Canzoni & Ripostes Part 9

Life is most cruel where she is most wise.

III

The will to live goes from me.

I have lain Dull and out-worn with some strange, subtle sickness.

Who shall say That love is not the very root of this, O thou afar?

Yet she was near me, that eternal deep.

O it is pa.s.sing strange that love Can blow two ways across one soul.

And I was Aengus for a thousand years, And she, the ever-living, moved with me And strove amid the waves, and would not go.

IV

ELEGIA

"_Far buon tempo e trionfare_"

"I have put my days and dreams out of mind'

For all their hurry and their weary fret Availed me little. But another kind Of leaf that's fast in some more sombre wind, Is man on life, and all our tenuous courses Wind and unwind as vainly.

I have lived long, and died, Yea I have been dead, right often, And have seen one thing: The sun, while he is high, doth light our wrong And none can break the darkness with a song.

To-day's the cup. To-morrow is not ours: Nay, by our strongest bands we bind her not, Nor all our fears and our anxieties Turn her one leaf or hold her scimitar.

The deed blots out the thought And many thoughts, the vision; And right's a compa.s.s with as many poles As there are points in her circ.u.mference, 'Tis vain to seek to steer all courses even, And all things save sheer right are vain enough.

The blade were vain to grow save toward the sun, And vain th' attempt to hold her green forever.

All things in season and no thing o'er long!

Love and desire and gain and good forgetting, Thou canst not stay the wheel, hold none too long!

V

How our modernity, Nerve-wracked and broken, turns Against time's way and all the way of things, Crying with weak and egoistic cries!

All things are given over, Only the restless will Surges amid the stars Seeking new moods of life, New permutations.

See, and the very sense of what we know Dodges and hides as in a sombre curtain Bright threads leap forth, and hide, and leave no pattern.

VI

I thought I had put Love by for a time And I was glad, for to me his fair face Is like Pain's face.

A little light, The lowered curtain and the theatre!

And o'er the frail talk of the inter-act Something that broke the jest! A little light, The gold, and half the profile!

The whole face Was nothing like you, yet that image cut Sheer through the moment.

VIb

I have gone seeking for you in the twilight, Here in the flurry of Fifth Avenue, Here where they pa.s.s between their teas and teas.

Is it such madness? though you could not be Ever in all that crowd, no gown Of all their subtle sorts could be your gown.

Yet I am fed with faces, is there one That even in the half-light mindeth me.

VII

THE HOUSE OF SPLENDOUR

'Tis Evanoe's, A house not made with hands, But out somewhere beyond the worldly ways Her gold is spread, above, around, inwoven, Strange ways and walls are fashioned out of it.

And I have seen my Lady in the sun, Her hair was spread about, a sheaf of wings, And red the sunlight was, behind it all.

And I have seen her there within her house, With six great sapphires hung along the wall, Low, panel-shaped, a-level with her knees, And all her robe was woven of pale gold.

There are there many rooms and all of gold, Of woven walls deep patterned, of email, Of beaten work; and through the claret stone, Set to some weaving, comes the aureate light.

Here am I come perforce my love of her, Behold mine adoration Maketh me clear, and there are powers in this Which, played on by the virtues of her soul, Break down the four-square walls of standing time.

VIII

THE FLAME

'Tis not a game that plays at mates and mating, Provence knew; 'Tis not a game of barter, lands and houses, Provence knew.

We who are wise beyond your dream of wisdom, Drink our immortal moments; we "pa.s.s through."

We have gone forth beyond your bonds and borders, Provence knew; And all the tales they ever writ of Oisin Say but this: That man doth pa.s.s the net of days and hours.

Where time is shrivelled down to time's seed corn We of the Ever-living, in that light Meet through our veils and whisper, and of love.

O smoke and shadow of a darkling world, Barters of pa.s.sion, and that tenderness That's but a sort of cunning! O my Love, These, and the rest, and all the rest we knew.

'Tis not a game that plays at mates and mating, 'Tis not a game of barter, lands and houses, 'Tis not "of days and nights" and troubling years, Of cheeks grown sunken and glad hair gone gray; There _is_ the subtler music, the clear light

Where time burns back about th' eternal embers.

We are not shut from all the thousand heavens: Lo, there are many G.o.ds whom we have seen, Folk of unearthly fashion, places splendid, Bulwarks of beryl and of chrysophrase.

Sapphire Benacus, in thy mists and thee Nature herself's turned metaphysical, Who can look on that blue and not believe?

Thou hooded opal, thou eternal pearl, O thou dark secret with a shimmering floor, Through all thy various mood I know thee mine;

If I have merged my soul, or utterly Am solved and bound in, through aught here on earth, There canst thou find me, O thou anxious thou, Who call'st about my gates for some lost me; I say my soul flowed back, became translucent.

Search not my lips, O Love, let go my hands, This thing that moves as man is no more mortal.

If thou hast seen my shade sans character, If thou hast seen that mirror of all moments, That gla.s.s to all things that o'ershadow it, Call not that mirror me, for I have slipped Your grasp, I have eluded.