II

I have a banner and a great duke's way,
     I have an High Adventure of my own.
Yet would I rather squire a knightlier,—Nay!
     Be the least harper by his red-hung throne.
I am not satisfied with any love
     Till I can say, "O stronger far than I!"
Is it a shame to hide the aching of,
     A sacred mystery to justify?
Through all our spiritual discontents
     Thrills the strange leaven of renunciation.—
Ah! god unknown behind the Sacraments
     Unfailing of the earthly expiation,
Lift up this amethyst-encumbered Vine,
Crush from her pain some ransom-cup of Wine.

XXXI

COMRADES

Yet for the honourable felicity
     Of comradeship I can be chivalrous,
And through love's transmutations fierily
     Constant as the gemmed paladin Sirius
To that fair pact. We go, gay challengers,
     Beneath dark rampires of forbidden thought,
Thread life's dim gardens masked like revellers
     Where dreams of roses red are dearly bought.
We shall ride haughtily as bright Crusaders,
     As hooded palmers fare with humbled hearts,
And we shall find, adoring blithe invaders,
     The City of Seven Towers, of Seven Arts.—
Then the Last Quest, (lead you the dreadful way!)
Among the unimagined Nebulae!

XXXII

THE SUM OF THINGS

TO ANOTHER WOMAN

Well, I am tired, who fared to divers ends,
     And you are not, who kept the beaten path;
But mystic Vintagers have been my friends,
     Even Love and Death and Sin and Pride and Wrath.
Wounded am I, you are immaculate;
     But great Adventurers were my starry guides:
From God's Pavilion to the Flaming Gate
     Have I not ridden as an immortal rides?
And your dry soul crumbles by dim degrees
     To final dust quite happily, it appears,
While all the sweetness of her nectaries
     Can only stand within my heart like tears.
O throbbing wounds, rich tears, and splendour spent,—
Ye are all my spoil, and I am well content.

XXXIII

REACTION

Give me a chamber paved with emerald
     And hung with arras green as evening skies,
Broidered with halcyons, moons, and heavily thralled
     White lilies, cold rare comfort for the eyes.
Of triumph built was radiant yesterday:
     Like an imperial eagle to the sun
My soul bare up her dreams the glorious way
     Through flagrant ordeals august, and won
To burning eyries, till beneath her wing
     Rankled the shaft. Her Archer was abroad;
And hooded with strange darkness, shuddering
     Down pain's dull spiral, sank she on the sod.
Close round, green dusk of dews! No more we dare
The blue inviolate castles of the air.

XXXIV

THE IDEALIST

For such an one let lovers cry, Alas!
     Since passion's leaguer shall break through in vain
To that cold centre of bright adamas.—
     Storm through her being, rapturous spears of pain!
Ye shall not wound that queen of gracious guile,
     The soul that with immortal trance keeps troth:
For Helen is in Egypt all the while,
     Learning great magic from the Wife of Thoth.
Throned white and high on red-rose porphyry,
     And coifed with golden wings, she lifts her eyes
O'er Nile's green lavers where most sacredly
     The Pattern of the myriad Lotos lies,
Unto those clear horizons jasper-pale
Her heavenly Brethren ride in silver mail.

XXXV

WOMAN AND VISION

Vainly the Vision of Life entreats those eyes
     Where stars of glamour mock at revelations.
But singular fiery moments do surprise
     With dreadful or delicious divinations
The whorls of our blue Labyrinth: the sweet
     Blind sense of touch tells like an undersong
Marvellous matters. What though snared feet,
     And wounded hands, and ravelled coils of wrong,
Plead that the solemn Vision might make whole
     Our imperfection?—Fevered second-sight,
Audacious wisdom of the blinded soul,
     Dim delicate auroras of delight
That thrill the Dark from startled finger-tips,
Are ye less precious an Apocalypse?

XXXVI

ART AND WOMEN

The Triumph of Art compels few womenkind;
     And these are yoked like slaves to Eros' car,—
No victors they! Yet ours the Dream behind,
     Who are nearer to the gods than poets are.
For with the silver moons we wax and wane,
     And with the roses love most woundingly,
And, wrought from flower to fruit with dim rich pain,
     The Orchard of the Pomegranates are we.
For with Demeter still we seek the Spring,
     With Dionysos tread the sacred Vine,
Our broken bodies still imagining
     The mournful Mystery of the Bread and Wine.—
And Art, that fierce confessor of the flowers,
Desires the secret spice of those veiled hours.

XXXVII

DESTINY

The great religions of the Rose and Grape
     Have bound us in to their sad Paradise:
We dream in crucial symbols, nor escape
     The cypress-garden where the slain god lies.
Daughters of lamentation round the Cross
     Where Beauty suffers garlanded with thorn,
Remembrancers through all the Night of Loss,
     We bear the spikenard of the Easter Morn.
The yearning Springs, the brooding Autumns seethe
     Like philtres in our veins. O dark Election,
Are then the sacrificial doors we wreathe
     With lilies fiery gates of Resurrexion?
And does the passion of our spices feed
Love's bright Arabian miracle indeed?

XXXVIII

CONFLICT

Why should a woman find her dream of love
     Irised by the strange ecstasy of Art?
Is not Eros a terrible lord enough
     That she must bear both Hunters of the heart,
The Golden Archer and the Scarlet too?
     Then bitter anomalies annul her choir
Of puissant and subtle instincts, rended through
     By gorgeous dualisms of vain-desire.
For Love outrages Art's clear disciplines,
     And Art lures Love to guilt of cryptic treason:
The spirit of imagination pines,
     Captive in webs of exquisite unreason.
Alas for this translated soul of hers,
The rose's, that must be the garlander's!

XXXIX

PREDECESSORS

Faëry of Sheba, idol moulded in
     Onyx milk-white, moon-mailed and casqued with gems;
Ye gold-swathed queens of Egypt, Isis' kin,
     With bright god-hawks and snakes for diadems;
Serene masque-music of Greek girls that bear
     The sacred Veil to that Athenian feast;
Hypatia, casting from thine ivory chair
     The gods' last challenge to the godless priest;
Fantastic fine Provençals wistfully
     Hearkening Love, the mournful lute player;
Diamond ladies of that Italy
     When Art and Wisdom Passion's angels were—
Ye give this grail (touch with no mad misprision!)
Of Beauty's rose-red miracled tradition.

XL

TRANSITION

But these recoil in riddles and reserves.—
     The dream's untuned. Ah! vanished chords thereof!
Ah! keen divisions of the jangled nerves
     That strung so long the gracious lutes of love!—
Hurry to sell old magian Lamps