Chapter 2
Thou art the incarnated Light Whose Sire is aboriginal, and beyond Death and resurgence of our day and night; From him is thy vicegerent wand With double potence of the black and white. Giver of Love, and Beauty, and Desire, The terror, and the loveliness, and purging, The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire! Samson’s riddling meanings merging In thy twofold sceptre meet: Out of thy minatory might, Burning Lion, burning Lion, Comes the honey of all sweet, And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat. And though, by thine alternate breath, Every kiss thou dost inspire Echoeth Back from the windy vaultages of death; Yet thy clear warranty above Augurs the wings of death too must Occult reverberations stir of love Crescent and life incredible; That even the kisses of the just Go down not unresurgent to the dust. Yea, not a kiss which I have given, But shall triúmph upon my lips in heaven, Or cling a shameful fungus there in hell. Know’st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, well Thou know’st the ancient miracle, The children know’st of Zeus and May; And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother, To incarnate, the antique way, The truth which is their heritage from their Sire In sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother. My fingers thou hast taught to con Thy flame-chorded psalterion, Till I can translate into mortal wire— Till I can translate passing well— The heavenly harping harmony, Melodious, sealed, inaudible, Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world’s desire. Thou whisperest in the Moon’s white ear, And she does whisper into mine,— By night together, I and she— With her virgin voice divine, The things I cannot half so sweetly tell As she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear.
By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord, Yet she for Earth, and both in thee. Light out of Light! Resplendent and prevailing Word Of the Unheard! Not unto thee, great Image, not to thee Did the wise heathen bend an idle knee; And in an age of faith grown frore If I too shall adore, Be it accounted unto me A bright sciential idolatry! God has given thee visible thunders To utter thine apocalypse of wonders; And what want I of prophecy, That at the sounding from thy station Of thy flagrant trumpet, see The seals that melt, the open revelation? Or who a God-persuading angel needs, That only heeds The rhetoric of thy burning deeds? Which but to sing, if it may be, In worship-warranting moiety, So I would win In such a song as hath within A smouldering core of mystery, Brimmèd with nimbler meanings up Than hasty Gideons in their hands may sup;— Lo, my suit pleads That thou, Isaian coal of fire, Touch from yon altar my poor mouth’s desire, And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds.
To thine own shape Thou round’st the chrysolite of the grape, Bind’st thy gold lightnings in his veins; Thou storest the white garners of the rains. Destroyer and preserver, thou Who medicinest sickness, and to health Art the unthankèd marrow of its wealth; To those apparent sovereignties we bow And bright appurtenances of thy brow! Thy proper blood dost thou not give, That Earth, the gusty Mænad, drink and dance? Art thou not life of them that live? Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell Within our body as a tabernacle! Thou bittest with thine ordinance The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete The unsustainable treading of his feet. Thou to thy spousal universe Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church; Who in most dusk and vidual curch, Her Lord being hence, Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hearse. The heavens renew their innocence And morning state But by thy sacrament communicate: Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers, Our darkened search, And sinful vigil desolate. Yea, biune in imploring dumb, Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await, The Spirit and the Bride say: Come! Lo, of thy Magians I the least Haste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs, To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced Regions and odorous of Song’s traded East. Thou, for the life of all that live The victim daily born and sacrificed; To whom the pinion of this longing verse Beats but with fire which first thyself did give, To thee, O Sun—or is’t perchance, to Christ?
Ay, if men say that on all high heaven’s face The saintly signs I trace Which round my stolèd altars hold their solemn place, Amen, amen! For oh, how could it be,— When I with wingèd feet had run Through all the windy earth about, Quested its secret of the sun, And heard what thing the stars together shout,— I should not heed thereout Consenting counsel won:— ‘By this, O Singer, know we if thou see. When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is here, When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is there, Believe them: yea, and this—then art thou seer, When all thy crying clear Is but: Lo here! lo there!—ah me, lo everywhere!’
NEW YEAR’S CHIMES.
WHAT is the song the stars sing? (_And a million songs are as song of one_.) This is the song the stars sing: _Sweeter song’s none_.
One to set, and many to sing, (_And a million songs are as song of one_), One to stand, and many to cling, The many things, and the one Thing, The one that runs not, the many that run.
The ever new weaveth the ever old (_And a million songs are as song of one_). Ever telling the never told; The silver saith, and the said is gold, And done ever the never done.
The chase that’s chased is the Lord o’ the chase (_And a million songs are as song of one_), And the pursued cries on the race; And the hounds in leash are the hounds that run.
Hidden stars by the shown stars’ sheen; (_And a million suns are but as one_); Colours unseen by the colours seen, And sounds unheard heard sounds between, And a night is in the light of the sun.
An ambuscade of light in night, (_And a million secrets are but as one_), And a night is dark in the sun’s light, And a world in the world man looks upon.
Hidden stars by the shown stars’ wings, (_And a million cycles are but as one_), And a world with unapparent strings Knits the simulant world of things; Behold, and vision thereof is none.
The world above in the world below (_And a million worlds are but as one_), And the One in all; as the sun’s strength so Strives in all strength, glows in all glow Of the earth that wits not, and man thereon.
Braced in its own fourfold embrace (_And a million strengths are as strength of one_), And round it all God’s arms of grace, The world, so as the Vision says, Doth with great lightning-tramples run.
And thunder bruiteth into thunder, (_And a million sounds are as sound of one_), From stellate peak to peak is tossed a voice of wonder, And the height stoops down to the depths thereunder, And sun leans forth to his brother-sun.
And the more ample years unfold (_With a million songs as song of one_), A little new of the ever old, A little told of the never told, Added act of the never done.
Loud the descant, and low the theme, (_A million songs are as song of one_); And the dream of the world is dream in dream, But the one Is is, or nought could seem; And the song runs round to the song begun.
This is the song the stars sing, (_Tonèd all in time_); Tintinnabulous, tuned to ring A multitudinous-single thing, Rung all in rhyme.
FROM THE NIGHT OF FOREBEING AN ODE AFTER EASTER
_In the chaos of preordination_, _and night of our forebeings_.—
SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
_Et lux in tenebris erat_, _et tenebræ eam non comprehenderunt_.—
ST. JOHN.
CAST wide the folding doorways of the East, For now is light increased! And the wind-besomed chambers of the air, See they be garnished fair; And look the ways exhale some precious odours, And set ye all about wild-breathing spice, Most fit for Paradise. Now is no time for sober gravity, Season enough has Nature to be wise; But now discinct, with raiment glittering free, Shake she the ringing rafters of the skies With festal footing and bold joyance sweet, And let the earth be drunken and carouse! For lo, into her house Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet, And all things are made young with young desires; And all for her is light increased In yellow stars and yellow daffodils, And East to West, and West to East, Fling answering welcome-fires, By dawn and day-fall, on the jocund hills. And ye, winged minstrels of her fair meinie, Being newly coated in glad livery, Upon her steps attend, And round her treading dance and without end Reel your shrill lutany. What popular breath her coming does out-tell The garrulous leaves among! What little noises stir and pass From blade to blade along the voluble grass! O Nature, never-done Ungaped-at Pentecostal miracle, We hear thee, each man in his proper tongue! Break, elemental children, break ye loose From the strict frosty rule Of grey-beard Winter’s school. Vault, O young winds, vault in your tricksome courses Upon the snowy steeds that reinless use In coerule pampas of the heaven to run; Foaled of the white sea-horses, Washed in the lambent waters of the sun. Let even the slug-abed snail upon the thorn Put forth a conscious horn! Mine elemental co-mates, joy each one; And ah, my foster-brethren, seem not sad— No, seem not sad, That my strange heart and I should be so little glad. Suffer me at your leafy feast To sit apart, a somewhat alien guest, And watch your mirth, Unsharing in the liberal laugh of earth; Yet with a sympathy, Begot of wholly sad and half-sweet memory— The little sweetness making grief complete; Faint wind of wings from hours that distant beat, When I, I too, Was once, O wild companions, as are you, Ran with such wilful feet. Wraith of a recent day and dead, Risen wanly overhead, Frail, strengthless as a noon-belated moon, Or as the glazing eyes of watery heaven, When the sick night sinks into deathly swoon.
A higher and a solemn voice I heard through your gay-hearted noise; A solemn meaning and a stiller voice Sounds to me from far days when I too shall rejoice, Nor more be with your jollity at strife. O prophecy Of things that are, and are not, and shall be! The great-vanned Angel March Hath trumpeted His clangorous ‘Sleep no more’ to all the dead— Beat his strong vans o’er earth, and air, and sea. And they have heard; Hark to the Jubilate of the bird For them that found the dying way to life! And they have heard, And quicken to the great precursive word; Green spray showers lightly down the cascade of the larch; The graves are riven, And the Sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven! Before his way Went forth the trumpet of the March; Before his way, before his way Dances the pennon of the May! O earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy, Behold how all things are made true! Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you, Exceeding glad and strong. Raise up your eyes, O raise your eyes abroad! No more shall you sit sole and vidual, Searching, in servile pall, Upon the hieratic night the star-sealed sense of all: Rejoice, O barren, and look forth abroad! Your children gathered back to your embrace See with a mother’s face. Look up, O mortals, and the portent heed; In very deed, Washed with new fire to their irradiant birth, Reintegrated are the heavens and earth! From sky to sod, The world’s unfolded blossom smells of God.
O imagery Of that which was the first, and is the last! For as the dark, profound nativity, God saw the end should be, When the world’s infant horoscope He cast. Unshackled from the bright Phoebean awe, In leaf, flower, mould, and tree, Resolved into dividual liberty, Most strengthless, unparticipant, inane, Or suffered the ill peace of lethargy, Lo, the Earth eased of rule: Unsummered, granted to her own worst smart The dear wish of the fool— Disintegration, merely which man’s heart For freedom understands, Amid the frog-like errors from the damp And quaking swamp Of the low popular levels spawned in all the lands. But thou, O Earth, dost much disdain The bondage of thy waste and futile reign, And sweetly to the great compulsion draw Of God’s alone true-manumitting law, And Freedom, only which the wise intend, To work thine innate end. Over thy vacant counterfeit of death Broods with soft urgent breath Love, that is child of Beauty and of Awe: To intercleavage of sharp warring pain, As of contending chaos come again, Thou wak’st, O Earth, And work’st from change to change and birth to birth Creation old as hope, and new as sight; For meed of toil not vain, Hearing once more the primal fiat toll:— ‘Let there be light!’ And there is light! Light flagrant, manifest; Light to the zenith, light from pole to pole; Light from the East that waxeth to the West, And with its puissant goings-forth Encroaches on the South and on the North; And with its great approaches does prevail Upon the sullen fastness of the height, And summoning its levied power Crescent and confident through the crescent hour, Goes down with laughters on the subject vale. Light flagrant, manifest; Light to the sentient closeness of the breast, Light to the secret chambers of the brain! And thou up-floatest, warm, and newly-bathed, Earth, through delicious air, And with thine own apparent beauties swathed, Wringing the waters from thine arborous hair; That all men’s hearts, which do behold and see, Grow weak with their exceeding much desire, And turn to thee on fire, Enamoured with their utter wish of thee, Anadyomene! What vine-outquickening life all creatures sup, Feel, for the air within its sapphire cup How it does leap, and twinkle headily! Feel, for Earth’s bosom pants, and heaves her scarfing sea; And round and round in bacchanal rout reel the swift spheres intemperably!
My little-worlded self! the shadows pass In this thy sister-world, as in a glass, Of all processions that revolve in thee: Not only of cyclic Man Thou here discern’st the plan, Not only of cyclic Man, but of the cyclic Me. Not solely of Mortality’s great years The reflex just appears, But thine own bosom’s year, still circling round In ample and in ampler gyre Toward the far completion, wherewith crowned, Love unconsumed shall chant in his own furnace-fire. How many trampled and deciduous joys Enrich thy soul for joys deciduous still, Before the distance shall fulfil Cyclic unrest with solemn equipoise! Happiness is the shadow of things past, Which fools still take for that which is to be! And not all foolishly: For all the past, read true, is prophecy, And all the firsts are hauntings of some Last, And all the springs are flash-lights of one Spring. Then leaf, and flower, and falless fruit Shall hang together on the unyellowing bough; And silence shall be Music mute For her surchargèd heart. Hush thou! These things are far too sure that thou should’st dream Thereof, lest they appear as things that seem.
Shade within shade! for deeper in the glass Now other imaged meanings pass; And as the man, the poet there is read. Winter with me, alack! Winter on every hand I find: Soul, brain, and pulses dead; The mind no further by the warm sense fed, The soul weak-stirring in the arid mind, More tearless-weak to flash itself abroad Than the earth’s life beneath the frost-scorched sod. My lips have drought, and crack, By laving music long unvisited. Beneath the austere and macerating rime Draws back constricted in its icy urns The genial flame of Earth, and there With torment and with tension does prepare The lush disclosures of the vernal time. All joys draw inward to their icy urns, Tormented by constraining rime, And there With undelight and throe prepare The bounteous efflux of the vernal time. Nor less beneath compulsive Law Rebukèd draw The numbèd musics back upon my heart; Whose yet-triumphant course I know And prevalent pulses forth shall start, Like cataracts that with thunderous hoof charge the disbanding snow. All power is bound In quickening refusal so; And silence is the lair of sound; In act its impulse to deliver, With fluctuance and quiver The endeavouring thew grows rigid; Strong From its retracted coil strikes the resilient song.
Giver of spring, And song, and every young new thing! Thou only seest in me, so stripped and bare, The lyric secret waiting to be born, The patient term allowed Before it stretch and flutteringly unfold Its rumpled webs of amethyst-freaked, diaphanous gold. And what hard task abstracts me from delight, Filling with hopeless hope and dear despair The still-born day and parchèd fields of night, That my old way of song, no longer fair, For lack of serene care, Is grown a stony and a weed-choked plot, Thou only know’st aright, Thou only know’st, for I know not. How many songs must die that this may live! And shall this most rash hope and fugitive, Fulfilled with beauty and with might In days whose feet are rumorous on the air, Make me forget to grieve For songs which might have been, nor ever were? Stern the denial, the travail slow, The struggling wall will scantly grow: And though with that dread rite of sacrifice Ordained for during edifice, How long, how long ago! Into that wall which will not thrive I build myself alive, Ah, who shall tell me will the wall uprise? Thou wilt not tell me, who dost only know! Yet still in mind I keep, He which observes the wind shall hardly sow, He which regards the clouds shall hardly reap. Thine ancient way! I give, Nor wit if I receive; Risk all, who all would gain: and blindly. Be it so.
‘And blindly,’ said I?—No! That saying I unsay: the wings Hear I not in prævenient winnowings Of coming songs, that lift my hair and stir it? What winds with music wet do the sweet storm foreshow! Utter stagnation Is the solstitial slumber of the spirit, The blear and blank negation of all life: But these sharp questionings mean strife, and strife Is the negation of negation. The thing from which I turn my troubled look Fearing the gods’ rebuke; That perturbation putting glory on, As is the golden vortex in the West Over the foundered sun; That—but low breathe it, lest the Nemesis Unchild me, vaunting this— Is bliss, the hid, hugged, swaddled bliss! O youngling Joy carest! That on my now first-mothered breast Pliest the strange wonder of thine infant lip, What this aghast surprise of keenest panging, Wherefrom I blench, and cry thy soft mouth rest? Ah hold, withhold, and let the sweet mouth slip! So, with such pain, recoils the woolly dam, Unused, affrighted, from her yeanling lamb: I, one with her in cruel fellowship, Marvel what unmaternal thing I am.
Nature, enough! within thy glass Too many and too stern the shadows pass. In this delighted season, flaming For thy resurrection-feast, Ah, more I think the long ensepulture cold, Than stony winter rolled From the unsealed mouth of the holy East; The snowdrop’s saintly stoles less heed Than the snow-cloistered penance of the seed. ’Tis the weak flesh reclaiming Against the ordinance Which yet for just the accepting spirit scans. Earth waits, and patient heaven, Self-bonded God doth wait Thrice-promulgated bans Of his fair nuptial-date. And power is man’s, With that great word of ‘wait,’ To still the sea of tears, And shake the iron heart of Fate. In that one word is strong An else, alas, much-mortal song; With sight to pass the frontier of all spheres, And voice which does my sight such wrong.
Not without fortitude I wait The dark majestical ensuit Of destiny, nor peevish rate Calm-knowledged Fate. I, that no part have in the time’s bragged way, And its loud bruit I, in this house so rifted, marred, So ill to live in, hard to leave; I, so star-weary, over-warred, That have no joy in this your day— Rather foul fume englutting, that of day Confounds all ray— But only stand aside and grieve; I yet have sight beyond the smoke, And kiss the gods’ feet, though they wreak Upon me stroke and again stroke; And this my seeing is not weak. The Woman I behold, whose vision seek All eyes and know not; t’ward whom climb The steps o’ the world, and beats all wing of rhyme, And knows not; ’twixt the sun and moon Her inexpressible front enstarred Tempers the wrangling spheres to tune; Their divergent harmonies Concluded in the concord of her eyes, And vestal dances of her glad regard. I see, which fretteth with surmise Much heads grown unsagacious-grey, The slow aim of wise-hearted Time, Which folded cycles within cycles cloak: We pass, we pass, we pass; this does not pass away, But holds the furrowing earth still harnessed to its yoke. The stars still write their golden purposes On heaven’s high palimpsest, and no man sees, Nor any therein Daniel; I do hear From the revolving year A voice which cries: ‘All dies; Lo, how all dies! O seer, And all things too arise: All dies, and all is born; But each resurgent morn, behold, more near the Perfect Morn.’
Firm is the man, and set beyond the cast Of Fortune’s game, and the iniquitous hour, Whose falcon soul sits fast, And not intends her high sagacious tour Or ere the quarry sighted; who looks past To slow much sweet from little instant sour, And in the first does always see the last.
ANY SAINT
HIS shoulder did I hold Too high that I, o’erbold Weak one, Should lean thereon.
But He a little hath Declined His stately path And my Feet set more high;
That the slack arm may reach His shoulder, and faint speech Stir His unwithering hair.
And bolder now and bolder I lean upon that shoulder So dear He is and near:
And with His aureole The tresses of my soul Are blent In wished content.
Yes, this too gentle Lover Hath flattering words to move her To pride By His sweet side.
Ah, Love! somewhat let be! Lest my humility Grow weak When thou dost speak!
Rebate thy tender suit, Lest to herself impute Some worth Thy bride of earth!
A maid too easily Conceits herself to be Those things Her lover sings;
And being straitly wooed, Believes herself the Good And Fair He seeks in her.
Turn something of Thy look, And fear me with rebuke, That I May timorously
Take tremors in Thy arms, And with contrivèd charms Allure A love unsure.
Not to me, not to me, Builded so flawfully, O God, Thy humbling laud!