Poems & Ballads Volume I Part 19

Sweet life, if life were stronger, Earth clear of years that wrong her, Then two things might live longer, Two sweeter things than they; Delight, the rootless flower, And love, the bloomless bower; Delight that lives an hour, And love that lives a day.

From evensong to daytime, When April melts in Maytime, Love lengthens out his playtime, Love lessens breath by breath, And kiss by kiss grows older On listless throat or shoulder Turned sideways now, turned colder Than life that dreams of death.

This one thing once worth giving Life gave, and seemed worth living; Sin sweet beyond forgiving And brief beyond regret: To laugh and love together And weave with foam and feather And wind and words the tether Our memories play with yet.

Ah, one thing worth beginning, One thread in life worth spinning, Ah sweet, one sin worth sinning With all the whole soul's will; To lull you till one stilled you, To kiss you till one killed you, To feed you till one filled you, Sweet lips, if love could fill;

To hunt sweet Love and lose him Between white arms and bosom, Between the bud and blossom, Between your throat and chin; To say of shame--what is it?

Of virtue--we can miss it, Of sin--we can but kiss it, And it's no longer sin:

To feel the strong soul, stricken Through fleshly pulses, quicken Beneath swift sighs that thicken, Soft hands and lips that smite; Lips that no love can tire, With hands that sting like fire, Weaving the web Desire To snare the bird Delight.

But love so lightly plighted, Our love with torch unlighted, Paused near us unaffrighted, Who found and left him free; None, seeing us cloven in sunder, Will weep or laugh or wonder; Light love stands clear of thunder, And safe from winds at sea.

As, when late larks give warning Of dying lights and dawning, Night murmurs to the morning, "Lie still, O love, lie still;"

And half her dark limbs cover The white limbs of her lover, With amorous plumes that hover And fervent lips that chill;

As scornful day represses Night's void and vain caresses, And from her cloudier tresses Unwinds the gold of his, With limbs from limbs dividing And breath by breath subsiding; For love has no abiding, But dies before the kiss;

So hath it been, so be it; For who shall live and flee it?

But look that no man see it Or hear it unaware; Lest all who love and choose him See Love, and so refuse him; For all who find him lose him, But all have found him fair.

DOLORES

(NOTRE-DAME DES SEPT DOULEURS)

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories, What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre Dolores, Our Lady of Pain?

Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin; But thy sins, which are seventy times seven, Seven ages would fail thee to purge in, And then they would haunt thee in heaven: Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, And the loves that complete and control All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows That wear out the soul.

O garment not golden but gilded, O garden where all men may dwell, O tower not of ivory, but builded By hands that reach heaven from h.e.l.l; O mystical rose of the mire, O house not of gold but of gain, O house of unquenchable fire, Our Lady of Pain!

O lips full of l.u.s.t and of laughter, Curled snakes that are fed from my breast, Bite hard, lest remembrance come after And press with new lips where you pressed.

For my heart too springs up at the pressure, Mine eyelids too moisten and burn; Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure, Ere pain come in turn.

In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's, Out of sight though they lie of to-day, There have been and there yet shall be sorrows That smite not and bite not in play.

The life and the love thou despisest, These hurt us indeed, and in vain, O wise among women, and wisest, Our Lady of Pain.

Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories That stung thee, what visions that smote?

Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores, When desire took thee first by the throat?

What bud was the sh.e.l.l of a blossom That all men may smell to and pluck?

What milk fed thee first at what bosom?

What sins gave thee suck?

We shift and bedeck and bedrape us, Thou art n.o.ble and nude and antique; Libitina thy mother, Priapus Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek.

We play with light loves in the portal, And wince and relent and refrain; Loves die, and we know thee immortal, Our Lady of Pain.

Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges; Thou art fed with perpetual breath, And alive after infinite changes, And fresh from the kisses of death; Of languors rekindled and rallied, Of barren delights and unclean, Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid And poisonous queen.

Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?

Men touch them, and change in a trice The lilies and languors of virtue For the raptures and roses of vice; Those lie where thy foot on the floor is, These crown and caress thee and chain, O splendid and sterile Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.

There are sins it may be to discover, There are deeds it may be to delight.

What new work wilt thou find for thy lover, What new pa.s.sions for daytime or night?

What spells that they know not a word of Whose lives are as leaves overblown?

What tortures undreamt of, unheard of, Unwritten, unknown?

Ah beautiful pa.s.sionate body That never has ached with a heart!

On thy mouth though the kisses are b.l.o.o.d.y, Though they sting till it shudder and smart, More kind than the love we adore is, They hurt not the heart or the brain, O bitter and tender Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.

As our kisses relax and redouble, From the lips and the foam and the fangs Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble, No dream of impossible pangs?

With the sweet of the sins of old ages Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore?

Too sweet is the rind, say the sages, Too bitter the core.

Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time, And bared all thy beauties to one?

Ah, where shall we go then for pastime, If the worst that can be has been done?

But sweet as the rind was the core is; We are fain of thee still, we are fain, O sanguine and subtle Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.

By the hunger of change and emotion, By the thirst of unbearable things, By despair, the twin-born of devotion, By the pleasure that winces and stings, The delight that consumes the desire, The desire that outruns the delight, By the cruelty deaf as a fire And blind as the night,

By the ravenous teeth that have smitten Through the kisses that blossom and bud, By the lips intertwisted and bitten Till the foam has a savour of blood, By the pulse as it rises and falters, By the hands as they slacken and strain, I adjure thee, respond from thine altars, Our Lady of Pain.

Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining The light fire in the veins of a boy?

But he comes to thee sad, without feigning, Who has wearied of sorrow and joy; Less careful of labour and glory Than the elders whose hair has uncurled; And young, but with fancies as h.o.a.ry And grey as the world.

I have pa.s.sed from the outermost portal To the shrine where a sin is a prayer; What care though the service be mortal?

O our Lady of Torture, what care?

All thine the last wine that I pour is, The last in the chalice we drain, O fierce and luxurious Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.

All thine the new wine of desire, The fruit of four lips as they clung Till the hair and the eyelids took fire, The foam of a serpentine tongue, The froth of the serpents of pleasure, More salt than the foam of the sea, Now felt as a flame, now at leisure As wine shed for me.

Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen, Marked cross from the womb and perverse!

They have found out the secret to cozen The G.o.ds that constrain us and curse; They alone, they are wise, and none other; Give me place, even me, in their train, O my sister, my spouse, and my mother, Our Lady of Pain.

For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than l.u.s.t.

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.

And pale from the past we draw nigh thee, And satiate with comfortless hours; And we know thee, how all men belie thee, And we gather the fruit of thy flowers; The pa.s.sion that slays and recovers, The pangs and the kisses that rain On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers, Our Lady of Pain.

The desire of thy furious embraces Is more than the wisdom of years, On the blossom though blood lie in traces, Though the foliage be sodden with tears.

For the lords in whose keeping the door is That opens on all who draw breath Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores, The myrtle to death.

And they laughed, changing hands in the measure, And they mixed and made peace after strife; Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure; Death tingled with blood, and was life.

Like lovers they melted and tingled, In the dusk of thine innermost fane; In the darkness they murmured and mingled, Our Lady of Pain.