Part 11

Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion, And thy limbs are as melodies yet, And move to the music of passion With lithe and lascivious regret. What ailed us, O gods, to desert you For creeds that refuse and restrain? Come down and redeem us from virtue, Our Lady of Pain.

All shrines that were Vestal are flameless, But the flame has not fallen from this; Though obscure be the god, and though nameless The eyes and the hair that we kiss; Low fires that love sits by and forges Fresh heads for his arrows and thine; Hair loosened and soiled in mid orgies With kisses and wine.

Thy skin changes country and colour, And shrivels or swells to a snake's. Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller, We know it, the flames and the flakes, Red brands on it smitten and bitten, Round skies where a star is a stain, And the leaves with thy litanies written, Our Lady of Pain.

On thy bosom though many a kiss be, There are none such as knew it of old. Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe, Male ringlets or feminine gold, That thy lips met with under the statue, Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves From the eyes of the garden-god at you Across the fig-leaves?

Then still, through dry seasons and moister, One god had a wreath to his shrine; Then love was the pearl of his oyster,[4] And Venus rose red out of wine. We have all done amiss, choosing rather Such loves as the wise gods disdain; Intercede for us thou with thy father, Our Lady of Pain.

In spring he had crowns of his garden, Red corn in the heat of the year, Then hoary green olives that harden When the grape-blossom freezes with fear; And milk-budded myrtles with Venus And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod; And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us, A visible God."

What broke off the garlands that girt you? What sundered you spirit and clay? Weak sins yet alive are as virtue To the strength of the sins of that day. For dried is the blood of thy lover, Ipsithilla, contracted the vein; Cry aloud, "Will he rise and recover, Our Lady of Pain?"

Cry aloud; for the old world is broken: Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest, And rears not the bountiful token And spreads not the fatherly feast. From the midmost of Ida, from shady Recesses that murmur at morn, They have brought and baptized her, Our Lady, A goddess new-born.

And the chaplets of old are above us, And the oyster-bed teems out of reach; Old poets outsing and outlove us, And Catullus makes mouths at our speech. Who shall kiss, in thy father's own city, With such lips as he sang with, again? Intercede for us all of thy pity, Our Lady of Pain.

Out of Dindymus heavily laden Her lions draw bound and unfed A mother, a mortal, a maiden, A queen over death and the dead. She is cold, and her habit is lowly, Her temple of branches and sods; Most fruitful and virginal, holy, A mother of gods.

She hath wasted with fire thine high places, She hath hidden and marred and made sad The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces Of gods that were goodly and glad. She slays, and her hands are not bloody; She moves as a moon in the wane, White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy, Our Lady of Pain.

They shall pass and their places be taken, The gods and the priests that are pure. They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken? They shall perish, and shalt thou endure? Death laughs, breathing close and relentless In the nostrils and eyelids of lust, With a pinch in his fingers of scentless And delicate dust.

But the worm shall revive thee with kisses; Thou shalt change and transmute as a god, As the rod to a serpent that hisses, As the serpent again to a rod. Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it; Thou shalt live until evil be slain, And good shall die first, said thy prophet, Our Lady of Pain.

Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it, Now he lies out of reach, out of breath, Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet, Sin's child by incestuous Death? Did he find out in fire at his waking, Or discern as his eyelids lost light, When the bands of the body were breaking And all came in sight?

Who has known all the evil before us, Or the tyrannous secrets of time? Though we match not the dead men that bore us At a song, at a kiss, at a crime-- Though the heathen outface and outlive us, And our lives and our longings are twain-- Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us, Our Lady of Pain.

Who are we that embalm and embrace thee With spices and savours of song? What is time, that his children should face thee? What am I, that my lips do thee wrong? I could hurt thee--but pain would delight thee; Or caress thee--but love would repel; And the lovers whose lips would excite thee Are serpents in hell.

Who now shall content thee as they did, Thy lovers, when temples were built And the hair of the sacrifice braided And the blood of the sacrifice spilt, In Lampsacus fervent with faces, In Aphaca red from thy reign, Who embraced thee with awful embraces, Our Lady of Pain?

Where are they, Cotytto or Venus, Astarte or Ashtaroth, where? Do their hands as we touch come between us? Is the breath of them hot in thy hair? From their lips have thy lips taken fever, With the blood of their bodies grown red? Hast thou left upon earth a believer If these men are dead?

They were purple of raiment and golden, Filled full of thee, fiery with wine, Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden, In marvellous chambers of thine. They are fled, and their footprints escape us, Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain, O daughter of Death and Priapus, Our Lady of Pain.

What ails us to fear overmeasure, To praise thee with timorous breath, O mistress and mother of pleasure, The one thing as certain as death? We shall change as the things that we cherish, Shall fade as they faded before, As foam upon water shall perish, As sand upon shore.

We shall know what the darkness discovers, If the grave-pit be shallow or deep; And our fathers of old, and our lovers, We shall know if they sleep not or sleep. We shall see whether hell be not heaven, Find out whether tares be not grain, And the joys of thee seventy times seven, Our Lady of Pain.

[4] Nam te praecipue in suis urbibus colit ora Hellespontia, caeteris ostreosior oris. CATULL. _Carm._ xviii.

THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE

Here, where the world is quiet; Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams; I watch the green field growing For reaping folk and sowing, For harvest-time and mowing, A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep; Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep.

Here life has death for neighbour, And far from eye or ear Wan waves and wet winds labour, Weak ships and spirits steer; They drive adrift, and whither They wot not who make thither; But no such winds blow hither, And no such things grow here.

No growth of moor or coppice, No heather-flower or vine, But bloomless buds of poppies, Green grapes of Proserpine, Pale beds of blowing rushes Where no leaf blooms or blushes Save this whereout she crushes For dead men deadly wine.

Pale, without name or number, In fruitless fields of corn, They bow themselves and slumber All night till light is born; And like a soul belated, In hell and heaven unmated, By cloud and mist abated Comes out of darkness morn.

Though one were strong as seven, He too with death shall dwell, Nor wake with wings in heaven, Nor weep for pains in hell; Though one were fair as roses, His beauty clouds and closes; And well though love reposes, In the end it is not well.

Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands; Her languid lips are sweeter Than love's who fears to greet her To men that mix and meet her From many times and lands.

She waits for each and other, She waits for all men born; Forgets the earth her mother, The life of fruits and corn; And spring and seed and swallow Take wing for her and follow Where summer song rings hollow And flowers are put to scorn.

There go the loves that wither, The old loves with wearier wings; And all dead years draw thither, And all disastrous things; Dead dreams of days forsaken, Blind buds that snows have shaken, Wild leaves that winds have taken, Red strays of ruined springs.

We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; To-day will die to-morrow; Time stoops to no man's lure; And love, grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal, Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night.

HESPERIA

Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is, Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy, As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region of stories, Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories beloved from a boy, Blows from the capes of the past oversea to the bays of the present, Filled as with shadow of sound with the pulse of invisible feet, Far out to the shallows and straits of the future, by rough ways or pleasant, Is it thither the wind's wings beat? is it hither to me, O my sweet? For thee, in the stream of the deep tide-wind blowing in with the water, Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west, Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a daughter Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest. Out of the distance of dreams, as a dream that abides after slumber, Strayed from the fugitive flock of the night, when the moon overhead Wanes in the wan waste heights of the heaven, and stars without number Die without sound, and are spent like lamps that are burnt by the dead, Comes back to me, stays by me, lulls me with touch of forgotten caresses, One warm dream clad about with a fire as of life that endures; The delight of thy face, and the sound of thy feet, and the wind of thy tresses, And all of a man that regrets, and all of a maid that allures. But thy bosom is warm for my face and profound as a manifold flower, Thy silence as music, thy voice as an odour that fades in a flame; Not a dream, not a dream is the kiss of thy mouth, and the bountiful hour That makes me forget what was sin, and would make me forget were it shame. Thine eyes that are quiet, thine hands that are tender, thy lips that are loving, Comfort and cool me as dew in the dawn of a moon like a dream; And my heart yearns baffled and blind, moved vainly toward thee, and moving As the refluent seaweed moves in the languid exuberant stream, Fair as a rose is on earth, as a rose under water in prison, That stretches and swings to the slow passionate pulse of the sea, Closed up from the air and the sun, but alive, as a ghost rearisen, Pale as the love that revives as a ghost rearisen in me. From the bountiful infinite west, from the happy memorial places Full of the stately repose and the lordly delight of the dead, Where the fortunate islands are lit with the light of ineffable faces, And the sound of a sea without wind is about them, and sunset is red, Come back to redeem and release me from love that recalls and represses, That cleaves to my flesh as a flame, till the serpent has eaten his fill; From the bitter delights of the dark, and the feverish, the furtive caresses That murder the youth in a man or ever his heart have its will. Thy lips cannot laugh and thine eyes cannot weep; thou art pale as a rose is, Paler and sweeter than leaves that cover the blush of the bud; And the heart of the flower is compassion, and pity the core it encloses, Pity, not love, that is born of the breath and decays with the blood. As the cross that a wild nun clasps till the edge of it bruises her bosom, So love wounds as we grasp it, and blackens and burns as a flame; I have loved overmuch in my life; when the live bud bursts with the blossom, Bitter as ashes or tears is the fruit, and the wine thereof shame. As a heart that its anguish divides is the green bud cloven asunder; As the blood of a man self-slain is the flush of the leaves that allure; And the perfume as poison and wine to the brain, a delight and a wonder; And the thorns are too sharp for a boy, too slight for a man, to endure. Too soon did I love it, and lost love's rose; and I cared not for glory's: Only the blossoms of sleep and of pleasure were mixed in my hair. Was it myrtle or poppy thy garland was woven with, O my Dolores? Was it pallor of slumber, or blush as of blood, that I found in thee fair? For desire is a respite from love, and the flesh not the heart is her fuel; She was sweet to me once, who am fled and escaped from the rage of her reign; Who behold as of old time at hand as I turn, with her mouth growing cruel, And flushed as with wine with the blood of her lovers, Our Lady of Pain. Low down where the thicket is thicker with thorns than with leaves in the summer, In the brake is a gleaming of eyes and a hissing of tongues that I knew; And the lithe long throats of her snakes reach round her, their mouths overcome her, And her lips grow cool with their foam, made moist as a desert with dew. With the thirst and the hunger of lust though her beautiful lips be so bitter, With the cold foul foam of the snakes they soften and redden and smile; And her fierce mouth sweetens, her eyes wax wide and her eyelashes glitter, And she laughs with a savour of blood in her face, and a savour of guile. She laughs, and her hands reach hither, her hair blows hither and hisses, As a low-lit flame in a wind, back-blown till it shudder and leap; Let her lips not again lay hold on my soul, nor her poisonous kisses, To consume it alive and divide from thy bosom, Our Lady of Sleep. Ah daughter of sunset and slumber, if now it return into prison, Who shall redeem it anew? but we, if thou wilt, let us fly; Let us take to us, now that the white skies thrill with a moon unarisen, Swift horses of fear or of love, take flight and depart and not die. They are swifter than dreams, they are stronger than death; there is none that hath ridden, None that shall ride in the dim strange ways of his life as we ride; By the meadows of memory, the highlands of hope, and the shore that is hidden, Where life breaks loud and unseen, a sonorous invisible tide; By the sands where sorrow has trodden, the salt pools bitter and sterile, By the thundering reef and the low sea-wall and the channel of years, Our wild steeds press on the night, strain hard through pleasure and peril, Labour and listen and pant not or pause for the peril that nears; And the sound of them trampling the way cleaves night as an arrow asunder, And slow by the sand-hill and swift by the down with its glimpses of grass, Sudden and steady the music, as eight hoofs trample and thunder, Rings in the ear of the low blind wind of the night as we pass; Shrill shrieks in our faces the blind bland air that was mute as a maiden, Stung into storm by the speed of our passage, and deaf where we past; And our spirits too burn as we bound, thine holy but mine heavy-laden, As we burn with the fire of our flight; ah love, shall we win at the last?

LOVE AT SEA

We are in love's land to-day; Where shall we go? Love, shall we start or stay, Or sail or row? There's many a wind and way, And never a May but May; We are in love's hand to-day; Where shall we go?

Our landwind is the breath Of sorrows kissed to death And joys that were; Our ballast is a rose; Our way lies where God knows And love knows where. We are in love's hand to-day--

Our seamen are fledged Loves, Our masts are bills of doves, Our decks fine gold; Our ropes are dead maids' hair, Our stores are love-shafts fair And manifold. We are in love's land to-day--

Where shall we land you, sweet? On fields of strange men's feet, Or fields near home? Or where the fire-flowers blow, Or where the flowers of snow Or flowers of foam? We are in love's hand to-day--

Land me, she says, where love Shows but one shaft, one dove, One heart, one hand. --A shore like that, my dear, Lies where no man will steer, No maiden land.

_Imitated from Theophile Gautier._

APRIL

FROM THE FRENCH OF THE VIDAME DE CHARTRES

12--?

When the fields catch flower And the underwood is green, And from bower unto bower The songs of the birds begin, I sing with sighing between. When I laugh and sing, I am heavy at heart for my sin; I am sad in the spring For my love that I shall not win, For a foolish thing.

This profit I have of my woe, That I know, as I sing, I know he will needs have it so Who is master and king, Who is lord of the spirit of spring. I will serve her and will not spare Till her pity awake Who is good, who is pure, who is fair, Even her for whose sake Love hath ta'en me and slain unaware.

O my lord, O Love, I have laid my life at thy feet; Have thy will thereof, Do as it please thee with it, For what shall please thee is sweet. I am come unto thee To do thee service, O Love; Yet cannot I see Thou wilt take any pity thereof, Any mercy on me.

But the grace I have long time sought Comes never in sight, If in her it abideth not, Through thy mercy and might, Whose heart is the world's delight. Thou hast sworn without fail I shall die, For my heart is set On what hurts me, I wot not why, But cannot forget What I love, what I sing for and sigh.

She is worthy of praise, For this grief of her giving is worth All the joy of my days That lie between death's day and birth, All the lordship of things upon earth. Nay, what have I said? I would not be glad if I could; My dream and my dread Are of her, and for her sake I would That my life were fled.

Lo, sweet, if I durst not pray to you, Then were I dead; If I sang not a little to say to you, (Could it be said) O my love, how my heart would be fed; Ah sweet who hast hold of my heart, For thy love's sake I live, Do but tell me, ere either depart, What a lover may give For a woman so fair as thou art.

The lovers that disbelieve, False rumours shall grieve And evil-speaking shall part.

BEFORE PARTING

A month or twain to live on honeycomb Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time, Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme, And that strong purple under juice and foam Where the wine's heart has burst; Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.

Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray Even to change the bitterness of it, The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet, To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise Over my face and eyes.

And yet who knows what end the scythed wheat Makes of its foolish poppies' mouths of red? These were not sown, these are not harvested, They grow a month and are cast under feet And none has care thereof, As none has care of a divided love.

I know each shadow of your lips by rote, Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows; The fashion of fair temples tremulous With tender blood, and colour of your throat; I know not how love is gone out of this, Seeing that all was his.

Love's likeness there endures upon all these: But out of these one shall not gather love. Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough To make love whole and fill his lips with ease, As some bee-builded cell Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell.

I know not how this last month leaves your hair Less full of purple colour and hid spice, And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care; And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet Worth patience to regret.

THE SUNDEW

A little marsh-plant, yellow green, And pricked at lip with tender red. Tread close, and either way you tread Some faint black water jets between Lest you should bruise the curious head.

A live thing maybe; who shall know? The summer knows and suffers it; For the cool moss is thick and sweet Each side, and saves the blossom so That it lives out the long June heat.

The deep scent of the heather burns About it; breathless though it be, Bow down and worship; more than we Is the least flower whose life returns, Least weed renascent in the sea.

We are vexed and cumbered in earth's sight With wants, with many memories; These see their mother what she is, Glad-growing, till August leave more bright The apple-coloured cranberries.

Wind blows and bleaches the strong grass, Blown all one way to shelter it From trample of strayed kine, with feet Felt heavier than the moorhen was, Strayed up past patches of wild wheat.