Thou wast quite perfect in the splendid guile
Of woman’s beauty; thou hadst the whole smile
That can dishonour heroes, and recal
Fair saints prepared for heaven back to hell:
And He, whose unlived glory thou mad’st fall
All beautiful and spotless, at thy spell,
Was great and fit for thee by whom he fell.
O, is it now sufficing sweet to thee—
Through all the long uncounted years that see
The undistinguished lost ones waste away—
To twine thee, biting, on those locks that bleed,
As bled they through thy fingers on that day?
Or hast thou, all unhallowed, some fierce need
Thy soul on his anointed grace to feed?
Or hast thou, rather, for that serpent’s task
Thou didst accomplish in thy woman-mask,
Some perfect inconceivable reward
Of serpent’s slimy pleasure?—all the thing
Thou didst beseech thy master, who is Lord
Of those accursèd hosts that creep and sting,
To give thee for the spoil thou shouldest bring?
He was a goodly spoil for thee to win!
—Men’s souls and lives were wholly dark with sin;
And so God’s world was changed with wars and gold,
No part of it was holy; save, maybe,
The desert and the ocean as of old:—
But such a spotless way of life had he,
His soul was as the desert or the sea.
I think he had not heard of the far towns;
Nor of the deeds of men, nor of kings’ crowns;
Before the thought of God took hold of him,
As he was sitting dreaming in the calm
Of one first noon, upon the desert’s rim,
Beneath the tall fair shadows of the palm,
All overcome with some strange inward balm.
But then, so wonderful and lovely seemed
That thought, he straight became as though he dreamed
A vast thing false and fair, which day and night
Absorbed him in some rapture—very high
Above the common swayings of delight
And general yearnings, that quite occupy
Men’s passions, and suffice them till they die:
Yea, soon as it had entered him—that thought
Of God—he felt that he was being wrought
All holy: more and more it filled his heart;
And seemed, indeed, a spirit of pure flame
Set burning in his soul’s most inward part.
And from the Lord’s great wilderness there came
A mighty voice calling on him by name.
He numbered not the changes of the year,
The days, the nights, and he forgot all fear
Of death: each day he thought there should have been
A shining ladder set for him to climb
Athwart some opening in the heavens, e’en
To God’s eternity, and see, sublime—
His face whose shadow passing fills all time.
But he walked through the ancient wilderness.
O, there the prints of feet were numberless
And holy all about him! And quite plain
He saw each spot an angel silvershod
Had lit upon; where Jacob too had lain
The place seemed fresh,—and, bright and lately trod,
A long track showed where Enoch walked with God.
And often, while the sacred darkness trailed
Along the mountains smitten and unveiled
By rending lightnings,—over all the noise
Of thunders and the earth that quaked and bowed
From its foundations—he could hear the voice
Of great Elias prophesying loud
To Him whose face was covered by a cloud.