The Unknown Eros
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III. ARBOR VITAE
With honeysuckle, over-sweet, festoon’d;With bitter ivy bound;Terraced with funguses unsound;Deform’d with many a bossAnd closed scar, o’ercushion’d deep with moss;Bunch’d all about with pagan mistletoe;And thick with nests of the hoarse birdThat talks, but understands not his own word;Stands, and so stood a thousand years ago,A single tree.Thunder has done its worst among its twigs,Where the great crest yet blackens, never pruned,But in its heart, alwayReady to push new verdurous boughs, whene’erThe rotting saplings near it fall and leave it air,Is all antiquity and no decay.Rich, though rejected by the forest-pigs,Its fruit, beneath whose rough, concealing rindThey that will break it findHeart-succouring savour of each several meat,And kernell’d drink of brain-renewing power,With bitter condiment and sour,And sweet economy of sweet,And odours that remindOf haunts of childhood and a different day.Beside this tree,Praising no Gods nor blaming, sans a wish,Sits, Tartar-like, the Time’s civility,And eats its dead-dog off a golden dish.IV. THE STANDARDS
That last,Blown from our Sion of the Seven Hills,Was no uncertain blast!Listen: the warning all the champaign fills,And minatory murmurs, answering, marThe Night, both near and far,Perplexing many a drowsy citadelBeneath whose ill-watch’d walls the Powers of Hell,With armed jarAnd angry threat, surceaseTheir long-kept compact of contemptuous peace!Lo, yonder, where our little English band,With peace in heart and wrath in hand,Have dimly ta’en their stand,Sweetly the lightShines from the solitary peak at Edgbaston,Whence, o’er the dawning Land,Gleam the gold blazonries of Love irate’Gainst the black flag of Hate.3Envy not, little band,Your brothers under the Hohenzollern hoofPut to the splendid proof.Your hour is near!The spectre-haunted time of idle Night,Your only fear,Thank God, is done,And Day and War, Man’s work-time and delight,Begun. Ho, ye of the van there, veterans great of cheer,Look to your footing, when, from yonder verge,The wish’d Sun shall emerge;Lest once again the Flower of Sharon bloomAfter a way the Stalk call heresy.Strange splendour and strange gloomAlike confuse the pathOf customary faith;And when the dim-seen mountains turn to flameAnd every roadside atom is a spark,The dazzled sense, that used was to the dark,May well doubt, ‘Is’t the safe way and the sameBy which we cameFrom Egypt, and to Canaan mean to go?’But know,The clearness then so marvellously increas’d,The light’ning shining Westward from the East,Is the great promised signOf His victorious and divineApproach, whose coming in the clouds shall be,As erst was His humility,A stumbling unto some, the first bid to the Feast. Cry, Ho!Good speed to them that come and them that goFrom either gathering host,And, after feeble, false allegiance, now first knowTheir post.Ho, yeWho loved our FlagOnly because there flapp’d none other ragWhich gentlemen might doff to, and such be,‘Save your gentility!For leagued, alas, are weWith many a faithful rogueDiscrediting bright Truth with dirt and brogue;And flatterers, too,That still would sniff the grassAfter the ’broider’d shoe,And swear it smelt like musk where He did pass,Though he were Borgia or Caiaphas.Ho, yeWho dread the bondage of the boundless fieldsWhich Heaven’s allegiance yields,And, like to house-hatch’d finches, hop not freeUnless ’tween walls of wire,Look, there be many cages: choose to your desire!Ho, ye,Of God the least beloved, of Man the most,That like not leaguing with the lesser host,Behold the invested Mount,And that assaulting Sea with ne’er a coast.You need not stop to count! But come up, yeWho adore, in any way,Our God by His wide-honour’d Name of YEA.Come up; for where ye stand ye cannot stay.Come allThat either mood of heavenly joyance know,And, on the ladder hierarchical,Have seen the order’d Angels to and froDescending with the pride of service sweet,Ascending, with the rapture of receipt!Come who have felt, in soul and heart and sense,The entire obedienceWhich opes the bosom, like a blissful wife,To the Husband of all life!Come ye that find contentment’s very coreIn the light storeAnd daisied pathOf Poverty,And know how moreA small thing that the righteous hathAvaileth than the ungodly’s riches great.Come likewise yeWhich do not yet disown as out of dateThat brightest third of the dead Virtues three,Of Love the crown elateAnd daintiest glee!Come up, come up, and join our little band.Our time is near at hand.The sanction of the world’s undying hateMeans more than flaunted flags in windy air.Be ye of gathering fateNow gladly ware.Now from the matrix, by God’s grinding wrought,The brilliant shall be brought;The white stone mystic set between the eyesOf them that get the prize;Yea, part and parcel of that mighty StoneWhich shall be thrownInto the Sea, and Sea shall be no more.V. SPONSA DEI
What is this Maiden fair,The laughing of whose eyeIs in man’s heart renew’d virginity;Who yet sick longing breedsFor marriage which exceedsThe inventive guess of Love to satisfyWith hope of utter binding, and of loosing endless dear despair?What gleams about her shine,More transient than delight and more divine!If she does something but a little sweet,As gaze towards the glass to set her hair,See how his soul falls humbled at her feet!Her gentle step, to go or come,Gains her more merit than a martyrdom;And, if she dance, it doth such grace conferAs opes the heaven of heavens to more than her,And makes a rival of her worshipper.To die unknown for her were little cost!So is she without guile,Her mere refused smileMakes up the sum of that which may be lost!Who is this FairWhom each hath seen,The darkest once in this bewailed dell,Be he not destin’d for the glooms of hell?Whom each hath seenAnd known, with sharp remorse and sweet, as QueenAnd tear-glad Mistress of his hopes of bliss,Too fair for man to kiss?Who is this only happy She,Whom, by a frantic flight of courtesy,Born of despairOf better lodging for his Spirit fair,He adores as Margaret, Maude, or Cecily?And what this sigh,That each one heaves for Earth’s last lowliheadAnd the Heaven highIneffably lock’d in dateless bridal-bed?Are all, then, mad, or is it prophecy?‘Sons now we are of God,’ as we have heard,‘But what we shall be hath not yet appear’d.’O, Heart, remember thee,That Man is none,Save One.What if this Lady be thy Soul, and HeWho claims to enjoy her sacred beauty be,Not thou, but God; and thy sick fireA female vanity,Such as a Bride, viewing her mirror’d charms,Feels when she sighs, ‘All these are for his arms!’A reflex heatFlash’d on thy cheek from His immense desire,Which waits to crown, beyond thy brain’s conceit,Thy nameless, secret, hopeless longing sweet,Not by-and-by, but now,Unless deny Him thou!VI. LEGEM TUAM DILEXI
The ‘Infinite.’ Word horrible! at feudWith life, and the braced moodOf power and joy and love;Forbidden, by wise heathen ev’n, to beSpoken of Deity,Whose Name, on popular altars, was ‘The Unknown,’Because, or ere It was reveal’d as OneConfined in Three,The people fear’d that it might proveInfinity,The blazon which the devils desired to gain;And God, for their confusion, laugh’d consent;Yet did so far relent,That they might seek relief, and not in vain,In dashing of themselves against the shores of pain.Nor bides alone in hellThe bond-disdaining spirit boiling to rebel.But for compulsion of strong grace,The pebble in the roadWould straight explode,And fill the ghastly boundlessness of space.The furious power,To soft growth twice constrain’d in leaf and flower,Protests, and longs to flash its faint self farBeyond the dimmest star.The sameSeditious flame,Beat backward with reduplicated might,Struggles alive within its stricter term,And is the worm.And the just Man does on himself affirmGod’s limits, and is conscious of delight,Freedom and right;And so His Semblance is, Who, every hour,By day and night,Buildeth new bulwarks ’gainst the Infinite.For, ah, who can expressHow full of bonds and simplenessIs God,How narrow is He,And how the wide, waste field of possibilityIs only trodStraight to His homestead in the human heart,And all His artIs as the babe’s that wins his Mother to repeatHer little song so sweet!What is the chief news of the Night?Lo, iron and salt, heat, weight and lightIn every star that drifts on the great breeze!And theseMean Man,Darling of God, Whose thoughts but live and moveRound him; Who woos his willTo wedlock with His own, and does distilTo that drop’s spanThe atta of all rose-fields of all love!Therefore the soul select assumes the stressOf bonds unbid, which God’s own style expressBetter than well,And aye hath, cloister’d, borne,To the Clown’s scorn,The fetters of the threefold golden chain:Narrowing to nothing all his worldly gain;(Howbeit in vain;For to have noughtIs to have all things without care or thought!)Surrendering, abject, to his equal’s rule,As though he were a fool,The free wings of the will;(More vainly still;For none knows rightly what ’tis to be freeBut only heWho, vow’d against all choice, and fill’d with aweOf the ofttimes dumb or clouded Oracle,Does wiser than to spell,In his own suit, the least word of the Law!)And, lastly, bartering life’s dear bliss for pain;But evermore in vain;For joy (rejoice ye Few that tasted have!)Is Love’s obedienceAgainst the genial laws of natural sense,Whose wide, self-dissipating wave,Prison’d in artful dykes,Trembling returns and strikesThence to its source again,In backward billows fleet,Crest crossing crest ecstatic as they greet,Thrilling each vein,Exploring every chasm and coveOf the full heart with floods of honied love,And every principal streetAnd obscure alley and laneOf the intricate brainWith brimming rivers of light and breezes sweetOf the primordial heat;Till, unto view of me and thee,Lost the intense life be,Or ludicrously display’d, by forceOf distance; as a soaring eagle, or a horseOn far-off hillside shewn,May seem a gust-driv’n rag or a dead stone.Nor by such bonds alone—But more I leave to say,Fitly revering the Wild Ass’s bray,Also his hoof,Of which, go where you will, the marks remainWhere the religious walls have hid the bright reproof.VII. TO THE BODY
Creation’s and Creator’s crowning good;Wall of infinitude;Foundation of the sky,In Heaven forecastAnd long’d for from eternity,Though laid the last;Reverberating dome,Of music cunningly built homeAgainst the void and indolent disgraceOf unresponsive space;Little, sequester’d pleasure-houseFor God and for His Spouse;Elaborately, yea, past conceiving, fair,Since, from the graced decorum of the hair,Ev’n to the tingling, sweetSoles of the simple, earth-confiding feet,And from the inmost heartOutwards unto the thinSilk curtains of the skin,Every least partAstonish’d hearsAnd sweet replies to some like region of the spheres;Form’d for a dignity prophets but darkly name,Lest shameless men cry ‘Shame!’So rich with wealth conceal’dThat Heaven and Hell fight chiefly for this field;Clinging to everything that pleases theeWith indefectible fidelity;Alas, so trueTo all thy friendships that no graceThee from thy sin can wholly disembrace;Which thus ’bides with thee as the Jebusite,That, maugre all God’s promises could do,The chosen People never conquer’d quite;Who therefore lived with them,And that by formal truce and as of right,In metropolitan Jerusalem.For which false fealtyThou needs must, for a season, lieIn the grave’s arms, foul and unshriven,Albeit, in Heaven,Thy crimson-throbbing GlowInto its old abode aye pants to go,And does with envy seeEnoch, Elijah, and the Lady, sheWho left the roses in her body’s lieu.O, if the pleasures I have known in theeBut my poor faith’s poor first-fruits be,What quintessential, keen, ethereal blissThen shall be hisWho has thy birth-time’s consecrating dewFor death’s sweet chrism retain’d,Quick, tender, virginal, and unprofaned!VIII. ‘SING US ONE OF THE SONGS OF SION.’
How sing the Lord’s Song in so strange a Land?A torrid waste of water-mocking sand;Oases of wild grapes;A dull, malodorous fogO’er a once Sacred River’s wandering strand,Its ancient tillage all gone back to bog;A busy synod of blest cats and apesExposing the poor trick of earth and starWith worshipp’d snouts oracular;Prophets to whose blind stareThe heavens the glory of God do not declare,Skill’d in such question niceAs why one conjures toads who fails with lice,And hatching snakes from sticks in such a swarmAs quite to surfeit Aaron’s bigger worm;A nation which has gotA lie in her right hand,And knows it not;With Pharaohs to her mind, each drifting as a logWhich way the foul stream flows,More harden’d the more plagued with fly and frog!How should sad Exile sing in such a Land?How should ye understand?What could he win but jeers,Or howls, such as sweet music draws from dog,Who told of marriage-feasting to the manThat nothing knows of food but bread of bran?Besides, if aught such earsMight e’er unclog,There lives but one, with tones for Sion meet.Behoveful, zealous, beautiful, elect,Mild, firm, judicious, loving, bold, discreet,Without superfluousness, without defect,Few are his words, and find but scant respect,Nay, scorn from some, for God’s good cause agog.Silence in such a Land is oftenest such men’s speech.O, that I might his holy secret reach;O, might I catch his mantle when he goes;O, that I were so gentle and so sweet,So I might deal fair Sion’s foolish foesSuch blows!IX. DELICIAE SAPIENTIAE DE AMORE
Love, light for meThy ruddiest blazing torch,That I, albeit a beggar by the PorchOf the glad Palace of Virginity,May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see;For, crown’d with roses all,’Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival!But first warn off the beatific spotThose wretched who have notEven afar beheld the shining wall,And those who, once beholding, have forgot,And those, most vile, who dressThe charnel spectre drearOf utterly dishallow’d nothingnessIn that refulgent fame,And cry, Lo, here!And nameThe Lady whose smiles inflameThe sphere.Bring, Love, anear,And bid be not afraidYoung Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid,And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought;For I will sing of noughtLess sweet to hearThan seemsA music in their half-remember’d dreams. The magnet calls the steel:Answers the iron to the magnet’s breath;What do they feelBut death!The clouds of summer kiss in flame and rain,And are not found again;But the heavens themselves eternal are with fireOf unapproach’d desire,By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest,In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess’d.O, spousals high;O, doctrine blest,Unutterable in even the happiest sigh;This know ye allWho can recallWith what a welling of indignant tearsLove’s simpleness first hearsThe meaning of his mortal covenant,And from what pride comes downTo wear the crownOf which ’twas very heaven to feel the want.How envies he the waysOf yonder hopeless star,And so would laugh and yearnWith trembling lids eterne,Ineffably content from infinitely farOnly to gazeOn his bright Mistress’s responding rays,That never know eclipse;And, once in his long year,With praeternuptial ecstasy and fear,By the delicious law of that ellipseWherein all citizens of ether move,With hastening pace to comeNearer, though never near,His LoveAnd always inaccessible sweet Home;There on his path doubly to burn.Kiss’d by her doubled lightThat whispers of its source,The ardent secret ever clothed with Night,Then go forth in new forceTowards a new return,Rejoicing as a Bridegroom on his course!This know ye all;Therefore gaze bold,That so in you be joyful hope increas’d,Thorough the Palace portals, and beholdThe dainty and unsating Marriage-Feast.O, hearThem singing clear‘Cor meum et caro mea’ round the ‘I am,’The Husband of the Heavens, and the LambWhom they for ever follow there that kept,Or losing, never sleptTill they reconquer’d had in mortal fightThe standard white.O, hearFrom the harps they bore from Earth, five-strung, what music springs,While the glad Spirits chideThe wondering strings!And how the shining sacrificial Choirs,Offering for aye their dearest hearts’ desires,Which to their hearts come back beatified,Hymn, the bright aisles along,The nuptial song,Song ever new to us and them, that saith,‘Hail Virgin in Virginity a Spouse!’Heard first belowWithin the little houseAt Nazareth;Heard yet in many a cell where brides of ChristLie hid, emparadised,And where, althoughBy the hour ’tis night,There’s light,The Day still lingering in the lap of snow.Gaze and be not afraidYe wedded few that honour, in sweet thoughtAnd glittering will,So freshly from the garden gather stillThe lily sacrificed;For ye, though self-suspected here for nought,Are highly styledWith the thousands twelve times twelve of undefiled.Gaze and be not afraidYoung Lover true and love-foreboding Maid.The full noon of deific vision brightAbashes nor abatesNo spark minute of Nature’s keen delight.’Tis there your Hymen waits!There where in courts afar, all unconfused, they crowd,As fumes the starlight softIn gulfs of cloud,And each to the other, well-content,Sighs oft,‘’Twas this we meant!’Gaze without blameYe in whom living Love yet blushes for dead shame.There of pure Virgins noneIs fairer seen,Save One,Than Mary Magdalene.Gaze without doubt or fearYe to whom generous Love, by any name, is dear.Love makes the life to beA fount perpetual of virginity;For, lo, the ElectOf generous Love, how named soe’er, affectNothing but God,Or mediate or direct,Nothing but God,The Husband of the Heavens:And who Him love, in potence great or small,Are, one and all,Heirs of the Palace glad,And inly cladWith the bridal robes of ardour virginal.X. THE CRY AT MIDNIGHT
The Midge’s wing beats to and froA thousand times ere one can utter ‘O!’And Sirius’ ballDoes on his business runAs many times immenser than the Sun.Why should things not be great as well as small,Or move like light as well as move at all?St. Michael fills his place, I mine, and, if you please,We will respect each other’s provinces,I marv’lling not at him, nor he at me.But, if thou must go gaping, let it beThat One who could make Michael should make thee.O, foolish Man, meting things low and highBy self, that accidental quantity!With this conceit, Philosophy stalks frailAs peacock staggering underneath his tail.Who judge of Plays from their own penny gaff,At God’s great theatre will hiss and laugh;For what’s a Saint to themBrought up in modern virtues brummagem?With garments grimed and lamps gone all to snuff,And counting others for like Virgins queer,To list those others cry, ‘Our Bridegroom’s near!’Meaning their God, is surely quite enoughTo make them rend their clothes and bawl out, ‘Blasphemy!’XI. AURAS OF DELIGHT
Beautiful habitations, auras of delight!Who shall bewail the crags and bitter foamAnd angry sword-blades flashing left and rightWhich guard your glittering height,That none thereby may come!The vision which we haveRevere we so,That yet we craveTo foot those fields of ne’er-profaned snow? I, with heart-quake,Dreaming or thinking of that realm of Love,See, oft, a doveTangled in frightful nuptials with a snake;The tortured knot,Now, like a kite scant-weighted, flung bewitch’dSunwards, now pitch’d,Tail over head, down, but with no taste gotEternallyOf rest in either ruin or the sky,But bird and vermin each incessant strives,With vain dilaceration of both lives,’Gainst its abhorred bond insoluble,Coveting fiercer any separate hellThan the most weary Soul in PurgatoryOn God’s sweet breast to lie.And, in this sign, I conThe guerdon of that golden Cup, fulfill’dWith fornications foul of Babylon,The heart where good is well-perceiv’d and known,Yet is not will’d;And Him I thank, who can make live again,The dust, but not the joy we once profane,That I, of ye,Beautiful habitations, auras of delight,In childish years and since had sometime sense and sight,But that ye vanish’d quite,Even from memory,Ere I could get my breath, and whisper ‘See!’ But did for meThey altogether die,Those trackless glories glimps’d in upper sky?Were they of chance, or vain,Nor good at all againFor curb of heart or fret?Nay, though, by grace,Lest, haply, I refuse God to His face,Their likeness wholly I forget,Ah, yet,Often in straits which else for me were ill,I mind me stillI did respire the lonely auras sweet,I did the blest abodes behold, and, at the mountains’ feet,Bathed in the holy Stream by Hermon’s thymy hill.XII. EROS AND PSYCHE
‘Love, I heard tell of thee so oft!Yea, thrice my face and bosom flush’d with heatOf sudden wings,Through delicatest ether feathering softTheir solitary beat.Long did I muse what service or what charmsMight lure thee, blissful Bird, into mine arms;And nets I made,But not of the fit strings.At last, of endless failure much afraid,To-night I would do nothing but lie still,And promise, wert thou once within my window-sill,Thine unknown will.In nets’ default,Finch-like me seem’d thou might’st be ta’en with salt;And here—and how thou mad’st me start!—Thou art.’ ‘O Mortal, by Immortals’ cunning led,Who shew’d you how for Gods to bait your bed?Ah, Psyche, guess’d you noughtI craved but to be caught?Wanton, it was not you,But I that did so passionately sue;And for your beauty, not unscath’d, I foughtWith Hades, ere I own’d in you a thought!’ ‘O, heavenly Lover true,Is this thy mouth upon my forehead press’d?Are these thine arms about my bosom link’d?Are these thy hands that tremble near my heart,Where join two hearts, for juncture more distinct?By thee and by my maiden zone caress’d,What dim, waste tracts of life shine sudden, like moonbeamsOn windless ocean shaken by sweet dreams!Ah, stir not to depart!Kiss me again, thy Wife and Virgin too!O Love, that, like a rose,Deckest my breast with beautiful repose,Kiss me again, and clasp me round the heart,Till fill’d with thee am IAs the cocoon is with the butterfly!—Yet how ’scape quiteNor pluck pure pleasure with profane delight?How know I that my Love is what he seems!Give me a signThat, in the pitchy night,Comes to my pillow an immortal Spouse,And not a fiend, hiding with happy boughsOf palm and asphodelThe pits of hell!’ ‘’Tis this:I make the childless to keep joyful house.Below your bosom, mortal Mistress mine,Immortal by my kiss,Leaps what sweet pain?A fiend, my Psyche, comes with barren bliss,A God’s embraces never are in vain.’ ‘I ownA life not mine within my golden zone.Yea, how’Tis easier grownThine arduous rule to donThan for a Bride to put her bride-dress on!Nay, rather, now’Tis no more service to be borne serene,Whither thou wilt, thy stormful wings between.But, Oh,Can I endureThis flame, yet live for what thou lov’st me, pure?’ ‘Himself the God let blameIf all about him bursts to quenchless flame!My Darling, knowYour spotless fairness is not match’d in snow,But in the integrity of fire.Whate’er you are, Sweet, I require.A sorry God were heThat fewer claim’d than all Love’s mighty kingdoms three!’ ‘Much marvel IThat thou, the greatest of the Powers above,Me visitest with such exceeding love.What thing is this?A God to make me, nothing, needful to his bliss,And humbly wait my favour for a kiss!Yea, all thy legions of liege deityTo look into this mystery desire.’ ‘Content you, Dear, with them, this marvel to admire,And lay your foolish little head to restOn my familiar breast.Should a high King, leaving his arduous throne,Sue from her hedge a little Gipsy Maid,For far-off royal ancestry bewray’dBy some wild beauties, to herself unknown;Some voidness of herself in her strange waysWhich to his bounteous fulness promised dainty praise;Some power, by all but him unguess’d,Of growing king-like were she king-caress’d;And should he bid his dames of loftiest gradePut off her rags and make her lowliheadPure for the soft midst of his perfumed bed,So to forget, kind-couch’d with her alone,His empire, in her winsome joyance free;What would he do, if such a fool were sheAs at his grandeur there to gape and quake,Mindless of love’s supreme equality,And of his heart, so simple for her sakeThat all he ask’d, for making her all-blest,Was that her nothingness alwayShould yield such easy fee as frank to playOr sleep delighted in her Monarch’s breast,Feeling her nothingness her giddiest boast,As being the charm for which he loved her most?What if this reed,Through which the King thought love-tunes to have blown,Should shriek, “Indeed,I am too base to trill so blest a tone!”Would not the King allegeDefaulted consummation of the marriage-pledge,And hie the Gipsy to her native hedge?’ ‘O, too much joy; O, touch of airy fire;O, turmoil of content; O, unperturb’d desire,From founts of spirit impell’d through brain and blood!I’ll not call ill what, since ’tis thine, is good,Nor best what is but second best or third;Still my heart fails,And, unaccustom’d and astonish’d, quails,And blames me, though I think I have not err’d.’Tis hard for fly, in such a honied flood,To use her eyes, far more her wings or feet.Bitter be thy behests!Lie like a bunch of myrrh between my aching breasts.Some greatly pangful penance would I brave.Sharpness me saveFrom being slain by sweet!’ ‘In your dell’d bosom’s double peaceLet all care cease!Custom’s joy-killing breathShall bid you sigh full soon for custom-killing death.So clasp your childish arms again around my heart:’Tis but in such captivityThe unbounded Heav’ns know what they be!And lie still there,Till the dawn, threat’ning to declareMy beauty, which you cannot bear,Bid me depart.Suffer your soul’s delight,Lest that which is to come wither you quite:For these are only your espousals; yes,More intimate and fruitfuller farThan aptest mortal nuptials are;But nuptials wait you such as now you dare not guess.’ ‘In all I thee obey! And thus I knowThat all is well:Should’st thou me tellOut of thy warm caress to goAnd roll my body in the biting snow,My very body’s joy were but increased;More pleasant ’tis to please thee than be pleased.Thy love has conquer’d me; do with me as thou wilt,And use me as a chattel that is thine!Kiss, tread me under foot, cherish or beat,Sheathe in my heart sharp pain up to the hilt,Invent what else were most perversely sweet;Nay, let the Fiend drag me through dens of guilt;Let Earth, Heav’n, Hell’Gainst my content combine;What could make nought the touch that made thee mine!Ah, say not yet, farewell!’ ‘Nay, that’s the Blackbird’s note, the sweet Night’s knell.Behold, Beloved, the penance you would brave!’ ‘Curs’d when it comes, the bitter thing we crave!Thou leav’st me now, like to the moon at dawn,A little, vacuous world alone in air.I will not care!When dark comes back my dark shall be withdrawn!Go free;For ’tis with meAs when the cup the Child scoops in the sandFills, and is part and parcel of the Sea.I’ll say it to myself and understand.Farewell!Go as thou wilt and come! Lover divine,Thou still art jealously and wholly mine;And this thy kissA separate secret by none other scann’d;Though well I wisThe whole of life is womanhood to thee,Momently wedded with enormous bliss.Rainbow, that hast my heaven sudden spann’d,I am the apple of thy glorious gaze,Each else life cent’ring to a different blaze;And, nothing though I beBut now a no more void capacity for thee,’Tis all to know there’s not in air or landAnother for thy Darling quite like me!Mine arms no more thy restless plumes compel!Farewell!Whilst thou art gone, I’ll search the weary meadsTo deck my bed with lilies of fair deeds!And, if thou choose to come this eventide,A touch, my Love, will set my casement wide.Farewell, farewell!Be my dull daysMusic, at least, with thy remember’d praise!’ ‘Bitter, sweet, few and veil’d let beYour songs of me.Preserving bitter, very sweet,Few, that so all may be discreet,And veil’d, that, seeing, none may see.’