Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses | Page 5

and
into my frail flanks,
Into my bursting veins, the whole sea poured

Its spaces and its thunder; and I feared.
We came to cities, and Life piped on me
Low calls to dreaming girls,

In counting-house windows, through the chink of gold,
Flung cries
that fired the captive brain of youth,
And made the heavy merchant at
his desk
Curse us for a cracked hurdy-gurdy; Life
Mimicked the
hurdy-gurdy, and we passed.
We climbed the slopes of solitude, and there
Life met a god, who
challenged her and said:
"Thy pipe against my lyre!" But "Wait!" she
laughed,
And in my live flank dug a finger-hole,
And wrung new
music from it. Ah, the pain!

We climbed and climbed, and left the god behind.
We saw the earth
spread vaster than the sea,
With infinite surge of mountains surfed
with snow,
And a silence that was louder than the deep;
But on the
utmost pinnacle Life again
Hid me, and I heard the terror in her hair.
Safe in new vales, I ached for the old pang,
And clamoured "Play me
against a god again!"
"Poor Marsyas-mortal--he shall bleed thee yet,"

She breathed and kissed me, stilling the dim need.
But evermore it
woke, and stabbed my flank
With yearnings for new music and new
pain.
"Another note against another god!"
I clamoured; and she
answered: "Bide my time.
Of every heart-wound I will make a stop,

And drink thy life in music, pang by pang,
But first thou must yield
the notes I stored in thee
At dawn beside the river. Take my lips."
She kissed me like a lover, but I wept,
Remembering that high song
against the god,
And the old songs slept in me, and I was dumb.
We came to cavernous foul places, blind
With harpy-wings, and
sulphurous with the glare
Of sinful furnaces--where hunger toiled,

And pleasure gathered in a starveling prey,
And death fed delicately
on young bones.
"Now sing!" cried Life, and set her lips to me.
"Here are gods also.
Wilt thou pipe for Dis?"
My cry was drowned beneath the furnace
roar,
Choked by the sulphur-fumes; and beast-lipped gods
Laughed
down on me, and mouthed the flutes of hell.
"Now sing!" said Life, reissuing to the stars;
And wrung a new note
from my wounded side.
So came we to clear spaces, and the sea.
And now I felt its volume in
my heart,
And my heart waxed with it, and Life played on me
The
song of the Infinite. "Now the stars," she said.
Then from the utmost pinnacle again
She poured me on the wild

sidereal stream,
And I grew with her great breathings, till we swept

The interstellar spaces like new worlds
Loosed from the fiery ruin of
a star.
Cold, cold we rested on black peaks again,
Under black skies, under a
groping wind;
And Life, grown old, hugged me to a numb breast,

Pressing numb lips against me. Suddenly
A blade of silver severed
the black peaks
From the black sky, and earth was born again,

Breathing and various, under a god's feet.
A god! A god! I felt the
heart of Life
Leap under me, and my cold flanks shook again.
He
bore no lyre, he rang no challenge out,
But Life warmed to him,
warming me with her,
And as he neared I felt beneath her hands

The stab of a new wound that sucked my soul
Forth in a new song
from my throbbing throat.
"His name--his name?" I whispered, but she shed
The music faster,
and I grew with it,
Became a part of it, while Life and I
Clung lip to
lip, and I from her wrung song
As she from me, one song, one ecstasy,

In indistinguishable union blent,
Till she became the flute and I the
player.
And lo! the song I played on her was more
Than any she
had drawn from me; it held
The stars, the peaks, the cities, and the
sea,
The faun's catch, the nymph's tremor, and the heart
Of
dreaming girls, of toilers at the desk,
Apollo's challenge on the
sunrise slope,
And the hiss of the night-gods mouthing flutes of hell--

All, to the dawn-wind's whisper in the reeds,
When Life first came,
a shape of mystery,
Moving among us, and with random stroke

Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe.
All this I wrung from her
in that deep hour,
While Love stood murmuring: "Play the god, poor
grass!"
Now, by that hour, I am a mate to thee
Forever, Life, however spent
and clogged,
And tossed back useless to my native mud!
Yea,
groping for new reeds to fashion thee
New instruments of anguish
and delight,
Thy hand shall leap to me, thy broken reed,
Thine ear

remember me, thy bosom thrill
With the old subjection, then when
Love and I
Held thee, and fashioned thee, and made thee dance

Like a slave-girl to her pipers--yea, thou yet
Shalt hear my call, and
dropping all thy toys
Thou'lt lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more

Pour the wild music through me--
VESALIUS IN ZANTE (See note at end)
(1564)
SET wide the window. Let me drink the day.
I loved light ever, light
in eye and brain--
No tapers mirrored in long palace floors,
Nor
dedicated depths of silent aisles,
But just