Selected Poems (Aiken)/Priapus and the Pool

PRIAPUS AND THE POOL

. . . Was God, then, so derisive as to shape us
In the image of Priapus? . . .
(Priapus? Who was he?)
Are we never to be left by our desires,
But forever try to warm our foolish hearts
At these illusory fires?
(Priapus! . . . do you mean a terminal figure
In a garden by a sea?)
It is strange! for one so easily conceives
A quieter world, in which the flesh and dust
Are contented, do not hunger, or thirst, or lust. . . .

(Priapus! . . . But, I don't know who you mean.
Do you intimate God played some trick upon us? . . . .
I will tell you about a pool that I have seen!

It is very old, it is very deep and clear,
No one knows how deep it is,
The ancient trees are about it in an ancient forest,
[t is a pool of mysteries!)

. . . It is puzzling, none the less, to understand
How God, if he is less or more than flesh,
Could have devised for us, walking in his garden,
The delicate imperfections of this mesh. . . .

(When it is clear, the pool reflects the trees—
Look down, and you will see the flight of a bird
Among the wavering boughs! But when a breeze
Comes slowly from that wood, the pool is stirred,
And a shadow like the skeleton of a cloud
Shivers like a ghost across it, puffs and passes. . . .
When it is still, the sky comes back again,
And at the fringes it reflects the grasses.)

. . . Must we always, like Priapus in a wood,
In the underbrush of our perplexities,
Pursue our maidens—pursuer and pursued? . . .

(I will not say it is not sometimes troubled!
It is very old; strange things are imaged there.
Out of its depths at night the stars have bubbled;
And into its depths maidens have hung their hair.
Leaves have fallen into it without number
And never been found again.
Birds have sung above it in the ancient trees.
And sometimes raindrops fall upon it, and then
There are rings of silver upon it, spreading and fading,
Delicately intersecting. . . .
But if you return again when the sky is cloudless,
You will find it clear again, and coldly reflecting.
Reflecting the ancient trees of the ancient forest,
And the ancient leaves, ready to fall once more,
And the blue sky under the leaves, old and empty,
And the savage grasses along the shore.)

. . . Priapus, himself, was never disenchanted. . . .
Why, then, did God permit us to be haunted
By this sense of imperfections? . . .

(But can a pool remember its reflections?
That is the thing that troubles me!
Does it remember the cloud that falls upon it,
Or the indignation of a tree?
Or suppose that once the image of Priapus
Fell quivering in ferocious sunshine there
As he came suddenly upon it from his forest
With fir-cones in his hair—
Would the pool, through the silences thereafter,
Recall that visitation and be stirred
Any more than it would hear and heed the laughter
Of a swinging ape, or the singing of a bird?)

. . . Was God, then, so derisive as to shape us
In the image of Priapus? . . .

(It is very old, it is very deep and clear,
No one knows how deep it is!
The ancient trees are about it in an ancient forest,
It is a pool of mysteries.)

I

The viola ceased its resonant throbbing, the violin
Was silent, the flute was still.
The voice of the singer was suddenly hushed. Only
The silence seemed to thrill

With the last echo of music, hovering over
The nodding heads of the listeners bowed and few;
And I became aware of the long light through a window,
Of the beauty of silence, of the beauty of you

Never so sharply known as when, beside you,
I dared not look to see
What thought shone out of your face, or if, like marble,
It hid its thought from me.

Never so lovely had music seemed, as when
Its lips were closed, its beauty said,
Its arrow of sound lost forever in the singing of the infinite;
And I could not turn my head,

In the motionless azure of silence that descended upon us,
Lest, somehow, you should not be there,
Or shine too much or little with the momentary beauty
Of which I was bitterly aware.

It was as if the mingled clear voices of the music,
Which the heart for a moment happily knew,
Had somehow, in the instant of their cessation,
Falling from air, become the beauty of you.

O white-flamed chord of many notes miraculously sung
In the blue universe of silence there for me:
I shall remember you thus when you are old and I am saddened;
And continents darken between us, or the silence of the sea.

II

In the moonlight I cry out, in the sunlight I bitterly exclaim,
I curse myself, turning my eyes upon my wretchedness;
Lamentable it is to be caught once more in the net of red flame;
Only in the darkness without stars I at last lie still.

I have despised the universe that could so scheme to capture
The ridiculous sparrow in its futile red net of desire.
Now I despise no more. The city shines suddenly with rapture.
The sky burns bright, the trees bend their heads in a dream.

Voices of delight rise out of the stones beneath my feet,
Azure the dusk is, the waters are singing. Wondering I stand
While the universe deepens about me. Sword-sharp-sweet,
Your voice, that I remember faintly, pierces my heart.

O light of the clear blue sky, for the first time known:
I am the solitary leaf that burns and falls
Shrivelled under your immensity, ecstatically blown
Down to the dust and darkness. Forget not me.

III

When trout swim down Great Ormond Street,
And sea-gulls cry above them lightly,
And hawthorns heave cold flagstones up
To blossom whitely,

Against old walls of houses there,
Gustily shaking out in moonlight
Their country sweetness on sweet air;
And in the sunlight,

By the green margin of that water,
Children dip white feet and shout,
Casting nets in the braided water
To catch the trout:

Then I shall hold my breath and die,
Swearing I never loved you; no,
'You were not lovely!' I shall cry,
'I never loved you so.'

IV

This is the shape of the leaf, and this of the flower,
And this the pale bole of the tree
Which watches its bough in a pool of unwavering water
In a land we never shall see.

The thrush on the bough is silent, the dew falls softly,
In the evening is hardly a sound.
And the three beautiful pilgrims who come here together
Touch lightly the dust of the ground,

Touch it with feet that trouble the dust but as wings do,
Come shyly together, are still,
Like dancers who wait, in a pause of the music, for music
The exquisite silence to fill.

This is the thought of the first, and this of the second,
And this the grave thought of the third:
'Linger we thus for a moment, palely expectant,
And silence will end, and the bird

'Sing the pure phrase, sweet phrase, clear phrase in the twilight
To fill the blue bell of the world;
And we, who on music so likeable have drifted together,
Leaflike apart shall be whirled

'Into what but the beauty of silence, silence forever?' . . .
. . . This is the shape of the tree,
And the flower, and the leaf, and the three pale beautiful pilgrims;
This is what you are to me.

V

And already the minutes, the hours, the days,
Separate thoughts and separate ways,
Fall whitely and silently and slowly between us,
Fall between us like phantasmal rain and snow.
And we, who were thrust for an instant so sharply together,
Under changing skies to alien destinies go.

Melody heard in the midnight on the wind,—
Orange poppy of fire seen in a dream,—
Vainly I try to keep you. How the sky,
A great blue wind, with a gigantic laugh,
Scorns us apart like chaff.
Like a bird blown to sea am I.

O let us hold, amid these immensities,
The blinding blaze of the hostile infinite,
To the one clear phrase we knew and still may know:
Walls rise daily and darkly between us
But love has seen us,
Wherever we go love too must go.

Beautiful, twilight, mysterious, bird-haunted land
Seen from the ship, with the far pale shore of sand,
And the blue deep folds of hills inviting the stars to rest,
Though I shall never set foot there, nor explore you,
Nor hear your angelus of bells about me, I shall adore you
And know you still the best.

VI

Let me suppose your ghost sits here beside me—
You, who are living still, but dead for me—
For friendly talk. And let me suppose you say,—
Clasping long hands together in a familiar way,
Giving your profile, only, for me to see,—

The charming wisdoms, exquisitely said,
That often have made me lift in delight my head
As for a glimpse of heights, in the sky, unknown;
O let me suppose, for this deliciousness,
A quiet room, and we two there alone,
Facing in dusk the mirror's watery stare
At the pale panelled wall, and the quiet air
Which yet not even a candle-flame shall fever;
With two blue vases above us, and no clock
Whose febrile insistent tiny voice might mock
The illusion that we sit here so forever:

Only your beauty, and my agitation,
To make, of the tranquil scene, a situation.
O then perhaps at last I would say to you
The words I have often implored myself to say:
'Let us no longer try what wit can do!

'But see, with the poor courage we command,
Sadly, profoundly, without a tremor of hand
Or faltering of the long delicious gaze,
The wretched beauty our hopeless love has given;
And speak at last, in silence, the perfect praise

'So long withheld! O let us together move
Unmoving, in the rich knowledge of our love,
Touching—not hand to hand, since that's forbidden,—
But wing to wing, in our full consciousness;
Stirring the luminous twilight to confess
That love like ours no longer can be hidden.'

Thus let us sit, in silence, without motion,
While the moment shakes bright leaves above us; then,
I would have you say, laying aside your wit,
Quite simply: 'It began, in such a way,
That afternoon—do you recall the day?—
We walked together!' . . . A pause, then, exquisite,

Infinite, azure, deep as the world is deep;
And I, like one arousing himself from sleep,
Would answer: 'And I too, that afternoon,
Turning toward you, to tell you of a tree
Which held, among its half-fledged leaves, the moon,

'Suddenly felt your beauty over me
Falling like light. My eyes filled. I could see
Nothing, thenceforth, but you' . . . And silence again;
While, for a moment infinite in duration,
Our troubled eyes, across our separation,
Found, beneath our blessing, infinite pain.

VII

Why is it, as I enter at last the panelled room,
And pause, having opened the door,
And turning my eyes from wall to wall in the gloom
Find all as it was before,—

Something, a slow, grave, passionless wave of grief,
So whelms me in silence there,
That I listen, like one who loses his only belief,
In vain to the voiceless air?

Did I expect, in my absence, that you had come—
You, or a sign from you—
To lend a voice to a beauty that else was dumb?
But alas, there is nothing new,

The room is the same, the same, there has been no change,
The table, the chairs are the same,
Nothing has altered, nothing is singing and strange,
No hover of light or flame;

And the walls have not, as in an illusion of spring,
Blossomed, nor the oaken chair
Put forth pale leaves, nor is there a bird to sing
In the mystically widened air.

Yet if you had come, and stood for an instant dreaming,
And thought my name and gone,
Leaving behind you hardly a stir of seeming,
I should no less have known;

For this would have been no longer the hated room
Whose walls imprison me now,
But the infinite heavens, and one white bough in bloom,
And a bird to sing on the bough.

VIII

Dante, walking once by the muddy river,
Watched the inscrutable angel pass him by,
Shutting her flower-like heart. . . . He turned his torment
To torture of a world let slowly die.

But I shall hide my torment like a fever
Within my breast, rejoicing when it feeds
Upon my heart; then only being certain
I live, when most my weak heart burns and bleeds.

Singular ending! brutal, perverse, unlooked for.
There, by the river, had I turned my head
To the shy doubtful exquisite smile you proffered
I should not now so slowly, like one dead,

Move as among the damned, unknown, unseeing,
Crying to heaven with lips that make no sound:
Heavily yearning downward, as the clay does,
Hapless and hopeless, parted from the ground.

IX

There is nothing moving there, in that desert of silence,
Nothing living there, not even a blade of grass
The morning there is as silent as the evening,
The nights and days with an equal horror pass.

Nothing moving except the cold, slow shadow
Thrown on sand by a boulder, or by the cliff
Whose rock not even a lichen comes to cover,
To hide—from what?—time's ancient hieroglyph.

The sun, at noon, sings like a flaming cymbal
Above that waste: but the waste makes no reply.
In all that desolation of rock and gravel
There is no water, no answer to the sky.

Sometimes, perhaps, from other lands more happy,
A faint wind, slow, exhausted, ventures there,
And loses itself in silence, like a music.
And then—who knows?—beneath that alien air,

Which moves mysteriously as memory over
Forlorn abysms and peaks of stone and sand,
Ghosts of delight awake for a shining moment,
And all is troubled, and that desolate land

Remembers grass and flowers, and birds that sang there
Their miracles of song in lovely trees,
And waters that poured, or stood, in dreaming azure,
Praising the sky. Perhaps once more it sees

The rose, the moon, the pool, in the blue evening,
And knows that silence in which one bird will sing
Slowly and sleepily his praise of gardens.
Perhaps once more, for a moment, it remembers spring.

X

HE

Say that we move together, sorrowful and silent,
To one high window which out-tops the sky,
And see, in the dusk, not even the crests of beech-trees,
Not even, in the wide blue, the flash of a bird.
And there, as if we stood alone on a headland,
Facing, in the long sunlight, all the sea,
Search the blue twilight of infinity;
And do not say a word.

SHE

You are romantic, you exaggerate;
It is a balcony on which we stand.

HE

This much you grant: we stand there so together.
What can it matter, if, questioning thus the starlight,
We do not trouble to regard each other?
Think what you will: be but a consciousness
Of night, and music that is sentimental—
Night, and the balustrade beneath your hand.
Say that you do not love me, never loved,
Know naught of love, nor think it worth the knowing.
Yet lies the infinite with all its azure
Like a vast sea around us, glares us up
For a long moment into terrible nothing.
And we are frightened; and we stand and stare
Into that shining silence, and are glad,
As lovers are, to feel the other there.

SHE

That is not love that takes but what it finds
In a dark hour. If frightened here, we cling,
It is not love, it is a transient thing.
Say afterward: We did not love, but only
Together turned for one inscrutable moment,
Held in the hand of the infinite, being lonely.
This is an intimacy we shall forget.
We shall be strangers yet.

HE

It is the moment in which the infinite
Closes about us. Turn, therefore, to me.
Call it what name you will, brief let it be;
Be conscious, if you must, of loneliness
And little else: but if this is not love,
Then nothing is. The stars, the night, the music
Eddy away beneath us and are gone.
We stand here. We are living. We are alone.

XI

The mirror says: Condole not too profoundly
With the pale thing you see yourself to be.
Do not recall that dead men sleep so soundly,
Nor wanly see

The sad procession passing, as a symbol
Of your so-much-to-be-pitied state of mind.
What you would shut in a coffin is too nimble
To be confined.

Look! as you search these depths, gleefully seeing
The atomy spectral coffin darkly pass,
Far off flashes a gesture of someone fleeing;
Across the glass,

In that small circle of shadow (which I show you
Your introspective eye is) goes the ghost
Of a delightful grief which seems to know you
Yet counts you lost.

She turns her dark young beautiful head toward you,
Sombrely looks at you, and, least foreseen,
Dazzingly smiles at you, as if to reward you—
Most generous queen!—

For the one word not said, the light betrayed not;
And turning upon the dusk is vaguely gone
Out of that world of yours she sought not, made not,
Nor would have known.

O rain of light! Ten times a day you stand here
To watch that brown-eyed ghost of delight escape,
Happy in knowing you now forever command here
That lovely shape.

XII

I shut my eyes, I try to remember you.
But as a diver plunging down through sunlight
To meet his azure shadow on the wide water
Shatters through it and is gone,
Thus I, coming suddenly upon your ghost,
See it but cannot grasp it: it is lost.
I stand in the dark and call you. I am alone.

Come to me: stand before me: turn your head
Sharply against the light: put forth one hand
Holding an amber bead: then let it fall.
Say 'It is nothing!' Slowly rise and move,
Darkened, against the open window; against the wall
Pause, with the sombre gesture that I love,
And slowly say, 'I do not understand.'

How I have seen you! How I have drunk of you!
Now, when I most would have you, you escape.
Thus is your mouth? or thus? I do not know.
But see, I ignore you now, bewildering shape,
Flee in the darkness from you. . . . And you come
Laughing before me, saying, 'I love you so!'

XIII

Now over the grass you come,
Gravely you come with a slow step
Into the azure world I call my heart:
Tardily you approach me.

Butterflies of the sun flicker about you—
Who could have foreseen it?
Moths of the moon at your finger-tips
Melt like flakes of snow.

Is it not too late that you come?
Are you not merely a ghost?
Behold, before you once speak my name,
Wind whirls us apart like leaves.

Never again, after this dream, shall I have peace.
In my heart is nothing but the crying of snow.
The grass over which I seek you is white with frost.
You have left upon it no footstep.

I place my most secret thought
Like a bough of magnolia
Where perhaps you will find it and remember.
It withers, and you do not come.

XIV

Suddenly, as I gaze at the sombre land in the picture,
The bridge, the enchanted stream, the long, long watery plain,
And the dark wood, and the small far houses, and the blue hills
Flashing like dolphins under a light like rain;

Look! The picture has opened! the sounds come in,
Broad, rich streaming, in the late light of the sun,
The whole wide land is a flood of mysterious sound! . . .
O this is the land where you have gone,

Your voice floats up to me from that bridge, I hear
The tiny words out of dusk like a gnat-song come—
'Stay! stay where you are! You will be happier there!
I will at last, perhaps, come home!'

O voice, crying the ineffable, face invisible,
Beauty intangibly gone like a tracery out of the sky!
Come back! . . . But the window closes. Bridge, stream, houses, hills,
Are silent. Small is the picture. None stirs in the world save I.

XV

There was an island in the sea
That out of immortal chaos reared
Towers of topaz, trees of pearl,
For maidens adored and warriors feared.

Long ago it sunk in the sea;
And now, a thousand fathoms deep,
Sea-worms above it whirl their lamps,
Crabs on the pale mosaic creep.

Voyagers over that haunted sea
Hear from the waters under the keel
A sound that is not wave or foam;
Nor do they only hear, but feel

The timbers quiver, as eerily comes
Up from the dark an elfin singing
Of voices happy as none can be,
And bells an ethereal anthem ringing.

Thereafter, where they go or come,
They will be silent; they have heard
Out of the infinite of the soul
An incommunicable word;

Thereafter, they are as lovers who
Over an infinite brightness lean:
'It is Atlantis!', all their speech;
'To lost Atlantis have we been.'

XVI

See, as the carver carves a rose,
A wing, a toad, a serpent's eye,
In cruel granite, to disclose
The soft things that in hardness lie,

So this one, taking up his heart,
Which time and change had made a stone,
Carved out of it with dolorous art,
Labouring yearlong and alone,

The thing there hidden—rose, toad, wing?
A frog's hand on a lily pad?
Bees in a cobweb—? No such thing!
A girl's head was the thing he had,

Small, shapely, richly crowned with hair,
Drowsy, with eyes half closed, as they
Looked through you and beyond you, clear
To something farther than Cathay:

Saw you, yet counted you not worth
The seeing, thinking all the while
How, flower-like, beauty comes to birth;
'And thinking this, began to smile.

Medusa! For she could not see
The world she turned to stone and ash.
Only herself she saw, a tree
That flowered beneath a lightning-flash.

Thus dreamed her face—a lovely thing,
To worship, weep for, or to break.
Better to carve a claw, a wing,
Or, if the heart provide, a snake.

XVII

Fade, then,—die, depart, and come no more—
You, whose beauty I abhor—
Out of my brain
Take back your voice that lodges there in pain,
Tear out your thousand golden roots
That thrust their tentacles in my heart
But bear no fruits.

Now like an exquisite but sterile tree
Your beauty grows in me
And feeds on light
Its lifted arms of leaves and blossoms white.
Come birds, come bees,
And marry flower with flower that it may bear
Like other trees.

Or else let hatred like a lightning come,
And flash, and strike it numb,
And strew on rock
These singing leaves, that, singing, seem to mock.
Thus let my heart once more be naked stone,
Bare under wind and hard with grief,
And leave not in a single crevice
A single leaf.

XVIII

First the white crocus, and then the purple; then the rain
Daylong and nightlong lashing the bitter garden,
Blurring, by day, the light on the window-pane,
Beating by night with talons. And after the rain
A cold clear day, no crocus left; and shrill
In the high cold poplar a ruffled robin singing;
And, in the cold grass, one clear daffodil,
Downcast, in pale light swinging.

First the red tulip, and then the white; and then the wind
Daylong and nightlong curving long poplar boughs
To green sonorous arcs against blue heaven,
The new leaves baffled. And after that carouse
A steamy fog that clings to tree and bush
And hides the shattered tulip. Sad is he
Who slowly at daybreak walks in the bitter garden
That ruin to see.

A day? A year? They come, they go, like weather,
Give leaves or take them. Here alone I move
Slowly in this small garden, deeply regarding
The flower, the tree, the grass, the weed, I love;
Dig here, plant there, or with a sickle cut
The too-thick clover. But whether there or here,
Have with me, for my calendar, crocus, tulip,
Daffodil, robin; and they say 'a year.'

Doomed brightly, darkly doomed, doomed from the first!
And sleep becomes but the gateway to a dream
Of a wise intimacy I never knew.
Now must I seek you in a garden gleam
Of tulip petals fallen, crocus withered,
Lilacs in bud, a sickle's edge. At night
I dream we walk and talk beneath low lime-trees
Palely in flower, as under an arch of light;

The petals, greener than golden, fall or hover,
Blow, twirl, float, and litter with flame the ground,
The air is alight with pollen. And there we loiter,
Laughing deliciously, and hear the slow sound
Of our two voices, happily weaving together
A harmony simple in seeming but strange beyond thought:
The words we say are beautiful, but have no meaning;
And as I wake and repeat them, they are nought.

First the white crocus, and then the purple; then the rain
Drawing its grey diagonals across the garden,
Wrinkling, by day, the light on the window-pane,
Scratching by night with claws. And after the rain
The unfamiliar silence in which we wake,
And seek, no longer storm-and-fever-tossed,
In the cool dark for a pale brightness dreamed of:
And find, at last, the memory of something lost.

XIX

Bitter nasturtium, pale pink phlox, scarlet william
Wrung like blood-drops from the suffering earth,
Dance in the southwest wind in the lamentable garden:
They are poor words to stammer your worth!—
Or curses for you; or, in the colourless moonlight,
Black cries and imprecations; with slow hands
I tear the offending heads off, strip them, smell them,
And crush them under my heel against harsh sands.

Come out of the earth like these with earth upon you,
Hands soiled with loam, lips flecked, the sunset cheek
Fouled with black webs and leaves, and the rich hair
Inhabited by spiders. I would speak
Not then as one fool to another babbles,
But with a natural tongue, as leaf to leaf
Nasturtium touches phlox in the dewy morning,
And the strong stems, growing together, know no grief.

But you are poisonous, dyed deep in death,
Black at the heart! Grow here, and you will spread
A low rank mist that, snake-like amid the flowers,
Will coil, delighting them, and leave them dead.
But ah, to have you like that snake pass by,
Drawing against my palms your viscous scales
Of venomous colours and translucent brightness!
There
My blossom falls upon you, my strong leaf fails.

XX

You are indifferent: think not of me:
Lead a wild life of days strangely begot,
Days that rise from a different source than mine,
Days that come up like giants out of the sea.
How should you think of me?
How should you think of one you never knew,
Who never disclosed his heart to you?

Now to a picture stoop you, now to an image,
Now to an idol you abase your knees,
Walk in a dim light praying, touch your heart
With tears of imagined gods. You sigh for these,
O foolish one! and seas
Send up star-bearing giants of days to you,
Rich in all lovely things; you knew

What words I said to you by a tall window
Where the sunlight came in mottled through a vine:
But you forget them. And the blue giants come
Bearing vast days how different from mine,
Globed, perfect, light as wine,
In which young gods like tyrannous dancers move
To music that is the voice of love.

Sleep, if you remember me not in waking; dream
Of one word lightly and profoundly said
By him you had forgotten, whose dim face
Is dimmer than faces of remembered dead:
Half wake, and turn your head,
Wondering who he was and what he meant.
Then I shall be content.

XXI

See now, after all these days I have the strength,
Yes, now at length,
To drive you forth, pale ghost! Ah, now I come
With flowers for whips and my dull heart for drum
And flog you out of the shadow of my brain,
Laughing whip you with flowers from vein to vein,
Shout, should a petal
Upon your rich hair settle,
Care not if red stains mark, or bruises dark,
Your flesh that was the integument of you,
Heed not the imagined cries,
Nor tears, if tears you have, that light your eyes.

Go, come not hither again, proud sorceress,
Idolatrous self-worshipper!
Into the tabernacle of my heart and brain
Come not again.
For now I rid me of the imperfect you,
You, halt when you would dance; you, dumb when you would sing,
You, dark when starlike you would shine!
Now a more perfect idol shall be mine,
Now the bright goddess will I bring,
Not garlanded with flowers nor bright with gems
Nor gay with diadems,
But her more holy who is born of dream
And who like light itself shall gleam.

She whom a vision shapes
Obeys not death nor change, nor ever escapes
Her worshipper, though dull of heart he be.
So now I make her
Out of the finest azure and pale fire,
To worship, not desire,
And none but I shall take her.
You were the last and greatest of those few
In whose imperfect flesh I thought I knew
Beauty: it burned in you
Briefly and brightly.
Now that it dims, in pity I whip you forth,
Scourge you with flowers that it may hurt you less—
For you have still your loveliness—
And dream the dream that I shall worship nightly.

O come not, lest against this perfect tree
You, who were once so dear to me,
And still, alas, perhaps too dear,
Must by my zealous hands be crucified,
Nailed with strong hands against that tree immortal:
To mark the portal
Wherethrough, no longer human,
At last, at last all flesh-forgetful,
I pass, to make a dream my bride.
Come not! Lest when I find you,
Weeping I bind you,
Bandage your eyes, not lest they see
But lest they injure me:
Chain the strong hands and feet that were my joy
Not that I hate them but lest they destroy:
And dumbly watch you die, to praise that beauty
To which henceforth, I swear it by my love,
I owe all duty.

XXII

Madonna of the eyes wide open, the white hands slender,
Madonna of the young smile tremulous and tender,
And the dark turned in wings aside
From the brow white and wide:

Madonna tall, standing as one who listens
To a far grave music, music that murmurs and glistens
With a secret perhaps unguessed
And comes to rest:

Madonna tall, standing as one who lingers
To hear a melody rise from invisible fingers,
Fingers invisible to me,
Who only see

How, in your eyes, the light for a moment changes,
Darkening to an abysm which estranges
Infinities apart
Me from your heart:

Madonna of the woman's body, the face of a child,
Madonna of whom only the lips have ever smiled,
Flowers to conceal the secret tear
None see or hear:

Not of the rays of the moon, could they be cloven,
Could such a beauty of flesh as yours be woven;
Not with so subtle a mesh
As the clear flesh

Which the soft wandering dream of you keeps bright
As with the singing imprisoned bird of light:
Not out of the beauty of dust or air
Comes aught so fair.

I stand bewildered, I stand in silence before you,
Knowing only the one thing, that I adore you;
Fearing so much that speech
Will never reach,

Nor these hands touch you, nor my terrible love arouse you,
Nor the dark house of the earth I inhabit house you;
O better it were in sorrow to cry
To a birdless sky

Than with a voice or silence to importune
You, silent, inscrutable, as to the sea the dune,
Which gives to the sea's hands
Not self but sands.

It is not you I touch! . . . O strange cool being,
Even in whose laughter falls the shadow of someone fleeing,
Bewildered denial in the caress,
No in the yes,

How shall we love? For we are worlds asunder,
Between us the demon chasms wail and thunder.
Ah, terrible destiny
If you should be

Agonized victim of the perverse gods who shape you,
Destined forever to see your soul escape you,
As one who remembers, yet remembers not,
Something forgot:

Desiring to give to me, to see me live,
Your soul, yet having, alas, no soul to give;
Desiring to give, that you
Might so live too;

And waiting thus in a tragic dumb confusion,
Weaving a shining mystery of your seclusion,
Miraculous beauty of mask;
Yet when I ask

For more than the mask, for the secret light behind,
Confessing—ah, what horror—that you are blind.
Here, then, our destiny takes us
And binds and breaks us.