Though cold clear cruelties like diamond
Burthen this silken text of dim surmise,
Surely thou knowest I am pity's bond
If one but look at me with stricken eyes.
If like a herald I have blazoned Pride,
I am Humility's own renegade.
For fruits of good and evil have I sighed?
If Love forbid them, Love shall be obeyed.
Though the wroth soul may excommunicate
Her body, yet I see the flagrant strife
Of earthy and heavenly elements create
Colour, change, music. For the Tree of Life
Burns with this precious mystery of sorrows
That Love the Phoenix find immortal morrows.
LX
THE NEW LOVE
Ah! what if thy last canticle be said,
Bright Archer of illusion adored of old,
Thou dream-fast Love in raiment burning-red,
Wreathed with white doves, quivered with burning gold?
Pass with thy Triumph of Lovers, Aucassin,
Tristram, and Pharamond, and Lancelot,
Dante, and Rudel, all thy haughty kin,
Princes in that high heaven, as we are not.—
With some gilt couchant sphinx both casqued and crowned,
All mailed in amethyst the new god comes,
Whose brooding beautiful eyes at last have found
Our uncanonical dark martyrdoms,
Who from the sombre catacombs of these
Brings his great miracles and mysteries.
LXI
THE WAYS OF LOVE
Hail the implacable Iconoclast
Whose images of ivory and gold
Make proud the dust that his enthusiast
In her dark trance may very God behold.
From the clear music of his delicate
Peripheries and porches of delight
He draws her down through cruel gate on gate,
Through immemorial, blind, implacable rite
That strips her of her dream-branched veils of youth,
And naked, agonised like trodden grapes,
Drags her before the imperishable Truth,
The flaming Ecstacy wherefrom he shapes
Real myth and doctrine. Therefore I lift up
My heart like some great jubilant scarlet Cup.