The House of Life

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Part I

Youth and Change.

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Part II

Change and Fate.

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      Scribe: May Morris

• A Sonnet is a moment's monument,—
• Memorial from thy the Soul's eternity
• To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
• Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
• Of its own intricate arduous fulness reverent:
• Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
• As Day or Night prevail; and let Time see
• Its flowering crest impearled and orient.

• A sonnet is a coin, whose its face reveals
• 10 Thy The soul,— its rear-type converse, to what Power 'tis due:—
Added Text
rear-foil  mintage
converse  mint-type
• Whether in for tribute to the august appeals
• Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
• It serve; or, 'mid the dark world's wharf's cavernous breath,
• In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.

    Scribe: DGR     Scribe: May Morris (probable)

• I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair:—
• Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;
• And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen past
• To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare;
• And Youth, with some bright spray of woman's still some single golden hair
• Yet to Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last
• Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;
• And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.

• Love's throne was not with these; but far above
• 10 All passionate wind of welcome and farewell
• He sat in breathless bowers they dream ed not of;
• Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, and Hope foretell,
• And Fame be for Love's sake desirable,
• And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love.

    Scribe: DGR

• As when desire, long darkling, dawns, & first
• The mother looks upon the newborn child,
• One hour Even so my Lady turned her eyes stood at gaze & smiled,
• And When her soul knew at length the Love it nursed.
• Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst
• And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay
• Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
• Cried to on him, and bonds of birth were burst.

• Now, shielded in his wings, our faces yearn
• 10 Together, as his fullgrown feet now tread range
• About us The grove, & his kind warm hands our couch prepare:
• Till to his song at once our Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn
• Are Be born his children, when the shadows Death's nuptial change
• Leaves us for last light the halo of his hair.

    Scribe: DGR

• O thou who in this Love's hour unswervingly ecstatically
• Unto my lips dost dost ever more present
• The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
• Whom clasping I have I have clinging [???] neared & felt thy breath to be
• The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
• Who not in words without speech hast owned him, and intent
• Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
• And murmured [?] o'er the cup, Remember me:—

• O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
• 10 And what to him Love the glory,—when the whole
• Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim goal shoal
• And weary water of the place of sighs,
• And there dost work [???] deliverance, as thine eyes
• Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul.

   

• O thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
• Unto my lips heart dost ever more present ,
• The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
  Added TextClothed with his fire, thy heart his testament;
• Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
• The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
• Who without speech hast owned him, and, intent
• Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
• And murmured , o'er the cup, Remember me!— “I am thine, thou'rt one with me!“—

• O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
• 10 And what to Love the glory,—when the whole
• Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal
• And weary water of the place of sighs,
• And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
• Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!

    Scribe: DGR

• When do I see thee most, beloved one?
• When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
• Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
• The worship of that Love through thee made known?
• Or when in the dark dusk hours, (we two alone,)
• Along thy face, along thy neck, along
• Thy breast my pressed lips feel the pulses throng,
• My happy cheek upon thy bosom lies,
• And our lips mingle kisses, words, & sighs,
• And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

• O Love, my love! when I no more may see
• 10Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
• Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
• How then shall sound, upon Life's darkening slope,
• The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
• The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

    Scribe: DGR

• Each hour until we meet is as a bird
• Far-heard, that wings  That wings, far-heard  That slowly wings his gradual way along
• Added TextFrom far that wings his gradual way along
• The rustling covert of my soul,—his song
• Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
• But at the hour of meeting, a clear word
• Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;
• Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet tune strain suffers wrong,
• Through our contending kisses oft unheard.

• What of that hour alas O love at last, when for her sake
• 10 No wing shall may fly to me nor song shall may flow;
• Till When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know
• The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
• And think how she, far from me, with like eyes
• Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?

    Scribe: May Morris

• By what word's power, the key to paths untrod,
• Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
• Till parted waves of song yield up the shore
• Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?
• For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
• Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
• Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
• Thee from myself, neither our Love from God.

• Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I
• 10 Draw from one loving heart such evidence
• As to all hearts all things shall signify ;
• Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense
• As instantaneous penetrating sense,
• In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.

    Scribe: DGR

• What withering smouldering senses in death's sick delay
• Or seizure of malign vicissitude
• Can rob this body of honour, or denude
• This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
• For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
• With these my lips such gracious consonant interlude
• As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
• The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.

• I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
• 10 When breast to breast we clung, even I & she,—
• A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—
• A god when all our all our life-breaths met to fan
• Our The Our life-blood, till the immingling intense Love's emulous ardours ran,
• Fire within fire, desire in deity.

    Scribe: DGR

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• To all the spirits of love that wander by
• Along the love-sown fallowfield of sleep
• My lady lies apparent; and the deep
• Calls to the deep; and no man sees but I.
• The bliss so long afar, at length so nigh,
• Rests there attained. Methinks proud Love must weep
• When Fate's one day doth from his harvest reap
• The sacred hour for which the years did sigh.

• First touched, the hand now warm beneath my neck
• 10 Taught memory long to mock desire: and lo!
• Across my breast the abandoned hair doth flow,
• Where ’neath one tress the longing long did wake one shorn tress [?]
• Added TextWhere one shorn tress long stirred the longing ache:
• prolonged the/ [?]
• the longing long did wake/felt/stilled long
• with/and longing/my wonder[?]
• And next the heart there trembling that trembled for its sake
• Lies the queen-heart in sovereign overthrow.

    Scribe: DGR

• Some ladies love the jewels in Love's zone,
• And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play
• In idle scornful hours he flings away;
• And some that listen to his lute's soft tone
• Do love to deem the silver praise their own;
• Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they
• Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday
• And thank his wings today that he is flown.

• My lady only loves the heart of Love:
• 10 Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee
• His [?] deep-bower of root His bower of unimagined flower and tree:
• There kneels he now, and all-anhungered of
• Thine eyes grey-lit in shadowy hair above,
• Seals with thy mouth his immortality.

    Scribe: DGR

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• Love brought to us a white-stoled harp-player
• Even as my lady and I lay all alone;
• Saying: “Behold, this minstrel is unknown;
• Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here:
• Only my strains are to my dear ones dear.”
• Then said I: “Through thy music's passionate tone
• Even now, Lord Love, I heard this harp make moan
• And still methought the note was loud deep and clear.”

• Then said my lady: “Even as thou art Love,
• 10 Lo, this is Worship this man hath for me.
• Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea:
• But where wan water sighs is high throbs within the grove
• And the wan moon is all the light thereof,
• This harp still makes my name its voluntary.”

   

• O lord of all compassionate control,
• O Love! let this my Lady's picture glow
• Under my hand to praise her name, and show
• Even of her inner self the perfect whole:
• That he who seeks her beauty's furthest goal,
• Beyond the glory light that the her sweet glances throw
• And [?] refluent wave of the sweet smile, may know
• The very sky and sea-line of her soul.

• Lo! it is done. Above the long lithe lifted throat
• 10 The moved mouth [?] its authenticates the voice and kiss,
• The shadowed eyes remember and foresee.
• Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note
• That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this!)
• They that would know her face look on her must come to me.

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• Warmed by her hand and shadowed by her hair
• As close she leaned and poured her heart through thee,
• Whereof the articulate throbs accompany
• The smooth black stream that makes thy whiteness fair,—
• Sweet fluttering sheet, even of her breath aware,—
• Oh let thy silent song disclose to me
• That soul wherewith her lips and eyes agree
• Like married music in Love's answering air.

• Fain had I watched her when, at some fond thought,
• 10 Her bosom to the writing closelier press'd,
• And her breast's secrets peered into her breast;
• When through eyes raised an instant, her soul sought
• My soul, and from the sudden confluence caught
• The words that made her love the loveliest.

    Scribe: May Morris

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• Sweet twining hedgeflowers wind-stirred in no wise
• On this June day; and hand that clings in hand:—
• Still glades; and meeting faces scarcely fanned:—
• An osier-odoured stream that draws the skies
• Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:—
• Fresh hourly wonder o'er the Summer land
• Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spanned
• With one o'erarching heaven of smiles and sighs:—

• Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto
• 10 Each other's visible sweetness amorously,—
• Whose passionate hearts are were lean ed by Love's high decree
• Together on his heart for ever true,
• As the white cloud-foaming firmamental blue
• Rests on the blue line of a foamless sea.

    Scribe: May Morris

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• “I love you, sweet: how can you ever learn
• How much I love you?” “You I love even so,
• And so I learn it.” “Sweet, you cannot know
• How fair you are.” “If fair enough to earn
• Your love, so much is all my love's concern.”
• “My love grows hourly, sweet.” “Mine too doth grow,
• Yet love seemed full so many hours ago!”
• Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn.

• Ah! happy they to whom such words as these
• 10 In youth have served for speech the whole day long,
• Hour after hour, remote from the world's throng,
• Work, contest, fame, all life's confederate pleas,—
• What while Love breathed in sighs and silences
• Through two blent souls one rapturous undersong.

    Scribe: May Morris

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• On this sweet bank your head thrice sweet and dear
• I lay, and spread your hair on either side,
• And see the newborn woodflowers bashful-eyed
• Look through the rippling golden tresses here and there.
• On these debateable borders of the year
• Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know
• The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow ;
• And through her bowers the wind's way still is clear.

• But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day;
• 10 So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss
• Creep, as the Spring now thrills through every spray,
• Up your warm throat to your warm lips; for this
• Is even the hour of Love's sworn suitservice,
• With whom cold hearts are counted castaway.

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    Scribe: DGR

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• Have you not noted, in some family
• Where two dear ones from the were born of a first marriage-bed,
• How still they own their fragrant bond, though fed
• And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?—
• That How to their father's children they shall be
• In act and thought of one goodwill; but each
• Shall for the other have, in silence speech,
• And in a word complete community?

• Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,
• 10 That among souls allied to mine was yet
• One nearer kindred than I eer knew of birth hinted of.
• O born with me somewhere that men forget,
• And though in years of sight and sound unmet,
• Known for my life's own sister well enough!

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    Scribe: DGR

• What of the end, Pandora? Was it thine,
• The deed that set these fiery pinions free?
• And Ah! wherefore did the Olympian consistory
• In its own likeness make thee half divine?
• Was it that Juno's face brow might stand the a sign
• Or not For ever? and [?] the mien of Pallas be
• A deadly curse thing? and that all men might see
• In Venus' eyes the gaze of Proserpine?

• What of the end? These beat their wings at will,
• 10The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill,—
• Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited.
• Aye, shut hug the casket close now! Whither they go
• Thou may'st not dare to think; nor canst thou know
• If Hope still pent there be alive or dead.

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    Scribe: May Morris

• Those envied places which do know her well,
• And are so scornful of this lonely place,
• Now for a while Even now for once are emptied of her grace:
• Nowhere but here she is: and as while Love's spell
• From his predominant presence doth compel
• All alien hours, an outworn populace,
• The hours of Love fill full the echoing space
• With their sweet confederate music favorable.

• Now many memories make solicitous
• 10 The delicate love-lines of her mouth, till, lit
• With quivering fire, the words take wing from it;
• As here between our kisses we sit thus
• Speaking of things remembered, and so sit
• Speechless while things forgotten call to us.

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    Scribe: May Morris

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• What dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last
• Incarnate flower of culminating day,—
• What marshalled marvels on the skirt of May,
• Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast;
• What glory of change by nature's hand amass'd
• Can vie with all those moods of varying grace
• Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face
• Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd?

• Love's very vesture & elect disguise
• 10 Was each fine movement,—wonder new-begot
• Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot;
• Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs,
• Parted again; and sorrow yet for eyes
• Unborn, that read these words and saw her not

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    Scribe: May Morris

• Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call
• Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime,—
• Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,—
• Is more with compassed mysteries musical;
• Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall
• More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes
• Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes
• Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.

• As many men are poets in their youth
• 10 But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong
• Even through all change the indomitable song;
• So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth
• Rends shallower grace with ruin sore forsooth void of ruth,
• Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong.

    Scribe: DGR

• Your hands lie open in the long lush grass
• And the sweet points look through like rosy blooms:
• The panting meadow Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
• With billowing skies that scatter & amass:
• AllAround us [?] our nest, far as the eye can pass,
• Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
• Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
• 'Tis visible silence, as of the like the still hour-glass.

• Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
• 10Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky :—
• Even So this wing'd hour is drop t ped to us from above.
• Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
• This close-companioned inarticulate hour
• When twofold silence was the song of love.

    Scribe: DGR

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• Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,—
• And The sweet finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
• Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams & glooms
• With 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass:
• All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
• Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
• Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
• 'Tis visible silence, like the still as the hourglass.

• Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
• 10Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:—
• So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
• Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
• This close-companioned inarticulate hour
• When twofold silence was the song of love.

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    Scribe: May Morris

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• Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
• When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
• Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
• So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace grace
• When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face
• What shall be said,—which, like a governing star,
• Gathers and garners from all things that are
• Their silent penetrative loveliness?

• O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring,
• 10 There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf
• With flowering rush and sceptered arrow-leaf,
• So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring
• Of cloud above and wave below, take wing
• And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief.

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    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray.

• Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
• About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
• In gracious fostering union garlanded;
• Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
• Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
• Her mouth's culled sweetness by the kisses shed
• On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
• Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—

• What sweeter than these things, except the thing
• 10 In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—
• The confident heart's still fervour; the swift beat
• And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
• Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
• The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?

    Scribe: May Morris

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• Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
• Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,
• With still tears showering and averted face,
• Inexplicably filled with faint alarms:
• And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms
• I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,—
• Against all ill the fortified strong place
• And sweet reserve of sovereign countercharms.

• And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
• 10 Lulls us to rest with songs, and screens turns away
• All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
• Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune;
• And as soft waters warble to the moon,
• Our answering kisses spirits chime one roundelay.

    Scribe: DGR

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• I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
• Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
• And round him ladies thronged in close pursuit,
• Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store:
• And from one hand the petal and the core
• Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
• Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,—
• Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.

• At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
• 10 And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
• And as I took them, at her touch they shone
• With inmost azure heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
• And then Love said: “Lo! when the hand is hers,
• Follies of love are love's high ministers.”

    Scribe: DGR

• Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
• The dead, but little in his heart can find,
• Since without need of thought to his clear mind
• Their turn it is to die and his to live:—
• Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
• Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind,
• Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
• Where night-racks shroud the Old Love fugitive.

• There is a change in every hour's recall,
• 10 And the last cowslip in the fields we see
• On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
• Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
• The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall,
• Even as the beads of a told rosary.

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• Each hour until we meet is as a bird
• That wings from far his gradual way along
• The rustling covert of my soul,—his song
• Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
• But at the hour of meeting, a clear word
• Is every note he sings, in Love'