The Unknown Eros

A free download from www.dertz.in

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Unknown Eros, by Coventry
Patmore
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Unknown Eros
Author: Coventry Patmore
Release Date: October 7, 2004 [eBook #13672]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
UNKNOWN EROS***
This eBook was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
THE UNKNOWN EROS
by Coventry Patmore.
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.
To this edition of "The Unknown Eros" are added all the other poems I
have written, in what I venture--because it has no other name--to call
"catalectic verse." Nearly all English metres owe their existence as
metres to "catalexis," or pause, for the time of one or more feet, and, as
a rule, the position and amount of catalexis are fixed. But the verse in
which this volume is written is catalectic par excellence, employing the
pause (as it does the rhyme) with freedom only limited by the
exigencies of poetic passion. From the time of Drummond of
Hawthornden to our own, some of the noblest flights of English poetry

have been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it
has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive
efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to
purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary
it by rhythmical movements which are destructive of its character.
Some persons, unlearned in the subject of metre, have objected to this
kind of verse that it is "lawless." But it has its laws as truly as any other.
In its highest order, the lyric or "ode," it is a tetrameter, the line having
the time of eight iambics. When it descends to narrative, or the
expression of a less-exalted strain of thought, it becomes a trimeter,
having the time of six iambics, or even a dimeter, with the time of four;
and it is allowable to vary the tetrameter "ode" by the occasional
introduction of passages in either or both of these inferior measures, but
not, I think, by the use of any other. The license to rhyme at indefinite
intervals is counterbalanced, in the writing of all poets who have
employed this metre successfully, by unusual frequency in the
recurrence of the same rhyme. For information on the generally
overlooked but primarily important function of catalexis in English
verse I refer such readers as may be curious about the subject to the
Essay printed as an appendix to the later editions of my collected
poems.
I do not pretend to have done more than very moderate justice to the
exceeding grace and dignity and the inexhaustible expressiveness of
which this kind of metre is capable; but I can say that I have never
attempted to write in it in the absence of that one justification of and
prime qualification for its use, namely, the impulse of some thought
that "voluntary moved harmonious numbers."
COVENTRY PATMORE.
HASTINGS, 1890.
CONTENTS
TO THE UNKNOWN EROS, ETC.
PROEM.

BOOK I.
I. SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY
II. WIND AND WAVE
III.
WINTER
IV. BEATA
V. THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW

VI. TRISTITIA
VII. THE AZALEA
VIII. DEPARTURE
IX.
EURYDICE
X. THE TOYS
XI. TIRED MEMORY
XII.
MAGNA EST VERITAS
XIII. 1867
XIV. 'IF I WERE DEAD'

XV. PEACE
XVI. A FAREWELL
XVII. 1880-85.
XVIII.
THE TWO DESERTS
XIX. CREST AND GULF
XX. 'LET
BE!'
XXI. 'FAINT YET PURSUING'
XXII. VICTORY IN
DEFEAT
XVIII. REMEMBERED GRACE
XXIV. VESICA
PISCIS
BOOK II.
I. TO THE UNKNOWN EROS
II. THE CONTRACT
III.
ARBOR VITAE
IV. THE STANDARDS
V. SPONSA DEI
VI.
LEGEM TUAM DILEXI
VII. TO THE BODY
VIII. 'SING US
ONE OF THE SONGS OF SION'
IX. DELICIAE SAPIENTIAE
DE AMORE
X. THE CRY AT MIDNIGHT
XI. AURAS OF
DELIGHT
XII. EROS AND PSYCHE
XIII. DE NATURA
DEORUM
XIV. PSYCHE'S DISCONTENT
XV. PAIN
XVI.
PROPHETS WHO CANNOT SING
XVII. THE CHILD'S
PURCHASE

XVIII. DEAD LANGUAGE
AMELIA, ETC.
AMELIA
L'ALLEGRO
REGINA COELI
THE OPEN
SECRET
VENUS AND DEATH
MIGNONNE
ALEXANDER
AND LYCON
SEMELE
THE UNKNOWN EROS
"Deliciae meae esse cum filiis hominum."
PROV. VIII. 31.

PROEM.
'Many speak wisely, some inerrably:
Witness the beast who talk'd
that should have bray'd,
And Caiaphas that said
Expedient 'twas for
all that One should die;
But what avails
When Love's right accent
from their wisdom fails,
And the Truth-criers know not what they cry!

Say, wherefore thou,
As under bondage of some bitter vow,

Warblest no word,
When all the rest are shouting to be heard?
Why
leave the fervid running just when Fame
'Gan whispering of thy name

Amongst the hard-pleased Judges of the Course?
Parch'd is thy
crystal-flowing source?
Pierce, then, with thought's steel probe, the
trodden ground, Till passion's buried floods be found;
Intend thine
eye
Into the dim and undiscover'd sky
Whose lustres are the
pulsings of the heart,
And promptly, as thy trade is, watch to chart

The lonely suns, the mystic hazes