The Hours of Fiammetta | Page 7

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 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.*
0. 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,