Chapter 2

Ah! love me not with honey-sweet excesses, With passionate prodigalities of praise, With wreaths of daisied words and quaint caresses, Adore me not in charming childish ways. This pastoral is beautiful enough: But never shall it antidote my drouth: I want a reticent ironic Love With smiling eyes and faintly mocking mouth. Sweetness is best when bitterly 'tis bought: So in Love's deadly duel I would not be Victorious, and the peace I long have sought, Sure knowledge of his great supremacy, Would buy with pangs, like that bright cuirassier, The queen-at-arms that knew the Peliad's spear.

XXIX

THE CONFESSION

I

I am initiate,--long disciplined In delicate austerities of art: The clear compulsions of the sovran mind Constrain the dreamy panics of my heart. Plato and Dante, Petrarch, Lancelot, Revealed me very Love, flame-clad, august. Also I strove to be as we are not, Loyal, and honourable, and even just. My webs of life in reveries were dyed As veils in vats of purple: so there stole Serene and sumptuous and mysterious pride Through the imperial vesture of my soul.-- And lo! like any servile fool I crave The dark strange rapture of the stricken slave.

XXX

THE CONFESSION

II

I have a banner and a great duke's way, I have an High Adventure of my own. Yet would I rather squire a knightlier,--Nay! Be the least harper by his red-hung throne. I am not satisfied with any love Till I can say, "O stronger far than I!" Is it a shame to hide the aching of, A sacred mystery to justify? Through all our spiritual discontents Thrills the strange leaven of renunciation.-- Ah! god unknown behind the Sacraments Unfailing of the earthly expiation, Lift up this amethyst-encumbered Vine, Crush from her pain some ransom-cup of Wine.

XXXI

COMRADES

Yet for the honourable felicity Of comradeship I can be chivalrous, And through love's transmutations fierily Constant as the gemmed paladin Sirius To that fair pact. We go, gay challengers, Beneath dark rampires of forbidden thought, Thread life's dim gardens masked like revellers Where dreams of roses red are dearly bought. We shall ride haughtily as bright Crusaders, As hooded palmers fare with humbled hearts, And we shall find, adoring blithe invaders, The City of Seven Towers, of Seven Arts.-- Then the Last Quest, (lead you the dreadful way!) Among the unimagined Nebulae!

XXXII

THE SUM OF THINGS

TO ANOTHER WOMAN

Well, I am tired, who fared to divers ends, And you are not, who kept the beaten path; But mystic Vintagers have been my friends, Even Love and Death and Sin and Pride and Wrath. Wounded am I, you are immaculate; But great Adventurers were my starry guides: From God's Pavilion to the Flaming Gate Have I not ridden as an immortal rides? And your dry soul crumbles by dim degrees To final dust quite happily, it appears, While all the sweetness of her nectaries Can only stand within my heart like tears. O throbbing wounds, rich tears, and splendour spent,-- Ye are all my spoil, and I am well content.

XXXIII

REACTION

Give me a chamber paved with emerald And hung with arras green as evening skies, Broidered with halcyons, moons, and heavily thralled White lilies, cold rare comfort for the eyes. Of triumph built was radiant yesterday: Like an imperial eagle to the sun My soul bare up her dreams the glorious way Through flagrant ordeals august, and won To burning eyries, till beneath her wing Rankled the shaft. Her Archer was abroad; And hooded with strange darkness, shuddering Down pain's dull spiral, sank she on the sod. Close round, green dusk of dews! No more we dare The blue inviolate castles of the air.

XXXIV

THE IDEALIST

For such an one let lovers cry, Alas! Since passion's leaguer shall break through in vain To that cold centre of bright adamas.-- Storm through her being, rapturous spears of pain! Ye shall not wound that queen of gracious guile, The soul that with immortal trance keeps troth: For Helen is in Egypt all the while, Learning great magic from the Wife of Thoth. Throned white and high on red-rose porphyry, And coifed with golden wings, she lifts her eyes O'er Nile's green lavers where most sacredly The Pattern of the myriad Lotos lies, Unto those clear horizons jasper-pale Her heavenly Brethren ride in silver mail.

XXXV

WOMAN AND VISION

Vainly the Vision of Life entreats those eyes Where stars of glamour mock at revelations. But singular fiery moments do surprise With dreadful or delicious divinations The whorls of our blue Labyrinth: the sweet Blind sense of touch tells like an undersong Marvellous matters. What though snared feet, And wounded hands, and ravelled coils of wrong, Plead that the solemn Vision might make whole Our imperfection?--Fevered second-sight, Audacious wisdom of the blinded soul, Dim delicate auroras of delight That thrill the Dark from startled finger-tips, Are ye less precious an Apocalypse?

XXXVI

ART AND WOMEN

The Triumph of Art compels few womenkind; And these are yoked like slaves to Eros' car,-- No victors they! Yet ours the Dream behind, Who are nearer to the gods than poets are. For with the silver moons we wax and wane, And with the roses love most woundingly, And, wrought from flower to fruit with dim rich pain, The Orchard of the Pomegranates are we. For with Demeter still we seek the Spring, With Dionysos tread the sacred Vine, Our broken bodies still imagining The mournful Mystery of the Bread and Wine.-- And Art, that fierce confessor of the flowers, Desires the secret spice of those veiled hours.

XXXVII

DESTINY

The great religions of the Rose and Grape Have bound us in to their sad Paradise: We dream in crucial symbols, nor escape The cypress-garden where the slain god lies. Daughters of lamentation round the Cross Where Beauty suffers garlanded with thorn, Remembrancers through all the Night of Loss, We bear the spikenard of the Easter Morn. The yearning Springs, the brooding Autumns seethe Like philtres in our veins. O dark Election, Are then the sacrificial doors we wreathe With lilies fiery gates of Resurrexion? And does the passion of our spices feed Love's bright Arabian miracle indeed?

XXXVIII

CONFLICT

Why should a woman find her dream of love Irised by the strange ecstasy of Art? Is not Eros a terrible lord enough That she must bear both Hunters of the heart, The Golden Archer and the Scarlet too? Then bitter anomalies annul her choir Of puissant and subtle instincts, rended through By gorgeous dualisms of vain-desire. For Love outrages Art's clear disciplines, And Art lures Love to guilt of cryptic treason: The spirit of imagination pines, Captive in webs of exquisite unreason. Alas for this translated soul of hers, The rose's, that must be the garlander's!

XXXIX

PREDECESSORS

Faëry of Sheba, idol moulded in Onyx milk-white, moon-mailed and casqued with gems; Ye gold-swathed queens of Egypt, Isis' kin, With bright god-hawks and snakes for diadems; Serene masque-music of Greek girls that bear The sacred Veil to that Athenian feast; Hypatia, casting from thine ivory chair The gods' last challenge to the godless priest; Fantastic fine Provençals wistfully Hearkening Love, the mournful lute player; Diamond ladies of that Italy When Art and Wisdom Passion's angels were-- Ye give this grail (touch with no mad misprision!) Of Beauty's rose-red miracled tradition.

XL

TRANSITION

But these recoil in riddles and reserves.-- The dream's untuned. Ah! vanished chords thereof! Ah! keen divisions of the jangled nerves That strung so long the gracious lutes of love!-- Hurry to sell old magian Lamps for new, Though beauty's moonlike domes dissolve and pass: If all things change, ye would be changing too, Crazed hearts that know not your desire, alas! Still, through these wintry treasons that forswear The lovely bitter bondage of our god, Rare perennations of the soul prepare-- And Music yet shall seal the period With some new star,--with sad pure hands unveil For ransomed eyes again the gilded Grail.

XLI

THE VIRTUE OF PRIDE

My troubled bosom shall be cinct with pride, Girdled with red asterias. Is it sin If I have cast lover and friend aside, Scorning them as myself who cannot win The strengths of beauty, the heavenly altitudes?-- O sad and sacred Spirit of Disdain, What penances upon thine ivory roods Within the burning Castles of thy pain!-- Thy mystic will no motion ever knew Outwith the splendid danger of extremes; Thy sorrowful refusals pass thee through The great concentrics of star-builded dreams, Unto the crypt of absolute ecstasy, To God or Nothing--where thine heart would be.

XLII

SPELL-BOUND

I have been frozen. Once I was not cold. But I have strayed within some glittering Night Of Lapland miracle, have leagued of old With glaives and banners of wild Polar light. Yet if I could dissolve in tears this core Of ice, my heart, undo these crystal spells, We should be sisters of incense evermore Like the crowned Lover of the Canticles. Through the great honeycomb of my soul should steep The secrets of the lilies, and her fire Be ambergris, her agate flagons keep The sorcelled hydromel which brings Desire To that mysterious Dark where still prevails The dream of roses and of nightingales.

XLIII

THE NIGHT OBSCURE OF THE SOUL

When the Soul travails in her Night Obscure, The nadir of her desperate defeat, What heavenly dream shall help her to endure, What flaming Wisdom be her Paraclete? No curious Metaphysic can withhold The heart from that mandragora she craves:-- Unreasonable, old as Earth is old, The blind ecstatic miracle that saves. Far off the pagan trumpeters of Pride Call to the blood.--Love moans.--Some fiery fashion Of rapture like the anguish of the bride Leaps from the dark perfection of the Passion, Crying: "O beautiful God, still torture me, For if thou slay me, I will trust in Thee."

XLIV

THE CONQUEST OF IMMORTALITY

Ah! not in earthy dull durations I Mine heirdom of Eternity implore. Give one star-drunken moment ere I die, Then doom me dreadless to the implacable Door. That mystical Assumption shall disown Time's haughtiest lieges. Grey mortality Will disenchant the jewel-breded throne Of Cassiopeia when more burningly My deed exults with angels. I will borrow From continuity no larva-lease: Through sworded crises and great compts of sorrow I seek the splendour that shall never cease Though Death coin from my soul through endless years Dim drachmas of his infinite arrears.

XLV

WOMEN OF TANAGRA

Have these forgotten they are toys of Death That in his sad aphelions of desire They still regret the joy that perisheth, And Spring's great reveries that exceed and tire,-- Faintly accusing Love's unmercied yokes With almost wanton grace, the craft and art Of precious frailty that with subtle strokes Of sweetness finds the core of Passion's heart? They carry fans and mirrors, or make fast The mournful flute-like cadence of a veil. Slight fans that winnowed souls, mirrors that glassed The burning brooding wings which never fail! Still in such lovely vanities to-day The gods their secret wisdom hide away.

XLVI

THE INVENTORY

TO HER FRIEND

I love all sumptuous things and delicate, Ethereal matters richly paradised In Art's proud certitudes. I love the great Greek vases, carven ivory, subtilised Arras of roses, Magians dyed on glass, Graven chalcedony and sardonyx, Nocturnes that through the nerves like fever pass, Arthurian kings, Love on the crucifix, All sweet mysterious verse, the Byzantine Gold chambers of Crivelli, marble that flowers In shy adoring angels, patterned vine And lotos, and emblazoned Books of Hours,-- _And you, whose smiling eyes to ironies Reduce both me and mine idolatries_.

XLVII

COMFORT

I

I sang the Dolorous Stroke of Disillusion, Yet never have I broken faith with Joy: Flame-broidered trance and starless cold confusion Of slain and flying dreams shall not destroy The radiant oath to that bright Suzerain Whose lightning-lovely succour ambushed lies Even in the most impossible strait of pain. Mystical paradox, divine surprise Of rapture! By intensities alone Their spirits enter in to exultation For whom the burning winds of their sad zone Bear down the Dove of the Imagination, Who suffer superbly, _in scarlet violetted, As the Sacred Kings of the Lillie_ mourned their dead.*

* See Favine's "Book of Chivalry."

XLVIII

COMFORT

II

And that is marvellous comfort;--and yet poor To what mere woman-mystery can give, The strange simplicity that will endure The pangs of death, most resolute to live. This God of riddles that shaped a thing so frail For his worst torment hid mysterious powers Within her breast who can like lilies prevail Through rains of doom that conquer brassy towers. Her heart lies broken; when some trivial chord Of sweetness chimes reveille through the sense,-- A rose, a song, a smile, a courtly word. She wakes, and sighs, and softly passes thence Back to the masquers, though her soul's veiled Pyx Enclose the solemn fruits of the Crucifix.

XLIX

THE CHANGE

I spun my soul about with soft cocoons Of pleasure golden-pale. For me, for me Were precious things put forth by crescent moons, Of pearl and milky jade and ivory. Grave players on ethereal harpsichords, My senses wrought a music exquisite As patterned roses, all my life's accords Were richer, ghostlier than peacocks white. So in my paradise reserved and fair I grew as dreamlike as the Elysian dead; Until a passing Wizard smote me there, And suddenly my soul inherited Some gorgeous terrible dukedom of desire Like those in bright Andromeda's realms of fire.

L

AT THE END

The fiery permutations of the soul Are infinite, but how to be revealed? On what impassive matter must the whole Inveterate coil of good and ill be sealed! How much too simple all the tale of deeds To pattern out these labyrinthine things, These knots of bright unreason, ghostly bredes Veiled weavers weave, moving with silver wings Within the duskling sense. Most diverse visions Their visionaries darkly reconcile At one sad end. Fate's delicate derisions Through the same hell of penance may beguile Two women, who meet with alien eyes downcast; Yet one stand first with Love, and one the last.

LI

THE SOUL OF AGE

I have seen delicate aged women wrought Most tenderly by Time, their passionate past By the wise vigils of forgiving thought Amerced of pain, mere beauty at the last. So may my soul be chaste, serene, enriched Like an Etruscan mirror one has found In kind oblivions, graciously bewitched With precious patinas, a various round Of milky opal, or turkis, or emerald, Glistered with rubies faint and smoky pearls, Where swirls of incised pattern have enthralled Figures of sweet archaic gods and girls, And I shall say: "Thou art a curious toy, O soul that mirrored Love and Wrath and Joy!"

LI I

HYPNEROTOMACHIA

Ah! Pride and Wrath and Mirth and Pain and Pity, Some amethystine day at last will be, When your bright guard and Phantasy's hill-city Shall be like wonders on a tapestry; And we shall touch between tired orisons The symbolism of those freaked crowns and wings,-- Then gaze across the falling Avalons, The resignations of autumnal things, And see among the pointed cypresses The one god left, the smiling perverse god, The Love that will not leave the loverless, Contending with the Stranger of the Rod,-- Until these twain become as one, and all The Soul and Sense be starrily vesperal.

LIII

THE REVOLT

Not so, my Soul? Rather for thee the fate Of those hieratic Carthaginian queens Who needs must vanish through the gods' own gate, Even holy Flame, with music and great threnes Idolatrous, as on soft gorgeous wings, If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed Their beauty's sacred unisons?--Fair things Desire their revel-raiment be their shroud. Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage! Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth, These penitential usages of age That expiate proud cruelties of youth, And bring thee to the last and perfect art, To love the lovely with a selfless heart?

LIV

AFTER MANY YEARS

By mute communions and by salt sad kisses, By Pity's webs that still with fiery strands Wove us together, by the unplumbed abysses Where we have gazed and never loosened hands, By holy water we have given each other At Beauty's blessed doors, and by the hearts Of sweet Delight and Agony her brother, By bright new marriages in all great arts, By the rare wisdom like miraculous amber Won by the desolate grey sound of tears, By wedding-music of the flute and tambour Prevailing o'er Time's cruel plot of years, By all the proud prayers granted and denied us, Fate has no sword at all that can divide us.

LV

TREASURE

Not mine the silver ride of the redeemer, Not mine the secret vision of the saint, Not mine the martyrdoms of Truth's dark dreamer Nor bitter beatitudes of Art. O quaint Undoing of youth's horoscope! No splendours Nor laurels, nor wisdom in a myrrhine bowl! Here is the treasure that the past surrenders, A spoil of roses coffered in the soul,-- Much like another woman's! Rare perfumes And cleaving thorns, faded pathetic store Of kisses and sighs, would those heroic dooms I craved of old have yet enriched me more? I have not dwelt in Galilee nor Tyre Nor Athens. But I have my heart's desire.

LVI

THE SOUL TO THE BODY

I know thou hast a secret of thine own Which I desire. But once I broke with thee And walked among the asphodel alone: Therefore thou wilt reserve this reverie, Like sumptuous flame closed up in alabaster. They half betray, these curious magian hands: Faint music of thy breast has throbbed the faster, If I have touched it with my charming-wands. And yet,--the wonder any woman knows Thou dost deny the proud Soul that has fed Among the lilies of the White Eros.-- Ere I go down among the witless Dead Give, give the secret, for my bliss or rue, Lest lack of that should craze my wisdom through.

LVII

THE IRONIST

Among high gods the absolute ironist Is Love. Therefore, when some cleft lightning mocks Thine arrogant rapture, sad idealist, Admire the wild play of his paradox. Great satires of reversal have astounded His bigots: proud fine dreamers confident Before an idol in their image are hounded Through comedies of disillusionment. Not heavenly Plato, not the Florentine, Not any mage of Epipsychidion Can the true nature of the god divine. Heresiarchs like Heine and like Donne, Bitter and sweet, and hot and cold, know best The incomparable anguish of his jest.

LVIII

IN VAIN

I said: "Confession's bitter cautery Shall fierily search my soul, destroy her ill." Natheless, the wounded wasting malady Is her unexorcised sad sovran still. Oh! that alembic fever of interwed Desire and dream and sense, rapture and rue! As soon as my sincerest words are said And heard they seem apostate and untrue. For only speech more richly dubious Than shoaling water, or a ringdove's breast, Than lighted incense more miraculous With fumes of strange remembrance, could attest The morbid beauty of that wasting ill Whereof I am the cureless lover still.

LIX

RESERVATIONS

Though cold clear cruelties like diamond Burthen this silken text of dim surmise, Surely thou knowest I am pity's bond If one but look at me with stricken eyes. If like a herald I have blazoned Pride, I am Humility's own renegade. For fruits of good and evil have I sighed? If Love forbid them, Love shall be obeyed. Though the wroth soul may excommunicate Her body, yet I see the flagrant strife Of earthy and heavenly elements create Colour, change, music. For the Tree of Life Burns with this precious mystery of sorrows That Love the Phoenix find immortal morrows.

LX

THE NEW LOVE

Ah! what if thy last canticle be said, Bright Archer of illusion adored of old, Thou dream-fast Love in raiment burning-red, Wreathed with white doves, quivered with burning gold? Pass with thy Triumph of Lovers, Aucassin, Tristram, and Pharamond, and Lancelot, Dante, and Rudel, all thy haughty kin, Princes in that high heaven, as we are not.-- With some gilt couchant sphinx both casqued and crowned, All mailed in amethyst the new god comes, Whose brooding beautiful eyes at last have found Our uncanonical dark martyrdoms, Who from the sombre catacombs of these Brings his great miracles and mysteries.

LXI

THE WAYS OF LOVE

Hail the implacable Iconoclast Whose images of ivory and gold Make proud the dust that his enthusiast In her dark trance may very God behold. From the clear music of his delicate Peripheries and porches of delight He draws her down through cruel gate on gate, Through immemorial, blind, implacable rite That strips her of her dream-branched veils of youth, And naked, agonised like trodden grapes, Drags her before the imperishable Truth, The flaming Ecstacy wherefrom he shapes Real myth and doctrine. Therefore I lift up My heart like some great jubilant scarlet Cup.

THE EPILOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN

Take back this armour. Give us broideries. Against the Five sad Wounds inveterate In our dim sense, can that defend, or these? In veils mysterious and delicate Clothe us again, in beautiful broideries.

Take back this justice. Give us thuribles. While ye do loudly in the battle-dust, We feed the gods with spice and canticles. To our strange hearts, as theirs, just and unjust Are idle words. Give graven thuribles.

Keep orb and sceptre. Give us up your souls That our long fingers wake them verily Like dulcimers and citherns and violes; Or at the burning disk of ecstasy Impose rare sigils on your gem-like souls.

Give mercies, cruelties, and exultations, Give the long trances of the breaking heart; And we shall bring you great imaginations To urge you through the agony of Art. Give cloud and flame, give trances, exultations.