The Hours of Fiammetta | Page 9

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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