The Hours of Fiammetta | Page 8

grey sound of tears,?By wedding-music of the flute and tambour
Prevailing o'er Time's cruel plot of years,?By all the proud prayers granted and denied us,?Fate has no sword at all that can divide us.
LV
TREASURE
Not mine the silver ride of the redeemer,
Not mine the secret vision of the saint,?Not mine the martyrdoms of Truth's dark dreamer
Nor bitter beatitudes of Art. O quaint?Undoing of youth's horoscope! No splendours
Nor laurels, nor wisdom in a myrrhine bowl!?Here is the treasure that the past surrenders,
A spoil of roses coffered in the soul,--?Much like another woman's! Rare perfumes
And cleaving thorns, faded pathetic store?Of kisses and sighs, would those heroic dooms
I craved of old have yet enriched me more??I have not dwelt in Galilee nor Tyre?Nor Athens. But I have my heart's desire.
LVI
THE SOUL TO THE BODY
I know thou hast a secret of thine own
Which I desire. But once I broke with thee?And walked among the asphodel alone:
Therefore thou wilt reserve this reverie,?Like sumptuous flame closed up in alabaster.
They half betray, these curious magian hands:?Faint music of thy breast has throbbed the faster,
If I have touched it with my charming-wands.?And yet,--the wonder any woman knows
Thou dost deny the proud Soul that has fed?Among the lilies of the White Eros.--
Ere I go down among the witless Dead?Give, give the secret, for my bliss or rue,?Lest lack of that should craze my wisdom through.
LVII
THE IRONIST
Among high gods the absolute ironist
Is Love. Therefore, when some cleft lightning mocks?Thine arrogant rapture, sad idealist,
Admire the wild play of his paradox.?Great satires of reversal have astounded
His bigots: proud fine dreamers confident?Before an idol in their image are hounded
Through comedies of disillusionment.?Not heavenly Plato, not the Florentine,
Not any mage of Epipsychidion?Can the true nature of the god divine.
Heresiarchs like Heine and like Donne,?Bitter and sweet, and hot and cold, know best?The incomparable anguish of his jest.
LVIII
IN VAIN
I said: "Confession's bitter cautery
Shall fierily search my soul, destroy her ill."?Natheless, the wounded wasting malady
Is her unexorcised sad sovran still.?Oh! that alembic fever of interwed
Desire and dream and sense, rapture and rue!?As soon as my sincerest words are said
And heard they seem apostate and untrue.?For only speech more richly dubious
Than shoaling water, or a ringdove's breast,?Than lighted incense more miraculous
With fumes of strange remembrance, could attest?The morbid beauty of that wasting ill?Whereof I am the cureless lover still.
LIX
RESERVATIONS
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.
THE EPILOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN
Take back this armour. Give us broideries.
Against the Five sad Wounds inveterate?In our dim sense, can that defend, or these?
In veils mysterious and delicate?Clothe us again, in beautiful broideries.
Take back this justice. Give us thuribles.
While ye do loudly in the battle-dust,?We feed the gods with spice and canticles.
To our strange hearts, as theirs, just and unjust?Are idle words. Give graven thuribles.
Keep orb and sceptre. Give us up your souls
That our long fingers wake them verily?Like dulcimers and citherns and violes;
Or at the burning disk of ecstasy?Impose rare sigils on your gem-like souls.
Give mercies, cruelties, and exultations,
Give the long trances of the breaking heart;?And we shall bring you great imaginations
To urge you through the agony of Art.?Give cloud and flame, give trances, exultations.
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