Against these desert howlings, and rejoice:
Now surely do I crave
To treble this my beauty, and embalm
My words with deathless thrill, singing the psalm
Of pleasure to thee, King,--so I may save
Thy fair days from this grave.
“Yea, now of all my beauty will I strive
With these mad prophesiers till I drive
Their ravings from thine ear:
Against their rudeness I will set my grace,
My softness, and the magic of my face;
And spite of all their curses thou shalt hear
And let my voice draw near:
“Against their loud revilings I will try
The long low-speaking pleadings of my sigh,
All my heart’s tender way;
Against their deserts--here, before thine eyes
My love shall open thee a paradise,
Where, if thou comest, thou shalt surely stay
And seek no better way:
“And rather than these haters of thy joy
Should anyhow allure thee to destroy
Thy heart’s prosperity,--
O, I will throw my woman’s arms entwined
About thy body; ere thy lips can find
One word of yielding, I will kiss them dry:
--And failing, let me die!
“But look on me, for it is in my soul
To make the measure of thy glory whole--
With many goodly things
To crown thee, yea, with pleasure and with love,
Till there shall scarcely be a name above
King Herod’s, in the mouth of one who sings
The fame of mighty kings:
“For see how great and fair a realm is this--
My untried love--the never conquered bliss
All hoarded in my breast;
My beauty and my love were jewels meet
To make the glory of a king complete,
And I,--O thou of kingship half-possest--
Can crown thee with the rest!
“I stand before thee--on my head the crown
Of all thou lackest yet in thy renown--
Ah, King, take this of me!
And in my hand I bear a brimming cup
That sparkles; to thine eyes I hold it up:
A royal draught of life-long pleasure--see,
The wine is fit for thee!
“Ah, wilt thou pass me? Wilt thou let me give
Thy fair life to some meaner man to live?
Nay, here--if I am sweet--
Thou shalt not. I will save thee with the sight
Of all my sweetness, save thee with the might
And charm of all my singing lips’ deceit,
Or with my dancing feet.
“I have indeed some power. A lure lies
Within my tender lips--behind my eyes--
Concealed in all my way;
And while I seem entreating, I compel,
Yea, while I do but plead, I use a spell--
Ah secretly--but surely. Who are they
That ever turn away?
“Now, thou hast barely seen bright glittering
The gilded cup of pleasures that I swung
Before thy reeling gaze,--
The deep beginnings of sweet drunkenness
Are in thy heart already, more or less,
And on thy soul deliciously there preys
A thirst no joy allays.
“Dost thou not feel, each time my long hair sweeps
The glowing floor, how through thy being creeps
A vague yet sweet desire?--
How writhes in every sense a tiny snake
Of pleasure biting till it seems to wake
A fever of sharp lusts that never tire,
Unquenchable as fire?
“Is there not wrought a madness in thy brain
Each time my thin veils part and close again--
Each time their flying ring
Is seen a moment’s space encircling me
With filmy changes--each time, rapidly
Rolled down, their cloud-like gauzes billowing
About my limbs they fling?
“Ah, seek not in this moment some cold will;
Attend to no false pratings that would kill
Thy heart, and make thee fall:
But now a little lean to me, and fear
My charming. Ah, thy fame to me is dear!
Some wound of mine, when me thou couldst not call,
Might slay thee after all.
“For even while I sing, the unseen grace
Of Love descending hath filled all this place
With most strong prevalence;
His miracle is raging in the breasts
Of all these men, and mightily he rests
On me and thee. His power is too intense,
No curse shall drive him hence.
“--O, Love, invisible, eternal God,
In whose delicious ways all men have trod,
This day Thou truly hast
My heart: thy inspiration fills my tongue
With great angelic madness; I have sung
Set words that in my bosom thou hast cast--
Thine am I to the last!
“My feet are like two liquid flames that leap
For joy at thee; I feel thy spirit sweep--
Yea, like a southern wind--
Through all the enchanted fibres of my soul;
I am a harp o’er which thy vast breaths roll,
And one day thou shalt break me: none shall find
A wreck of me behind.
“And now all palpitating, O I pray
Thy utmost passion while I cry--away
With all Love’s enemies!
A man--borne up between the closing wings
Of two eternities of unknown things,
May catch this seraph charmer as he flies,
And hold him till he dies;
“And yet some bitter ones, whom coming night
Hath wholly entered, grudge man this small right
Of joy, and seek to fill
His rushing moment with the monstrous hiss
Of shapeless terrors, poisoning the bliss
Brief nestled in his bosom--merely till
Forced out by its death chill!
“What voice is this the envious wilderness
Hath sent among us foully to distress
And haunt our lives with fear?
What vulture, shrieking on the scent of death--
What yelping jackal--what insidious breath
Of pestilence hath ventured to draw near,
And enter even here?
“No kindred flesh of fair humanity
Yon fiend hath, seeking through lives doomed to die
Death’s foretaste to infuse:
His body is but raised up from the slain
Unburied thousands that long years have lain
About the desert: Death himself doth choose
His pale disguise to use.
“But, even though he be from some new God,
He shall not turn us who love’s ways have trod,
Nor make us break love’s vow.
Nay, rather, if a single beauty dwells
In me, if in that beauty there be spells
To win my will of any man--O thou,
King Herod, hear me now!--
“Let _it_ be for his ruin! Ah, let me,
With all in me thou countest fair to see,
Procure this and no more!
If yet, with tender prevalence, my voice
May ask a thing of thee--this is my choice,
Though thou wouldst buy my sweets with all thy store--
This all I sell them for.
“Yea, are there lures of softness in my eyes?
My eyes are--for his death. Is my heart’s prize
A seeming fair reward?
My virgin heart is--for his blood here shed;
Its passion--for the falling of his head;
And on that man my kiss shall be outpoured
Who slays him with the sword!”
Invisible--in supernatural haze,
Of shapes that seem not shapes to human gaze--
The devils were half awed as they did stand
Around her; each one in his separate hell
All inwardly was forced to praise her well:
And every man was fain to lose his hand
Or do all that sweet woman might command.
There was a tumult.--Cloven foot and scale
Of fiend with iron heel and coat of mail
Were rolled and hustled in the rage to slay
That fair young Saviour: when they murdered him
And brought his head, still beautiful--though dim
And drenched with blood--the aureole did play
Above it, slowly vanishing away.
I weep to think of him and his fair light
So quenched--of him thrust into some long night
Of unaccomplishment so soon, alas!
And Thou, who on that ancient palace floor
Didst dance, where dost thou writhe now evermore--
Salome, Daughter of Herodias?
O woman-viper--may thy curse ne’er pass!
VI
HELEN.
After long years of all that too sweet sin
That held her ever in the far strange land,
She felt her heart was stricken, felt begin
Great strokes of sorrow smiting like a hand.
She turned away from all the long delight
Which had so filled and blinded all the past;
The sweet sin rose up bitter in the night
And turned the love to sickness at the last.
She and her lover in their goodly halls
Gazed on each other no more the old way;
About the face of each clung shadowy palls
Of sadness all unchanged through many a day.
And now, along the fair courts marble-floored,
Each met the looks of other all aghast
With rueful thoughts unstanched yet ne’er outpoured;
And their trailed robes touched mournful as they passed.
Into the lonely paths of Ida sweet
For sorrow, dark and very sweet with leaves,
Came Helen: weary at her bosom beat
The sad thoughts all the summer noons and eves.
Strange: as her eyes sought where the sea was held
Gathered into dim distances of blue,
Down in her heart a dim Past she beheld,
Wherein were memories like an ocean too.
And strange, there, long up-pent, the memories stirred
Like waves long rolling: in her heart at length
All the fair time from which her years had erred
Came up against her now with all its strength.
Back from the earliest love-time there was sent
A tide of all the long untasted sweet
Of days forgotten, summers that were spent,
And eves when love and lover used to meet;
And heavy wafts of perfume that was known
E’en from those dark familiar laurel trees
That hid where love and lover were alone
Rolled back upon the heart with sore disease:
And from the early home there came no less
Than the reproach of each remembered gaze
Of friends, and want of all the happiness
They gave her in their simple Spartan ways.
And now her heart strove, longing, to divine
The several thoughts of her they had devised
In separate years that passed by with no sign;
Yea, to have known their pain she would have prized:
For now when toward them her heart was wrought
Quite weak, and from no tenderness forbore,
They seemed all strong against her, with hard thought
And faces turning from her evermore.
And with the vision of them so deceived
Came piteous memories of the waning face
Of the Old man who sat all shamed and grieved
Lonely beside the hearth’s familiar place.
Before her soon in very semblance gleamed
The Spartan homestead there unaltered, plain,
With all the household things; yea, till she dreamed
All were yet to begin that way again,
And Menelaus the next golden morn
Were still to come for her with wedlock blest,
As though not all deserted and forlorn
He strayed--the lone man without love or rest.
But most she yearned between her fear and love,
To see him now--divining what was due
To wrath and sorrowing to change and move
His features from the fashion that she knew:
For now the first time after all those years
The face seemed anyhow her way to seek;
--But turned upon her now with all its tears
And vengeance of reproach at length to wreak;
--And seemed to hold her through her love come back,
Unforeseen, and how come, she could not tell;
So that the wrath of it, the grief could rack
Her heart,--yet her heart craved therewith to dwell.
He was her husband--it should ever seem;
And that home, surely it was still her home;
And years since some long voyage or a dream;
And now no more the heart was fain to roam:
Nay, but was true to where it felt begin
Love and the rosy ecstasies so brief;
And that was surely love and the rest sin,
That all delight and all the other grief.
And now though none should render her heart’s right
In any fair place where she used to sit,
She would have prayed for a mere alien’s sight
Of all it was so little pain to quit:
Just to draw near, some silent hour, alone,
Unheralded, unwelcomed, and behold
Her husband and remember him her own,
And be quite near him only as of old:
And perchance, for some grief that was exprest
Plainly upon his face, she might have dared
To enter in, and after all been blest
Some remnant of his pity to have shared.
--Alas, too surely, for long years, all thought
And love of her had perished from his heart;
Until on all her memory were wrought
Dishonour, and with him she had no part;
--And this the while, so held of alien joys,
She spared no thought for him and for his pain,
Nor fancied the least echo of his voice
Sent forth a thousand times to her in vain;
When, might-be many a time, his earnest grief
Sent it so truly seeking her quite near,
Vainly it fell on some dumb flower or leaf
Beside her, never cherished in her ear.
And she thought how one day--she heeding nought--
The last voice on the fruitless air was borne
And died almost a taunt, and the last thought
Of her was changed to hate or utter scorn.
And she thought how since that time, day by day,
The man had learnt to live without her need,
And been quite happy perhaps many a way,
All without loving her or taking heed.
And that which was the great woe had scarce grown
In any gradual way; but with a burst
Her life was torn apart from peace, and thrown
Far from the love that seemed its own at first
All for a mere girl’s fancy too--a whim
For foreign faces and some ruddier south,
And no real choice to die away from him
Who won the truest troth in love and youth.
Now it was bitter to be quite outcast,
And bitter--when this thought of dying crost
Her heart--to reach him no more at the last
Than in mere rumour, as of one long lost.
She looked upon the great sea rolled between
Herself and Lacedæmon: but the Past,
The sins and all the falseness that had been
Seemed like an ocean deeper and more vast.
VII.
A TROTH FOR ETERNITY.
--So, Woman! I possess you. Yes, at length.
Once wholly and for ever you are mine!
That cursèd burden on my memory,
Your whole past life’s betrayal--let it go:
Ay, let it perish, and, for me at least,
Let life begin this moment, though we die
But three hours hence!
Is this your little voice
My Love, enthralling, winning my whole faith
With mere increasing sweetness in its tones,
Dissolving, exorcising, as it used,
Ah too infallibly, the phantom thing,
The doubt, the dread within me? ah, my Sweet,
Is this once more your voice assuring me--
With some rare music rather than one word
Of those fair whispered oaths of constancy;
Yea, till, as ever, I am come to smile
And glory in you, and believe you pure--
All mine, for ever, past a change in thought?
But no! _It is the little voice of the Steel
Here safe against my breast and fairly hid:
The Steel is singing to me, very low,
A tender song entrancing me_;--O joy!
The Steel says you will ne’er escape me more;
You will be true to me; you will be mine;
No man shall touch you after me; no face,
However strangely fair, shall have the art
To draw one look from you, to charm and rouse
That wondrous little snake of treachery
That was for ever lurking for me--sure
To spring upon me out of the least look
Or promise, safe to be curled up beneath
The simplest seeming offering in your hand.
Yes, ’tis a thing at length as good as this
The steel is singing to me: did you hear,
You should but love it--since it pleads so well
It makes me put whole faith in you once more.
For now three days and nights indeed--while I,
Contending for you with the love I gave
Against the curse I owed you, raged and thought
It was my madness--O this little voice
Was striving with me, singing all the time,
Upon a low sweet soothing tune, strange words
Of promise that seemed like the distant taunts
Of all my past beliefs, and that I sought
To cover with my curses; till, last night,
My soul grew faint with hearing them--how sweet,
How full of good they were. Then I fell still,
Yea, stunned, and with my head upon the ground;
And through the shut bleared darkness of my eyes,
I seemed to see the room about me lit
And fearful, and the Sword from off the wall
Unscabbarded before me in the midst,
Most terrible and living, and in light--
Just like a great archangel with the glare
Of burning expiations full on him.
O then my soul did call upon the Steel;
And the Steel heard and swore to me. My soul
Tore forth the hidden-rooted love of thee,
Thy treasured words--each one a cruel worm
That gnaws me through for ever, thy fair face
From the first inmost shrine, thy early kiss,
Thy separate falsenesses, all my despair,
My utter helplessness--and flung them down,
The very writhing entrails of my life
Become one inward horror to be borne
No longer. And there came about me, loud,
The mocking of a thousand impious tongues,
That seemed to clash and rattle hideously
From ancient hollow sepulchres of men
Long buried and forgotten; for my love
Their gibe was, for my faith, for my despair,
For my long blindness: and at last I knew,
And, understanding, called with a great voice
Upon the Steel: and the Steel heard me there,
And swore to me--for you and me and God!
_Sing on, O little voice: She cannot hear;_
_There is a pact between us._
Now I stand
And feel her eyes’ soft element within,
Upon, around me, melting away life
Into these few full throbbing moments.--Lo!
Her tears again--her disavowal clean
Of any thought of falseness. Lo! her words--
I might have lived beside her all these days
In perfect joy; words, blandishments and tears
Already staggering me with their old might
Of coiling fascinations; and one tear
A drop that, falling straight into my heart,
Fills it too full for speaking a long time
The ready thing of pardon and of love.
See! am I Lord here?--This fair sight of Her,
Working the whole impassioned prodigy
As ’twere of all her beauty, just to win
_Me_ this time and, at any cost, be queen
Of this one present, as of many pasts--
Hath ever it been fairer, more complete?
Who else hath had her more and called her his
Than here I have her calling herself mine?
I would indeed he might draw near just now,
Yea, void of feigning, in some wonted way,
And feel a cold look from her plant him there
Outside the circle where this molten love
Of her whole smile is showered upon me,
And know her no more his now than mine then.
But what do I here with a thought like this?
Those men I deemed my rivals--what are they
To me now? Why I could put them to shame
And taunt them now myself for insolent
Pretenders who have never known what ’tis
To conquer love.--Ay, what compared with me
Seem all the famous lovers of great queens
Or splendid cruel mistresses, whose woes--
Deceived, betrayed, reviled--have made them shine
With some bright share of every age’s tears?
What but mere fools? weak sufferers of wrong
From creatures whom they held in their own hands?
Or passionless, or lacking any strength
To seize their fair worlds passing them so nigh
Rather than linger in some sickly trail
Of sweetness left behind and die of shame?
O all ye Messalinas of old time--
Ye Helens, Cleopatras, ye Dalilahs,
Ye Maries, ye Lucrezias, Catharines--
Fair crowned or uncrowned--courtezans alike
Who played with men a calculated game--
Your moves their heart-wounds, deaths and ruins--sure
Of your inconstancy and their soft loves,
Had I been lover in the stead of them,
Methinks the histories of you had been changed,
And some of your worst falsenesses redeemed
By flawless faithfulness to one last love.
But now I am content, I have love here;
And I thank God for love--yea, is it sweet?
Yea, is it best of all his gifts to man?
--I see her splendid smile there--feel her arms
Already coming round me!--Who but I
Can answer? Who but I have had it whole
Like this? _(The Steel is singing to me now,
Still hidden in my breast--a low sweet song.)_
Ah, this time there is no doubt! ’tis all true:
Her arms may fold me--fondle me, and I
May wholly yield myself to their caress
Quite sure it leaves no atom in reserve
For any other after me. And lo,
She is right worthy of a greater one
Than all the lovers that have ever loved
And, trembling, lost their women and themselves:
For splendour--such as stains for me and turns
My eyes disgusted from the vaunted white
Of many a bosom impudently bared--
Is in that bosom closely veiled, whose veils
I may undo--yea now, and with these hands;
It is my right. And then, O joy, to know
That this, so much more wonderful than those,
Shall ne’er be seen by anyone but me!
(Ah, sing on little voice!) But, as I said,
--Yes, she is worthy!--Come to me, my Sweet:
You have the greatest beauty God has made.
I think that. Let me kiss your forehead once,
Twice, thrice, and say it is diviner white,
And hallowed with a brighter radiant grace
Than Cleopatra’s was, and swear therewith
I kiss it with a passion greater far
Than Antony’s was: yea, let me write there
This thing in kisses that none can efface.
“Ah, you believe me now, dear love?” she says:
Yes: I say yes. _(Sing on! ’Twas you sang: yes;
You bade me answer so. I trust you most.)_
“Dear Love, let us go lie upon that bed.
I should delight to know it just the grave,
So I might keep this faith and happiness,
That yours--this mine--both safe for evermore,
So I might lie down sure that no mischance,
No doubt, no calumny, could come to change
Me--yours, you--mine, and peace for evermore.”
She says this, and she leads me by the hand.
Her head is like a lily drooping down.
--My passion! Yea I will not baulk thee now:
I need not: for I feel that what I am
Is something more than man, that conquers man.
What is it? I know not: a flame, a thought;
But cold, but calm, unalterable, pure,
As far above the fume of the base lust
That dulls and levels all men, as, perhaps,
Was that strange flame or thought that made Man first
And Woman then to bring the man to nought,
Which fate I, who indeed am not a god,
Who am not Hercules, nor Samson, no,
Nor Antony--which fate I yet will change.
Nay, passion, rather I will urge thee on;
For I shall be above thee all the time
A cold impartial watcher, hard to foil,
Attentive that thou gettest all thine own
Not tampered with--lest, in some little thing,
Thou art betrayed, or with a semblance served,
Yea, for a blind fool as thou ever wert.
--O take thy fill of looking on this snow
In which thy heart finds such delicious death;
Do out thine utmost revel on the bloom
Of this rare flower’s beauty, now at full;
Whose summer is just perfected to-night
And laid before thee, heightened with the tint
Of first mysterious sadness, like a touch
Of far-off autumns. Do not shun that mouth:
For there, indeed, a thing most dainty-sweet--
The last kiss that was sown a precious seed
By Love at the beginning--waits for thee,
The fullest, the most perfect of them all.
The earth will never fashion forth, and Love
Will never with his summer paint again
So beautiful a flower.
I am clasped
With such arms as I would might hold me so
For evermore in heaven. All around,
The strange unearthly fragrance of her hair
Is coming up, and, with an element
Divine as some transparent rosy cloud,
Enwrapping both of us; ay, and, as though--
A very cloud of magic--it had borne
Us, lifted far away from thought, and life,
And days, and earthliness--we seem to voyage
Through most ethereal atmospheres, and seas
Upon whose soft sustaining waves we drift,
And draw no sound from either distant shore
Of ending or beginning: and the bliss,
Unspeakable and perfect, that we feel
Seems making and remaking evermore
Our souls through this eternity.
Alas!
One little thread--I strive in vain to break--
Is holding me: a memory, a thought,
The pricking of a half-numbed wound through sleep,
The constant teazing of a wingéd thing,
The bitterness wherewith some ceaseless fang
Of life gnaws through, and breaks our dream of it--
Some such pursues and racks me. But ’tis well:
I know the dream is mine to make my own;
I know what dragon guards this paradise,
And with what paltry lies he fools mankind.
Ah, how the universe must jeer to see
All men so smoothly cheated of their own!--
And when I slay this dragon, I have all.
I cannot stir now. Many a knotted tress
Is on me, like a thousand-threaded chain
Twined many times about my limbs. I dream
No more: I feel her small and gliding hands
Seek mine; and while the burning rapid words
Her full heart furnishes hiss in mine ear,
My sight is peering blindly through the dark
Of her vast hair--a cavernous abyss
Of blackness traversed by mad shooting sparks
Or fearful gleams of blood.--What things she says!
“--Let this be as it were my bridal night,
If you doubt all the Past. I am yours now;
Take this for the beginning, and trust me;
I will be yours for ever,--not a look,
A word, a thought shall e’er dishonour you.”--
And, if I had not heard this very thing
Before, once, twice, innumerable times,
I should not plunge as I do now, my head
Still deeper in the fathomless dark hair,
And see tears falling from me--as it seems--
To fall on through a drear eternity.
But, hark, another voice! Whence comes it?--Whence?
From here, beneath the pillow; yes, ’tis harsh
And not like hers; but speaks a sweet thing--this:
_I swear for Her it shall be so: trust Me!_