Part 2
They marvel to be born in a new element, To meet like streams as they go chiming to the sea, To move like flames that touch and tremble; and marvelling They look back on the voided shell they quit. Dawn within dawn, light within light, unfolds for them The secret of the world that flowing overflows The sun and the moon and the farthest of the stars, And it abounds in them, and they in it.
Beautiful are their fears as the shy-footed fawns Safe only in wildness from the old hunter, Time, To be assured in shadow of the heart’s solitude, Where joy finds joy that never Time records. They have made virgin words of that soiled alphabet Wherewith have been written histories of sorrow, Labour and long defeat, and proud and vain conquest; And all their lore is those sufficing words.
Magnificent they match the music of a name Against abhorred Silence and terrors of the abyss, The trust of a smile against all-ignoring Night, And one low voice against Oblivion’s greed. Difference drew them to the enamoured wrestle, Chosen, inevitable dear antagonists; They cry one to the other; ‘Alone I was not I,’ ‘O lovely danger!’ and ‘O my angel need!’
‘Because thy sweetness is so troubling and so sharp, Full of blood-thrilling strangeness, unexplored peril, Never to be possessed, always to be desired, Thou unknown world, I will dare all for thee.’ ‘Though in a moment thou hast made me to forget All that I was and had, triumphing I hold thee; To thy darkness of strength I give and commit me; Here is thy world, O sail upon my sea!’
As the East that quickens and flushes to the height Answering the ardour of the West, and as a rose Quivers on the western cloud before the dayspring, Divided as the East and West they are: But upon ways invisible to mortal sense Moves their bright union, where was created new Love’s wondrous world; from the darkness it emerges; It is their Evening and their Morning Star.
Out of the hollows of unpenetrated Night From afar calls to them, though they have known it not, A voice that is theirs, yet is not theirs, a new voice Never yet heard, yet older than all things; Laughter of a child’s voice, sweeter than any sound On the earth or in the air, voice of eternal joy, Victorious over the bowed wisdom of mortals, A well beyond the world, that springs and sings.
III. THE UNDISCOVERED WORLD
O in a living stream to bathe That runs its course from spring to sea! And O to cast this aching mesh Of iron bands that starkly swathe Limbs that labour, neck to knee! To feel the wind upon the flesh, Wind that was before man was, Blowing out of blue divine; Feel the feet on morning grass Lightly firm, and body bare Over-showered with beams so fine As cleanse the very heart of care! Sages, had you found but this For the mind, so it could use What the body knows of bliss When all thought it loves to lose Merely poising in the sun, Sure of powers a-spring within it Rippling out to leap and run,— Like for memory’s waiting ear Silence, ere the music win it:— When unreasoned joy alone Brims the body, itself its own Infinity unquestioning; Careless, Life is O so near, Death a legendary thing, Breath and blood like bells that ring;— Sages, had you art to find Such a glory for the mind, Not with eyes that are too wise But the lover’s wonder-vision Seeing far and seeing near As within one radiant sphere All things living, joined and whole, Bloomed with light of Paradise; Sages then—but who has taught Such an end for labouring thought, Such a nakedness of soul;— What but probing, doubting, and division? Hark, on iron iron’s endless clamour! The hours, the hours, drive swifter than we strain— Earth changes not, but who has changed us, As if a Fury with a shadowy hammer Nailed the nails into the fiery brain? Who has estranged us?
What dark enemy within Makes of Earth an enemy? Is it not he who sought of old Secrets of her wealth to win, Hot with greed and overbold, Aching to possess her? he, Searching labyrinthine veins, Thirsted for yet rarer gains, And through patient nights perused Each divided element, Curious of that pregnant dust Which with intent hand he bruised; Crucibled in fire the grains That should subtly be cajoled In the end to yield his lust Feasts of gold—a continent Molten into dazzling gold! (Were not heard the Sirens then Deriding the poor dreams of men?) Nay, but he would scrutinize Even Night’s deep-ordered scheme, And spell his own proud destinies In scripture of the starry stream. Coveting what power those skies Might enthrone, he sought a charm That should warp them and should woo. To his use, and by such aid To disimperil of one harm This brief body, would undo A universe. And he arrayed In a constellated robe His heaven-projected effigy, Because his spirit was afraid Of its nakedness, nor dared Terrors of the truth to probe; Rather chose itself to ensky In a dream. But no night bared To him her grandeur, swerved no spheres To the wrench of human fears. Earth and Night to crave of lust Yield but fruitlessness and dust; Dust to lust, to greed a weed! Mockers rise from those forgotten years: ‘This is he, the self-dupe, still the same Vaunter of a world of his defiling! Claiming heavens, with only will to maim. Who is this to own an earth’s empire, In whose blood is mud, and this aviling Squalor of desire?’
Lo, with feet on fiery ashes Earth’s foiled master casts his eyes Round his world-abode. Time’s heir, Freed by blood of martyrs, wise With myriad lives of thought and care, Into Doubt’s dim future gropes, Black with omen, lit with flashes! Lo, beneath his heaven of hopes Falling palaces of dream, Proudly pillared; regions wreckt, Peopled with stray flames that seem Hot greeds from his burning brain And the very earth infect. Lo, like bodies for his fear Shadowy shapes of force insane Menacing in murk appear, Primed with energy to kill,— Engines of his intellect, Incarnations of his will! Those old siren-songs of air Change into a song abhorred, Chanting softly, Revel, Lord! Triumph, Master! This you sought! This your own proud hands have wrought! Now the lover’s loathing taste Comes on him for what he burned So imperiously to clutch. Where is now the bliss embraced, Where the conquest? At a touch All’s to desolation turned. Is it he, or Earth, betrays? She that seemed to sting him on To possession, once possessed, Dispossesses him. Her breast Stony grows, and hard her gaze. —Yet, oh, could she again be wooed In her own, her chosen ways, Shall she not transform her mood, Glorify with truth his quest, Give, as lovers give, entire Body to body, mind to mind, Ay, and more than these can find,— Spirit to spirit? Beauty of Desire, Beauty beyond possession still is breathing, Beauty in us defaced! O secret spring eternal, muddied here, Soiled and sunken, troubled into seething! Torrent of Desire, by greed and fear Spilled into waste!
III. 2
Be still! Wash out this dull roar from the ear That fevers Time; be emptied the hot brain Of clamorous, intricately-teasing toil. Let spiritual Silence brim again The mind’s well to a mirror virgin-clear; All these invented cares smoothe and uncoil.
Contemplate Silence; the wild Silence, ere Music or word was; waste, unshapen sound; Crying of wind; moaning of sea; stammer of storm; Gropings as for a being nowhere found; Mateless desires, frustrated throbs of air, Without home, without form.
They sought a lodge in haunted flesh, they sought The inward tingling sense’s touched accord; To be delivered, to be born perfect On shapes of lips, a breathed, a living word, A flower that seeds its riches, thought from thought, Incarnate sound, mysterious and elect.
Contemplate Silence! The unwithered womb Of all music infinite as desire; All words, releasing tears and bliss; all song, That wins at last a universe for choir, And there the enlarged spirit has full room, There its desires and its delights belong.
All speech, all song, all music still unborn, Waits there for its futurity of mind To become human; yet it holds some tone Drawn from a something vaster than mankind, As from profounder heart-strings torn, And yet complete in man alone;
As if behind him travailing, the whole Dark world were seeking in this eloquent flesh Some other self, and sighing here to be Born afresh, born afresh; To win a world yet undiscovered in the soul: ‘O Voice,’ it cries, ‘utter; O Hands, deliver me!’
With such a dark quest in desirous eyes, From the ancient East, as through a silent gate In the mind’s city and labyrinth of thought, Those Magian Kings, of knowledge satiate, Of riches satiate, and forlornly wise, Down desert gorges brought
Gifts for the Unknown: nay, but Earth from far In yearning sent them, her ambassadors. Rocks opened veins of gold, trees oozed their blood, Spices sighed, gems burned up from cavern-floors, The very Night had made Desire a star, That over against them, strange and certain, stood;
And thither laden with Earth’s hope and want, Her symbol’d sighs and riches of her pain, Down separate passes of the mountain streaming Wound onward each amid his marvelling train, Those sages drawn from towers of midnight haunt By their prophetic dreaming; And trumpet thrilled to trumpet thro’ the night, And torches told of glistering strange attire, Where met those three kings on one errand led. What image shaped they of the World’s Desire, What presence throned in majesty and might, As they went musing, deep in hope and dread,
And under vast cope of the wheeling skies Found but a naked child, a child new-born? Wisdom resigned the crown of her enthroning; All her impassioned question was forsworn: In wonder she saw all things with new eyes. Then, there were songs of joy; now, sound of a world groaning.
III. 3
Mystery of Dawn, ere yet the glory streams Risen over earth, and pauses in that hush When far, as from an ecstasy, clouds flush, And hills lift up their pureness into dreams Of light that not yet colours the cold flower, And the earth-clasping, heaven-desiring tree Trembles in virginal expectancy— What breath of the unknown Power Is this that, spirit to spirit, as with a spousal kiss Comes seeking us, even us, through shadow and dew,— Seeking in this soiled flesh what undiscovered world Beyond tears, beyond bliss, beyond wisdom, beyond Time? what recaptured harmony of earth and heaven? What world made new?
A world so strange, the spirit thrills to flame, Transfigured in a wonder of release! A world so near, it has no other name Than light and breath! Where lost we, then, this peace? Wanting what charm to cleanse Our eyes? To see; is this the last of gifts, That, as the scales drop, the heart so uplifts? O world where no possession is of men’s, Where the will rages not with fever to destroy Differing wills, or warp another life to its use, But each lives in the light of its own joy! In one wide vision all have share, and we in all, Infinitely companioned with the stars, the dust, Beasts of the field, and stones, and flowers that fall! This body that we use seems in that air Marvellous; secret from ourselves; a power Without which were no speech, nor deed done anywhere, Nor could thought range and tower, Nor seed be sown for the unborn time to reap; Whose natural motion was ordained to be Beautiful as a wave out of a sea Boundless as mind asleep; So passionately shaped, in every part perfect, Universes are wounded in its abasement, Crying from stone to star; The unimagined height, the immeasurable deep, Hungers, abysses, heavens, millions of ghosts from far Meet in this body born to laugh and weep.
Weep; not for the endured, ancestral ill, Perils and plagues, that ambush all our ways, Time’s injury, and pain’s deep-wandered maze; These need not eyes to see, but only flesh to feel. But of the eternal vision to partake, And see what we have done, and what refused, To what accepted blindness we grow used, And what marred shapes of one another make, This is to weep such tears as no flesh-throes have cost, Weep for our loves, our loves, that we ourselves have slain, The powers of loveliness that we have left forlorn. Eyes we had and saw not, ears and we did not hear! Ah, when the heart, full-visioned, breaks in shame and pain, Then is the world’s hope born.
The cry of desolation turns to praise. If falsehood first enchant the eager mind, And if desire be cruel, being blind, Each by its own infirmity betrays, And some profounder, more imperious need Drives through all smart, whatever world to lose, The pure vision to choose, And tho’ Truth kill, there in the end be freed. Open, open, gates of deliverance, open! See, liberated spirits, see, victorious ones, For testimony of us from homes of glory shine, Vindicators of this brief flesh, they mingle us,— Soiled and despoiled,—with beauty and with felicity, And sting us from afar with the Divine.
Hands of men stretched out in so dark a craving! Baffled heart, clouded vision; filled with ache To know you have maimed the world you sought to make Your instrument and minister, enslaving Powers of earth and air—Hands that have wrought So glorious things, the thoughts of joy to house! Heart that has pulsed so ardent for its vow’s Accomplishment,—O heart so hardly taught! O stretched-out hands! of you Eternity has need. Give but your sacred passion and your shaping art, The hunger of Eternity is there,— Barren else, barren: chaos and a wilderness Of feud and everlasting greed devouring greed, The unshapen dream’s despair!
Spirit of Man, dear spirit, sore opprest With self-estrangement, and mis-choosing will, And all satiety of gainful skill,— Possession that was never yet possessed,— You that have been so great a lover, giving In innocency all for sacrifice; Whom neither Time nor earth’s regions suffice— You too are sought, where still your dream is living. Over the secret oceans of uncharted mind Who knows what voyagers, what sails invisibly Press on, for all the lost, the foundered hopes untrue? Who knows, through ignorant mists and storm upon that sea What Lover, what unweariable Adventurer, Makes still his quest of you?
O world that is within us, yet must still Out of the eternal mystery be wooed Ere it be ours and, breathing in the blood, Live in its beauty, as the miracle Of the divine colour of flowers in night Was not, and is not of themselves alone Nor of the dawn-beam, but of both made one,— A marriage-mystery of earth and light! O undiscovered world that all about us lies When spirit to Spirit surrenders, and like young Love sees Heaven with human eyes! World of radiant morning! Joy’s untravelled region! Why lies it solitary? and O why tarry we? Why daily wander out from Paradise?
III. 4
World-besieging Storm, from horizon heaped and menacing Rear up the walls of thunder, till they tower Shattering over earth, and from heart to heart reverberate, Lancing that bright fear through the ruin-shower! Revel, Winds, severing the bough of leafy promises With rages from returning chaos sent! Mockers and Destroyers, come; here is Man, predestinate To all your arrows at his bosom bent. Strip him of his splendours, of his conquests and dominions, His secure boast to be earth’s lord enthroned, Humble him: he stands forth greater in his nakedness Than in the wealth and safety that he owned. He that has so loved peril in all experience, He that has gone with Sorrow all her way, Will not now refuse or shrink; prove him to the innermost, With worse than worst confront him: come what may, Lo, you awake, O Trumpets of Calamity, Some fragment of old Darkness in his breast; Lo, to him fraternal is the stony and the terrible place: His stricken Genius out of deeps unguessed Rises up, grappling his reality to reality, And still the secret in himself explores, Bound beyond fear, the discovered and discoverer, And in his own soul touches farthest shores. Though he be stript of all, Powers from far replenish him, Powers of the streaming worlds that through him stream. O throbbing heart, O lifted arms, O tenderness, O only capable of grief supreme! O earth for ever mingled with unearthliness Because the eternal with the brief is twined! Wonder of breath that is momentary and tremulous Suffices him who breathes eternal mind. Vision that dawns beyond knowledge shall deliver him From all that flattered, threatened, foiled, betrayed. Lo, having nothing, he is free of all the universe, And where light is, he enters unafraid.
THE END
[Illustration: Decoration]
LONDON: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD. CHISWICK PRESS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.