The Heptalogia | Page 5

I conjecture, in a blank and rhythmic passion, Had the æons
thought of making thee a man, and me a louse.
"The broad lives of upper planets, their absorption and digestion, Food
and famine, health and sickness, I can scrutinize and test; Through a
shiver of the senses comes a resonance of question, And by proof of
balanced answer I decide that I am best."
"Man, the fleshly marvel, alway feels a certain kind of awe stick To the
skirts of contemplation, cramped with nympholeptic weight: Feels his
faint sense charred and branded by the touch of solar caustic, On the
forehead of his spirit feels the footprint of a Fate."
"Notwithstanding which, O poet," spake the woodlouse, very blandly,
"I am likewise the created,--I the equipoise of thee;
I the particle, the
atom, I behold on either hand lie
The inane of measured ages that
were embryos of me.
"I am fed with intimations, I am clothed with consequences, And the air
I breathe is coloured with apocalyptic blush: Ripest-budded odours
blossom out of dim chaotic stenches,
And the Soul plants spirit-lilies
in sick leagues of human slush.
"I am thrilled half cosmically through by cryptophantic surgings, Till
the rhythmic hills roar silent through a spongious kind of blee: And
earth's soul yawns disembowelled of her pancreatic organs, Like a
madrepore if mesmerized, in rapt catalepsy.

"And I sacrifice, a Levite--and I palpitate, a poet;--
Can I close dead
ears against the rush and resonance of things? Symbols in me breathe
and flicker up the heights of the heroic; Earth's worst spawn, you said,
and cursed me? look! approve me! I have wings.
"Ah, men's poets! men's conventions crust you round and swathe you
mist-like,
And the world's wheels grind your spirits down the dust ye
overtrod: We stand sinlessly stark-naked in effulgence of the
Christlight, And our polecat chokes not cherubs; and our skunk smells
sweet to God.
"For He grasps the pale Created by some thousand vital handles, Till a
Godshine, bluely winnowed through the sieve of thunderstorms,
Shimmers up the non-existent round the churning feet of angels; And
the atoms of that glory may be seraphs, being worms.
"Friends, your nature underlies us and your pulses overplay us; Ye,
with social sores unbandaged, can ye sing right and steer wrong? For
the transient cosmic, rooted in imperishable chaos,
Must be kneaded
into drastics as material for a song.
"Eyes once purged from homebred vapours through humanitarian
passion See that monochrome a despot through a democratic prism;

Hands that rip the soul up, reeking from divine evisceration, Not with
priestlike oil anoint him, but a stronger-smelling chrism.
"Pass, O poet, retransfigured! God, the psychometric rhapsode, Fills
with fiery rhythms the silence, stings the dark with stars that blink;

All eternities hang round him like an old man's clothes collapsèd,
While he makes his mundane music--AND HE WILL NOT STOP, I
THINK."

THE PERSON OF THE HOUSE
IDYL CCCLXVI

THE ACCOMPANIMENTS
0. THE MONTHLY NURSE
. THE CAUDLE
. THE SENTENCES
THE KID
. THE MONTHLY NURSE
The sickly airs had died of damp;
Through huddling leaves the holy
chime
Flagged; I, expecting Mrs. Gamp,
Thought--"Will the
woman come in time?"
Upstairs I knew the matron bed
Held her
whose name confirms all joy
To me; and tremblingly I said,
"Ah!
will it be a girl or boy?"
And, soothed, my fluttering doubts began

To sift the pleasantness of things;
Developing the unshapen man,

An eagle baffled of his wings;
Considering, next, how fair the state

And large the license that sublimes
A nineteenth-century female
fate--
Sweet cause that thralls my liberal rhymes!
And Chastities
and colder Shames,
Decorums mute and marvellous,
And fair
Behaviour that reclaims
All fancies grown erroneous,
Moved round
me musing, till my choice
Faltered. A female in a wig
Stood by me,
and a drouthy voice
Announced her--Mrs. Betsy Prig.
2. THE CAUDLE
Sweet Love that sways the reeling years,
The crown and chief of
certitudes,
For whose calm eyes and modest ears
Time writes the
rule and text of prudes--
That, surpliced, stoops a nuptial head,
Nor
chooses to live blindly free,
But, with all pulses quieted,
Plays tunes
of domesticity--
That Love I sing of and have sung
And mean to
sing till Death yawn sheer,
He rules the music of my tongue,

Stills
it or quickens, there or here.
I say but this: as we went up
I heard
the Monthly give a sniff
And "_if_ the big dog makes the pup--"

She murmured--then repeated "if!"
The caudle on a slab was placed;

She snuffed it, snorting loud and long;
I fled--I would not stop to

taste--
And dreamed all night of things gone wrong.
3. THE SENTENCES
I
Abortive Love is half a sin;
But Love's abortions dearer far
Than
wheels without an axle-pin
Or life without a married star.
II
My rules are hard to understand
For him whom sensual rules depress;

A bandbox in a midwife's hand
May hold a costlier bridal dress.
III
"I like her not; in fact I loathe;
Bugs hath she brought from London
beds."
Friend! wouldst thou rather bear