The Victories of Love, and Other Poems Part 9

The truths of Love are like the sea For clearness and for mystery.

Of that sweet love which, startling, wakes Maiden and Youth, and mostly breaks The word of promise to the ear, But keeps it, after many a year, To the full spirit, how shall I speak?

My memory with age is weak, And I for hopes do oft suspect The things I seem to recollect.

Yet who but must remember well 'Twas this made heaven intelligible As motive, though 'twas small the power The heart might have, for even an hour.

To hold possession of the height Of nameless pathos and delight!

2

In G.o.dhead rise, thither flow back All loves, which, as they keep or lack.

In their return, the course a.s.sign'd, Are virtue or sin. Love's every kind.

Lofty or low, of spirit or sense, Desire is, or benevolence.

He who is fairer, better, higher Than all His works, claims all desire, And in His Poor, His Proxies, asks Our whole benevolence: He tasks, Howbeit, His People by their powers; And if, my Children, you, for hours, Daily, untortur'd in the heart, Can worship, and time's other part Give, without rough recoils of sense, To the claims ingrate of indigence, Happy are you, and fit to be Wrought to rare heights of sanct.i.ty, For the humble to grow humbler at.

But if the flying spirit falls flat, After the modest spell of prayer That saves the day from sin and care, And the upward eye a void descries, And praises are hypocrisies, And, in the soul, o'erstrain'd for grace, A G.o.dless anguish grows apace; Or, if impartial charity Seems, in the act, a sordid lie, Do not infer you cannot please G.o.d, or that He His promises Postpones, but be content to love No more than He accounts enough.

Account them poor enough who want Any good thing which you can grant; And fathom well the depths of life In loves of Husband and of Wife, Child, Mother, Father; simple keys To what cold faith calls mysteries.

3

The love of marriage claims, above All other kinds, the name of love, As perfectest, though not so high As love which Heaven with single eye Considers. Equal and entire, Therein benevolence, desire, Elsewhere ill-join'd or found apart, Become the pulses of one heart, Which now contracts, and now dilates, And, both to the height exalting, mates Self-seeking to self-sacrifice.

Nay, in its subtle paradise (When purest) this one love unites All modes of these two opposites, All balanced in accord so rich Who may determine which is which?

Chiefly G.o.d's Love does in it live, And nowhere else so sensitive; For each is all that the other's eye, In the vague vast of Deity, Can comprehend and so contain As still to touch and ne'er to strain The fragile nerves of joy. And then 'Tis such a wise goodwill to men And politic economy As in a prosperous State we see, Where every plot of common land Is yielded to some private hand To fence about and cultivate.

Does narrowness its praise abate?

Nay, the infinite of man is found But in the beating of its bound, And, if a brook its banks o'erpa.s.s, 'Tis not a sea, but a mora.s.s.

4

No giddiest hope, no wildest guess Of Love's most innocent loftiness Had dared to dream of its own worth, Till Heaven's bold sun-gleam lit the earth.

Christ's marriage with the Church is more, My Children, than a metaphor.

The heaven of heavens is symbol'd where The torch of Psyche flash'd despair.

But here I speak of heights, and heights Are hardly scaled. The best delights Of even this homeliest pa.s.sion, are In the most perfect souls so rare, That they who feel them are as men Sailing the Southern ocean, when, At midnight, they look up, and eye The starry Cross, and a strange sky Of brighter stars; and sad thoughts come To each how far he is from home.

5

Love's inmost nuptial sweetness see In the doctrine of virginity!

Could lovers, at their dear wish, blend, 'Twould kill the bliss which they intend; For joy is love's obedience Against the law of natural sense; And those perpetual yearnings sweet Of lives which dream that they can meet Are given that lovers never may Be without sacrifice to lay On the high altar of true love, With tears of vestal joy. To move Frantic, like comets to our bliss, Forgetting that we always miss, And so to seek and fly the sun, By turns, around which love should run, Perverts the ineffable delight Of service guerdon'd with full sight And pathos of a hopeless want, To an unreal victory's vaunt, And plaint of an unreal defeat.

Yet no less dangerous misconceit May also be of the virgin will, Whose goal is nuptial blessing still, And whose true being doth subsist, There where the outward forms are miss'd, In those who learn and keep the sense Divine of 'due benevolence,'

Seeking for aye, without alloy Of selfish thought, another's joy, And finding in degrees unknown That which in act they shunn'd, their own.

For all delights of earthly love Are shadows of the heavens, and move As other shadows do; they flee From him that follows them; and he Who flies, for ever finds his feet Embraced by their pursuings sweet.

6

Then, even in love humane, do I Not counsel aspirations high, So much as sweet and regular Use of the good in which we are.

As when a man along the ways Walks, and a sudden music plays, His step unchanged, he steps in time, So let your Grace with Nature chime.

Her primal forces burst, like straws, The bonds of uncongenial laws.

Right life is glad as well as just, And, rooted strong in 'This I must,'

It bears aloft the blossom gay And zephyr-toss'd, of 'This I may;'

Whereby the complex heavens rejoice In fruits of uncommanded choice.

Be this your rule: seeking delight Esteem success the test of right; For 'gainst G.o.d's will much may be done, But nought enjoy'd, and pleasures none Exist, but, like to springs of steel, Active no longer than they feel The checks that make them serve the soul, They take their vigour from control.

A man need only keep but well The Church's indispensable First precepts, and she then allows, Nay, more, she bids him, for his spouse, Leave even his heavenly Father's awe, At times, and His immaculate law, Construed in its extremer sense.

Jehovah's mild magnipotence Smiles to behold His children play In their own free and childish way, And can His fullest praise descry In the exuberant liberty Of those who, having understood The glory of the Central Good, And how souls ne'er may match or merge, But as they thitherward converge, Take in love's innocent gladness part With infantine, untroubled heart, And faith that, straight t'wards heaven's far Spring, Sleeps, like the swallow, on the wing.

7

Lovers, once married, deem their bond Then perfect, scanning nought beyond For love to do but to sustain The spousal hour's delighted gain.

But time and a right life alone Fulfil the promise then foreshown.

The Bridegroom and the Bride withal Are but unwrought material Of marriage; nay, so far is love, Thus crown'd, from being thereto enough, Without the long, compulsive awe Of duty, that the bond of law Does oftener marriage-love evoke, Than love, which does not wear the yoke Of legal vows, submits to be Self-rein'd from ruinous liberty.

Lovely is love; but age well knows 'Twas law which kept the lover's vows Inviolate through the year or years Of worship pieced with panic fears, When she who lay within his breast Seem'd of all women perhaps the best, But not the whole, of womankind, Or love, in his yet wayward mind, Had ghastly doubts its precious life Was pledged for aye to the wrong wife.

Could it be else? A youth pursues A maid, whom chance, not he, did choose, Till to his strange arms hurries she In a despair of modesty.

Then, simply and without pretence Of insight or experience, They plight their vows. The parents say 'We cannot speak them yea or nay; The thing proceedeth from the Lord!'

And wisdom still approves their word; For G.o.d created so these two They match as well as others do That take more pains, and trust Him less Who never fails, if ask'd, to bless His children's helpless ignorance And blind election of life's chance.

Verily, choice not matters much, If but the woman's truly such, And the young man has led the life Without which how shall e'er the wife Be the one woman in the world?

Love's sensitive tendrils sicken, curl'd Round folly's former stay; for 'tis The doom of all unsanction'd bliss To mock some good that, gain'd, keeps still The taint of the rejected ill.

8

Howbeit, though both were perfect, she Of whom the maid was prophecy As yet lives not, and Love rebels Against the law of any else; And, as a steed takes blind alarm, Disowns the rein, and hunts his harm, So, misdespairing word and act May now perturb the happiest pact.

The more, indeed, is love, the more Peril to love is now in store.

Against it nothing can be done But only this: leave ill alone!

Who tries to mend his wife succeeds As he who knows not what he needs.

He much affronts a worth as high As his, and that equality Of spirits in which abide the grace And joy of her subjected place; And does the still growth check and blur Of contraries, confusing her Who better knows what he desires Than he, and to that mark aspires With perfect zeal, and a deep wit Which nothing helps but trusting it.

So, loyally o'erlooking all In which love's promise short may fall Of full performance, honour that As won, which aye love worketh at!

It is but as the pedigree Of perfectness which is to be That our best good can honour claim; Yet honour to deny were shame And robbery: for it is the mould Wherein to beauty runs the gold Of good intention, and the prop That lifts to the sun the earth-drawn crop Of human sensibilities.

Such honour, with a conduct wise In common things, as, not to steep The lofty mind of love in sleep Of over much familiarness; Not to degrade its kind caress, As those do that can feel no more, So give themselves to pleasures o'er; Not to let morning-sloth destroy The evening-flower, domestic joy; Not by uxoriousness to chill The warm devotion of her will Who can but half her love confer On him that cares for nought but her;-- These, and like obvious prudencies Observed, he's safest that relies, For the hope she will not always seem, Caught, but a laurel or a stream, On time; on her unsearchable Love-wisdom; on their work done well, Discreet with mutual aid; on might Of shared affliction and delight; On pleasures that so childish be They're 'shamed to let the children see, By which life keeps the valleys low Where love does naturally grow; On much whereof hearts have account, Though heads forget; on babes, chief fount Of union, and for which babes are No less than this for them, nay far More, for the bond of man and wife To the very verge of future life Strengthens, and yearns for brighter day, While others, with their use, decay; And, though true marriage purpose keeps Of offspring, as the centre sleeps Within the wheel, transmitting thence Fury to the circ.u.mference, Love's self the n.o.blest offspring is, And sanction of the nuptial kiss; Lastly, on either's primal curse, Which help and sympathy reverse To blessings.

9

G.o.d, who may be well Jealous of His chief miracle, Bids sleep the meddling soul of man, Through the long process of this plan, Whereby, from his unweeting side, The Wife's created, and the Bride, That chance one of her strange, sweet s.e.x He to his glad life did annex, Grows more and more, by day and night, The one in the whole world opposite Of him, and in her nature all So suited and reciprocal To his especial form of sense, Affection, and intelligence, That, whereas love at first had strange Relapses into l.u.s.t of change, It now finds (wondrous this, but true!) The long-accustom'd only new, And the untried common; and, whereas An equal seeming danger was Of likeness lacking joy and force, Or difference reaching to divorce, Now can the finish'd lover see Marvel of me most far from me, Whom without pride he may admire, Without Narcissus' doom desire, Serve without selfishness, and love 'Even as himself,' in sense above n.i.g.g.ard 'as much,' yea, as she is The only part of him that's his.

10

I do not say love's youth returns; That joy which so divinely yearns!

But just esteem of present good Shows all regret such grat.i.tude As if the sparrow in her nest, Her woolly young beneath her breast, Should these despise, and sorrow for Her five blue eggs that are no more.

Nor say I the fruit has quite the scope Of the flower's spiritual hope.