The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 89

My G.o.ddess sinks; round Latmos' darkening brow Trembles the parting of her presence now, Faint as the perfume left upon the gra.s.s By her limbs' pressure or her feet that pa.s.s 110 By me conjectured, but conjectured so As things I touch far fainter substance show.

Was it mine eyes' imposture I have seen Flit with the moonbeams on from shade to sheen Through the wood-openings? Nay, I see her now Out of her heaven new-lighted, from her brow The hair breeze-scattered, like loose mists that blow Across her crescent, goldening as they go High-kirtled for the chase, and what was shown, Of maiden rondure, like the rose half-blown. 120 If dream, turn real! If a vision, stay!

Take mortal shape, my philtre's spell obey!

If hags compel thee from thy secret sky With gruesome incantations, why not I, Whose only magic is that I distil A potion, blent of pa.s.sion, thought, and will, Deeper in reach, in force of fate more rich, Than e'er was juice wrung by Thessalian witch From moon-enchanted herbs,--a potion brewed Of my best life in each diviner mood? 130 Myself the elixir am, myself the bowl Seething and mantling with my soul of soul.

Taste and be humanized: what though the cup, With thy lips frenzied, shatter? Drink it up!

If but these arms may clasp, o'erquited so, My world, thy heaven, all life means I shall know.

V

Sure she hath heard my prayer and granted half, As G.o.ds do who at mortal madness laugh.

Yet if life's solid things illusion seem, Why may not substance wear the mask of dream? 140 In sleep she comes; she visits me in dreams, And, as her image in a thousand streams, So in my veins, that her obey, she sees, Floating and flaming there, her images Bear to my little world's remotest zone Glad messages of her, and her alone.

With silence-sandalled Sleep she comes to me, (But softer-footed, sweeter-browed, than she,) In motion gracious as a seagull's wing, And all her bright limbs, moving, seem to sing. 150 Let me believe so, then, if so I may With the night's bounty feed my beggared day.

In dreams I see her lay the G.o.ddess down With bow and quiver, and her crescent-crown Flicker and fade away to dull eclipse As down to mine she deigns her longed-for lips; And as her neck my happy arms enfold, Flooded and l.u.s.tred with her loosened gold, She whispers words each sweeter than a kiss: Then, wakened with the shock of sudden bliss, 160 My arms are empty, my awakener fled, And, silent in the silent sky o'erhead, But coldly as on ice-plated snow, she gleams, Herself the mother and the child of dreams.

VI

Gone is the time when phantasms could appease My quest phantasmal and bring cheated ease; When, if she glorified my dreams, I felt Through all my limbs a change immortal melt At touch of hers illuminate with soul.

Not long could I be stilled with Fancy's dole; 170 Too soon the mortal mixture in me caught Red fire from her celestial flame, and fought For tyrannous control in all my veins: My fool's prayer was accepted; what remains?

Or was it some eidolon merely, sent By her who rules the shades in banishment, To mock me with her semblance? Were it thus, How 'scape I shame, whose will was traitorous?

What shall compensate an ideal dimmed?

How blanch again my statue virgin-limbed, 180 Soiled with the incense-smoke her chosen priest Poured more profusely as within decreased The fire unearthly, fed with coals from far Within the soul's shrine? Could my fallen star Be set in heaven again by prayers and tears And quenchless sacrifice of all my years, How would the victim to the flamen leap, And life for life's redemption paid hold cheap!

But what resource when she herself descends From her blue throne, and o'er her va.s.sal bends 190 That shape thrice-deified by love, those eyes Wherein the Lethe of all others lies?

When my white queen of heaven's remoteness tires, Herself against her other self conspires, Takes woman's nature, walks in mortal ways, And finds in my remorse her beauty's praise?

Yet all would I renounce to dream again The dream in dreams fulfilled that made my pain, My n.o.ble pain that heightened all my years With crowns to win and prowess-breeding tears; 200 Nay, would that dream renounce once more to see Her from her sky there looking down at me!

VII

G.o.ddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be once more An inaccessible splendor to adore, A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth As bred enn.o.bling discontent with earth; Give back the longing, back the elated mood That, fed with thee, spurned every meaner good; Give even the spur of impotent despair That, without hope, still bade aspire and dare; 210 Give back the need to wors.h.i.+p, that still pours Down to the soul the virtue it adores!

Nay, brightest and most beautiful, deem naught These frantic words, the reckless wind of thought; Still stoop, still grant,--I live but in thy will; Be what thou wilt, but be a woman still!

Vainly I cried, nor could myself believe That what I prayed for I would fain receive; My moon is set; my vision set with her; No more can wors.h.i.+p vain my pulses stir. 220 G.o.ddess Triform, I own thy triple spell, My heaven's queen,--queen, too, of my earth and h.e.l.l!

THE BLACK PREACHER

A BRETON LEGEND

At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, They show you a church, or rather the gray Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach With the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach, Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone, 'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone; 'Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to see That may have their teaching for you and me.

Something like this, then, my guide had to tell, Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell; 10 But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench, He talking his _patois_ and I English-French, I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone, In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own.

An abbey-church stood here, once on a time, Built as a death-bed atonement for crime: 'Twas for somebody's sins, I know not whose; But sinners are plenty, and you can choose.

Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat, 'Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat, 20 Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl, Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul.

But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire, And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary, Where only the wind sings _miserere_.

No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot, Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root, Nor sound of service is ever heard, Except from throat of the unclean bird, 30 Hooting to una.s.soiled shapes as they pa.s.s In midnights unholy his witches' ma.s.s, Or shouting 'Ho! ho!' from the belfry high As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by.

But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal m.u.f.fled with sea-mists mirk, The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful nicker of corpse-lights blue, 40 And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death.

Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fair Hear the dull summons and gather there: No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail, Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale; No knight whispers love in the _chatelaine's_ ear, His next-door neighbor this five-hundred year; No monk has a sleek _benedicite_ For the great lord shadowy now as he; 50 Nor needeth any to hold his breath, Lest he lose the least word of Doctor Death.

He chooses his text in the Book Divine, Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter nine: '"Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to do, That do with thy whole might, or thou shalt rue; For no man is wealthy, or wise, or brave, In that quencher of might-be's and would-be's, the grave."

Bid by the Bridegroom, "To-morrow," ye said, And To-morrow was digging a trench for your bed; 60 Ye said, "G.o.d can wait; let us finish our wine;"

Ye had wearied Him, fools, and that last knock was mine!'

But I can't pretend to give you the sermon, Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, or German; Whatever he preached in, I give you my word The meaning was easy to all that heard; Famous preachers there have been and be, But never was one so convincing as he; So blunt was never a begging friar, No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire, 70 Cameronian never, nor Methodist, Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a twist.

And would you know who his hearers must be?

I tell you just what my guide told me: Excellent teaching men have, day and night, From two earnest friars, a black and a white, The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life; And between these two there is never strife, For each has his separate office and station, And each his own work in the congregation; 80 Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears, And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears, Awake In his coffin must wait and wait, In that blackness of darkness that means _too late_, And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls, As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls, To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brine Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine.

ARCADIA REDIVIVA

I, walking the familiar street, While a crammed horse-car jingled through it, Was lifted from my prosy feet And in Arcadia ere I knew it.

Fresh sward for gravel soothed my tread, And shepherd's pipes my ear delighted; The riddle may be lightly read: I met two lovers newly plighted.

They murmured by in happy care, New plans for paradise devising, 10 Just as the moon, with pensive stare, O'er Mistress Craigie's pines was rising.

Astarte, known nigh threescore years, Me to no speechless rapture urges; Them in Elysium she enspheres, Queen, from of old, of thaumaturges.

The railings put forth bud and bloom, The house-fronts all with myrtles twine them, And light-winged Loves in every room Make nests, and then with kisses line them. 20

O sweetness of untasted life!

O dream, its own supreme fulfillment!

O hours with all illusion rife, As ere the heart divined what ill meant!

'_Et ego_', sighed I to myself, And strove some vain regrets to bridle, 'Though now laid dusty on the shelf, Was hero once of such an idyl!

'An idyl ever newly sweet, Although since Adam's day recited, 30 Whose measures time them to Love's feet, Whose sense is every ill requited.'

Maiden, if I may counsel, drain Each drop of this enchanted season, For even our honeymoons must wane, Convicted of green cheese by Reason.

And none will seem so safe from change, Nor in such skies benignant hover, As this, beneath whose witchery strange You tread on rose-leaves with your lover. 40

The gla.s.s unfilled all tastes can fit, As round its brim Conjecture dances; For not Mephisto's self hath wit To draw such vintages as Fancy's.

When our pulse beats its minor key, When play-time halves and school-time doubles, Age fills the cup with serious tea, Which once Dame Clicquot starred with bubbles.

'Fie, Mr. Graybeard! Is this wise?

Is this the moral of a poet, 50 Who, when the plant of Eden dies, Is privileged once more to sow it!