some chord
     Of mystery Love's music never knelled
Before;—but nought of the rough alchemy
That disillusions all felicity.

XX

THE HIDDEN REVERIE

The life of plants, rising through dim sweet states,
     Cloisters the rich love-secret more and more,
Gathers it jealously within the gates
     Of the hushed heart; but, mightier than before,
The mystery prevails and overpowers
     Stem, leaf, and petal. So the passion lies
In this tranced flowery being which is ours
     Like to a hidden wound; yet softly dyes
With dolorous beauty all the stuff of life,
     Each dream and vision and desire subduing
With muted pulses, that great counter-strife
     Of soul with its own rhythmic pangs imbuing.
Deny it and disdain it. Lo! there beat
Red stigmata in heart and hands and feet.

XXI

SOUL AND BODY

It may be all my pain is woven wrong,
     And this wild "I" is nothing but a dream
The body exhales, as roses at evensong
     Their passionate odour. Verily it may seem
That this most fevered and fantastic wear
     Of nerves and senses is myself indeed,
The rest, illusion taken in that snare.—
     But still the fiery splendour and the need
Can bite like actual flame and hunger. Ah!
     If Sense, bewildered in the spiral towers
Of Matter, dreamed this great Superbia
     I call the Soul, not less the Dream hath powers;
Not less these Twain, being one, are separate,
Like lovers whose love is tangled hard with hate.

XXII

SOUL AND BODY

II

Sometimes the Soul in pure hieratic rule
     Is throned (as on some high Abbatial chair
Of moon-pearl and rose-rubies beautiful)
     Within the body grown serene and fair:
Sometimes it weds her like a lifted rood;
     But she endures, and wills no anodyne,
For then she flowers within the mystic Wood,
     And hath her lot with gods—and seems divine:
Sometimes it is her lonely oubliet,
     Sometimes a marriage-chamber sweet with spice:
It is her triumph-car with flutes beset,
     The altar where she lies a sacrifice.—
Cold images! The truth is not in these.
Both are alive, both quick with rhapsodies.

XXIII

THE JUSTIFICATION

Life I adore, and not Life's accidents.
     A garlanded and dream-fast thurifer
My Soul comes out from beauty's purple tents
     That incense-troubled Love may grieve and stir,
Be ransomed from satiety's sad graves,
     And go to God up the bright stair of Wonder.
Since passion makes immortal Time's tired slaves
     I am of those that delicately sunder
Corruptions of contentment from the breast
     As with rare steel. Like music I unveil
Last things, till, weary of earthen cups and rest,
     You seek Montsalvat and the burning Grail.
Ah! blindly, blindly, wounded with the roses,
I bear my spice where Ecstasy reposes.

XXIV

ASPIRATIONS

Light of great swords, banners all blazoned gold,
     Bright lists of danger where with trumpets pass
Riders like those for whom bride-bells are bold
     To beautiful desperate conflict, Michaelmas
Of golden heroes, how my sad soul saith
     Your praise! Nor does to you her love deny,
Solemn strange Cups that carry dreamy death
     To quench those fevers when they flame too high.
But now the Victories have broken wings;
     The spirit of Rapture from the day of deeds
Is banished, and must spend on sorcerous strings
     Her heart that perishes of splendid needs.—
Saints, lovers, high crusaders, give me too
Some simple and impassioned thing to do.

XXV

THE ANAESTHETIC

Like a white moth caught heavily, heavily,
     In the honeyed heart of some white drowsy flower,
I lay behind the leaves of apathy,
     Where not the reddest pang has any power.
Then, like one drowning, I rose and lapsed again
     On dim sweet tides of the great anodyne.
Why must they hale me back to drink the pain
     That seethes in consciousness, an evil wine?
I love the closing trances, howsoever
     Their seals be broken: they are wise and kind.
If death can give such fumes of poppy, never
     Shall I revile him. Oh! uncertain mind!
Hast thou an equal pleasure in the proud
Flame-builded pillar, and the pillar of cloud?

XXVI

DIVINATION

I weary of your hesitating will;
     This flicker of "should" and "should not" crazes me.
Rest from these vain debates of good and ill:
     Let me your secret swift diviner be.
In the memorial blue dusk of sense,
     Where, spirals of doves or wreaths of ravens, rise
Auguries sweet or dread, the blue dusk whence
     The cresseted houses of the stars surprise
The heart with their mysterious horoscopes,
     I know the issues ere great battles begin,
The ashen values of bright-burning hopes,
     The ultimate hours of sacrifice or sin.
Do I obey the Wisdom? If I list,
I too, beloved, can play the casuist.

XXVII

SUB-CONSCIOUSNESS

Sometimes as Martha suddenly stood amazed
     By Mary's mystic eyes, and sometimes as
That very dreamer Mary might have gazed
     Upon the Daughter of Herodias,
The conscious Soul that other Soul discovers,
     The strange idolator who still regrets
Golden Osiris, Tammuz lord of lovers,
     Attis the sad white god of violets.
In jasper caves she lies behind her veils;
     And jars of spice, and gilded ears of corn,
And wine-red roses and rose-red wine-grails
     Feed her long trances while the far flutes mourn.
She lies and dreams daemonic passionate things:
Cherubim guard her gates with monstrous wings.

XXVIII

SATIETY

Ah! love me not with honey-sweet excesses,
     With passionate prodigalities of praise,
With wreaths of daisied words and quaint caresses,
     Adore me not in charming childish ways.
This pastoral is beautiful enough:
     But never shall it antidote my drouth:
I want a reticent ironic Love
     With smiling eyes and faintly mocking mouth.
Sweetness is best when bitterly 'tis bought:
     So in Love's deadly duel I would not be
Victorious, and the peace I long have sought,
     Sure knowledge of his great supremacy,
Would buy with pangs, like that bright cuirassier,
The queen-at-arms that knew the Peliad's spear.

XXIX

THE CONFESSION

I

I am initiate,—long disciplined
     In delicate austerities of art:
The clear compulsions of the sovran mind
     Constrain the dreamy panics of my heart.
Plato and Dante, Petrarch, Lancelot,
     Revealed me very Love, flame-clad, august.
Also I strove to be as we are not,
     Loyal, and honourable, and even just.
My webs of life in reveries were dyed
     As veils in vats of purple: so there stole
Serene and sumptuous and mysterious pride
     Through the imperial vesture of my soul.—
And lo! like any servile fool I crave
The dark strange rapture of the stricken slave.

XXX

THE CONFESSION