I sang the Dolorous Stroke of Disillusion,
Yet never have I broken faith with Joy:
Flame-broidered trance and starless cold confusion
Of slain and flying dreams shall not destroy
The radiant oath to that bright Suzerain
Whose lightning-lovely succour ambushed lies
Even in the most impossible strait of pain.
Mystical paradox, divine surprise
Of rapture! By intensities alone
Their spirits enter in to exultation
For whom the burning winds of their sad zone
Bear down the Dove of the Imagination,
Who suffer superbly, in scarlet violetted,
As the Sacred Kings of the Lillie mourned their dead.*
* See Favine's "Book of Chivalry."
XLVIII
COMFORT
II
And that is marvellous comfort;—and yet poor
To what mere woman-mystery can give,
The strange simplicity that will endure
The pangs of death, most resolute to live.
This God of riddles that shaped a thing so frail
For his worst torment hid mysterious powers
Within her breast who can like lilies prevail
Through rains of doom that conquer brassy towers.
Her heart lies broken; when some trivial chord
Of sweetness chimes reveille through the sense,—
A rose, a song, a smile, a courtly word.
She wakes, and sighs, and softly passes thence
Back to the masquers, though her soul's veiled Pyx
Enclose the solemn fruits of the Crucifix.
XLIX
THE CHANGE