XV. PAIN.
O, Pain, Love’s mystery,
Close next of kin
To joy and heart’s delight,
Low Pleasure’s opposite,
Choice food of sanctity
And medicine of sin,
Angel, whom even they that will pursue
Pleasure with hell’s whole gust
Find that they must
Perversely woo,
My lips, thy live coal touching, speak thee true.
Thou sear’st my flesh, O Pain,
But brand’st for arduous peace my languid brain,
And bright’nest my dull view,
Till I, for blessing, blessing give again,
And my roused spirit is
Another fire of bliss,
Wherein I learn
Feelingly how the pangful, purging fire
Shall furiously burn
With joy, not only of assured desire,
But also present joy
Of seeing the life’s corruption, stain by stain,
Vanish in the clear heat of Love irate,
And, fume by fume, the sick alloy
Of luxury, sloth and hate
Evaporate;
Leaving the man, so dark erewhile,
The mirror merely of God’s smile.
Herein, O Pain, abides the praise
For which my song I raise;
But even the bastard good of intermittent ease
How greatly doth it please!
With what repose
The being from its bright exertion glows,
When from thy strenuous storm the senses sweep
Into a little harbour deep
Of rest;
When thou, O Pain,
Having devour’d the nerves that thee sustain,
Sleep’st, till thy tender food be somewhat grown
again;
And how the lull
With tear-blind love is full!
What mockery of a man am I express’d
That I should wait for thee
To woo!
Nor even dare to love, till thou lov’st me.
How shameful, too,
Is this:
That, when thou lov’st, I am at first afraid
Of thy fierce kiss,
Like a young maid;
And only trust thy charms
And get my courage in thy throbbing arms.
And, when thou partest, what a fickle mind
Thou leav’st behind,
That, being a little absent from mine eye,
It straight forgets thee what thou art,
And ofttimes my adulterate heart
Dallies with Pleasure, thy pale enemy.
O, for the learned spirit without attaint
That does not faint,
But knows both how to have thee and to lack,
And ventures many a spell,
Unlawful but for them that love so well,
To call thee back.
XVI. PROPHETS WHO CANNOT SING.
Ponder, ye just, the scoffs that frequent go
From forth the foe:
‘The holders of the Truth in Verity
Are people of a harsh and stammering tongue!
The hedge-flower hath its song;
Meadow and tree,
Water and wandering cloud
Find Seers who see,
And, with convincing music clear and loud,
Startle the adder-deafness of the crowd
By tones, O Love, from thee.
Views of the unveil’d heavens alone forth bring
Prophets who cannot sing,
Praise that in chiming numbers will not run;
At least, from David until Dante, none,
And none since him.
Fish, and not swim?
They think they somehow should, and so they try;
But (haply ’tis they screw the pitch too high)
’Tis still their fates
To warble tunes that nails might draw from slates.
Poor Seraphim!
They mean to spoil our sleep, and do, but all their gains
Are curses for their pains!’
Now who but knows
That truth to learn from foes
Is wisdom ripe?
Therefore no longer let us stretch our throats
Till hoarse as frogs
With straining after notes
Which but to touch would burst an organ-pipe.
Far better be dumb dogs.
XVII. THE CHILD’S PURCHASE.
A PROLOGUE.
As a young Child, whose Mother, for a jest,
To his own use a golden coin flings down,
Devises blythe how he may spend it best,
Or on a horse, a bride-cake, or a crown,
Till, wearied with his quest,
Nor liking altogether that nor this,
He gives it back for nothing but a kiss,
Endow’d so I
With golden speech, my choice of toys to buy,
And scanning power and pleasure and renown,
Till each in turn, with looking at, looks vain,
For her mouth’s bliss,
To her who gave it give I it again.
Ah, Lady elect,
Whom the Time’s scorn has saved from its respect,
Would I had art
For uttering this which sings within my heart!
But, lo,
Thee to admire is all the art I know.
My Mother and God’s; Fountain of miracle!
Give me thereby some praise of thee to tell
In such a Song
As may my Guide severe and glad not wrong
Who never spake till thou’dst on him conferr’d
The right, convincing word!
Grant me the steady heat
Of thought wise, splendid, sweet,
Urged by the great, rejoicing wind that rings
With draught of unseen wings,
Making each phrase, for love and for delight,
Twinkle like Sirius on a frosty night!
Aid thou thine own dear fame, thou only Fair,
At whose petition meek
The Heavens themselves decree that, as it were,
They will be weak!
Thou Speaker of all wisdom in a Word,
Thy Lord!
Speaker who thus could’st well afford
Thence to be silent;—ah, what silence that
Which had for prologue thy ‘Magnificat?’—
O, Silence full of wonders
More than by Moses in the Mount were heard,
More than were utter’d by the Seven Thunders;
Silence that crowns, unnoted, like the voiceless blue,
The loud world’s varying view,
And in its holy heart the sense of all things ponders!
That acceptably I may speak of thee,
Ora pro me!
Key-note and stop
Of the thunder-going chorus of sky-Powers;
Essential drop
Distill’d from worlds of sweetest-savour’d flowers
To anoint with nuptial praise
The Head which for thy Beauty doff’d its rays,
And thee, in His exceeding glad descending, meant,
And Man’s new days
Made of His deed the adorning accident!
Vast Nothingness of Self, fair female Twin
Of Fulness, sucking all God’s glory in!
(Ah, Mistress mine,
To nothing I have added only sin,
And yet would shine!)
Ora pro me!
Life’s cradle and death’s tomb!
To lie within whose womb,
There, with divine self-will infatuate,
Love-captive to the thing He did create,
Thy God did not abhor,
No more
Than Man, in Youth’s high spousal-tide,
Abhors at last to touch
The strange lips of his long-procrastinating Bride;
Nay, not the least imagined part as much!
Ora pro me!
My Lady, yea, the Lady of my Lord,
Who didst the first descry
The burning secret of virginity,
We know with what reward!
Prism whereby
Alone we see
Heav’n’s light in its triplicity;
Rainbow complex
In bright distinction of all beams of sex,
Shining for aye
In the simultaneous sky,
To One, thy Husband, Father, Son, and Brother,
Spouse blissful, Daughter, Sister, milk-sweet Mother;
Ora pro me!
Mildness, whom God obeys, obeying thyself
Him in thy joyful Saint, nigh lost to sight
In the great gulf
Of his own glory and thy neighbour light;
With whom thou wast as else with husband none
For perfect fruit of inmost amity;
Who felt for thee
Such rapture of refusal that no kiss
Ever seal’d wedlock so conjoint with bliss;
And whose good singular eternally
’Tis now, with nameless peace and vehemence,
To enjoy thy married smile,
That mystery of innocence;
Ora pro me!
Sweet Girlhood without guile,
The extreme of God’s creative energy;
Sunshiny Peak of human personality;
The world’s sad aspirations’ one Success;
Bright Blush, that sav’st our shame from shamelessness;
Chief Stone of stumbling; Sign built in the way
To set the foolish everywhere a-bray;
Hem of God’s robe, which all who touch are heal’d;
To which the outside Many honour yield
With a reward and grace
Unguess’d by the unwash’d boor that hails Him to His face,
Spurning the safe, ingratiant courtesy
Of suing Him by thee;
Ora pro me!
Creature of God rather the sole than first;
Knot of the cord
Which binds together all and all unto their Lord;
Suppliant Omnipotence; best to the worst;
Our only Saviour from an abstract Christ
And Egypt’s brick-kilns, where the lost crowd plods,
Blaspheming its false Gods;
Peace-beaming Star, by which shall come enticed,
Though nought thereof as yet they weet,
Unto thy Babe’s small feet,
The Mighty, wand’ring disemparadised,
Like Lucifer, because to thee
They will not bend the knee;
Ora pro me!
Desire of Him whom all things else desire!
Bush aye with Him as He with thee on fire!
Neither in His great Deed nor on His throne—
O, folly of Love, the intense
Last culmination of Intelligence,—
Him seem’d it good that God should be alone!
Basking in unborn laughter of thy lips,
Ere the world was, with absolute delight
His Infinite reposed in thy Finite;
Well-match’d: He, universal being’s Spring,
And thou, in whom are gather’d up the ends of everything!
Ora pro me!
In season due, on His sweet-fearful bed,
Rock’d by an earthquake, curtain’d with eclipse,
Thou shar’d’st the rapture of the sharp spear’s head,
And thy bliss pale
Wrought for our boon what Eve’s did for our bale;
Thereafter, holding a little thy soft breath,
Thou underwent’st the ceremony of death;
And, now, Queen-Wife,
Sitt’st at the right hand of the Lord of Life,
Who, of all bounty, craves for only fee
The glory of hearing it besought with smiles by thee!
Ora pro me!
Mother, who lead’st me still by unknown ways,
Giving the gifts I know not how to ask,
Bless thou the work
Which, done, redeems my many wasted days,
Makes white the murk,
And crowns the few which thou wilt not dispraise.
When clear my Songs of Lady’s graces rang,
And little guess’d I ’twas of thee I sang!
Vainly, till now, my pray’rs would thee compel
To fire my verse with thy shy fame, too long
Shunning world-blazon of well-ponder’d song;
But doubtful smiles, at last, ’mid thy denials lurk;
From which I spell,
‘Humility and greatness grace the task
Which he who does it deems impossible!’
XVIII. DEAD LANGUAGE.
‘Thou dost not wisely, Bard.
A double voice is Truth’s, to use at will:
One, with the abysmal scorn of good for ill,
Smiting the brutish ear with doctrine hard,
Wherein She strives to look as near a lie
As can comport with her divinity;
The other tender-soft as seem
The embraces of a dead Love in a dream.
These thoughts, which you have sung
In the vernacular,
Should be, as others of the Church’s are,
Decently cloak’d in the Imperial Tongue.
Have you no fears
Lest, as Lord Jesus bids your sort to dread,
Yon acorn-munchers rend you limb from limb,
You, with Heaven’s liberty affronting theirs!’
So spoke my monitor; but I to him,
‘Alas, and is not mine a language dead?’