The Unknown Eros Part 5

The spectre-haunted time of idle Night, Your only fear, Thank G.o.d, is done, And Day and War, Man's work-time and delight, Begun.

Ho, ye of the van there, veterans great of cheer, Look to your footing, when, from yonder verge, The wish'd Sun shall emerge; Lest once again the Flower of Sharon bloom After a way the Stalk call heresy.

Strange splendour and strange gloom Alike confuse the path Of customary faith; And when the dim-seen mountains turn to flame And every roadside atom is a spark, The dazzled sense, that used was to the dark, May well doubt, 'Is't the safe way and the same By which we came From Egypt, and to Canaan mean to go?'

But know, The clearness then so marvellously increas'd, The light'ning s.h.i.+ning Westward from the East, Is the great promised sign Of His victorious and divine Approach, whose coming in the clouds shall be, As erst was His humility, A stumbling unto some, the first bid to the Feast.

Cry, Ho!

Good speed to them that come and them that go From either gathering host, And, after feeble, false allegiance, now first know Their post.

Ho, ye Who loved our Flag Only because there flapp'd none other rag Which gentlemen might doff to, and such be, 'Save your gentility!

For leagued, alas, are we With many a faithful rogue Discrediting bright Truth with dirt and brogue; And flatterers, too, That still would sniff the gra.s.s After the 'broider'd shoe, And swear it smelt like musk where He did pa.s.s, Though he were Borgia or Caiaphas.

Ho, ye Who dread the bondage of the boundless fields Which Heaven's allegiance yields, And, like to house-hatch'd finches, hop not free Unless 'tween walls of wire, Look, there be many cages: choose to your desire!

Ho, ye, Of G.o.d the least beloved, of Man the most, That like not leaguing with the lesser host, Behold the invested Mount, And that a.s.saulting Sea with ne'er a coast.

You need not stop to count!

But come up, ye Who adore, in any way, Our G.o.d by His wide-honour'd Name of YEA.

Come up; for where ye stand ye cannot stay.

Come all That either mood of heavenly joyance know, And, on the ladder hierarchical, Have seen the order'd Angels to and fro Descending with the pride of service sweet, Ascending, with the rapture of receipt!

Come who have felt, in soul and heart and sense, The entire obedience Which opes the bosom, like a blissful wife, To the Husband of all life!

Come ye that find contentment's very core In the light store And daisied path Of Poverty, And know how more A small thing that the righteous hath Availeth than the unG.o.dly's riches great.

Come likewise ye Which do not yet disown as out of date That brightest third of the dead Virtues three, Of Love the crown elate And daintiest glee!

Come up, come up, and join our little band.

Our time is near at hand.

The sanction of the world's undying hate Means more than flaunted flags in windy air.

Be ye of gathering fate Now gladly ware.

Now from the matrix, by G.o.d's grinding wrought, The brilliant shall be brought; The white stone mystic set between the eyes Of them that get the prize; Yea, part and parcel of that mighty Stone Which shall be thrown Into the Sea, and Sea shall be no more.

V. SPONSA DEI.

What is this Maiden fair, The laughing of whose eye Is in man's heart renew'd virginity; Who yet sick longing breeds For marriage which exceeds The inventive guess of Love to satisfy With hope of utter binding, and of loosing endless dear despair?

What gleams about her s.h.i.+ne, More transient than delight and more divine!

If she does something but a little sweet, As gaze towards the gla.s.s to set her hair, See how his soul falls humbled at her feet!

Her gentle step, to go or come, Gains her more merit than a martyrdom; And, if she dance, it doth such grace confer As opes the heaven of heavens to more than her, And makes a rival of her wors.h.i.+pper.

To die unknown for her were little cost!

So is she without guile, Her mere refused smile Makes up the sum of that which may be lost!

Who is this Fair Whom each hath seen, The darkest once in this bewailed dell, Be he not destin'd for the glooms of h.e.l.l?

Whom each hath seen And known, with sharp remorse and sweet, as Queen And tear-glad Mistress of his hopes of bliss, Too fair for man to kiss?

Who is this only happy She, Whom, by a frantic flight of courtesy, Born of despair Of better lodging for his Spirit fair, He adores as Margaret, Maude, or Cecily?

And what this sigh, That each one heaves for Earth's last lowlihead And the Heaven high Ineffably lock'd in dateless bridal-bed?

Are all, then, mad, or is it prophecy?

'Sons now we are of G.o.d,' as we have heard, 'But what we shall be hath not yet appear'd.'

O, Heart, remember thee, That Man is none, Save One.

What if this Lady be thy Soul, and He Who claims to enjoy her sacred beauty be, Not thou, but G.o.d; and thy sick fire A female vanity, Such as a Bride, viewing her mirror'd charms, Feels when she sighs, 'All these are for his arms!'

A reflex heat Flash'd on thy cheek from His immense desire, Which waits to crown, beyond thy brain's conceit, Thy nameless, secret, hopeless longing sweet, Not by-and-by, but now, Unless deny Him thou!

VI. LEGEM TUAM DILEXI.

The 'Infinite.' Word horrible! at feud With life, and the braced mood Of power and joy and love; Forbidden, by wise heathen ev'n, to be Spoken of Deity, Whose Name, on popular altars, was 'The Unknown,'

Because, or ere It was reveal'd as One Confined in Three, The people fear'd that it might prove Infinity, The blazon which the devils desired to gain; And G.o.d, for their confusion, laugh'd consent; Yet did so far relent, That they might seek relief, and not in vain, In das.h.i.+ng of themselves against the sh.o.r.es of pain.

Nor bides alone in h.e.l.l The bond-disdaining spirit boiling to rebel.

But for compulsion of strong grace, The pebble in the road Would straight explode, And fill the ghastly boundlessness of s.p.a.ce.

The furious power, To soft growth twice constrain'd in leaf and flower, Protests, and longs to flash its faint self far Beyond the dimmest star.

The same Seditious flame, Beat backward with reduplicated might, Struggles alive within its stricter term, And is the worm.

And the just Man does on himself affirm G.o.d's limits, and is conscious of delight, Freedom and right; And so His Semblance is, Who, every hour, By day and night, Buildeth new bulwarks 'gainst the Infinite.

For, ah, who can express How full of bonds and simpleness Is G.o.d, How narrow is He, And how the wide, waste field of possibility Is only trod Straight to His homestead in the human heart, And all His art Is as the babe's that wins his Mother to repeat Her little song so sweet!

What is the chief news of the Night?

Lo, iron and salt, heat, weight and light In every star that drifts on the great breeze!

And these Mean Man, Darling of G.o.d, Whose thoughts but live and move Round him; Who woos his will To wedlock with His own, and does distil To that drop's span The atta of all rose-fields of all love!

Therefore the soul select a.s.sumes the stress Of bonds unbid, which G.o.d's own style express Better than well, And aye hath, cloister'd, borne, To the Clown's scorn, The fetters of the threefold golden chain: Narrowing to nothing all his worldly gain; (Howbeit in vain; For to have nought Is to have all things without care or thought!) Surrendering, abject, to his equal's rule, As though he were a fool, The free wings of the will; (More vainly still; For none knows rightly what 'tis to be free But only he Who, vow'd against all choice, and fill'd with awe Of the ofttimes dumb or clouded Oracle, Does wiser than to spell, In his own suit, the least word of the Law!) And, lastly, bartering life's dear bliss for pain; But evermore in vain; For joy (rejoice ye Few that tasted have!) Is Love's obedience Against the genial laws of natural sense, Whose wide, self-dissipating wave, Prison'd in artful d.y.k.es, Trembling returns and strikes Thence to its source again, In backward billows fleet, Crest crossing crest ecstatic as they greet, Thrilling each vein, Exploring every chasm and cove Of the full heart with floods of honied love, And every princ.i.p.al street And obscure alley and lane Of the intricate brain With br.i.m.m.i.n.g rivers of light and breezes sweet Of the primordial heat; Till, unto view of me and thee, Lost the intense life be, Or ludicrously display'd, by force Of distance; as a soaring eagle, or a horse On far-off hillside shewn, May seem a gust-driv'n rag or a dead stone.

Nor by such bonds alone-- But more I leave to say, Fitly revering the Wild a.s.s's bray, Also his hoof, Of which, go where you will, the marks remain Where the religious walls have hid the bright reproof.

VII. TO THE BODY.

Creation's and Creator's crowning good; Wall of infinitude; Foundation of the sky, In Heaven forecast And long'd for from eternity, Though laid the last; Reverberating dome, Of music cunningly built home Against the void and indolent disgrace Of unresponsive s.p.a.ce; Little, sequester'd pleasure-house For G.o.d and for His Spouse; Elaborately, yea, past conceiving, fair, Since, from the graced decorum of the hair, Ev'n to the tingling, sweet Soles of the simple, earth-confiding feet, And from the inmost heart Outwards unto the thin Silk curtains of the skin, Every least part Astonish'd hears And sweet replies to some like region of the spheres; Form'd for a dignity prophets but darkly name, Lest shameless men cry 'Shame!'

So rich with wealth conceal'd That Heaven and h.e.l.l fight chiefly for this field; Clinging to everything that pleases thee With indefectible fidelity; Alas, so true To all thy friends.h.i.+ps that no grace Thee from thy sin can wholly disembrace; Which thus 'bides with thee as the Jebusite, That, maugre all G.o.d's promises could do, The chosen People never conquer'd quite; Who therefore lived with them, And that by formal truce and as of right, In metropolitan Jerusalem.

For which false fealty Thou needs must, for a season, lie In the grave's arms, foul and unshriven, Albeit, in Heaven, Thy crimson-throbbing Glow Into its old abode aye pants to go, And does with envy see Enoch, Elijah, and the Lady, she Who left the roses in her body's lieu.

O, if the pleasures I have known in thee But my poor faith's poor first-fruits be, What quintessential, keen, ethereal bliss Then shall be his Who has thy birth-time's consecrating dew For death's sweet chrism retain'd, Quick, tender, virginal, and unprofaned!

VIII. 'SING US ONE OF THE SONGS OF SION.'

How sing the Lord's Song in so strange a Land?

A torrid waste of water-mocking sand; Oases of wild grapes; A dull, malodorous fog O'er a once Sacred River's wandering strand, Its ancient tillage all gone back to bog; A busy synod of blest cats and apes Exposing the poor trick of earth and star With wors.h.i.+pp'd snouts oracular; Prophets to whose blind stare The heavens the glory of G.o.d do not declare, Skill'd in such question nice As why one conjures toads who fails with lice, And hatching snakes from sticks in such a swarm As quite to surfeit Aaron's bigger worm; A nation which has got A lie in her right hand, And knows it not; With Pharaohs to her mind, each drifting as a log Which way the foul stream flows, More harden'd the more plagued with fly and frog!

How should sad Exile sing in such a Land?

How should ye understand?

What could he win but jeers, Or howls, such as sweet music draws from dog, Who told of marriage-feasting to the man That nothing knows of food but bread of bran?

Besides, if aught such ears Might e'er unclog, There lives but one, with tones for Sion meet.

Behoveful, zealous, beautiful, elect, Mild, firm, judicious, loving, bold, discreet, Without superfluousness, without defect, Few are his words, and find but scant respect, Nay, scorn from some, for G.o.d's good cause agog.

Silence in such a Land is oftenest such men's speech.

O, that I might his holy secret reach; O, might I catch his mantle when he goes; O, that I were so gentle and so sweet, So I might deal fair Sion's foolish foes Such blows!

IX. DELICIAE SAPIENTIAE DE AMORE.

Love, light for me Thy ruddiest blazing torch, That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch Of the glad Palace of Virginity, May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see; For, crown'd with roses all, 'Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival!

But first warn off the beatific spot Those wretched who have not Even afar beheld the s.h.i.+ning wall, And those who, once beholding, have forgot, And those, most vile, who dress The charnel spectre drear Of utterly dishallow'd nothingness In that refulgent fame, And cry, Lo, here!

And name The Lady whose smiles inflame The sphere.

Bring, Love, anear, And bid be not afraid Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid, And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought; For I will sing of nought Less sweet to hear Than seems A music in their half-remember'd dreams.

The magnet calls the steel: Answers the iron to the magnet's breath; What do they feel But death!

The clouds of summer kiss in flame and rain, And are not found again; But the heavens themselves eternal are with fire Of unapproach'd desire, By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest, In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess'd.

O, spousals high; O, doctrine blest, Unutterable in even the happiest sigh; This know ye all Who can recall With what a welling of indignant tears Love's simpleness first hears The meaning of his mortal covenant, And from what pride comes down To wear the crown Of which 'twas very heaven to feel the want.