Too wearily had we and song
Been left to look and left to long,
Yea, song and we to long and look,
Since thine acquainted feet forsook
The mountain where the Muses hymn
For Sinai and the Seraphim.
Now in both the mountains’ shine
Dress thy countenance, twice divine!
From Moses and the Muses draw
The Tables of thy double Law!
His rod-born fount and Castaly
Let the one rock bring forth for thee,
Renewing so from either spring
The songs which both thy countries sing:
Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long,
Thou should’st forget thy native song,
And mar thy mortal melodies
With broken stammer of the skies.

   The loom which mortal verse affords,
Out of weak and mortal words,
Wovest thou thy singing-weed in,
To a rune of thy far Eden.
Vain are all disguises!  Ah,
Heavenly incognita!
Thy mien bewrayeth through that wrong
The great Uranian House of Song!
As the vintages of earth
Taste of the sun that riped their birth,
We know what never cadent Sun
Thy lampèd clusters throbbed upon,
What plumed feet the winepress trod;
Thy wine is flavorous of God.
Whatever singing-robe thou wear
Has the Paradisal air;
And some gold feather it has kept
Shows what Floor it lately swept!

Lady who hold’st on me dominion!
Within your spirit’s arms I stay me fast
      Against the fell
Immitigate ravening of the gates of hell;
And claim my right in you, most hardly won,
Of chaste fidelity upon the chaste:
Hold me and hold by me, lest both should fall
(O in high escalade high companion!)
Even in the breach of Heaven’s assaulted wall.
Like to a wind-sown sapling grow I from
The clift, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul,—
Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome
By all its clouds incumbent: O be true
To your soul, dearest, as my life to you!
For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole
Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot
Of climbing poesy, and my life, killed through,
Dry down and perish to the foodless root.

I.

Since you have waned from us,
   Fairest of women!
I am a darkened cage
   Song cannot hymn in.
My songs have followed you,
   Like birds the summer;
Ah! bring them back to me,
   Swiftly, dear comer!
      Seraphim,
      Her to hymn,
      Might leave their portals;
      And at my feet learn
      The harping of mortals!

II.

III.

Whereso your angel is,
   My angel goeth;
I am left guardianless,
   Paradise knoweth!
I have no Heaven left
   To weep my wrongs to;
Heaven, when you went from us;
   Went with my songs too.
      Seraphim,
      Her to hymn,
      Might leave their portals;
      And at my feet learn
      The harping of mortals!

IV.

V.

She that is Heaven’s Queen
   Her title borrows,
For that she pitiful
   Beareth our sorrows.
So thou, Regina mî,
   Spes infirmorum;
With all our grieving crowned
   Mater dolorum!
      Seraphim,
      Her to hymn,
      Might leave their portals;
      And at my feet learn
      The harping of mortals!

VI.

VII.

Penitent! give me back
   Angels, and Heaven;
Render your stolen self,
   And be forgiven!
How frontier Heaven from you?
   For my soul prays, Sweet,
Still to your face in Heaven,
   Heaven in your face, Sweet!
      Seraphim,
      Her to hymn,
      Might leave their portals;
      And at my feet learn
      The harping of mortals!

Her soul from earth to Heaven lies,
Like the ladder of the vision,
      Whereon go
      To and fro,
In ascension and demission,
Star-flecked feet of Paradise.

Now she is drawn up from me,
All my angels, wet-eyed, tristful,
      Gaze from great
      Heaven’s gate
Like pent children, very wistful,
That below a playmate see.

Dream-dispensing face of hers!
Ivory port which loosed upon me
      Wings, I wist,
      Whose amethyst
Trepidations have forgone me,—
Hesper’s filmy traffickers!

Thou dost to rich attire a grace,
To let it deck itself with thee,
And teachest pomp strange cunning ways
To be thought simplicity.
But lilies, stolen from grassy mold,
No more curlèd state unfold
Translated to a vase of gold;
In burning throne though they keep still
Serenities unthawed and chill.
Therefore, albeit thou’rt stately so,
In statelier state thou us’dst to go.

Though jewels should phosphoric burn
Through those night-waters of thine hair,
A flower from its translucid urn
Poured silver flame more lunar-fair.
These futile trappings but recall
Degenerate worshippers who fall
In purfled kirtle and brocade
To ’parel the white Mother-Maid.
For, as her image stood arrayed
In vests of its self-substance wrought

The violet would thy dusk hair deck
With graces like thine own unsought.
Ah! but such place would daze and wreck
Its simple, lowly rustic thought.
For so advancèd, dear, to thee,
It would unlearn humility!
Yet do not, with an altered look,
In these weak numbers read rebuke;
Which are but jealous lest too much
God’s master-piece thou shouldst retouch.
Where a sweetness is complete,
Add not sweets unto the sweet!
Or, as thou wilt, for others so
In unfamiliar richness go;
But keep for mine acquainted eyes
The fashions of thy Paradise.

   If I would praise her soul (temerarious if!),
All must be mystery and hieroglyph.
Heaven, which not oft is prodigal of its more
To singers, in their song too great before;
By which the hierarch of large poesy is
Restrained to his once sacred benefice;
Only for her the salutary awe
Relaxes and stern canon of its law;
To her alone concedes pluralities,
In her alone to reconcile agrees
The Muse, the Graces, and the Charities;
To her, who can the trust so well conduct
To her it gives the use, to us the usufruct.

Alas, and I have spoken of her Muse—
Her Muse, that died with her auroral dews!
Learn, the wise cherubim from harps of gold
Seduce a trepidating music manifold;
But the superior seraphim do know
None other music but to flame and glow.
So she first lighted on our frosty earth,
A sad musician, of cherubic birth,
Playing to alien ears—which did not prize
The uncomprehended music of the skies—
The exiled airs of her far Paradise.
But soon from her own harpings taking fire,
In love and light her melodies expire.
Now Heaven affords her, for her silenced hymn,
A double portion of the seraphim.

   How to the petty prison could she shrink
Of femineity?—Nay, but I think
In a dear courtesy her spirit would
Woman assume, for grace to womanhood.
Or, votaress to the virgin Sanctitude
Of reticent withdrawal’s sweet, courted pale,
She took the cloistral flesh, the sexual veil,
Of her sad, aboriginal sisterhood;
The habit of cloistral flesh which founding Eve indued.

How should I gauge what beauty is her dole,
Who cannot see her countenance for her soul;
As birds see not the casement for the sky?
And as ’tis check they prove its presence by,
I know not of her body till I find
My flight debarred the heaven of her mind.
Hers is the face whence all should copied be,
Did God make replicas of such as she;
Its presence felt by what it does abate,
Because the soul shines through tempered and mitigate:
Where—as a figure labouring at night
Beside the body of a splendid light—
Dark Time works hidden by its luminousness;
And every line he labours to impress
Turns added beauty, like the veins that run
Athwart a leaf which hangs against the sun.

EPILOGUE.

To the Poet’s Sitter,
Wherein he excuseth himself for the manner of the Portrait.

Alas! now wilt thou chide, and say (I deem),
My figured descant hides the simple theme:
Or in another wise reproving, say
I ill observe thine own high reticent way.
Oh, pardon, that I testify of thee
What thou couldst never speak, nor others be!

The heavens do not advance their majesty
Over their marge; beyond his empery
The ensigns of the wind are not unfurled,
His reign is hooped in by the pale o’ the world.
’Tis not the continent, but the contained,
That pleasaunce makes or prison, loose or chained.
Too much alike or little captives me,
For all oppression is captivity.
What groweth to its height demands no higher;
The limit limits not, but the desire.
Give but my spirit its desirèd scope,—
A giant in a pismire, I not grope;
Deny it,—and an ant, with on my back
A firmament, the skiey vault will crack.
Our minds make their own Termini, nor call
The issuing circumscriptions great or small;
So high constructing Nature lessons to us all:
Who optics gives accommodate to see
Your countenance large as looks the sun to be,
And distant greatness less than near humanity.

Such sweet captivity, and only such,
In you, as in those golden bars, we touch!
Our gazes for sufficing limits know
The firmament above, your face below;
Our longings are contented with the skies,
Contented with the heaven, and your eyes.
My restless wings, that beat the whole world through,
Flag on the confines of the sun and you;
And find the human pale remoter of the two.

I will not perturbate
Thy Paradisal state
         With praise
   Of thy dead days;

To the new-heavened say,—
“Spirit, thou wert fine clay:”
         This do,
   Thy praise who knew.

Therefore my spirit clings
Heaven’s porter by the wings,
         And holds
   Its gated golds

Apart, with thee to press
A private business;—
         Whence,
   Deign me audience.

Anchorite, who didst dwell
With all the world for cell
         My soul
   Round me doth roll

For its burning fruitage I
Do climb the tree o’ the sky;
         Do prize
   Some human eyes.

You smelt the Heaven-blossoms,
And all the sweet embosoms
         The dear
   Uranian year.

Those Eyes my weak gaze shuns,
Which to the suns are Suns.
         Did
   Not affray your lid.

The carpet was let down
(With golden mouldings strown)
         For you
   Of the angels’ blue.

But I, ex-Paradised,
The shoulder of your Christ
         Find high
   To lean thereby.

Life is a coquetry
Of Death, which wearies me,
         Too sure
   Of the amour;

A tiring-room where I
Death’s divers garments try,
         Till fit
   Some fashion sit.

It seemeth me too much
I do rehearse for such
         A mean
   And single scene.

The sandy glass hence bear—
Antique remembrancer;
         My veins
   Do spare its pains.

With secret sympathy
My thoughts repeat in me
         Infirm
   The turn o’ the worm

Its grasses by the top;
The rains thereon that drop
         Perturb
   With drip acerb

My subtly answering soul;
The feet across its knoll
         Do jar
   Me from afar.

As sap foretastes the spring;
As Earth ere blossoming
         Thrills
   With far daffodils,

And feels her breast turn sweet
With the unconceivèd wheat;
         So doth
   My flesh foreloathe

The abhorrèd spring of Dis,
With seething presciences
         Affirm
   The preparate worm.

But you, should that be so,
May very well, I know,
         May well
   To me in hell

With recognising eyes
Look from your Paradise—
         “God bless
   Thy hopelessness!”

Call, holy soul, O call
The hosts angelical,
         And say,—
   “See, far away

“Lies one I saw on earth;
One stricken from his birth
         With curse
   Of destinate verse.

“What place doth He ye serve
For such sad spirit reserve,—
         Given,
   In dark lieu of Heaven,

“Hers, but she never his?
He reapeth miseries,
         Foreknows
   His wages woes;

“He lives detachèd days;
He serveth not for praise;
         For gold
   He is not sold;

“Deaf is he to world’s tongue;
He scorneth for his song
         The loud
   Shouts of the crowd;

“He asketh not world’s eyes;
Not to world’s ears he cries;
         Saith,—‘These
   Shut, if ye please;’

“He measureth world’s pleasure,
World’s ease as Saints might measure;
         For hire
   Just love entire

“In guerdon of long duty,
Unowned by Love or Beauty;
         And goes—
   Tell, tell, who knows!

“Aliens from Heaven’s worth,
Fine beasts who nose i’ the earth,
         Do there
   Reward prepare.

“But are his great desires
Food but for nether fires?
         Ah me,
   A mystery!

“Can it be his alone,
To find when all is known,
         That what
   He solely sought

“Is lost, and thereto lost
All that its seeking cost?
         That he
   Must finally,

So ask; and if they tell
The secret terrible,
         Good friend,
   I pray thee send

Some high gold embassage
To teach my unripe age.
         Tell!
   Lest my feet walk hell.

It seemed corrival of the world’s great prime,
   Made to un-edge the scythe of Time,
      And last with stateliest rhyme.

No tender Dryad ever did indue
   That rigid chiton of rough yew,
      To fret her white flesh through:

But some god like to those grim Asgard lords,
   Who walk the fables of the hordes
      From Scandinavian fjords,

Upheaved its stubborn girth, and raised unriven,
   Against the whirl-blast and the levin,
      Defiant arms to Heaven.

When doom puffed out the stars, we might have said,
   It would decline its heavy head,
      And see the world to bed.

For this firm yew did from the vassal leas,
   And rain and air, its tributaries,
      Its revenues increase,

But now our yew is strook, is fallen—yea
   Hacked like dull wood of every day
      To this and that, men say.

Never!—To Hades’ shadowy shipyards gone,
   Dim barge of Dis, down Acheron
      It drops, or Lethe wan.

Stirred by its fall—poor destined bark of Dis!—
   Along my soul a bruit there is
      Of echoing images,

Reverberations of mortality:
   Spelt backward from its death, to me
      Its life reads saddenedly.

Its breast was hollowed as the tooth of eld;
   And boys, their creeping unbeheld,
      A laughing moment dwelled.

Yet they, within its very heart so crept,
   Reached not the heart that courage kept
      With winds and years beswept.

And in its boughs did close and kindly nest
   The birds, as they within its breast,
      By all its leaves caressed.

The breadth of God, he breadth of death and life!
   Even so, even so, in undreamed strife
      With pulseless Law, the wife,—

The sweetest wife on sweetest marriage-day,—
   Their souls at grapple in mid-way,
      Sweet to her sweet may say:

“I take you to my inmost heart, my true!”
   Ah, fool! but there is one heart you
      Shall never take him to!

The hold that falls not when the town is got,
   The heart’s heart, whose immurèd plot
      Hath keys yourself keep not!

Its ports you cannot burst—you are withstood—
   For him that to your listening blood
      Sends precepts as he would.

Its gates are deaf to Love, high summoner;
   Yea, Love’s great warrant runs not there:
      You are your prisoner.

Yourself are with yourself the sole consortress
   In that unleaguerable fortress;
      It knows you not for portress

And if His feet shall rock those floors in wrath,
   Or blest aspersion sleek His path,
      Is only choice it hath.

Yea, in that ultimate heart’s occult abode
   To lie as in an oubliette of God,
      Or as a bower untrod,

Built by a secret Lover for His Spouse;—
   Sole choice is this your life allows,
      Sad tree, whose perishing boughs
         So few birds house!

The breaths of kissing night and day
   Were mingled in the eastern Heaven:
Throbbing with unheard melody
   Shook Lyra all its star-chord seven:
      When dusk shrunk cold, and light trod shy,
         And dawn’s grey eyes were troubled grey;
      And souls went palely up the sky,
         And mine to Lucidé.

There was no change in her sweet eyes
   Since last I saw those sweet eyes shine;
There was no change in her deep heart
   Since last that deep heart knocked at mine.
      Her eyes were clear, her eyes were Hope’s,
         Wherein did ever come and go
      The sparkle of the fountain-drops
         From her sweet soul below.

The chambers in the house of dreams
   Are fed with so divine an air,
That Time’s hoar wings grow young therein,
   And they who walk there are most fair.
      I joyed for me, I joyed for her,
         Who with the Past meet girt about:
      Where our last kiss still warms the air,
      Nor can her eyes go out.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
   I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
   Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
               Up vistaed hopes, I sped;
               And shot, precipitated
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
   From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
               But with unhurrying chase,
               And unperturbéd pace,
      Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
               They beat—and a Voice beat
               More instant than the Feet—
      “All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

            Halts by me that footfall:
            Is my gloom, after all,
      Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
            “Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
            I am He Whom thou seekest!
      Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”

Over the bickering gonfalons, * far-ranged as for Tartarean wars,
Went a waver of ribbèd fire *—as night-seas on phosphoric bars
Like a flame-plumed fan shake slowly out * their ridgy reach of crumbling stars.

At length to where on His fretted Throne * sat in the heart of His aged dominions
The great Triune, and Mary nigh, * lit round with spears of their hauberked minions,
The poet drew, in the thunderous blue * involvèd dread of those mounted pinions.

As in a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquiet earth
At momentary intervals * beholds from its raggèd rifts break forth
The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat of a witchèd birth;

With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of night-dipt plumes so burned their charge;
Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so,—disclosed from their kindling marge,
Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the singer there where God’s light lay large.

Hu, hu! a wonder! a wonder! see, * clasping the singer’s glories clings
A dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in patchwork things,
Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs’ versicoloured wings.

A rhymer, rhyming a futile rhyme, * he had crept for convoy through Eden-ways
Into the shade of the poet’s glory, * darkened under his prevalent rays,
Fearfully hoping a distant welcome * as a poor kinsman of his lays.

The singer bowed his brow majestic, * searching that patchwork through and through,
Feeling God’s lucent gazes traverse * his singing-stoling and spirit too:
The hallowed harpers were fain to frown * on the strange thing come ’mid their sacred crew,
Only the singer that was earth * his fellow-earth and his own self knew.

But the poet rent off robe and wreath, * so as a sloughing serpent doth,
Laid them at the rhymer’s feet, * shed down wreath and raiment both,
Stood in a dim and shamèd stole, * like the tattered wing of a musty moth.

“Thou gav’st the weed and wreath of song, * the weed and wreath are solely Thine,
And this dishonest vesture * is the only vesture that is mine;
The life I textured, Thou the song *—my handicraft is not divine!”

Never a chief in Saintdom was, * but turned him from the Poet then;
Never an eye looked mild on him * ’mid all the angel myriads ten,
Save sinless Mary, and sinful Mary *—the Mary titled Magdalen.

“Turn yon robe,” spake Magdalen, * “of torn bright song, and see and feel.”
They turned the raiment, saw and felt * what their turning did reveal—
All the inner surface piled * with bloodied hairs, like hairs of steel.

“Take, I pray, yon chaplet up, * thrown down ruddied from his head.”
They took the roseal chaplet up, * and they stood astonishèd:
Every leaf between their fingers, * as they bruised it, burst and bled.