The Unknown Eros

by Coventry Patmore

The Midge’s wing beats to and fro
A thousand times ere one can utter ‘O!’
And Sirius’ ball
Does on his business run
As many times immenser than the Sun.
Why should things not be great as well as small,
Or move like light as well as move at all?
St. Michael fills his place, I mine, and, if you please,
We will respect each other’s provinces,
I marv’lling not at him, nor he at me.
But, if thou must go gaping, let it be
That One who could make Michael should make thee.
O, foolish Man, meting things low and high
By self, that accidental quantity!
With this conceit, Philosophy stalks frail
As peacock staggering underneath his tail.
Who judge of Plays from their own penny gaff,
At God’s great theatre will hiss and laugh;
For what’s a Saint to them
Brought up in modern virtues brummagem?
With garments grimed and lamps gone all to snuff,
And counting others for like Virgins queer,
To list those others cry, ‘Our Bridegroom’s near!’
Meaning their God, is surely quite enough
To make them rend their clothes and bawl out, ‘Blasphemy!’

XI. AURAS OF DELIGHT.

Beautiful habitations, auras of delight!
Who shall bewail the crags and bitter foam
And angry sword-blades flashing left and right
Which guard your glittering height,
That none thereby may come!
The vision which we have
Revere we so,
That yet we crave
To foot those fields of ne’er-profaned snow?
I, with heart-quake,
Dreaming or thinking of that realm of Love,
See, oft, a dove
Tangled in frightful nuptials with a snake;
The tortured knot,
Now, like a kite scant-weighted, flung bewitch’d
Sunwards, now pitch’d,
Tail over head, down, but with no taste got
Eternally
Of rest in either ruin or the sky,
But bird and vermin each incessant strives,
With vain dilaceration of both lives,
’Gainst its abhorred bond insoluble,
Coveting fiercer any separate hell
Than the most weary Soul in Purgatory
On God’s sweet breast to lie.
And, in this sign, I con
The guerdon of that golden Cup, fulfill’d
With fornications foul of Babylon,
The heart where good is well-perceiv’d and known,
Yet is not will’d;
And Him I thank, who can make live again,
The dust, but not the joy we once profane,
That I, of ye,
Beautiful habitations, auras of delight,
In childish years and since had sometime sense and sight,
But that ye vanish’d quite,
Even from memory,
Ere I could get my breath, and whisper ‘See!’
But did for me
They altogether die,
Those trackless glories glimps’d in upper sky?
Were they of chance, or vain,
Nor good at all again
For curb of heart or fret?
Nay, though, by grace,
Lest, haply, I refuse God to His face,
Their likeness wholly I forget,
Ah, yet,
Often in straits which else for me were ill,
I mind me still
I did respire the lonely auras sweet,
I did the blest abodes behold, and, at the mountains’ feet,
Bathed in the holy Stream by Hermon’s thymy hill.

XII. EROS AND PSYCHE.

‘Love, I heard tell of thee so oft!
Yea, thrice my face and bosom flush’d with heat
Of sudden wings,
Through delicatest ether feathering soft
Their solitary beat.
Long did I muse what service or what charms
Might lure thee, blissful Bird, into mine arms;
And nets I made,
But not of the fit strings.
At last, of endless failure much afraid,
To-night I would do nothing but lie still,
And promise, wert thou once within my window-sill,
Thine unknown will.
In nets’ default,
Finch-like me seem’d thou might’st be ta’en with salt;
And here—and how thou mad’st me start!—
Thou art.’
‘O Mortal, by Immortals’ cunning led,
Who shew’d you how for Gods to bait your bed?
Ah, Psyche, guess’d you nought
I craved but to be caught?
Wanton, it was not you,
But I that did so passionately sue;
And for your beauty, not unscath’d, I fought
With Hades, ere I own’d in you a thought!’
‘O, heavenly Lover true,
Is this thy mouth upon my forehead press’d?
Are these thine arms about my bosom link’d?
Are these thy hands that tremble near my heart,
Where join two hearts, for juncture more distinct?
By thee and by my maiden zone caress’d,
What dim, waste tracts of life shine sudden, like moonbeams
On windless ocean shaken by sweet dreams!
Ah, stir not to depart!
Kiss me again, thy Wife and Virgin too!
O Love, that, like a rose,
Deckest my breast with beautiful repose,
Kiss me again, and clasp me round the heart,
Till fill’d with thee am I
As the cocoon is with the butterfly!
—Yet how ’scape quite
Nor pluck pure pleasure with profane delight?
How know I that my Love is what he seems!
Give me a sign
That, in the pitchy night,
Comes to my pillow an immortal Spouse,
And not a fiend, hiding with happy boughs
Of palm and asphodel
The pits of hell!’
‘’Tis this:
I make the childless to keep joyful house.
Below your bosom, mortal Mistress mine,
Immortal by my kiss,
Leaps what sweet pain?
A fiend, my Psyche, comes with barren bliss,
A God’s embraces never are in vain.’
‘I own
A life not mine within my golden zone.
Yea, how
’Tis easier grown
Thine arduous rule to don
Than for a Bride to put her bride-dress on!
Nay, rather, now
’Tis no more service to be borne serene,
Whither thou wilt, thy stormful wings between.
But, Oh,
Can I endure
This flame, yet live for what thou lov’st me, pure?’
‘Himself the God let blame
If all about him bursts to quenchless flame!
My Darling, know
Your spotless fairness is not match’d in snow,
But in the integrity of fire.
Whate’er you are, Sweet, I require.
A sorry God were he
That fewer claim’d than all Love’s mighty kingdoms three!’
‘Much marvel I
That thou, the greatest of the Powers above,
Me visitest with such exceeding love.
What thing is this?
A God to make me, nothing, needful to his bliss,
And humbly wait my favour for a kiss!
Yea, all thy legions of liege deity
To look into this mystery desire.’
‘Content you, Dear, with them, this marvel to admire,
And lay your foolish little head to rest
On my familiar breast.
Should a high King, leaving his arduous throne,
Sue from her hedge a little Gipsy Maid,
For far-off royal ancestry bewray’d
By some wild beauties, to herself unknown;
Some voidness of herself in her strange ways
Which to his bounteous fulness promised dainty praise;
Some power, by all but him unguess’d,
Of growing king-like were she king-caress’d;
And should he bid his dames of loftiest grade
Put off her rags and make her lowlihead
Pure for the soft midst of his perfumed bed,
So to forget, kind-couch’d with her alone,
His empire, in her winsome joyance free;
What would he do, if such a fool were she
As at his grandeur there to gape and quake,
Mindless of love’s supreme equality,
And of his heart, so simple for her sake
That all he ask’d, for making her all-blest,
Was that her nothingness alway
Should yield such easy fee as frank to play
Or sleep delighted in her Monarch’s breast,
Feeling her nothingness her giddiest boast,
As being the charm for which he loved her most?
What if this reed,
Through which the King thought love-tunes to have blown,
Should shriek, “Indeed,
I am too base to trill so blest a tone!”
Would not the King allege
Defaulted consummation of the marriage-pledge,
And hie the Gipsy to her native hedge?’
‘O, too much joy; O, touch of airy fire;
O, turmoil of content; O, unperturb’d desire,
From founts of spirit impell’d through brain and blood!
I’ll not call ill what, since ’tis thine, is good,
Nor best what is but second best or third;
Still my heart fails,
And, unaccustom’d and astonish’d, quails,
And blames me, though I think I have not err’d.
’Tis hard for fly, in such a honied flood,
To use her eyes, far more her wings or feet.
Bitter be thy behests!

Lie like a bunch of myrrh between my aching breasts.
Some greatly pangful penance would I brave.
Sharpness me save
From being slain by sweet!’
‘In your dell’d bosom’s double peace
Let all care cease!
Custom’s joy-killing breath
Shall bid you sigh full soon for custom-killing death.
So clasp your childish arms again around my heart:
’Tis but in such captivity
The unbounded Heav’ns know what they be!
And lie still there,
Till the dawn, threat’ning to declare
My beauty, which you cannot bear,
Bid me depart.
Suffer your soul’s delight,
Lest that which is to come wither you quite:
For these are only your espousals; yes,
More intimate and fruitfuller far
Than aptest mortal nuptials are;
But nuptials wait you such as now you dare not guess.’
‘In all I thee obey! And thus I know
That all is well:
Should’st thou me tell
Out of thy warm caress to go
And roll my body in the biting snow,
My very body’s joy were but increased;
More pleasant ’tis to please thee than be pleased.
Thy love has conquer’d me; do with me as thou wilt,
And use me as a chattel that is thine!
Kiss, tread me under foot, cherish or beat,
Sheathe in my heart sharp pain up to the hilt,
Invent what else were most perversely sweet;
Nay, let the Fiend drag me through dens of guilt;
Let Earth, Heav’n, Hell
’Gainst my content combine;
What could make nought the touch that made thee mine!
Ah, say not yet, farewell!’
‘Nay, that’s the Blackbird’s note, the sweet Night’s knell.
Behold, Beloved, the penance you would brave!’
‘Curs’d when it comes, the bitter thing we crave!
Thou leav’st me now, like to the moon at dawn,
A little, vacuous world alone in air.
I will not care!
When dark comes back my dark shall be withdrawn!
Go free;
For ’tis with me
As when the cup the Child scoops in the sand
Fills, and is part and parcel of the Sea.
I’ll say it to myself and understand.
Farewell!
Go as thou wilt and come! Lover divine,
Thou still art jealously and wholly mine;
And this thy kiss
A separate secret by none other scann’d;
Though well I wis
The whole of life is womanhood to thee,
Momently wedded with enormous bliss.
Rainbow, that hast my heaven sudden spann’d,
I am the apple of thy glorious gaze,
Each else life cent’ring to a different blaze;
And, nothing though I be
But now a no more void capacity for thee,
’Tis all to know there’s not in air or land
Another for thy Darling quite like me!
Mine arms no more thy restless plumes compel!
Farewell!
Whilst thou art gone, I’ll search the weary meads
To deck my bed with lilies of fair deeds!
And, if thou choose to come this eventide,
A touch, my Love, will set my casement wide.
Farewell, farewell!
Be my dull days
Music, at least, with thy remember’d praise!’
‘Bitter, sweet, few and veil’d let be
Your songs of me.
Preserving bitter, very sweet,
Few, that so all may be discreet,
And veil’d, that, seeing, none may see.’

XIII. DE NATURA DEORUM.

‘Good-morrow, Psyche! What’s thine errand now?
What awful pleasure do thine eyes bespeak,
What shame is in thy childish cheek,
What terror on thy brow?
Is this my Psyche, once so pale and meek?
Thy body’s sudden beauty my sight old
Stings, like an agile bead of boiling gold,
And all thy life looks troubled like a tree’s
Whose boughs wave many ways in one great breeze.’
‘O Pythoness, to strangest story hark:
A dreadful God was with me in the dark—’
‘How many a Maid—
Has never told me that! And thou’rt afraid—’
‘He’ll come no more,
Or come but twice,
Or thrice,
Or only thrice ten thousand times thrice o’er!’
‘For want of wishing thou mean’st not to miss.
We know the Lover, Psyche, by the kiss!’
‘If speech of honey could impart the sweet,
The world were all in tears and at his feet!
But not to tell of that in tears come I, but this:
I’m foolish, weak, and small,
And fear to fall.
If long he stay away, O frightful dream, wise Mother,
What keeps me but that I, gone crazy, kiss some other!’
‘The fault were his! But know,
Sweet little Daughter sad,
He did but feign to go;
And never more
Shall cross thy window-sill,
Or pass beyond thy door,
Save by thy will.
He’s present now in some dim place apart
Of the ivory house wherewith thou mad’st him glad.
Nay, this I whisper thee,
Since none is near,
Or, if one were, since only thou could’st hear,
That happy thing which makes thee flush and start,
Like infant lips in contact with thy heart,
Is He!’
‘Yea, this I know, but never can believe!
O, hateful light! when shall mine own eyes mark
My beauty, which this victory did achieve?’
‘When thou, like Gods and owls, canst see by dark.’
‘In vain I cleanse me from all blurring error—’
‘’Tis the last rub that polishes the mirror.’
‘It takes fresh blurr each breath which I respire.’
‘Poor Child, don’t cry so! Hold it to the fire.’
‘Ah, nought these dints can e’er do out again!’
‘Love is not love which does not sweeter live
For having something dreadful to forgive.’
‘Sadness and change and pain
Shall me for ever stain;
For, though my blissful fate
Be for a billion years,
How shall I stop my tears
That life was once so low and Love arrived so late!’
‘Sadness is beauty’s savour, and pain is
The exceedingly keen edge of bliss;
Nor, without swift mutation, would the heav’ns be aught.’
‘How to behave with him I’d fain be taught.
A maid, meseems, within a God’s embrace,
Should bear her like a Goddess, or, at least, a Grace.’
‘When Gods, to Man or Maid below,
As men or birds appear,
A kind ’tis of incognito,
And that, not them, is what they choose we should revere.’
‘Advise me what oblation vast to bring,
Some least part of my worship to confess!’
‘A woman is a little thing,
And in things little lies her comeliness.’
‘Must he not soon with mortal tire to toy?’
‘The bashful meeting of strange Depth and Height
Breeds the forever new-born babe, Delight;
And, as thy God is more than mortal boy,
So bashful more the meeting, and so more the joy.’
‘He loves me dearly, but he shakes a whip
Of deathless scorpions at my slightest slip.
Mother, last night he call’d me “Gipsy,” so
Roughly it smote me like a blow!
Yet, oh,
I love him, as none surely e’er could love
Our People’s pompous but good-natured Jove.
He used to send me stately overture;
But marriage-bonds, till now, I never could endure!’
‘How should great Jove himself do else than miss
To win the woman he forgets to kiss;
Or, won, to keep his favour in her eyes,
If he’s too soft or sleepy to chastise!
By Eros, her twain claims are ne’er forgot;
Her wedlock’s marr’d when either’s miss’d:
Or when she’s kiss’d, but beaten not,
Or duly beaten, but not kiss’d.
Ah, Child, the sweet
Content, when we’re both kiss’d and beat!
—But whence these wounds? What Demon thee enjoins
To scourge thy shoulders white
And tender loins!’
‘’Tis nothing, Mother. Happiness at play,
And speech of tenderness no speech can say!’
‘How learn’d thou art!
Twelve honeymoons profane had taught thy docile heart
Less than thine Eros, in a summer night!’
‘Nay, do not jeer, but help my puzzled plight:
Because he loves so marvellously me,
And I with all he loves in love must be,
How to except myself I do not see.
Yea, now that other vanities are vain,
I’m vain, since him it likes, of being withal
Weak, foolish, small!’
‘How can a Maid forget her ornaments!
The Powers, that hopeless doom the proud to die,
Unask’d smile pardon upon vanity,
Nay, praise it, when themselves are praised thereby.’
‘Ill-match’d I am for a God’s blandishments!
So great, so wise—’
‘Gods, in the abstract, are, no doubt, most wise;
But, in the concrete, Girl, they’re mysteries!
He’s not with thee,
At all less wise nor more
Than human Lover is with her he deigns to adore.
He finds a fair capacity,
And fills it with himself, and glad would die
For that sole She.’
‘Know’st thou some potion me awake to keep,
Lest, to the grief of that ne’er-slumbering Bliss,
Disgraced I sleep,
Wearied in soul by his bewildering kiss?’
‘The Immortals, Psyche, moulded men from sods
That Maids from them might learn the ways of Gods.
Think, would a wakeful Youth his hard fate weep,
Lock’d to the tired breast of a Bride asleep?’
‘Ah, me, I do not dream,
Yet all this does some heathen fable seem!’
‘O’ermuch thou mind’st the throne he leaves above!
Between unequals sweet is equal love.’
‘Nay, Mother, in his breast, when darkness blinds,
I cannot for my life but talk and laugh
With the large impudence of little minds!’
‘Respectful to the Gods and meek,
According to one’s lights, I grant
’Twere well to be;
But, on my word,
Child, any one, to hear you speak,
Would take you for a Protestant,
(Such fish I do foresee
When the charm’d fume comes strong on me,)
Or powder’d lackey, by some great man’s board,
A deal more solemn than his Lord!
Know’st thou not, Girl, thine Eros loves to laugh?
And shall a God do anything by half?
He foreknew and predestinated all
The Great must pay for kissing things so small,
And ever loves his little Maid the more
The more she makes him laugh.’
‘O, Mother, are you sure?’
‘Gaze steady where yon starless deep the gaze revolts,
And say,
Seest thou a Titan forging thunderbolts,
Or three fair butterflies at lovesome play?
And this I’ll add, for succour of thy soul:
Lines parallel meet sooner than some think;
The least part oft is greater than the whole;
And, when you’re thirsty, that’s the time to drink.’
‘Thy sacred words I ponder and revere,
And thank thee heartily that some are clear.’
‘Clear speech to men is mostly speech in vain.
Their scope is by themselves so justly scann’d,
They still despise the things they understand;
But, to a pretty Maid like thee, I don’t mind speaking plain.’
‘Then one boon more to her whom strange Fate mocks
With a wife’s duty but no wife’s sweet right:
Could I at will but summon my Delight—’
‘Thou of thy jewel art the dainty box;
Thine is the charm which, any time, unlocks;
And this, it seems, thou hitt’st upon last night.
Now go, Child! For thy sake
I’ve talk’d till this stiff tripod makes my old limbs ache.’

XIV. PSYCHE’S DISCONTENT.

‘Enough, enough, ambrosial plumed Boy!
My bosom is aweary of thy breath.
Thou kissest joy
To death.
Have pity of my clay-conceived birth
And maiden’s simple mood,
Which longs for ether and infinitude,
As thou, being God, crav’st littleness and earth!
Thou art immortal, thou canst ever toy,
Nor savour less
The sweets of thine eternal childishness,
And hold thy godhead bright in far employ.
Me, to quite other custom life-inured,
Ah, loose from thy caress.
’Tis not to be endured!
Undo thine arms and let me see the sky,
By this infatuating flame obscured.
O, I should feel thee nearer to my heart
If thou and I
Shone each to each respondently apart,
Like stars which one the other trembling spy,
Distinct and lucid in extremes of air.
O, hear me pray—’
‘Be prudent in thy prayer!
A God is bond to her who is wholly his,
And, should she ask amiss,
He may not her beseeched harm deny.’
‘Not yet, not yet!
’Tis still high day, and half my toil’s to do.
How can I toil, if thus thou dost renew
Toil’s guerdon, which the daytime should forget?
The long, long night, when none can work for fear,
Sweet fear incessantly consummated,
My most divinely Dear,
My Joy, my Dread,
Will soon be here!
Not, Eros, yet!
I ask, for Day, the use which is the Wife’s:
To bear, apart from thy delight and thee,
The fardel coarse of customary life’s
Exceeding injucundity.
Leave me awhile, that I may shew thee clear
How Goddess-like thy love has lifted me;
How, seeming lone upon the gaunt, lone shore,
I’ll trust thee near,
When thou’rt, to knowledge of my heart, no more
Than a dream’s heed
Of lost joy track’d in scent of the sea-weed!
Leave me to pluck the incomparable flower
Of frailty lion-like fighting in thy name and power;
To make thee laugh, in thy safe heaven, to see
With what grip fell
I’ll cling to hope when life draws hard to hell,
Yea, cleave to thee when me thou seem’st to slay,
Haply, at close of some most cruel day,
To find myself in thy reveal’d arms clasp’d,
Just when I say,
My feet have slipp’d at last!
But, lo, while thus I store toil’s slow increase,
To be my dower, in patience and in peace,
Thou com’st, like bolt from blue, invisibly,
With premonition none nor any sign,
And, at a gasp, no choice nor fault of mine,
Possess’d I am with thee
Ev’n as a sponge is by a surge of the sea!’
‘Thus irresistibly by Love embraced
Is she who boasts her more than mortal chaste!’
‘Find’st thou me worthy, then, by day and night,
But of this fond indignity, delight?’
‘Little, bold Femininity,
That darest blame Heaven, what would’st thou have or be?’
‘Shall I, the gnat which dances in thy ray,
Dare to be reverent? Therefore dare I say,
I cannot guess the good that I desire;
But this I know, I spurn the gifts which Hell
Can mock till which is which ’tis hard to tell.
I love thee, God; yea, and ’twas such assault
As this which made me thine; if that be fault;
But I, thy Mistress, merit should thine ire
If aught so little, transitory and low
As this which made me thine
Should hold me so.’
‘Little to thee, my Psyche, is this, but much to me!’
‘Ah, if, my God, that be!’
‘Yea, Palate fine,
That claim’st for thy proud cup the pearl of price,
And scorn’st the wine,
Accept the sweet, and say ’tis sacrifice!
Sleep, Centre to the tempest of my love,
And dream thereof,
And keep the smile which sleeps within thy face
Like sunny eve in some forgotten place!’