Chapter 2

TRANSFIGURED LIFE

As growth of form or momentary glance In a child's features will recall to mind The father's with the mother's face combin'd,-- Sweet interchange that memories still enhance: And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance, The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind, Till in the blended likeness now we find A separate man's or woman's countenance:--

So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain, Its very parents, evermore expand To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain, By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd; And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand There comes the sound as of abundant rain.

THE SONG-THROE

By thine own tears thy song must tears beget, O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own Anguish or ardour, else no amulet. Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh, That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.

The Song-god--He the Sun-god--is no slave Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul Fledges his shaft: to no august control Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave: But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart, The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.

THE SOUL'S SPHERE

Come prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,-- Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre Blazed with momentous memorable fire;-- Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these? Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight Conjectured in the lamentable night?... Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images!

What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van Of Love's unquestioning unreveale'd span,-- Visions of golden futures: or that last Wild pageant of the accumulated past That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.

INCLUSIVENESS

The changing guests, each in a different mood, Sit at the roadside table and arise: And every life among them in likewise Is a soul's board set daily with new food. What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?-- Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?

May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell In separate living souls for joy or pain? Nay, all its corners may be painted plain Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well; And may be stamped, a memory all in vain, Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.

ARDOUR AND MEMORY

The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring; The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose; The summer clouds that visit every wing With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting; The furtive flickering streams to light re-born 'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn, While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:--

These ardour loves, and memory: and when flown All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight The wind swoops onward brandishing the light, Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone; With ditties and with dirges infinite.

KNOWN IN VAIN

As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope, Knows suddenly, with music high and soft, The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope; Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft Together, within hopeless sight of hope For hours are silent:--So it happeneth When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze After their life sailed by, and hold their breath. Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze Thenceforth their incommunicable ways Follow the desultory feet of Death?

HEART OF THE NIGHT

From child to youth; from youth to arduous man; From lethargy to fever of the heart; From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart; From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban;-- Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran Till now. Alas, the soul!--how soon must she Accept her primal immortality,-- The flesh resume its dust whence it began?

O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life! O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late, Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath: That when the peace is garnered in from strife, The work retrieved, the will regenerate, This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!

THE LANDMARK

Was _that_ the landmark? What,--the foolish well Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink, But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell, (And mine own image, had I noted well!) Was that my point of turning?--I had thought The stations of my course should rise unsought, As altar-stone or ensigned citadel.

But lo! the path is missed, I must go back, And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring Which once I stained, which since may have grown black. Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening, That the same goal is still on the same track.

A DARK DAY

The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears. Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares, Or hath but memory of the day whose plough Sowed hunger once,--the night at length when thou, O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?

How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth, Along the hedgerows of this journey shed, Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe! Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth, Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.

AUTUMN IDLENESS

This sunlight shames November where he grieves In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun The day, though bough with bough be over-run. But with a blessing every glade receives High salutation; while from hillock-eaves The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun, As if, being foresters of old, the sun Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves.

Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic glass; Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the dew; Till eve bring rest when other good things pass. And here the lost hours the lost hours renew While I still lead my shadow o'er the grass, Nor know, for longing, that which I should do.

THE HILL SUMMIT

This feast-day of the sun, his altar there In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song; And I have loitered in the vale too long And gaze now a belated worshipper. Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware, So journeying, of his face at intervals Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,-- A fiery bush with coruscating hair.

And now that I have climbed and won this height, I must tread downward through the sloping shade And travel the bewildered tracks till night. Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed And see the gold air and the silver fade And the last bird fly into the last light.

THE CHOICE

I

Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die. Surely the earth, that's wise being very old, Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold Thy sultry hair up from my face that I May pour for thee this yellow wine, brim-high, Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold. We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours toil'd, Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.

Now kiss, and think that there are really those, My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way Through many days they toil; then comes a day They die not,--never having lived,--but cease; And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.

II

Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die. Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death? Is not the day which God's word promiseth To come man knows not when? In yonder sky, Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath Even at the moment haply quickeneth The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.

And dost thou prate of all that man shall do? Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be Glad in his gladness that comes after thee? Will _his_ strength slay _thy_ worm in Hell? Go to: Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.

Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die. Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore, Thou say'st: 'Man's measured path is all gone o'er: Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb* until he touched the truth; and I, Even I, am he whom it was destined for.' How should this be? Art thou then so much more Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?

Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me; Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd. Miles and miles distant though the grey line be, And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,-- Still, leagues beyond those leagues there is more sea.

*[sic]

OLD AND NEW ART

I. ST. LUKE THE PAINTER

Give honour unto Luke Evangelist; For he it was (the aged legends say) Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray. Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist Of devious symbols: but soon having wist How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day Are symbols also in some deeper way, She looked through these to God and was God's priest.

And if, past noon, her toil began to irk, And she sought talismans, and turned in vain To soulless self-reflections of man's skill, Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still Kneel in the latter grass to pray again, Ere the night cometh and she may not work.

II. NOT AS THESE

'I am not as these are,' the poet saith In youth's pride, and the painter, among men At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen, And shut about with his own frozen breath. To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith As poets,--only paint as painters,--then He turns in the cold silence; and again Shrinking, 'I am not as these are,' he saith.

And say that this is so, what follows it? For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head, Such words were well; but they see on, and far. Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead,-- Say thou instead 'I am not as _these_ are.'

III. THE HUSBANDMEN

Though God, as one that is an householder, Called these to labour in his vine-yard first, Before the husk of darkness was well burst Bidding them grope their way out and bestir, (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, 'Sir, Unto each man a penny:') though the worst Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst: Though God hath since found none such as these were To do their work like them:--Because of this Stand not ye idle in the market-place. Which of ye knoweth _he_ is not that last Who may be first by faith and will?--yea, his The hand which after the appointed days And hours shall give a Future to their Past?

SOUL'S BEAUTY

Under the arch of Life, where love and death, Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe, I drew it in as simply as my breath. Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath, The sky and sea bend on thee,--which can draw, By sea or sky or woman, to one law, The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.

This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise Thy voice and hand shake still,--long known to thee By flying hair and fluttering hem,--the beat Following her daily of thy heart and feet, How passionately and irretrievably, In what fond flight, how many ways and days!

BODY'S BEAUTY

Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,) That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, And her enchanted hair was the first gold. And still she sits, young while the earth is old, And, subtly of herself contemplative, Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

THE MONOCHORD

Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound That is Life's self and draws my life from me, And by instinct ineffable decree Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound? Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd, That 'mid the tide of all emergency Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea Its difficult eddies labour in the ground?

Oh! what is this that knows the road I came, The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame, The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?-- That draws round me at last this wind-warm space, And in regenerate rapture turns my face Upon the devious coverts of dismay?

FROM DAWN TO NOON

As the child knows not if his mother's face Be fair; nor of his elders yet can deem What each most is; but as of hill or stream At dawn, all glimmering life surrounds his place: Who yet, tow'rd noon of his half-weary race, Pausing awhile beneath the high sun-beam And gazing steadily back,--as through a dream, In things long past new features now can trace:--

Even so the thought that is at length fullgrown Turns back to note the sun-smit paths, all grey And marvellous once, where first it walked alone; And haply doubts, amid the unblenching day, Which most or least impelled its onward way,-- Those unknown things or these things overknown.

MEMORIAL THRESHOLDS

What place so strange,--though unrevealed snow With unimaginable fires arise At the earth's end,--what passion of surprise Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago? Lo! this is none but I this hour; and lo! This is the very place which to mine eyes Those mortal hours in vain immortalize, 'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know.

City, of thine a single simple door, By some new Power reduplicate, must be Even yet my life-porch in eternity, Even with one presence filled, as once of yore Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor Thee and thy years and these my words and me.

HOARDED JOY

I said: 'Nay, pluck not,--let the first fruit be: Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red, But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head Sees in the stream its own fecundity And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we At the sun's hour that day possess the shade, And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade, And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?'

I say: 'Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun Too long,--'tis fallen and floats adown the stream. Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one, And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free, And the woods wail like echoes from the sea.'

BARREN SPRING

So now the changed year's turning wheel returns And as a girl sails balanced in the wind, And now before and now again behind Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns,-- So Spring comes merry towards me now, but earns No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd With the dead boughs that winter still must bind, And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns.

Behold, this crocus is a withering flame; This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art. Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them, Nor gaze till on the year's last lily-stem The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.

FAREWELL TO THE GLEN

Sweet stream-fed glen, why say 'farewell' to thee Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth The brow of Time where man may read no ruth? Nay, do thou rather say 'farewell' to me, Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy Than erst was mine where other shade might soothe By other streams, what while in fragrant youth The bliss of being sad made melancholy.

And yet, farewell! For better shalt thou fare When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there In hours to come, than when an hour ago Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear And thy trees whispered what he feared to know.

VAIN VIRTUES

What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell? None of the sins,--but this and that fair deed Which a soul's sin at length could supersede. These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom leaves Their refuse maidenhood abominable.

Night sucks them down, the garbage of the pit, Whose names, half entered in the book of Life, Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife, The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.

LOST DAYS

The lost days of my life until to-day, What were they, could I see them on the street Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat Sown once for food but trodden into clay? Or golden coins squandered and still to pay? Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet? Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat The throats of men in Hell, who thirst alway?

I do not see them here; but after death God knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. 'I am thyself,--what hast thou done to me?' 'And I--and I--thyself,' (lo! each one saith,) 'And thou thyself to all eternity!'

DEATH'S SONGSTERS

When first that horse, within whose populous womb The birth was death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate, Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight, Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home: She whispered, 'Friends, I am alone; come, come!' Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid, And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.

The same was he who, lashed to his own mast, There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves, Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd, Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves... Say, soul,--are songs of Death no heaven to thee, Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?

HERO'S LAMP*

That lamp thou fill'st in Eros name to-night, O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight. Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break; While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake, Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.

That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree) Till some one man the happy issue see Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine: Which still may rest unfir'd; for, theirs or thine, O brother, what brought love to them or thee?

*After the deaths of Leander and Hero, the signal-lamp was dedicated to Anteros, with the edict that no man should light it unless his love had proved fortunate.

THE TREES OF THE GARDEN

Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know And still stand silent:--is it all a show, A wisp that laughs upon the wall?--decree Of some inexorable supremacy Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes, Sphinx-faced with unabashed augury?

Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day Whose roots are hillocks where the children play; Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall wage Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age.

'RETRO ME, SATHANA!'

Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled, Stooping against the wind, a charioteer Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair, So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world: Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air, It shall be sought and not found anywhere. Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled, Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath Much mightiness of men to win thee praise. Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways. Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path, Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath For certain years, for certain months and days.

LOST ON BOTH SIDES

As when two men have loved a woman well, Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit; Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet And the long pauses of this wedding bell; Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat; Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet The two lives left that most of her can tell:--

So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed The one same Peace, strove with each other long, And Peace before their faces perished since: So through that soul, in restless brotherhood, They roam together now, and wind among Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.

THE SUN'S SHAME

I

Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught From life; and mocking pulses that remain When the soul's death of bodily death is fain; Honour unknown, and honour known unsought; And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane; And longed-for woman longing all in vain For lonely man with love's desire distraught; And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleasantness, Given unto bodies of whose souls men say, None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:-- Beholding these things, I behold no less The blushing morn and blushing eve confess The shame that loads the intolerable day.

As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth, 'Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess, Such blessing of mine all coming years should bless;'-- Then sends one sigh forth to the unknown goal, And bitterly feels breathe against his soul The hour swift-winged of nearer nothingness:--

Even so the World's grey Soul to the green World Perchance one hour must cry: 'Woe's me, for whom Inveteracy of ill portends the doom,-- Whose heart's old fire in shadow of shame is furl'd: While thou even as of yore art journeying, All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!'

MICHELANGELO'S KISS

Great Michelangelo, with age grown bleak And uttermost labours, having once o'ersaid All grievous memories on his long life shed, This worst regret to one true heart could speak:-- That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek, He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed, His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed, Her hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek.

O Buonarruoti,--good at Art's fire-wheels To urge her chariot!--even thus the Soul, Touching at length some sorely-chastened goal, Earns oftenest but a little: her appeals Were deep and mute,--lowly her claim. Let be: What holds for her Death's garner? And for thee?

THE VASE OF LIFE

Around the vase of Life at your slow pace He has not crept, but turned it with his hands, And all its sides already understands. There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race; Whose road runs far by sands and fruitful space; Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has pass'd; Who weeps, nor stays for weeping; who at last, A youth, stands somewhere crowned, with silent face.

And he has filled this vase with wine for blood, With blood for tears, with spice for burning vow, With watered flowers for buried love most fit; And would have cast it shattered to the flood, Yet in Fate's name has kept it whole; which now Stands empty till his ashes fall in it.

LIFE THE BELOVED

As thy friend's face, with shadow of soul o'erspread, Somewhile unto thy sight perchance hath been Ghastly and strange, yet never so is seen In thought, but to all fortunate favour wed; As thy love's death-bound features never dead To memory's glass return, but contravene Frail fugitive days, and always keep, I ween Than all new life a livelier lovelihead:--

So Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love, Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify; Though pale she lay when in the winter grove Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her And the red wings of frost-fire rent the sky.

A SUPERSCRIPTION

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell; Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.

Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart One moment through thy soul the soft surprise Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs, Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.

HE AND I

Whence came his feet into my field, and why? How is it that he sees it all so drear? How do I see his seeing, and how hear The name his bitter silence knows it by? This was the little fold of separate sky Whose pasturing clouds in the soul's atmosphere Drew living light from one continual year: How should he find it lifeless? He, or I?

Lo! this new Self now wanders round my field, With plaints for every flower, and for each tree A moan, the sighing wind's auxiliary: And o'er sweet waters of my life, that yield Unto his lips no draught but tears unseal'd, Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he.

NEWBORN DEATH

I

To-day Death seems to me an infant child Which her worn mother Life upon my knee Has set to grow my friend and play with me; If haply so my heart might be beguil'd To find no terrors in a face so mild,-- If haply so my weary heart might be Unto the newborn milky eyes of thee, O Death, before resentment reconcil'd.

How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart, What time with thee indeed I reach the strand Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art, And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?

II

And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss, With whom, when our first heart beat full and fast, I wandered till the haunts of men were pass'd, And in fair places found all bowers amiss Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss, While to the winds all thought of Death we cast: Ah, Life! and must I have from thee at last No smile to greet me and no babe but this?

Lo! Love, the child once ours; and Song, whose hair Blew like a flame and blossomed like a wreath; And Art, whose eyes were worlds by God found fair; These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath With neck-twined arms, as oft we watched them there: And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death?

THE ONE HOPE

When all desire at last and all regret Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain, What shall assuage the unforgotten pain And teach the unforgetful to forget? Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet,-- Or may the soul at once in a green plain Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet?

Ah! when the wan soul in that golden air Between the scriptured petals softly blown Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown, Ah! let none other written spell soe'er But only the one Hope's one name be there,-- Not less nor more, but even that word alone.

End of Project Gutenberg's The House of Life, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti