Emblems Of Love Part 22

G.o.d hath given me beauty, and I may Snare with it him whose trap now bites my folk.

There is naught else to think of. Let me go And set those robes in order which best pleased Mana.s.ses' living eyes; and let me fill My gown with jewels, such as kindle sight, And have some stinging sweetness in my hair.-- Mana.s.ses, my Mana.s.ses, lost to me, Gone where my love can nothing search, and hidden Behind the vapours of these worldly years, The many years between me and thy death; Thine ears are sealed with immortal blessedness Against our miserable din of living; Through thy pure sense goeth no soil of grief.

Forgive me! for thou hast left me here to be hurt And moved to pity by the dolour of men.

The garment of my soul is splasht with sorrow, Sorrowful noise and sight; and like to fires Of venom spat on me, the sorrow eats Through the thin robe of sense into my soul.

And it is cried against me, this keen anguish, By my own people and my G.o.d's;--and thou Didst love them. Therefore thou must needs forgive me, That I devise how this my beauty, this Sacred to thy long-dead joy of desire, May turn to weapon in the hand of G.o.d; Such weapon as he hath taken aforetime To sword whole nations at a stroke to their knees,-- Storms of the air and hilted fire from heaven, And sightless edge of pestilence hugely swung Down on the bulk of armies in the night.

Such weapon in G.o.d's hand, and wielded so, A woman's beauty may be now, I pray; A pestilence suddenly in this foreign blood, A blight on the vast growth of a.s.syrian weed, A knife to the stem of its main root, the heart Of Holofernes. G.o.d! Let me hew him down, And out of the ground of Israel wither our plague!

II

BEFORE THE TENT OF HOLOFERNES

_Holofernes_.

Night and her admirable stars again!

And I again envying her and questioning!

What hast thou, Night, achieved, denied to me, That maketh thee so full of quiet stars?

What beauty has been mingled into thee So that thy depth burns with the peace of stars?-- I now with fires of uproarious heat, Exclaiming yellow flames and towering splendour And a huge fragrant smoke of precious woods, Must build against thy overlooking, Stars, And against thy terrible eternal news Of Beauty that burns quietly and pure, A lodge of wild extravagant earthly fire; Even as under pa.s.sions of fleshly pleasure I hide myself from my desiring soul.

[_Enter Guards with_ JUDITH.

_Guard_ 1.

We found this woman wandering in the trenches, And calling out, "Take me to Holofernes, a.s.syrians, I am come for Holofernes."

_Guard_ 2.

She would not, for no words of ours, unveil, And something held us back from handling her.

_Guard_ 1.

We think she must be beautiful, although She is so stubborn with that veil of hers.

_Guard_ 2.

We minded my lord's word, that he be shewn All the seized women which are strangely fair.

_Holofernes_.

Take off thy veil.

_Judith_.

I will not.

_Holofernes_.

Take thy veil From off thy face, Jewess, or thou straight goest To entertain my soldiers.

_Judith_.

I will not.

_Holofernes_.

Am I to tear it, then?

_Judith_.

My lord, thou durst not.

_Holofernes_.

Ha, there is spirit here. I have the whim, Jewess, almost to believe thee: I dare not!

But tell me who thou art.

_Judith_.

That shalt thou know Before the night has end.

_Holofernes_.

Take off thy veil.

_Judith_.

Alone for Holofernes am I come.

_Holofernes_.

And there is only Holofernes here.

These fellows are but thoughts of mine; my whole Army, that treads down all the earth and breaks The banks of fending rivers into marsh, Is nought but my forth-going imagination.

Where I am, there is no man else: if I Appeared before thee in a throng of spears, I'ld stand alone before thee, girt about By powers of my mind made visible.

_Judith_.

For captured peasants or for captured kings Such words would have the right big sound. But I Am woman, and I hear them not: I say I will not, before any man but thee, Make known my face; I am only for thee.

When I have thee alone and in thy tent I will unveil.

_Holofernes (to the Guards)_.

What! Staring?--Hence, you dogs!

III

IN THE TENT OF HOLOFERNES

_Holofernes (alone with Judith)_.

Thou art the woman! Thou hast come to me!-- O not as I thought! not with senses blazing Far into my deep soul abiding calm Within their glory of knowledge, as the vast Of night behind her outward sense of stars.

Now am I but the place thy beauty brightens, And of myself I have no light of sense Nor certainty of being: I am made Empty of all my wont of life before thee, A vessel where thy splendour may be poured, After the way the great vessel of air Accepts the morning power of the sun.

Now nothing I have known of me remains, Save that, within me, far as the world is high Beneath this dawn that gilds my spirit's air, Some depth, more inward even than my soul, Troubles and flashes like the s.h.i.+ning sea.

O Jewish woman, if thou knewest all The hunger and the tears the punisht world Suffers by cause of thee, and of my dream That thou wert somewhere hidden in mankind!

I could not but obey my dream, and toil To break the nations and to sift them fine, Pounding them with my warfare into dust, And searching with my many iron hands Through their destruction as through crumbs of marl, Until my palms should know the jewel-stone Betwixt them, the Woman who is Beauty,-- Nature so long hath like a miser kept Buried away from me in this heap of Jews!

Now that we twain might meet, women and men In every land where I have felt for thee Have taken desolation for their home, Crying against me,--and against thee unknowing.

Ah, but I had given over to despair The mind in me, I ground the stubborn tribes, I quarried them like rocks and broke them small And ground them down to flinders and to sands; But never gleamed the jewel-stone therein, Naught but the common flint of earth I found.

And in a dreary anger I kept on a.s.sailing the whole kind of man, because Some manner of war my soul must needs inhabit.

Like a man making himself in drunken sleep A king, my soul, drunk with its earthly war, Kept idle all its terrible want of thee, Believed itself managing arms with G.o.d; Yea, when my trampling hurry through the earth Made cloudy wind of the light human dust, I thought myself to move in the dark danger Of blinding G.o.d's own face with blasts of war!

Until my rage forgot his crime against me, His hiding thee, the beauty I had dreamt.

Yea and I filled my flesh with furious pleasure, That in the noise of it my soul should hear No whispering thought of desperate desire.

Nevertheless, I knew well that my heart's Sightless imagination lifted his face Continually awake for news of thee.

But 'twas infirm and crazy waking, like As when a starving sentry, put to guard The sleep of a broken soldiery that flees Through winter of wild hills from hounding foes, Hath but the pain of frozen wounds, and fear Feeding on his dark spirit, to watch withal.

And lo, As suddenly, as blessedly thou comest Now to my heart's unseeing watch for thee, As out of the night behind him into the heart, Drugg'd senseless with its ache, of that lost soldier An arrow leaps, and ere the stab can hurt, His frozen waking is the ease of death.

So I am killed by thee; all the loud pain Of pleasure that had lockt my heart in life, Wherein with blinded and unhearing face My hope of thee yet stood and strained to look And listen for thy coming,--all this life Is killed before thee; yea, like marvellous death, Spiritual sense invests my heart's desire; And round the quiet and content thereof, The striving hunger of my fleshly sense Fails like a web of hanging cloth in fire.-- Tell me now, if thou knowest, why thou hast come!