XXIX

THE CONFESSION

I

I am initiate,—long disciplined
     In delicate austerities of art:
The clear compulsions of the sovran mind
     Constrain the dreamy panics of my heart.
Plato and Dante, Petrarch, Lancelot,
     Revealed me very Love, flame-clad, august.
Also I strove to be as we are not,
     Loyal, and honourable, and even just.
My webs of life in reveries were dyed
     As veils in vats of purple: so there stole
Serene and sumptuous and mysterious pride
     Through the imperial vesture of my soul.—
And lo! like any servile fool I crave
The dark strange rapture of the stricken slave.

XXX

THE CONFESSION

II

I have a banner and a great duke's way,
     I have an High Adventure of my own.
Yet would I rather squire a knightlier,—Nay!
     Be the least harper by his red-hung throne.
I am not satisfied with any love
     Till I can say, "O stronger far than I!"
Is it a shame to hide the aching of,
     A sacred mystery to justify?
Through all our spiritual discontents
     Thrills the strange leaven of renunciation.—
Ah! god unknown behind the Sacraments
     Unfailing of the earthly expiation,
Lift up this amethyst-encumbered Vine,
Crush from her pain some ransom-cup of Wine.

XXXI

COMRADES

Yet for the honourable felicity
     Of comradeship I can be chivalrous,
And through love's transmutations fierily
     Constant as the gemmed paladin Sirius
To that fair pact. We go, gay challengers,
     Beneath dark rampires of forbidden thought,
Thread life's dim gardens masked like revellers
     Where dreams of roses red are dearly bought.
We shall ride haughtily as bright Crusaders,
     As hooded palmers fare with humbled hearts,
And we shall find, adoring blithe invaders,
     The City of Seven Towers, of Seven Arts.—
Then the Last Quest, (lead you the dreadful way!)
Among the unimagined Nebulae!

XXXII

THE SUM OF THINGS

TO ANOTHER WOMAN

Well, I am tired, who fared to divers ends,
     And you are not, who kept the beaten path;
But mystic Vintagers have been my friends,
     Even Love and Death and Sin and Pride and Wrath.
Wounded am I, you are immaculate;
     But great Adventurers were my starry guides:
From God's Pavilion to the Flaming Gate
     Have I not ridden as an immortal rides?
And your dry soul crumbles by dim degrees
     To final dust quite happily, it appears,
While all the sweetness of her nectaries
     Can only stand within my heart like tears.
O throbbing wounds, rich tears, and splendour spent,—
Ye are all my spoil, and I am well content.

XXXIII

REACTION

Give me a chamber paved with emerald
     And hung with arras green as evening skies,
Broidered with halcyons, moons, and heavily thralled
     White lilies, cold rare comfort for the eyes.
Of triumph built was radiant yesterday:
     Like an imperial eagle to the sun
My soul bare up her dreams the glorious way
     Through flagrant ordeals august, and won
To burning eyries, till beneath her wing
     Rankled the shaft. Her Archer was abroad;
And hooded with strange darkness, shuddering
     Down pain's dull spiral, sank she on the sod.
Close round, green dusk of dews! No more we dare
The blue inviolate castles of the air.

XXXIV

THE IDEALIST

For such an one let lovers cry, Alas!
     Since passion's leaguer shall break through in vain
To that cold centre of bright adamas.—
     Storm through her being, rapturous spears of pain!
Ye shall not wound that queen of gracious guile,
     The soul that with immortal trance keeps troth:
For Helen is in Egypt all the while,
     Learning great magic from the Wife of Thoth.
Throned white and high on red-rose porphyry,
     And coifed with golden wings, she lifts her eyes
O'er Nile's green lavers where most sacredly
     The Pattern of the myriad Lotos lies,
Unto those clear horizons jasper-pale
Her heavenly Brethren ride in silver mail.

XXXV

WOMAN AND VISION

Vainly the Vision of Life entreats those eyes
     Where stars of glamour mock at revelations.
But singular fiery moments do surprise
     With dreadful or delicious divinations
The whorls of our blue Labyrinth: the sweet
     Blind sense of touch tells like an undersong
Marvellous matters. What though snared feet,
     And wounded hands, and ravelled coils of wrong,
Plead that the solemn Vision might make whole
     Our imperfection?—Fevered second-sight,
Audacious wisdom of the blinded soul,
     Dim delicate auroras of delight
That thrill the Dark from startled finger-tips,
Are ye less precious an Apocalypse?

XXXVI

ART AND WOMEN

The Triumph of Art compels few womenkind;
     And these are yoked like slaves to Eros' car,—
No victors they! Yet ours the Dream behind,
     Who are nearer to the gods than poets are.
For with the silver moons we wax and wane,
     And with the roses love most woundingly,
And, wrought from flower to fruit with dim rich pain,
     The Orchard of the Pomegranates are we.
For with Demeter still we seek the Spring,
     With Dionysos tread the sacred Vine,
Our broken bodies still imagining
     The mournful Mystery of the Bread and Wine.—
And Art, that fierce confessor of the flowers,
Desires the secret spice of those veiled hours.

XXXVII

DESTINY

The great religions of the Rose and Grape
     Have bound us in to their sad Paradise:
We dream in crucial symbols, nor escape
     The cypress-garden where the slain god lies.
Daughters of lamentation round the Cross
     Where Beauty suffers garlanded with thorn,
Remembrancers through all the Night of Loss,
     We bear the spikenard of the Easter Morn.
The yearning Springs, the brooding Autumns seethe
     Like philtres in our veins. O dark Election,
Are then the sacrificial doors we wreathe
     With lilies fiery gates of Resurrexion?
And does the passion of our spices feed
Love's bright Arabian miracle indeed?

XXXVIII

CONFLICT

Why should a woman find her dream of love
     Irised by the strange ecstasy of Art?
Is not Eros a terrible lord enough
     That she must bear both Hunters of the heart,
The Golden Archer and the Scarlet too?
     Then bitter anomalies annul her choir
Of puissant and subtle instincts, rended through
     By gorgeous dualisms of vain-desire.
For Love outrages Art's clear disciplines,
     And Art lures Love to guilt of cryptic treason:
The spirit of imagination pines,
     Captive in webs of exquisite unreason.
Alas for this translated soul of hers,
The rose's, that must be the garlander's!

XXXIX

PREDECESSORS

Faëry of Sheba, idol moulded in
     Onyx milk-white, moon-mailed and casqued with gems;
Ye gold-swathed queens of Egypt, Isis' kin,
     With bright god-hawks and snakes for diadems;
Serene masque-music of Greek girls that bear
     The sacred Veil to that Athenian feast;
Hypatia, casting from thine ivory chair
     The gods' last challenge to the godless priest;
Fantastic fine Provençals wistfully
     Hearkening Love, the mournful lute player;
Diamond ladies of that Italy
     When Art and Wisdom Passion's angels were—
Ye give this grail (touch with no mad misprision!)
Of Beauty's rose-red miracled tradition.

XL

TRANSITION

But these recoil in riddles and reserves.—
     The dream's untuned. Ah! vanished chords thereof!
Ah! keen divisions of the jangled nerves
     That strung so long the gracious lutes of love!—
Hurry to sell old magian Lamps for new,
     Though beauty's moonlike domes dissolve and pass:
If all things change, ye would be changing too,
     Crazed hearts that know not your desire, alas!
Still, through these wintry treasons that forswear
     The lovely bitter bondage of our god,
Rare perennations of the soul prepare—
     And Music yet shall seal the period
With some new star,—with sad pure hands unveil
For ransomed eyes again the gilded Grail.

XLI

THE VIRTUE OF PRIDE

My troubled bosom shall be cinct with pride,
     Girdled with red asterias. Is it sin
If I have cast lover and friend aside,
     Scorning them as myself who cannot win
The strengths of beauty, the heavenly altitudes?—
     O sad and sacred Spirit of Disdain,
What penances upon thine ivory roods
     Within the burning Castles of thy pain!—
Thy mystic will no motion ever knew
     Outwith the splendid danger of extremes;
Thy sorrowful refusals pass thee through
     The great concentrics of star-builded dreams,
Unto the crypt of absolute ecstasy,
To God or Nothing—where thine heart would be.

XLII

SPELL-BOUND

I have been frozen. Once I was not cold.
     But I have strayed within some glittering
Night Of Lapland miracle, have leagued of old
     With glaives and banners of wild Polar light.
Yet if I could dissolve in tears this core
     Of ice, my heart, undo these crystal spells,
We should be sisters of incense evermore
     Like the crowned Lover of the Canticles.
Through the great honeycomb of my soul should steep
     The secrets of the lilies, and her fire
Be ambergris, her agate flagons keep
     The sorcelled hydromel which brings Desire
To that mysterious Dark where still prevails
The dream of roses and of nightingales.

XLIII

THE NIGHT OBSCURE OF THE SOUL

When the Soul travails in her Night Obscure,
     The nadir of her desperate defeat,
What heavenly dream shall help her to endure,
     What flaming Wisdom be her Paraclete?
No curious Metaphysic can withhold
     The heart from that mandragora she craves:—
Unreasonable, old as Earth is old,
     The blind ecstatic miracle that saves.
Far off the pagan trumpeters of Pride
     Call to the blood.—Love moans.—Some fiery fashion
Of rapture like the anguish of the bride
     Leaps from the dark perfection of the Passion,
Crying: "O beautiful God, still torture me,
For if thou slay me, I will trust in Thee."

XLIV

THE CONQUEST OF IMMORTALITY

Ah! not in earthy dull durations I
     Mine heirdom of Eternity implore.
Give one star-drunken moment ere I die,
     Then doom me dreadless to the implacable Door.
That mystical Assumption shall disown
     Time's haughtiest lieges. Grey mortality
Will disenchant the jewel-breded throne
     Of Cassiopeia when more burningly
My deed exults with angels. I will borrow
     From continuity no larva-lease:
Through sworded crises and great compts of sorrow
     I seek the splendour that shall never cease
Though Death coin from my soul through endless years
Dim drachmas of his infinite arrears.

XLV

WOMEN OF TANAGRA

Have these forgotten they are toys of Death
     That in his sad aphelions of desire
They still regret the joy that perisheth,
     And Spring's great reveries that exceed and tire,—
Faintly accusing Love's unmercied yokes
     With almost wanton grace, the craft and art
Of precious frailty that with subtle strokes
     Of sweetness finds the core of Passion's heart?
They carry fans and mirrors, or make fast
     The mournful flute-like cadence of a veil.
Slight fans that winnowed souls, mirrors that glassed
     The burning brooding wings which never fail!
Still in such lovely vanities to-day
The gods their secret wisdom hide away.

XLVI

THE INVENTORY

TO HER FRIEND

I love all sumptuous things and delicate,
     Ethereal matters richly paradised
In Art's proud certitudes. I love the great
     Greek vases, carven ivory, subtilised
Arras of roses, Magians dyed on glass,
     Graven chalcedony and sardonyx,
Nocturnes that through the nerves like fever pass,
     Arthurian kings, Love on the crucifix,
All sweet mysterious verse, the Byzantine
     Gold chambers of Crivelli, marble that flowers
In shy adoring angels, patterned vine
     And lotos, and emblazoned Books of Hours,—
And you, whose smiling eyes to ironies
Reduce both me and mine idolatries.

XLVII

COMFORT

I

I sang the Dolorous Stroke of Disillusion,
     Yet never have I broken faith with Joy:
Flame-broidered trance and starless cold confusion
     Of slain and flying dreams shall not destroy
The radiant oath to that bright Suzerain
     Whose lightning-lovely succour ambushed lies
Even in the most impossible strait of pain.
     Mystical paradox, divine surprise
Of rapture! By intensities alone
     Their spirits enter in to exultation
For whom the burning winds of their sad zone
     Bear down the Dove of the Imagination,
Who suffer superbly, in scarlet violetted,
As the Sacred Kings of the Lillie mourned their dead.*

* See Favine's "Book of Chivalry."

XLVIII

COMFORT

II

And that is marvellous comfort;—and yet poor
     To what mere woman-mystery can give,
The strange simplicity that will endure
     The pangs of death, most resolute to live.
This God of riddles that shaped a thing so frail
     For his worst torment hid mysterious powers
Within her breast who can like lilies prevail
     Through rains of doom that conquer brassy towers.
Her heart lies broken; when some trivial chord
     Of sweetness chimes reveille through the sense,—
A rose, a song, a smile, a courtly word.
     She wakes, and sighs, and softly passes thence
Back to the masquers, though her soul's veiled Pyx
Enclose the solemn fruits of the Crucifix.

XLIX

THE CHANGE

I spun my soul about with soft cocoons
     Of pleasure golden-pale. For me, for me
Were precious things put forth by crescent moons,
     Of pearl and milky jade and ivory.
Grave players on ethereal harpsichords,
     My senses wrought a music exquisite
As patterned roses, all my life's accords
     Were richer, ghostlier than peacocks white.
So in my paradise reserved and fair
     I grew as dreamlike as the Elysian dead;
Until a passing Wizard smote me there,
     And suddenly my soul inherited
Some gorgeous terrible dukedom of desire
Like those in bright Andromeda's realms of fire.

L

AT THE END

The fiery permutations of the soul
     Are infinite, but how to be revealed?
On what impassive matter must the whole
     Inveterate coil of good and ill be sealed!
How much too simple all the tale of deeds
     To pattern out these labyrinthine things,
These knots of bright unreason, ghostly bredes
     Veiled weavers weave, moving with silver wings
Within the duskling sense. Most diverse visions
     Their visionaries darkly reconcile
At one sad end. Fate's delicate derisions
     Through the same hell of penance may beguile
Two women, who meet with alien eyes downcast;
Yet one stand first with Love, and one the last.

LI

THE SOUL OF AGE

I have seen delicate aged women wrought
     Most tenderly by Time, their passionate past
By the wise vigils of forgiving thought
     Amerced of pain, mere beauty at the last.
So may my soul be chaste, serene, enriched
     Like an Etruscan mirror one has found
In kind oblivions, graciously bewitched
     With precious patinas, a various round
Of milky opal, or turkis, or emerald,
     Glistered with rubies faint and smoky pearls,
Where swirls of incised pattern have enthralled
     Figures of sweet archaic gods and girls,
And I shall say: "Thou art a curious toy,
O soul that mirrored Love and Wrath and Joy!"

LI I

HYPNEROTOMACHIA

Ah! Pride and Wrath and Mirth and Pain and Pity,
     Some amethystine day at last will be,
When your bright guard and Phantasy's hill-city
     Shall be like wonders on a tapestry;
And we shall touch between tired orisons
     The symbolism of those freaked crowns and wings,—
Then gaze across the falling Avalons,
     The resignations of autumnal things,
And see among the pointed cypresses
     The one god left, the smiling perverse god,
The Love that will not leave the loverless,
     Contending with the Stranger of the Rod,—
Until these twain become as one, and all
The Soul and Sense be starrily vesperal.

LIII

THE REVOLT

Not so, my Soul? Rather for thee the fate
     Of those hieratic Carthaginian queens
Who needs must vanish through the gods' own gate,
     Even holy Flame, with music and great threnes
Idolatrous, as on soft gorgeous wings,
     If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed
Their beauty's sacred unisons?—Fair things
     Desire their revel-raiment be their shroud.
Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage!
     Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth,
These penitential usages of age
     That expiate proud cruelties of youth,
And bring thee to the last and perfect art,
To love the lovely with a selfless heart?

LIV

AFTER MANY YEARS

By mute communions and by salt sad kisses,
     By Pity's webs that still with fiery strands
Wove us together, by the unplumbed abysses
     Where we have gazed and never loosened hands,
By holy water we have given each other
     At Beauty's blessed doors, and by the hearts
Of sweet Delight and Agony her brother,
     By bright new marriages in all great arts,
By the rare wisdom like miraculous amber
     Won by the desolate grey sound of tears,
By wedding-music of the flute and tambour
     Prevailing o'er Time's cruel plot of years,
By all the proud prayers granted and denied us,
Fate has no sword at all that can divide us.

LV

TREASURE

Not mine the silver ride of the redeemer,
     Not mine the secret vision of the saint,
Not mine the martyrdoms of Truth's dark dreamer
     Nor bitter beatitudes of Art. O quaint
Undoing of youth's horoscope! No splendours
     Nor laurels, nor wisdom in a myrrhine bowl!
Here is the treasure that the past surrenders,
     A spoil of roses coffered in the soul,—
Much like another woman's! Rare perfumes
     And cleaving thorns, faded pathetic store
Of kisses and sighs, would those heroic dooms
     I craved of old have yet enriched me more?
I have not dwelt in Galilee nor Tyre
Nor Athens. But I have my heart's desire.

LVI

THE SOUL TO THE BODY

I know thou hast a secret of thine own
     Which I desire. But once I broke with thee
And walked among the asphodel alone:
     Therefore thou wilt reserve this reverie,
Like sumptuous flame closed up in alabaster.
     They half betray, these curious magian hands:
Faint music of thy breast has throbbed the faster,
     If I have touched it with my charming-wands.
And yet,—the wonder any woman knows
     Thou dost deny the proud Soul that has fed
Among the lilies of the White Eros.—
     Ere I go down among the witless Dead
Give, give the secret, for my bliss or rue,
Lest lack of that should craze my wisdom through.

LVII

THE IRONIST

Among high gods the absolute ironist
     Is Love. Therefore, when some cleft lightning mocks
Thine arrogant rapture, sad idealist,
     Admire the wild play of his paradox.
Great satires of reversal have astounded
     His bigots: proud fine dreamers confident
Before an idol in their image are hounded
     Through comedies of disillusionment.
Not heavenly Plato, not the Florentine,
     Not any mage of Epipsychidion
Can the true nature of the god divine.
     Heresiarchs like Heine and like Donne,
Bitter and sweet, and hot and cold, know best
The incomparable anguish of his jest.

LVIII

IN VAIN

I said: "Confession's bitter cautery
     Shall fierily search my soul, destroy her ill."
Natheless, the wounded wasting malady
     Is her unexorcised sad sovran still.
Oh! that alembic fever of interwed
     Desire and dream and sense, rapture and rue!
As soon as my sincerest words are said
     And heard they seem apostate and untrue.
For only speech more richly dubious
     Than shoaling water, or a ringdove's breast,
Than lighted incense more miraculous
     With fumes of strange remembrance, could attest
The morbid beauty of that wasting ill
Whereof I am the cureless lover still.

LIX

RESERVATIONS

Though cold clear cruelties like diamond
     Burthen this silken text of dim surmise,
Surely thou knowest I am pity's bond
     If one but look at me with stricken eyes.
If like a herald I have blazoned Pride,
     I am Humility's own renegade.
For fruits of good and evil have I sighed?
     If Love forbid them, Love shall be obeyed.
Though the wroth soul may excommunicate
     Her body, yet I see the flagrant strife
Of earthy and heavenly elements create
     Colour, change, music. For the Tree of Life
Burns with this precious mystery of sorrows
That Love the Phoenix find immortal morrows.

LX

THE NEW LOVE

Ah! what if thy last canticle be said,
     Bright Archer of illusion adored of old,
Thou dream-fast Love in raiment burning-red,
     Wreathed with white doves, quivered with burning gold?
Pass with thy Triumph of Lovers, Aucassin,
     Tristram, and Pharamond, and Lancelot,
Dante, and Rudel, all thy haughty kin,
     Princes in that high heaven, as we are not.—
With some gilt couchant sphinx both casqued and crowned,
     All mailed in amethyst the new god comes,
Whose brooding beautiful eyes at last have found
     Our uncanonical dark martyrdoms,
Who from the sombre catacombs of these
Brings his great miracles and mysteries.

LXI

THE WAYS OF LOVE

Hail the implacable Iconoclast
     Whose images of ivory and gold
Make proud the dust that his enthusiast
     In her dark trance may very God behold.
From the clear music of his delicate
     Peripheries and porches of delight
He draws her down through cruel gate on gate,
     Through immemorial, blind, implacable rite
That strips her of her dream-branched veils of youth,
     And naked, agonised like trodden grapes,
Drags her before the imperishable Truth,
     The flaming Ecstacy wherefrom he shapes
Real myth and doctrine. Therefore I lift up
My heart like some great jubilant scarlet Cup.

THE EPILOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN

Take back this armour. Give us broideries.
     Against the Five sad Wounds inveterate
In our dim sense, can that defend, or these?
     In veils mysterious and delicate
Clothe us again, in beautiful broideries.

Take back this justice. Give us thuribles.
     While ye do loudly in the battle-dust,
We feed the gods with spice and canticles.
     To our strange hearts, as theirs, just and unjust
Are idle words. Give graven thuribles.

Keep orb and sceptre. Give us up your souls
     That our long fingers wake them verily
Like dulcimers and citherns and violes;
     Or at the burning disk of ecstasy
Impose rare sigils on your gem-like souls.

Give mercies, cruelties, and exultations,
     Give the long trances of the breaking heart;
And we shall bring you great imaginations
     To urge you through the agony of Art.
Give cloud and flame, give trances, exultations.