The Hours of Fiammetta / A Sonnet Sequence

THE PROLOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN

We carry spices to the gods.
     For this are we wrought curiously,
     All vain-desire and reverie,
To carry spices to the gods.

We carry spices to the gods.
     Sacred and soft as lotos-flowers
     Are those long languorous hands of ours
That carry spices to the gods.

We know their roses and their rods,
     Having in pale spring-orchards seen
     Their cruel eyes, and in the green
Strange twilights having met the gods.

Sometimes we tire. Upon the sods
     We set the great enamels by,
     Wherein the occult odours lie,
And play with children on the sods.

Yet soon we take, O jealous gods,
     Those gracious caskets once again,
     Storied with oracles of pain,
That keep the spices for the gods.

We carry spices to the gods.
     Like sumptuous cold chalcedony
     Our weary breasts and hands must be
To carry spices to the gods.

I

THE PRELUDE

Thou sayest, "O pure Palace of my Pleasures,
     O Doors of Ivory, let the King come in.
With silver lamps before him, and with measures
     Of low lute-music let him come. Begin,
Ye suppliant lilies and ye frail white roses,
     Imploring sweetnesses of hands and eyes,
To let Love through to the most secret closes
     Of all his flowery Court of Paradise." . . .
Sunder the jealous gates. Thine ivory Castle
     Is hung with scarlet, is the Convent of Pain.
With purple and with spice indeed the Vassal
     Receives her King whom dark desires constrain.
Rejoice, rejoice!—But far from flutes and dances
The cloistered Soul lies frozen in her trances.

II

PERILS

Ah! Since from subtle silk of agony
     Our veils of lamentable flesh are spun,
Since Time in spoiling violates, and we
     In that strait Pass of Pangs may be undone,
Since the mere natural flower and withering
     Of these our bodies terribly distil
Strange poisons, since an alien Lust may fling
     On any autumn day some torch to fill
Our pale Pavilion of dreaming lavenders
     With frenzy, till it is a Tower of Flame
Wherein the soul shrieks burning, since the myrrhs
     And music of our beauty are mixed with shame
Inextricable,—some drug of poppies give
This bitter ecstasy whereby we live!

III

THE PEACE TO BE

Quell this consuming fever, quickly give
     Some drug of poppies white!—But Peace will come?
O ashen savourless alternative,
     Quietude of the blind and deaf and dumb
That all swift motions must alike assuage,—
     When we are exiled from youth's golden hosts
To pace the calm cold terraces of age,
     With unvexed senses, being but houseled ghosts,
Wise, with the uncoloured wisdom of the souls
     With whom great passions have no more to do,
Serene, since ours the dusty arles Death doles,
     Oblivions dim of all there is to rue!—
Peace comes to hearts of whom proud Love has tired;
Beyond all danger dwell the undesired.

IV

STATUES

The great Greek lovers of gold and ivory things,
     Austere and perfect things, albeit they wrought
Girl-shapes with driven raiment, conquering wings,
     And smiling queens of Cnidos, turned and sought
A more inviolate beauty that should keep
     Their secret dream. Their grave sweet geniuses
Of love and death, of rapture or of sleep,
     Are delicately severed from all excess.—
Ah! suppliant, honey-white, the languor cleaves
     About the dolorous weak body He,
The Dark Eros, with staunchless spear-thrust grieves;
     Heavy the seal of that mortality.
No wounds disgrace the haughty acolytes
Of heavenly sorrows, of divine delights.

V

THE WEDDING-GARMENT

Thought it be blither than roses in thine eyes,
     Shall I not rend this raiment of pangs and fears,
This Colchian cloth white flames ensorcelise,
     This gaudy-veil distained with blood and tears?—
What praise? "O marriage-beauty garlanded
     For festival, O sumptuous flowery stole
For rites of adoration!"—See instead
     A cilice drenched with torment of my soul!
Nevertheless the fibres implicate
     Proud exultations; burning, have revealed
Rich throes of triumph, sweetness passionate
     As painèd lilies reared in thorn-plots yield.
Ah! silver wedding-garment of the bride,
Ah! fiery cilice, I am satisfied!

VI

THE DEATH OF PROCRIS

Come gaze on Procris, poor soon-perished child!
     Why did her innocent virginity
Follow Desire within his arrowy wild?
     She dies pursuing the cruel ecstasy
That keeps as mortal wounds for them that find.
     Serene her pensive body lies at last
Like a mown poppy-flower to sleep resigned,
     Softly resigned. The wildwood things aghast,
With pitiful hearts instinctive, sweet as hers,
     Approach her now: love, death, and virgin grace,
Blue distance, and the stricken foresters,
     And all the dreaming, healing, woodland place
Are patterned into tender melodies
Of lovely line and hue—a music of peace!

VII

THE WARNING

As delicate gorgeous rains of dusky gold
     Heavy white lilies, Love importunate
Besets the soul,—as that wild Splendour told
     Pale Danaë her haughty heavenly fate.
Not speared in burning points but spun in strands
     My senses: drowsily burning webs are they
That veil me head to foot. While on mine hands
     And hair and lids thy kisses die away
Through all my being their strange echoes thrill
     And from the body's flowery mysticism
I draw the last white honey. What is thine ill?
     What wouldst thou more of that great symbolism?
Beyond this ultimate moment nothing lies
But moonless cold and darkness. Ah! be wise!

VIII

THE ACCUSATION

Mere night! The unconsenting Soul stands by,
     A moaning protestant. "Ah, not for this,
And not for this, through rose and thorn was I
     Drawn to surrender and the bridal-kiss.
Annunciations lit with jewelled wings
     Of sudden angels mid the lilies tall,
Proud prothalamia chaunting enraptured things,—
     O sumptuous fables, why so prodigal
Of masque and music, of dreams like foam-white swans
     On lakes of hyacinthus? Must Love seek
Great allies, Beauty sound her arrière-bans
     That all her splendours betray us to this bleak
Simplicity whereto blind satyrs run?"—
The irony seems old, old as the sun.

IX

THE MEDIEVAL MIRROR-CASES

I

Rondels of old French ivory to-day
     (Poor perished beauty's deathless mirror-cases!)
Reveal to me the delicate amorous play
     Of reed-like flowering folk with pointed faces.
Lovers ride hawking; over chess delight;
     The Castle of Ladies renders up its keys,
Its roses all being flung; a gracious knight
     Kneels to his garlander mid orchard-trees.
Passionate pilgrims, do ye keep so fast
     Your dream of miracles and heights? Ah, shent
And sore-bewildered shall ye couch at last
     In bitter beds of disillusionment.
In the Black Orchard the foul raven grieves
White Love, on some Montfauçon of the thieves.

X

THE MIRROR-CASES

II

O treasonable heart and perverse words,
     Ye darken beauty with your plots of pain!
What languors beat through me like muted chords?
     I know indeed that suffering shall profane
These lovers, sweet as viols or violet-spices.
     Strangely must end their dreamy chess-playing,
Strange wounds amaze their broidered Paradises,
     And stain the falconry and garlanding.
Their bodies must be broken as on wheels,
     Their souls be carded with implacable shame,—
Molten like wax, be crushed beneath the seals
     Of sin and penance. Yet, with wings aflame,
Love, Love more lovely, like a triumpher,
Shall break his malefactor's sepulchre.

XI

THE PASSION-FLOWER

The passion-flower bears in her violet Cup
     The senses of her bridal, and they seem
Symbols of sacred pangs,—Love lifted up
     To expiate the beauty of his dream.
Come and adore, ye crafty imagers,
     This piece of ivory and amethyst.
Let Music, Colour, decorated Verse,
     Meditate, each like some sad lutanist,
This Paten, and the marvels it uncovers,
     Identities of joy and anguish. Rod,
Nails, bitter garlands, all ecstatic lovers
     Blindly repeat the dolours of a God.
Subdue this mournful matter unto Art,
Ivory, amethyst, serene of heart.

XII

THE VOICE OF LOVE

I

"Mine, mine!" saith Love, "Deny me many times.
     Yet mine that body wherein mine arrow thrills,
And mine the fugitive soul that bleeding climbs
     Hunting a vision on the frozen hills.
Mine are her stigmata, sad rhapsodist.—
     And when to the delighted bridal-bowers
They bring thee starlike through the silver mist
     Of music and canticles and myrtle-flowers,
And the dark hour bids the consentless heart
     Surrender to disillusion, since in all
The labyrinth of deed no counterpart
     Can pattern Passion's archetype, nor shall
The chalice of sense endure her flaming wine,
Superb and bitter dreamer, thou most art mine."

XIII

THE VOICE OF LOVE

II

"Mine, mine!" saith Love, "Although ye serve no more
     Mine images of ivory and bronze
With flute-led dances of the days of yore,
     But leave them to barbarian orisons
Of dull hearth-loving hearts, mistaking me:
     Yet from mine incense ye shall not divorce
Remembrance. Fools, these recantations be
     Ardours that prove you still idolators;
And, though ye hurry through the circling hells
     Of bright ambition like hopes and energies,
That haste bewrays you. My great doctrine dwells
     Immortal in those fevered heresies,
And all the inversions of my rites proclaim
The mournful memory of mine altar-flame."

XIV

DREAM-GHOSTS

White house of night, too much the ghosts come through
     Your crazy doors, to vex and startle me,
Touching with curious fingers cold as dew
     Kissing with unloved kisses fierily
That dwell, slow fever, through my veins all day,
     And fill my senses as the dead their graves.
They are builded in my castles and bridges? Yea,
     Not therefore must my dreams become their slaves.
If once we passed some kindness, must they still
     Sway me with weird returns and dim disgust?—
Though even in sleep the absolute bright Will
     Would exorcise them, saying, "These are but dust,"
They show sad symbols, that, when I awaken,
I never can deny I have partaken.

XV

MEMORIA SUBMERSA

Can souls forget what bodies keep the while?
     Is this among their dark antinomies?
The spiritual joy is volatile:
     The flesh is faithful to her memories.
This living silk, this inarticulate
     Remembrance of the nerves enwinds us fast:
Delicate cells, obscure and obstinate,
     Secrete the bitter essence of the Past.
Ah! Was the fading web of rose and white
     All macerated by the kisses of old
As rare French queens with perfume? (So, by night,
     They lived like lilies mid their cloth-of-gold.)
Within the sense, howe'er the soul abjure,
Like flavours and fumes these ancient things endure.

XVI

A PORTRAIT BY VENEZIANO

Strange dancing-girl with curls of golden wire,
     With strait white veil, and sinister jewel strung
Upon your brows, your sombre eyes desire
     Some secret thing. Garlanded leaves are young
Around your head, and, in your beauty's hours,
     Venice yet loved that joy's enthusiast
Be frail, fantastic as gilt iris-flowers.
     O startling reveller from out the Past,
Long, long ago through lanes of chrysophrase
     The Dark Eros compelled his exquisite
Evil apostle. This painter made your praise,
     A piece of art, a curious delight.
But your ghost wanders. Yesterday your sweet
Accusing eyes challenged me in the street.

XVII

THE ENIGMA

Eternally grieving and arraigning eyes,
     Why vex my heart? What is it I can do?
Can I call back the hounds of Time with sighs,
     Or find inviolate peace to bring you to,
Pluck frenzy from the amazed soul of man,
     Or curb the horses of raging poverty
That trample you until—escape who can,—
     Or spill the honey from rich revelry
And strip the silken days?—Alas! alas!
     I am so dream-locked that I cannot know
Why it is not much easier to pass
     To death than let love's haughty cloister show
A common hostel for such taverners.—
Ye know, who are perhaps my ransomers.

XVIII

THE DOUBT

I am pure, because of great illuminations
     Of dreamy doctrine caught from poets of old,
Because of delicate imaginations,
     Because I am proud, or subtle, or merely cold.
Natheless my soul's bright passions interchange
     As the red flames in opal drowse and speak:
In beautiful twilight paths the elusive strange
     Phantoms of personality I seek.
If better than the last embraces I
     Love the lit riddles of the eyes, the faint
Appeal of merely courteous fingers,—why,
     Though 'tis a quest of souls, and I acquaint
My heart with spiritual vanities,—
Is there indeed no bridge twixt me and these?

XIX

THE SEEKER

Curious and wistful through your soul I go.
     With silver-tinkling feet I penetrate
Sealed chambers, and a puissant incense throw
     Upon the smouldering braziers, love and hate:
And chaunt the grievèd verses of a dirge
     For dying gods, remembering flutes and shawms:
With perverse moods I trouble you, and urge
     The sense to beauty. Give me some sweet alms,
Some reverie, some pang of a damasked sword,
     Some poignant moment yet unparalleled
In my dream-broidered chronicles, some chord
     Of mystery Love's music never knelled
Before;—but nought of the rough alchemy
That disillusions all felicity.

XX

THE HIDDEN REVERIE

The life of plants, rising through dim sweet states,
     Cloisters the rich love-secret more and more,
Gathers it jealously within the gates
     Of the hushed heart; but, mightier than before,
The mystery prevails and overpowers
     Stem, leaf, and petal. So the passion lies
In this tranced flowery being which is ours
     Like to a hidden wound; yet softly dyes
With dolorous beauty all the stuff of life,
     Each dream and vision and desire subduing
With muted pulses, that great counter-strife
     Of soul with its own rhythmic pangs imbuing.
Deny it and disdain it. Lo! there beat
Red stigmata in heart and hands and feet.

XXI

SOUL AND BODY

It may be all my pain is woven wrong,
     And this wild "I" is nothing but a dream
The body exhales, as roses at evensong
     Their passionate odour. Verily it may seem
That this most fevered and fantastic wear
     Of nerves and senses is myself indeed,
The rest, illusion taken in that snare.—
     But still the fiery splendour and the need
Can bite like actual flame and hunger. Ah!
     If Sense, bewildered in the spiral towers
Of Matter, dreamed this great Superbia
     I call the Soul, not less the Dream hath powers;
Not less these Twain, being one, are separate,
Like lovers whose love is tangled hard with hate.

XXII

SOUL AND BODY

II

Sometimes the Soul in pure hieratic rule
     Is throned (as on some high Abbatial chair
Of moon-pearl and rose-rubies beautiful)
     Within the body grown serene and fair:
Sometimes it weds her like a lifted rood;
     But she endures, and wills no anodyne,
For then she flowers within the mystic Wood,
     And hath her lot with gods—and seems divine:
Sometimes it is her lonely oubliet,
     Sometimes a marriage-chamber sweet with spice:
It is her triumph-car with flutes beset,
     The altar where she lies a sacrifice.—
Cold images! The truth is not in these.
Both are alive, both quick with rhapsodies.

XXIII

THE JUSTIFICATION

Life I adore, and not Life's accidents.
     A garlanded and dream-fast thurifer
My Soul comes out from beauty's purple tents
     That incense-troubled Love may grieve and stir,
Be ransomed from satiety's sad graves,
     And go to God up the bright stair of Wonder.
Since passion makes immortal Time's tired slaves
     I am of those that delicately sunder
Corruptions of contentment from the breast
     As with rare steel. Like music I unveil
Last things, till, weary of earthen cups and rest,
     You seek Montsalvat and the burning Grail.
Ah! blindly, blindly, wounded with the roses,
I bear my spice where Ecstasy reposes.

XXIV

ASPIRATIONS

Light of great swords, banners all blazoned gold,
     Bright lists of danger where with trumpets pass
Riders like those for whom bride-bells are bold
     To beautiful desperate conflict, Michaelmas
Of golden heroes, how my sad soul saith
     Your praise! Nor does to you her love deny,
Solemn strange Cups that carry dreamy death
     To quench those fevers when they flame too high.
But now the Victories have broken wings;
     The spirit of Rapture from the day of deeds
Is banished, and must spend on sorcerous strings
     Her heart that perishes of splendid needs.—
Saints, lovers, high crusaders, give me too
Some simple and impassioned thing to do.

XXV

THE ANAESTHETIC

Like a white moth caught heavily, heavily,
     In the honeyed heart of some white drowsy flower,
I lay behind the leaves of apathy,
     Where not the reddest pang has any power.
Then, like one drowning, I rose and lapsed again
     On dim sweet tides of the great anodyne.
Why must they hale me back to drink the pain
     That seethes in consciousness, an evil wine?
I love the closing trances, howsoever
     Their seals be broken: they are wise and kind.
If death can give such fumes of poppy, never
     Shall I revile him. Oh! uncertain mind!
Hast thou an equal pleasure in the proud
Flame-builded pillar, and the pillar of cloud?

XXVI

DIVINATION

I weary of your hesitating will;
     This flicker of "should" and "should not" crazes me.
Rest from these vain debates of good and ill:
     Let me your secret swift diviner be.
In the memorial blue dusk of sense,
     Where, spirals of doves or wreaths of ravens, rise
Auguries sweet or dread, the blue dusk whence
     The cresseted houses of the stars surprise
The heart with their mysterious horoscopes,
     I know the issues ere great battles begin,
The ashen values of bright-burning hopes,
     The ultimate hours of sacrifice or sin.
Do I obey the Wisdom? If I list,
I too, beloved, can play the casuist.

XXVII

SUB-CONSCIOUSNESS

Sometimes as Martha suddenly stood amazed
     By Mary's mystic eyes, and sometimes as
That very dreamer Mary might have gazed
     Upon the Daughter of Herodias,
The conscious Soul that other Soul discovers,
     The strange idolator who still regrets
Golden Osiris, Tammuz lord of lovers,
     Attis the sad white god of violets.
In jasper caves she lies behind her veils;
     And jars of spice, and gilded ears of corn,
And wine-red roses and rose-red wine-grails
     Feed her long trances while the far flutes mourn.
She lies and dreams daemonic passionate things:
Cherubim guard her gates with monstrous wings.

XXVIII

SATIETY

Ah! love me not with honey-sweet excesses,
     With passionate prodigalities of praise,
With wreaths of daisied words and quaint caresses,
     Adore me not in charming childish ways.
This pastoral is beautiful enough:
     But never shall it antidote my drouth:
I want a reticent ironic Love
     With smiling eyes and faintly mocking mouth.
Sweetness is best when bitterly 'tis bought:
     So in Love's deadly duel I would not be
Victorious, and the peace I long have sought,
     Sure knowledge of his great supremacy,
Would buy with pangs, like that bright cuirassier,
The queen-at-arms that knew the Peliad's spear.