The Hours of Fiammetta | Page 7

finds the core of Passion's heart??They carry fans and mirrors, or make fast
The mournful flute-like cadence of a veil.?Slight fans that winnowed souls, mirrors that glassed
The burning brooding wings which never fail!?Still in such lovely vanities to-day?The gods their secret wisdom hide away.
XLVI
THE INVENTORY
TO HER FRIEND
I love all sumptuous things and delicate,
Ethereal matters richly paradised?In Art's proud certitudes. I love the great
Greek vases, carven ivory, subtilised?Arras of roses, Magians dyed on glass,
Graven chalcedony and sardonyx,?Nocturnes that through the nerves like fever pass,
Arthurian kings, Love on the crucifix,?All sweet mysterious verse, the Byzantine
Gold chambers of Crivelli, marble that flowers?In shy adoring angels, patterned vine
And lotos, and emblazoned Books of Hours,--?_And you, whose smiling eyes to ironies?Reduce both me and mine idolatries_.
XLVII
COMFORT
I
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
I spun my soul about with soft cocoons
Of pleasure golden-pale. For me, for me?Were precious things put forth by crescent moons,
Of pearl and milky jade and ivory.?Grave players on ethereal harpsichords,
My senses wrought a music exquisite?As patterned roses, all my life's accords
Were richer, ghostlier than peacocks white.?So in my paradise reserved and fair
I grew as dreamlike as the Elysian dead;?Until a passing Wizard smote me there,
And suddenly my soul inherited?Some gorgeous terrible dukedom of desire?Like those in bright Andromeda's realms of fire.
L
AT THE END
The fiery permutations of the soul
Are infinite, but how to be revealed??On what impassive matter must the whole
Inveterate coil of good and ill be sealed!?How much too simple all the tale of deeds
To pattern out these labyrinthine things,?These knots of bright unreason, ghostly bredes
Veiled weavers weave, moving with silver wings?Within the duskling sense. Most diverse visions
Their visionaries darkly reconcile?At one sad end. Fate's delicate derisions
Through the same hell of penance may beguile?Two women, who meet with alien eyes downcast;?Yet one stand first with Love, and one the last.
LI
THE SOUL OF AGE
I have seen delicate aged women wrought
Most tenderly by Time, their passionate past?By the wise vigils of forgiving thought
Amerced of pain, mere beauty at the last.?So may my soul be chaste, serene, enriched
Like an Etruscan mirror one has found?In kind oblivions, graciously bewitched
With precious patinas, a various round?Of milky opal, or turkis, or emerald,
Glistered with rubies faint and smoky pearls,?Where swirls of incised pattern have enthralled
Figures of sweet archaic gods and girls,?And I shall say: "Thou art a curious toy,?O soul that mirrored Love and Wrath and Joy!"
LI I
HYPNEROTOMACHIA
Ah! Pride and Wrath and Mirth and Pain and Pity,
Some amethystine day at last will be,?When your bright guard and Phantasy's hill-city
Shall be like wonders on a tapestry;?And we shall touch between tired orisons
The symbolism of those freaked crowns and wings,--?Then gaze across the falling Avalons,
The resignations of autumnal things,?And see among the pointed cypresses
The one god left, the smiling perverse god,?The Love that will not leave the loverless,
Contending with the Stranger of the Rod,--?Until these twain become as one, and all?The Soul and Sense be starrily vesperal.
LIII
THE REVOLT
Not so, my Soul? Rather for thee the fate
Of those hieratic Carthaginian queens?Who needs must vanish through the gods' own gate,
Even holy Flame, with music and great threnes?Idolatrous, as on soft gorgeous wings,
If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed?Their beauty's sacred unisons?--Fair things
Desire their revel-raiment be their shroud.?Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage!
Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth,?These penitential usages of age
That expiate proud cruelties of youth,?And bring thee to the last and perfect art,?To love the lovely with a selfless heart?
LIV
AFTER MANY YEARS
By mute communions and by salt sad kisses,
By Pity's webs that still with fiery strands?Wove us together, by the unplumbed abysses
Where we have gazed and never loosened hands,?By holy water we have given each other
At Beauty's blessed doors, and by the hearts?Of sweet Delight and Agony her brother,
By bright new marriages in all great arts,?By the rare wisdom like miraculous amber
Won by the desolate