The Hours of Fiammetta | Page 6

are nearer to the gods than poets are.?For with the silver moons we wax and wane,
And with the roses love most woundingly,?And, wrought from flower to fruit with dim rich pain,
The Orchard of the Pomegranates are we.?For with Demeter still we seek the Spring,
With Dionysos tread the sacred Vine,?Our broken bodies still imagining
The mournful Mystery of the Bread and Wine.--?And Art, that fierce confessor of the flowers,?Desires the secret spice of those veiled hours.
XXXVII
DESTINY
The great religions of the Rose and Grape
Have bound us in to their sad Paradise:?We dream in crucial symbols, nor escape
The cypress-garden where the slain god lies.?Daughters of lamentation round the Cross
Where Beauty suffers garlanded with thorn,?Remembrancers through all the Night of Loss,
We bear the spikenard of the Easter Morn.?The yearning Springs, the brooding Autumns seethe
Like philtres in our veins. O dark Election,?Are then the sacrificial doors we wreathe
With lilies fiery gates of Resurrexion??And does the passion of our spices feed?Love's bright Arabian miracle indeed?
XXXVIII
CONFLICT
Why should a woman find her dream of love
Irised by the strange ecstasy of Art??Is not Eros a terrible lord enough
That she must bear both Hunters of the heart,?The Golden Archer and the Scarlet too?
Then bitter anomalies annul her choir?Of puissant and subtle instincts, rended through
By gorgeous dualisms of vain-desire.?For Love outrages Art's clear disciplines,
And Art lures Love to guilt of cryptic treason:?The spirit of imagination pines,
Captive in webs of exquisite unreason.?Alas for this translated soul of hers,?The rose's, that must be the garlander's!
XXXIX
PREDECESSORS
Fa?ry of Sheba, idol moulded in
Onyx milk-white, moon-mailed and casqued with gems;?Ye gold-swathed queens of Egypt, Isis' kin,
With bright god-hawks and snakes for diadems;?Serene masque-music of Greek girls that bear
The sacred Veil to that Athenian feast;?Hypatia, casting from thine ivory chair
The gods' last challenge to the godless priest;?Fantastic fine Proven?als wistfully
Hearkening Love, the mournful lute player;?Diamond ladies of that Italy
When Art and Wisdom Passion's angels were--?Ye give this grail (touch with no mad misprision!)?Of Beauty's rose-red miracled tradition.
XL
TRANSITION
But these recoil in riddles and reserves.--
The dream's untuned. Ah! vanished chords thereof!?Ah! keen divisions of the jangled nerves
That strung so long the gracious lutes of love!--?Hurry to sell old magian Lamps for new,
Though beauty's moonlike domes dissolve and pass:?If all things change, ye would be changing too,
Crazed hearts that know not your desire, alas!?Still, through these wintry treasons that forswear
The lovely bitter bondage of our god,?Rare perennations of the soul prepare--
And Music yet shall seal the period?With some new star,--with sad pure hands unveil?For ransomed eyes again the gilded Grail.
XLI
THE VIRTUE OF PRIDE
My troubled bosom shall be cinct with pride,
Girdled with red asterias. Is it sin?If I have cast lover and friend aside,
Scorning them as myself who cannot win?The strengths of beauty, the heavenly altitudes?--
O sad and sacred Spirit of Disdain,?What penances upon thine ivory roods
Within the burning Castles of thy pain!--?Thy mystic will no motion ever knew
Outwith the splendid danger of extremes;?Thy sorrowful refusals pass thee through
The great concentrics of star-builded dreams,?Unto the crypt of absolute ecstasy,?To God or Nothing--where thine heart would be.
XLII
SPELL-BOUND
I have been frozen. Once I was not cold.
But I have strayed within some glittering?Night Of Lapland miracle, have leagued of old
With glaives and banners of wild Polar light.?Yet if I could dissolve in tears this core
Of ice, my heart, undo these crystal spells,?We should be sisters of incense evermore
Like the crowned Lover of the Canticles.?Through the great honeycomb of my soul should steep
The secrets of the lilies, and her fire?Be ambergris, her agate flagons keep
The sorcelled hydromel which brings Desire?To that mysterious Dark where still prevails?The dream of roses and of nightingales.
XLIII
THE NIGHT OBSCURE OF THE SOUL
When the Soul travails in her Night Obscure,
The nadir of her desperate defeat,?What heavenly dream shall help her to endure,
What flaming Wisdom be her Paraclete??No curious Metaphysic can withhold
The heart from that mandragora she craves:--?Unreasonable, old as Earth is old,
The blind ecstatic miracle that saves.?Far off the pagan trumpeters of Pride
Call to the blood.--Love moans.--Some fiery fashion?Of rapture like the anguish of the bride
Leaps from the dark perfection of the Passion,?Crying: "O beautiful God, still torture me,?For if thou slay me, I will trust in Thee."
XLIV
THE CONQUEST OF IMMORTALITY
Ah! not in earthy dull durations I
Mine heirdom of Eternity implore.?Give one star-drunken moment ere I die,
Then doom me dreadless to the implacable Door.?That mystical Assumption shall disown
Time's haughtiest lieges. Grey mortality?Will disenchant the jewel-breded throne
Of Cassiopeia when more burningly?My deed exults with angels. I will borrow
From continuity no larva-lease:?Through sworded crises and great compts of sorrow
I seek the splendour that shall never cease?Though Death coin from my soul through endless years?Dim drachmas of his infinite arrears.
XLV
WOMEN OF TANAGRA
Have these forgotten they are toys of Death
That in his sad aphelions of desire?They still regret the joy that perisheth,
And Spring's great reveries that exceed and tire,--?Faintly accusing Love's unmercied yokes
With almost wanton grace, the craft and art?Of precious frailty that with subtle strokes
Of sweetness