And knows the silence there for God!
-
100Here with her face doth memory sit
- Meanwhile, and wait the day's decline,
- Till other eyes shall look from it,
- Eyes of the spirit's Palestine,
page: 132
- Even than the old gaze tenderer:
- While hopes and aims long lost with her
- Stand round her image side by side,
- Like tombs of pilgrims that have died
- About the Holy Sepulchre.
page: 133
- ‘Why did you melt your waxen man,
- Sister Helen?
- To-day is the third since you began.’
- ‘The time was long, yet the time ran,
- Little brother.’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!)
- ‘But if you have done your work aright,
- Sister Helen,
-
10 You'll let me play, for you said I might.’
- ‘Be very still in your play to-night,
- Little brother.’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Third night, to-night, between Hell and Heaven!)
page: 134
- ‘You said it must melt ere vesper-bell,
- Sister Helen;
- If now it be molten, all is well.’
- ‘Even so,—nay, peace! you cannot tell,
- Little brother.’
-
20 (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
O what is this, between Hell and Heaven?)
- ‘Oh the waxen knave was plump to-day,
- Sister Helen;
- How like dead folk he has dropped away!’
- ‘Nay now, of the dead what can you say,
- Little brother?’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
What of the dead, between Hell and Heaven?)
- ‘See, see, the sunken pile of wood,
-
30 Sister Helen,
- Shines through the thinned wax red as blood!’
- ‘Nay now, when looked you yet on blood,
- Little brother?’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
How pale she is, between Hell and Heaven!)
page: 135
- ‘Now close your eyes, for they're sick and sore,
- Sister Helen,
- And I'll play without the gallery door.’
- ‘Aye, let me rest,—I'll lie on the floor,
-
40 Little brother.’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
What rest to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
- ‘Here high up in the balcony,
- Sister Helen,
- The moon flies face to face with me.’
- ‘Aye, look and say whatever you see,
- Little brother.’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
What sight to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
-
50‘Outside it's merry in the wind's wake,
- Sister Helen;
- In the shaken trees the chill stars shake.’
- ‘Hush, heard you a horse-tread as you spake,
- Little brother?’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
What sound to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
page: 136
- ‘I hear a horse-tread, and I see,
- Sister Helen,
- Three horsemen that ride terribly.’
-
60‘Little brother, whence come the three,
- Little brother?’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Whence should they come, between Hell and Heaven?)
- ‘They come by the hill-verge from Boyne Bar,
- Sister Helen,
- And one draws nigh, but two are afar.’
- ‘Look, look, do you know them who they are,
- Little brother?’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
70
Who should they be, between Hell and Heaven?)
- ‘Oh, it's Keith of Eastholm rides so fast,
- Sister Helen,
- For I know the white mane on the blast.’
- ‘The hour has come, has come at last,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Her hour at last, between Hell and Heaven!)
page: 137
- ‘He has made a sign and called Halloo!
- Sister Helen,
-
80 And he says that he would speak with you.’
- ‘Oh tell him I fear the frozen dew,
- Little brother.’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Why laughs she thus, between Hell and Heaven?)
- ‘The wind is loud, but I hear him cry,
- Sister Helen,
- That Keith of Ewern's like to die.’
- ‘And he and thou, and thou and I,
- Little brother.’
-
90 (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
And they and we, between Hell and Heaven!)
- ‘For three days now he has lain abed,
- Sister Helen,
- And he prays in torment to be dead.’
- ‘The thing may chance, if he have prayed,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
If he have prayed, between Hell and Heaven!)
page: 138
- ‘But he has not ceased to cry to-day,
-
100 Sister Helen,
- That you should take your curse away.’
- ‘
My prayer was heard,—he need but pray,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Shall God not hear, between Hell and Heaven?)
- ‘But he says, till you take back your ban,
- Sister Helen,
- His soul would pass, yet never can.’
- ‘Nay then, shall I slay a living man,
-
110 Little brother?’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
A living soul, between Hell and Heaven!)
- ‘But he calls for ever on your name,
- Sister Helen,
- And says that he melts before a flame.’
- ‘My heart for his pleasure fared the same,
- Little brother.’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Fire at the heart, between Hell and Heaven!)
page: 139
-
120‘Here's Keith of Westholm riding fast,
- Sister Helen,
- For I know the white plume on the blast.’
- ‘The hour, the sweet hour I forecast,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Is the hour sweet, between Hell and Heaven?)
- ‘He stops to speak, and he stills his horse,
- Sister Helen;
- But his words are drowned in the wind's course.’
-
130‘Nay hear, nay hear, you must hear perforce,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
A word ill heard, between Hell and Heaven!)
- ‘Oh he says that Keith of Ewern's cry,
- Sister Helen,
- Is ever to see you ere he die.’
- ‘He sees me in earth, in moon and sky,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
140
Earth, moon and sky, between Hell and Heaven!)
page: 140
- ‘He sends a ring and a broken coin,
- Sister Helen,
- And bids you mind the banks of Boyne.’
- ‘What else he broke will he ever join,
- Little brother?’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Oh, never more, between Hell and Heaven!)
- ‘He yields you these and craves full fain,
- Sister Helen,
-
150 You pardon him in his mortal pain.’
- ‘What else he took will he give again,
- Little brother?’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
No more again, between Hell and Heaven!)
- ‘He calls your name in an agony,
- Sister Helen,
- That even dead Love must weep to see.’
- ‘Hate, born of Love, is blind as he,
- Little brother!’
-
160 (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Love turned to hate, between Hell and Heaven!)
page: 141
- ‘Oh it's Keith of Keith now that rides fast,
- Sister Helen,
- For I know the white hair on the blast.’
- ‘The short short hour will soon be past,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Will soon be past, between Hell and Heaven!)
- ‘He looks at me and he tries to speak,
-
170 Sister Helen,
- But oh! his voice is sad and weak!’
- ‘What here should the mighty Baron seek,
- Little brother?’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Is this the end, between Hell and Heaven?)
- ‘Oh his son still cries, if you forgive,
- Sister Helen,
- The body dies but the soul shall live.’
- ‘Fire shall forgive me as I forgive,
-
180 Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
As she forgives, between Hell and Heaven!)
page: 142
- ‘Oh he prays you, as his heart would rive,
- Sister Helen,
- To save his dear son's soul alive.’
- ‘Nay, flame cannot slay it, it shall thrive,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Alas, alas, between Hell and Heaven!)
-
190‘He cries to you, kneeling in the road,
- Sister Helen,
- To go with him for the love of God!’
- ‘The way is long to his son's abode,
- Little brother.’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
The way is long, between Hell and Heaven!)
- ‘O Sister Helen, you heard the bell,
- Sister Helen!
- More loud than the vesper-chime it fell.’
-
200‘No vesper-chime, but a dying knell,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven!)
page: 143
- ‘Alas! but I fear the heavy sound,
- Sister Helen;
- Is it in the sky or in the ground?’
- ‘Say, have they turned their horses round,
- Little brother?’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
210
What would she more, between Hell and Heaven?)
- ‘They have raised the old man from his knee,
- Sister Helen,
- And they ride in silence hastily.’
- ‘More fast the naked soul doth flee,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
The naked soul, between Hell and Heaven!)
- ‘Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill,
- Sister Helen,
-
220 And weary sad they look by the hill.’
- ‘But Keith of Ewern's sadder still,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Most sad of all, between Hell and Heaven!)
page: 144
- ‘See, see, the wax has dropped from its place,
- Sister Helen,
- And the flames are winning up apace!’
- ‘Yet here they burn but for a space,
- Little brother!’
-
230 (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven!)
- ‘Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
- Sister Helen?
- Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?’
- ‘A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
- Little brother!’
- (
O Mother, Mary Mother,
-
Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)
page: 145
- ‘O have you seen the Stratton flood
- That's great with rain to-day?
- It runs beneath your wall, Lord Sands,
- Full of the new-mown hay.
- ‘I led your hounds to Hutton bank
- To bathe at early morn:
- They got their bath by Borrowbrake
- Above the standing corn.’
- Out from the castle-stair Lord Sands
-
10 Looked up the western lea;
- The rook was grieving on her nest,
- The flood was round her tree.
- Over the castle-wall Lord Sands
- Looked down the eastern hill:
- The stakes swam free among the boats,
- The flood was rising still.
page: 146
- ‘What's yonder far below that lies
- So white against the slope?’
- ‘O it's a sail o' your bonny barks
-
20 The waters have washed up.
- ‘But I have never a sail so white,
- And the water's not yet there.’
- ‘O it's the swans o' your bonny lake
- The rising flood doth scare.’
- ‘The swans they would not hold so still,
- So high they would not win.’
- ‘O it's Joyce my wife has spread her smock
- And fears to fetch it in.’
- ‘Nay, knave, it's neither sail nor swans,
-
30 Nor aught that you can say;
- For though your wife might leave her smock,
- Herself she'd bring away.’
- Lord Sands has passed the turret-stair,
- The court, and yard, and all;
- The kine were in the byre that day,
- The nags were in the stall.
page: 147
- Lord Sands has won the weltering slope
- Whereon the white shape lay:
- The clouds were still above the hill,
-
40 And the shape was still as they.
- Oh pleasant is the gaze of life
- And sad is death's blind head;
- But awful are the living eyes
- In the face of one thought dead!
- ‘In God's name, Janet, is it me
- Thy ghost has come to seek?’
- ‘Nay, wait another hour, Lord Sands,—
- Be sure my ghost shall speak.’
- A moment stood he as a stone,
-
50 Then grovelled to his knee.
- ‘O Janet, O my love, my love,
- Rise up and come with me!’
- ‘O once before you bade me come,
- And it's here you have brought me!
- ‘O many's the sweet word, Lord Sands,
- You've spoken oft to me;
- But all that I have from you to-day
- Is the rain on my body.
page: 148
- ‘And many's the good gift, Lord Sands,
-
60 You've promised oft to me;
- But the gift of yours I keep to-day
- Is the babe in my body.
- ‘O it's not in any earthly bed
- That first my babe I'll see;
- For I have brought my body here
- That the flood may cover me.’
- His face was close against her face,
- His hands of hers were fain:
- O her wet cheeks were hot with tears,
-
70 Her wet hands cold with rain.
- ‘They told me you were dead, Janet,—
- How could I guess the lie?’
- ‘They told me you were false, Lord Sands,—
- What could I do but die?’
- ‘Now keep you well, my brother Giles,—
- Through you I deemed her dead!
- As wan as your towers be to-day,
- To-morrow they'll be red.
page: 149
- ‘Look down, look down, my false mother,
-
80 That bade me not to grieve:
- You'll look up when our marriage fires
- Are lit to-morrow eve.
- ‘O more than one and more than two
- The sorrow of this shall see:
- But it's to-morrow, love, for them,—
- To-day's for thee and me.’
- He's drawn her face between his hands
- And her pale mouth to his:
- No bird that was so still that day
-
90 Chirps sweeter than his kiss.
- The flood was creeping round their feet.
- ‘O Janet, come away!
- The hall is warm for the marriage-rite,
- The bed for the birthday.’
- ‘Nay, but I hear your mother cry,
- “Go bring this bride to bed!
- And would she christen her babe unborn,
- So wet she comes to wed?”
page: 150
- ‘I'll be your wife to cross your door
-
100 And meet your mother's e'e.
- We plighted troth to wed i' the kirk,
- And it's there I'll wed with ye.’
- He's ta'en her by the short girdle
- And by the dripping sleeve:
- ‘Go fetch Sir Jock my mother's priest,—
- You'll ask of him no leave.
- ‘O it's one half-hour to reach the kirk
- And one for the marriage-rite;
- And kirk and castle and castle-lands
-
110 Shall be our babe's to-night.’
- ‘The flood's in the kirkyard, Lord Sands,
- And round the belfry-stair.’
- ‘I bade ye fetch the priest,’ he said,
- ‘Myself shall bring him there.
- ‘It's for the lilt of wedding bells
- We'll have the hail to pour,
- And for the clink of bridle-reins
- The plashing of the oar.’
page: 151
- Beneath them on the nether hill
-
120 A boat was floating wide:
- Lord Sands swam out and caught the oars
- And rowed to the hill-side.
- He's wrapped her in a green mantle
- And set her softly in;
- Her hair was wet upon her face,
- Her face was grey and thin;
- And ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘lie still, my babe,
- It's out you must not win!’
- But woe's my heart for Father John!
-
130 As hard as he might pray,
- There seemed no help but Noah's ark
- Or Jonah's fish that day.
- The first strokes that the oars struck
- Were over the broad leas;
- The next strokes that the oars struck
- They pushed beneath the trees;
- The last stroke that the oars struck,
- The good boat's head was met,
- And there the gate of the kirkyard
-
140 Stood like a ferry-gate.
page: 152
- He's set his hand upon the bar
- And lightly leaped within:
- He's lifted her to his left shoulder,
- Her knees beside his chin.
- The graves lay deep beneath the flood
- Under the rain alone;
- And when the foot-stone made him slip,
- He held by the head-stone.
- The empty boat thrawed i' the wind,
-
150 Against the postern tied.
- ‘Hold still, you've brought my love with me,
- You shall take back my bride.’
- But woe's my heart for Father John
- And the saints he clamoured to!
- There's never a saint but Christopher
- Might hale such buttocks through!
- And ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘on men's shoulders
- I well had thought to wend,
- And well to travel with a priest,
-
160 But not to have cared or ken'd.
page: 153
- ‘And oh!’ she said, ‘it's well this way
- That I thought to have fared,—
- Not to have lighted at the kirk
- But stopped in the kirkyard.
- ‘For it's oh and oh I prayed to God,
- Whose rest I hoped to win,
- That when to-night at your board-head
- You'd bid the feast begin,
- This water past your window-sill
-
170 Might bear my body in.’
- Now make the white bed warm and soft
- And greet the merry morn.
- The night the mother should have died
- The young son shall be born.
page: 154
- What thing unto mine ear
- Wouldst thou convey,—what secret thing,
- O wandering water ever whispering?
- Surely thy speech shall be of her.
- Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
- What message dost thou bring?
- Say, hath not Love leaned low
- This hour beside thy far well-head,
- And there through jealous hollowed fingers said
-
10 The thing that most I long to know,—
- Murmuring with curls all dabbled in thy flow
- And washed lips rosy red?
- He told it to thee there
- Where thy voice hath a louder tone;
- But where it welters to this little moan
page: 155
- His will decrees that I should hear.
- Now speak: for with the silence is no fear,
- And I am all alone.
- Shall Time not still endow
-
20 One hour with life, and I and she
- Slake on love's lips the thirst of memory?
- Say, stream; lest Love should disavow
- Thy service, and the bird upon the bough
- Sing first to tell it me.
- What whisperest thou? Nay, why
- Name the dead hours? I mind them well:
- Their ghosts in many darkened doorways dwell
- With desolate eyes to know them by.
- That hour must still be born ere it can die:
-
30 Of that I'd have thee tell.
- But hear, before thou speak!
- Withhold, I pray, the vain behest
- That while the maze hath still its bower for quest
- My burning heart should cease to seek.
- Be sure that Love ordained for souls more meek
- His roadside dells of rest.
page: 156
- Stream, when this silver thread
- In flood-time is a torrent brown,
- May any bulwark bind thy foaming crown?
-
40 Shall not the waters surge and spread
- And to the crannied boulders of their bed
- Still shoot the dead leaves down?
- Let no rebuke find place
- In speech of thine: or it shall prove
- That thou dost ill expound the words of Love,
- Even as thine eddy's rippling race
- Would blur the perfect image of his face.
- I will have none thereof.
- O learn and understand
-
50 That 'gainst the wrongs himself did wreak
- Love sought her aid; until her shadowy cheek
- And eyes beseeching gave command;
- And compassed in her close compassionate hand
- My heart must burn and speak.
- For then at last we spoke
- What eyes so oft had told to eyes
- Through that long-lingering silence whose half-sighs
page: 157
- Alone the buried secret broke,
- Which with snatched hands and lips' reverberate stroke
-
60 Then from the heart did rise.
- But she is far away
- Now; nor the hours of night grown hoar
- Bring yet to me, long gazing from the door,
- The wind-stirred robe of roseate grey
- And rose-crown of the hour that leads the day
- When we shall meet once more.
- Dark as thy blinded wave
- When brimming midnight floods the glen,—
- Bright as the laughter of thy runnels when
-
70 The dawn yields all the light they crave;
- Even so these hours to wound and that to save
- Are sisters in Love's ken.
- Oh sweet her bending grace
- Then when I kneel beside her feet;
- And sweet her eyes' o'erhanging heaven; and sweet
- The gathering folds of her embrace;
- And her fall'n hair at last shed round my face
- When breaths and tears shall meet.
page: 158
- Beneath her sheltering hair,
-
80 In the warm silence near her breast,
- Our kisses and our sobs shall sink to rest;
- As in some still trance made aware
- That day and night have wrought to fulness there
- And Love has built our nest.
- And as in the dim grove,
- When the rains cease that hushed them long,
- 'Mid glistening boughs the song-birds wake to song,—
- So from our hearts deep-shrined in love,
- While the leaves throb beneath, around, above,
-
90 The quivering notes shall throng.
- Till tenderest words found vain
- Draw back to wonder mute and deep,
- And closed lips in closed arms a silence keep,
- Subdued by memory's circling strain,—
- The wind-rapt sound that the wind brings again
- While all the willows weep.
- Then by her summoning art
- Shall memory conjure back the sere
- Autumnal Springs, from many a dying year
page: 159
-
100 Born dead; and, bitter to the heart,
- The very ways where now we walk apart
- Who then shall cling so near.
- And with each thought new-grown,
- Some sweet caress or some sweet name
- Low-breathed shall let me know her thought the same;
- Making me rich with every tone
- And touch of the dear heaven so long unknown
- That filled my dreams with flame.
- Pity and love shall burn
-
110 In her pressed cheek and cherishing hands;
- And from the living spirit of love that stands
- Between her lips to soothe and yearn,
- Each separate breath shall clasp me round in turn
- And loose my spirit's bands.
- Oh passing sweet and dear,
- Then when the worshipped form and face
- Are felt at length in darkling close embrace;
- Round which so oft the sun shone clear,
- With mocking light and pitiless atmosphere,
-
120 In many an hour and place.
page: 160
- Ah me! with what proud growth
- Shall that hour's thirsting race be run;
- While, for each several sweetness still begun
- Afresh, endures love's endless drouth:
- Sweet hands, sweet hair, sweet cheeks, sweet eyes,
sweet
- [mouth.
- Each singly wooed and won.
Note: The word “mouth” in
line 125 has been dropped to the next line.
- Yet most with the sweet soul
- Shall love's espousals then be knit;
- What time the governing cloud sheds peace from it
-
130 O'er tremulous wings that touch the goal,
- And on the unmeasured height of Love's control
- The lustral fires are lit.
- Therefore, when breast and cheek
- Now part, from long embraces free,—
- Each on the other gazing shall but see
- A self that has no need to speak:
- All things unsought, yet nothing more to seek,—
- One love in unity.
- O water wandering past,—
-
140 Albeit to thee I speak this thing,
- O water, thou that wanderest whispering,
page: 161
- Thou keep'st thy counsel to the last.
- What spell upon thy bosom should Love cast,
- Its secret thence to wring?
- Nay, must thou hear the tale
- Of the past days,—the heavy debt
- Of life that obdurate time withholds,—ere yet
- To win thine ear these prayers prevail,
- And by thy voice Love's self with high All-hail
-
150 Yield up the amulet?
- How should all this be told?—
- All the sad sum of wayworn days;—
- Heart's anguish in the impenetrable maze;
- And on the waste uncoloured wold
- The visible burthen of the sun grown cold
- And the moon's labouring gaze?
- Alas! shall hope be nurs'd
- On life's all-succouring breast in vain,
- And made so perfect only to be slain?
-
160 Or shall not rather the sweet thirst
- Even yet rejoice the heart with warmth dispers'd
- And strength grown fair again?
page: 162
- Stands it not by the door—
- Love's Hour—till she and I shall meet;
- With bodiless form and unapparent feet
- That cast no shadow yet before,
- Though round its head the dawn begins to pour
- The breath that makes day sweet?
- Its eyes invisible
-
170 Watch till the dial's thin-thrown shade
- Be born,—yea, till the journeying line be laid
- Upon the point that wakes the spell,
- And there in lovelier light than tongue can tell
- Its presence stand array'd.
- Its soul remembers yet
- Those sunless hours that passed it by;
- And still it hears the night's disconsolate cry,
- And feels the branches wringing wet
- Cast on its brow, that may not once forget,
-
180 Dumb tears from the blind sky.
- But oh! when now her foot
- Draws near, for whose sake night and day
- Were long in weary longing sighed away,—
page: 163
- The Hour of Love, 'mid airs grown mute,
- Shall sing beside the door, and Love's own lute
- Thrill to the passionate lay.
- Thou know'st, for Love has told
- Within thine ear, O stream, how soon
- That song shall lift its sweet appointed tune.
-
190 O tell me, for my lips are cold,
- And in my veins the blood is waxing old
- Even while I beg the boon.
- So, in that hour of sighs
- Assuaged, shall we beside this stone
- Yield thanks for grace; while in thy mirror shown
- The twofold image softly lies,
- Until we kiss, and each in other's eyes
- Is imaged all alone.
- Still silent? Can no art
-
200 Of Love's then move thy pity? Nay,
- To thee let nothing come that owns his sway:
- Let happy lovers have no part
- With thee; nor even so sad and poor a heart
- As thou hast spurned to-day.
page: 164
- To-day? Lo! night is here.
- The glen grows heavy with some veil
- Risen from the earth or fall'n to make earth pale;
- And all stands hushed to eye and ear,
- Until the night-wind shake the shade like fear
-
210 And every covert quail.
- Ah! by another wave
- On other airs the hour must come
- Which to thy heart, my love, shall call me home.
- Between the lips of the low cave
- Against that night the lapping waters lave,
- And the dark lips are dumb.
- But there Love's self doth stand,
- And with Life's weary wings far-flown,
- And with Death's eyes that make the water moan,
-
220 Gathers the water in his hand:
- And they that drink know nought of sky or land
- But only love alone.
- O soul-sequestered face
- Far off,—O were that night but now!
- So even beside that stream even I and thou
page: 165
- Through thirsting lips should draw Love's grace,
- And in the zone of that supreme embrace
- Bind aching breast and brow.
- O water whispering
-
230 Still through the dark into mine ears,—
- As with mine eyes, is it not now with hers?—
- Mine eyes that add to thy cold spring,
- Wan water, wandering water weltering,
- This hidden tide of tears.
page: 166
- Could you not drink her gaze like wine?
- Yet though its splendour swoon
- Into the silence languidly
- As a tune into a tune,
- Those eyes unravel the coiled night
- And know the stars at noon.
- The gold that's heaped beside her hand,
- In truth rich prize it were;
- And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
-
10 With magic stillness there;
- And he were rich who should unwind
- That woven golden hair.
- Around her, where she sits, the dance
- Now breathes its eager heat;
page: 167
- And not more lightly or more true
- Fall there the dancers' feet
- Than fall her cards on the bright board
- As 'twere an heart that beat.
- Her fingers let them softly through,
-
20 Smooth polished silent things;
- And each one as it falls reflects
- In swift light-shadowings,
- Blood-red and purple, green and blue,
- The great eyes of her rings.
- Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov'st
- Those gems upon her hand;
- With me, who search her secret brows;
- With all men, bless'd or bann'd.
- We play together, she and we,
-
30 Within a vain strange land:
- A land without any order,—
- Day even as night, (one saith,)—
- Where who lieth down ariseth not
- Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
page: 168
- A land of darkness as darkness itself
- And of the shadow of death.
- What be her cards, you ask? Even these:—
- The heart, that doth but crave
- More, having fed; the diamond,
-
40 Skilled to make base seem brave;
- The club, for smiting in the dark;
- The spade, to dig a grave.
- And do you ask what game she plays?
- With me 'tis lost or won;
- With thee it is playing still; with him
- It is not well begun;
- But 'tis a game she plays with all
- Beneath the sway o' the sun.
- Thou seest the card that falls,—she knows
-
50 The card that followeth:
- Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
- As ebbs thy daily breath:
- When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue
- And know she calls it Death.
page: 169
- She fell asleep on Christmas Eve:
- At length the long-ungranted shade
- Of weary eyelids overweigh'd
- The pain nought else might yet relieve.
- Our mother, who had leaned all day
- Over the bed from chime to chime,
- Then raised herself for the first time,
- And as she sat her down, did pray.
- Her little work-table was spread
-
10 With work to finish. For the glare
- Made by her candle, she had care
- To work some distance from the bed.
Transcribed Footnote (page 169):
* This little poem, written in 1847, was printed in a periodical
at
the outset of 1850. The metre, which is used by several old
English
writers, became celebrated a month or two later on the
publication
of ‘
In Memoriam.’
page: 170
- Without, there was a cold moon up,
- Of winter radiance sheer and thin;
- The hollow halo it was in
- Was like an icy crystal cup.
- Through the small room, with subtle sound
- Of flame, by vents the fireshine drove
- And reddened. In its dim alcove
-
20The mirror shed a clearness round.
- I had been sitting up some nights,
- And my tired mind felt weak and blank;
- Like a sharp strengthening wine it drank
- The stillness and the broken lights.
- Our mother rose from where she sat:
-
30 Her needles, as she laid them down,
- Met lightly, and her silken gown
- Settled: no other noise than that.
page: 171
Note: The second 1 in the pagination of page 171 is slightly
raised.
- ‘Glory unto the Newly Born!’
- So, as said angels, she did say;
- Because we were in Christmas Day,
- Though it would still be long till morn.
- Just then in the room over us
- There was a pushing back of chairs,
- As some who had sat unawares
-
40So late, now heard the hour, and rose.
- With anxious softly-stepping haste
- Our mother went where Margaret lay,
- Fearing the sounds o'erhead—should they
- Have broken her long watched-for rest!
- She stooped an instant, calm, and turned;
- But suddenly turned back again;
- And all her features seemed in pain
- With woe, and her eyes gazed and yearned.
- For my part, I but hid my face,
-
50 And held my breath, and spoke no word:
- There was none spoken; but I heard
- The silence for a little space.
page: 172
- Our mother bowed herself and wept:
- And both my arms fell, and I said,
- ‘God knows I knew that she was dead.’
- And there, all white, my sister slept.
- Then kneeling, upon Christmas morn
- A little after twelve o'clock
- We said, ere the first quarter struck,
-
60‘Christ's blessing on the newly born!’
page: 173
- Along the grass sweet airs are blown
- Our way this day in Spring.
- Of all the songs that we have known
- Now which one shall we sing?
- Not that, my love, ah no!—
- Not this, my love? why, so!—
- Yet both were ours, but hours will come and go.
- The grove is all a pale frail mist,
- The new year sucks the sun.
-
10Of all the kisses that we kissed
- Now which shall be the one?
- Not that, my love, ah no!—
- Not this, my love?—heigh-ho
- For all the sweets that all the winds can blow!
- The branches cross above our eyes,
- The skies are in a net:
- And what's the thing beneath the skies
- We two would most forget?
- Not birth, my love, no, no,—
-
20 Not death, my love, no, no,—
- The love once ours, but ours long hours ago.
page: 174
- So it is, my dear.
- All such things touch secret strings
- For heavy hearts to hear.
- So it is, my dear.
- Very like indeed:
- Sea and sky, afar, on high,
- Sand and strewn seaweed,—
- Very like indeed.
- But the sea stands spread
-
10As one wall with the flat skies,
- Where the lean black craft like flies
- Seem well-nigh stagnated,
- Soon to drop off dead.
- Seemed it so to us
- When I was thine and thou wast mine,
- And all these things were thus,
- But all our world in us?
- Could we be so now?
- Not if all beneath heaven's pall
-
20 Lay dead but I and thou,
- Could we be so now!
page: 175
- ‘
How should I your true love know
-
From another one?’
- ‘
By his cockle-hat and staff
-
And his sandal-shoon.’
- ‘And what signs have told you now
- That he hastens home?’
- ‘Lo! the spring is nearly gone,
- He is nearly come.’
- ‘For a token is there nought,
-
10 Say, that he should bring?’
- ‘He will bear a ring I gave
- And another ring.’
- ‘How may I, when he shall ask,
- Tell him who lies there?’
- ‘Nay, but leave my face unveiled
- And unbound my hair.’
- ‘Can you say to me some word
- I shall say to him?’
- ‘Say I'm looking in his eyes
-
20 Though my eyes are dim.’
page: 176
- Andromeda, by Perseus saved and wed,
- Hankered each day to see the Gorgon's head:
- Till o'er a fount he held it, bade her lean,
- And mirrored in the wave was safely seen
- That death she lived by.
- Let not thine eyes know
- Any forbidden thing itself, although
- It once should save as well as kill: but be
- Its shadow upon life enough for thee.
page: 177