Chapter VI: Part III: Virginity and Perfection (2)

_Ozias_. Wait: listen to me. 'Tis I now must be wise And thou the hearkener. Not without wound (So I make out, at least, thy hurrying words) Comest thou back to us from conquering. And such a wound, I easily believe, As eats into thy soul and rages there; Yea, I that know thee, Judith, know thy soul Worse rankling hath in it from heathen insult Than flesh could take from steel bathed in a venom Art magic brewed over a charcoal fire, Blown into flame by hissing of whipt lizards. Yet is it likely, by too much regarding, Thy hurt is pamper'd in its poisonous sting. Wounds in the spirit need no surgery But a mind strong not to insist on them. See, then, thou hast not too much horror of this; Who that fights well in battle comes home sound?-- Much less couldst thou, who must, with seeming weakness, Invite the power of Holofernes forth Ere striking it, thy womanhood the ambush. For thou didst plan, I guess, to duel him In snares, weaving his greed about his limbs, Drawn out and twisted winding round his strength By ministry of thy enticing beauty; That when he thought himself spending on thee Malicious violence, and thou hadst made him Languish, stupid with boasting and delight, Thy hands might find him a tied quiet victim Under their anger, maiming him of life. Now, thy device accomplisht, wilt thou grudge Its means? Wilt thou scruple to understand Thy abus'd sex will show upon thy fame A nobler colour of glory than a soldier's Wounded bravery rusting his habergeon? Nay, will not the world rejoice, thou being found Among its women, ready such insolence To bear as is unbearable to think on, Thereby to serve and save God and his people?

_Judith_. The world rejoice over me? Yea, I am certain.

_Ozias_. Then art thou too fastidious. It is weak To make thyself a shame of being injured; And is it injury indeed? Nay, is it Anything but a mere opinion hurt? Not thou, but customary thought is here Molested and annoyed; the only nerve Can carry anguish from this to thy soul, Is that credulity which ties the mind Firmly to notional creature as to real. Advise thee, then; dark in thyself keep hid This grief; and thou wilt shortly find it dying.

_A Citizen_. Judith, Pardon our ecstasy. 'Tis time thou hadst Our honour. But first tell us all the event, That in thy proper height thou with thy deed May stand against our worship.

_Judith_. Why do you stop Your shouts, and glare upon me? Have you need Truly to hear my tale? I think, not so. Ozias here, as he hath whiled at ease Upon the walls my stay in the camp yonder, Hath fairly fancied all that I have done, And more exactly, and with a relishing gust, All that was done to me. Ask him, therefore; If he hath not already entertained Your tedious leisure with my story told Pat to your liking, enjoyed, and glosst with praise.-- And yet, why ask him? Why go even so far To hear it? Ask but the clever libidinousness Dwelling in each of your hearts, and it will surely Imagine for you how I trained to my arms Lewd Holofernes, and kept him plied with lust, Until his wild blood in the end paused fainting, And he lay twitching, drained of all his wits;-- But there was wine as well working in him, Feebling his sinews; 'twas not all my doing, The snoring fit that came before his death, The routing beastly slumber that was my time. You know it all! Why ask me for the tale?

_Ozias_. Comfort her: praise her. She is strangely ashamed Of Holofernes having evilly used her.

_A Citizen_. We will contrive the triumph of our joy Into some tune of words, and bring thee on, Accompanied by singing, to thy house.

_Judith_. I pray you, rather let me go alone. You will do better to be searching out All sharpen'd steel that may take weapon-use. The Assyrians are afraid: it is your time.

[_They surround_ JUDITH _and go with her_.

CHORUS _of Citizens praising_ JUDITH _and leading her to her house_. Over us and past us go the years; Like wind that taketh sound from jubilee And aloud flieth ringing, Over us goeth the speed of the years, Like loud noise eternally bringing The greatness women have done.

Deborah was great; with her singing She hearten'd the men that the horses had dismayed; Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, alone Stood singing where the men were horribly afraid, Singing of God in the midst of fear; When archers out of Hazor were Eating the land like grasshoppers, And darkness at noon was plundering the air Of the light of the sun's insulted fires, Red darkness covering Sisera's host As Jewry was covered by the Canaanite's boast: For the earth was broken into dust beneath The force of his chariots' thundering tyres, Nine hundred chariots of iron.

Deborah was great in her prophesying; But, though her anger moved through the Israelites, And the loose tribes her indignant crying Bound into song, fashion'd to an army; And before the measure of her song went flying, Like leaves and breakage of the woods Fallen into pouring floods, The iron and the men of Sisera and Jabin; Not by her alone God's punishment was done On Canaan intending a monstrous crime, On the foaming and poison of the serpent in Hazor; Two women were the power of God that time.

Yea, and sullenly down Into its hiding town, Even though the lightning were still in its heart, The broken dragon, drawing in its fury, Had croucht to mend its shatter'd malice, Had lifted its head again and spat against God. But God its endlessly devising brain, Its braving spirit, its captain Sisera, Into the hands of another woman brought: In nets of her persuasion She that wild spirit caught, She fasten'd up that uncontrollable thought. Sisera spake, and the crops were flames; Sisera lookt, and blood ran down the door-sills. But weary, trusting his entertainment, He came to Jael, the Kenite woman; A woman who gave him death for a bed, And with base tools nailed down his murderous head Fast to the earth his rage had fed With men unreckonably slain.

But than these wonderfully greater, Judith, art thou; The praise of both shall follow like a shadow After thy glory now, Who alone the measureless striding, The high ungovern'd brow, Of Assur upon the hills of the world Hast tript and sent him hugely sliding, Like a shot beast, down from his towering, By his own lamed Mightiness hurl'd To lie a filth in disaster. Deborah and Jael, famously named, Like rich lands enriching the city their master, Bring thee now their most golden honour. For the beauty of thy limbs was found By a dreadfuller enemy dreadful as the sound Of Deborah's singing, though hers was a song That had for its words thousands of men. But thou thyself, looking upon them, Didst weaken the Assyrians mortally. They thought it terrible to see thee coming; They falter'd in their impiousness, Their hearts gave in to thee; they went Backward before thee and shewed thee the tent Where Holofernes would have thee in to him, Yea, for his slayer waiting, Waiting thee to entertain, Desiring thee, his death, to enjoy, as Jael Waited for Sisera her slain.

_Judith_. Have done! Do you think I know not why your souls Are so delighted round me? Do you think I see not what it is you praise?--not me, But you yourselves triumphing in me and over me.

_A Citizen_. Did we kill Holofernes?

_Judith_. No: nor I. That corpse was not his death. He is alive, And will be till there is no more a world Filled with his hidden hunger, waiting for souls That ford the monstrous waters of the world. Alive in you is Holofernes now, But fed and rejoicing; I have filled your hunger. Yea, and alive in me: my spirit hath been Enjoyed by the lust of the world, and I am changed Vilely by the vile thing that clutcht on me, Like sulphurous smoke eating into silver. Your song is all of this, this your rejoicing; You have good right to circle me with song! You are the world, and you have fed on me.

_A Citizen_. We are the world; yes, but the world for ever Honouring thee.

_Judith_. How am I honoured so, If I no honour have for the world, but rather Hold it an odious and traitorous thing, That means no honour but to those whose spirits Have yielded to its ancient lechery?-- Defiled, defiled!

_A Citizen_. Thou wert moved by our grief: Was that a vile thing?

_Judith_. That was the cunning world. It moved me by your grief to give myself Into the pleasure of its ravenous love.

_A Citizen_. Judith, if thy hot spirit beareth still Indignant suffering of villainy, Think, that thou hast no wrong from it. Such things Are in themselves dead, and have only life From what lives round them. And around thee glory Lives and will force its splendour on the harm Thy purity endured, making it shine Like diamond in sunlight, as before Unviolated it could not.

_Judith_. Ay, to you I doubt not I seem admirable now, Worthy of being sung in loudest praise; But to myself how seem I?

_A Citizen_. Surely as one Whose charity went down the stairs of hell, And barter'd with the fiends thy sacredest For our deliverance.

_Judith_. And that you praise!-- I was a virgin spirit. Whence I come I know not, and I care not whither I go. One fearful knowledge holds me: that I am A spirit walking dangerously here. For the world covets me. I am alone, And made of something which the world has not, Unless its substance can devour my spirit. And it hath devoured me! In Holofernes It seized me, fed on me; and then gibed on me, With show of his death scoffing at my rage,-- His death!--He lay there, drunken, glutted with me, And his bare falchion hung beside the bed,-- Look on it, and look on the blood I made Go pouring thunder of pleasure through his brain!-- And like a mad thing hitting at the madness Thronging upon it in a grinning rout, I my defilement smote, that Holofernes. But does a maniac kill the frenzy in him, When with his fists he beats the clambering fiends That swarm against his limbs? No more did I Kill my defilement; it was fast within me; And like a frenzy can go out of me And dress its hideous motions in my world. For when I come back here, behold the thing I murdered in the camp leaps up and yells! The carrion Holofernes, my defilement, Dances a triumph round me, roars and rejoices, Quickened to hundreds of exulting lives.

_A Citizen_. God help thee in this wildness! Are we then As Holofernes to thee?

_Judith_. You are naught But the defilement that is in me now, Rejoicing to be lodged safely within me. You are the lust I entertained, rejoicing To wreak itself upon my purity. The stratagems of my ravishment you are, Rejoicing that the will you serve has dealt Its power on me. O, I hate you not. You and your crying grief should have blown past My heart like wind shaking a fasten'd casement. But I must have you in. Myself I loathe For opening to you, and thereby opening To the demon which had set you on to whine Pitiably in the porches of my spirit. You are but noise; but he is the lust of the world, The infinite wrong the spirit, the virgin spirit, Must fasten against, or be for ever vile.

_A Citizen_. But is it naught that we, the folk of God, Are safe by thee?

_Judith_. God hath his own devices. But I would be God's helper! I would be Known as the woman whom his strength had chosen To ruin the Assyrians!--O my God, How dreadfully thou punishest small sins! If it is thou who punishest; but rather It is that, when we slacken in perceiving The world's intent towards us, and fatally, Enticed out of suspicion by fair signs, Go from ignoring its proposals, down To parley,--thou our weakness dost permit. In all my days I from the greed of the world Virginal have kept my spirit's dwelling,-- Till now; yea, all my being I have maintained Sacredly my own possession; for love But made more beautiful and more divine My spirit's ownership. And yet no warning, When I infatuate went down to be Procuress of myself to the world's desire, Did God blaze on my blindness, no rebuke. Therefore I am no more my virgin own, But hatefully, unspeakably, the world's. To these now I belong; they took me and used me. I have no pride to live for; and why else Should one stay living, if not joyfully proud? For I have yielded now; mercilessly What is makes foolish nothing of what was. To know the world, for all its grasping hands, For all its heat to utter its pent nature Into the souls that must go faring through it, Availing nothing against purity, Made always like rebellion trodden under,-- By this was life a noble labour. Now I have been persuaded into the world's pleasure: And now at last I will all certainly Contrive for myself the death of Holofernes.

[OZIAS _comes behind her and catches the lifted falchion_.

_Judith_. It was well done, Ozias.

_Ozias_. I have watcht Thy anguish growing, and I lookt for this.

_Judith_. Thou knowest me better than I know myself. What moves in me is strange and uncontrolled, That once I thought was ruled: thou knew'st me better.-- Indeed thou must forgive me; what was I To take so bitterly thy suit? What right Had I to give thee anger, when thou wouldst Brighten thy hopeless death with me enjoyed, I, even from that anger, going to be Holofernes' pleasure?--Thou knewest me better, And therefore shalt forgive me. Ay, no doubt My spirit answered thee so fiercely then Because it felt thee reading me aright, How a mere bragging was my purity. But now to pardon askt, I must add thanks.-- I had forgot Manasses! Even love Was driven forth of me by these loud mouths! Whether in death he waits for me, I know not; But it had been an unforgivable thing To have made this the end; not to have gone To death as unto spousals, leaving life As one sets down a work faithfully done, And knows oneself by service justified, Worthy of love, whether love be or not. But, soiled with detestation, to have thrown Fiercely aside the garment of this light; Proved at the last impatient, death desiring Like a mere doffing of foul drenched clothes; Release from the wicked hindering mire of sorrow; A comfortable darkness hiding me Out of the glowing world myself have made An insult, domineering me with splendour;-- O such a death had turned, past all forgiving, My insult to Manasses, and searcht him out, Even where he is quiet, with the blaze, Ranging like din, of this contempt, this triumph. Not crying out such hateful news should I Flee hunted into death, unto my love. From this, Ozias, thou hast saved me. Now I am to learn my shame, that not amazed, But practised in my burden, I at last, When my time comes, may all in gladness fare The road made sacred by Manasses' feet.

[JUDITH _goes into her house_.

_Ozias (addressing the citizens)_. You do well to be stricken silent here. Terrible Holofernes slain by a woman Was something wonderful, to be noised aloud; But this is a wonder past applauding thought, This grief darkening Judith, in the midst Of the new shining glory she herself Has brought to conquer in our skies the storm. You do well to be dumb: for you have seen Virginity. That spirit you have seen, Seen made wrathfully plain that secret spirit, Whereby is man's frail scabbard filled with steel. This, cumbered in the earthen kind of man, Which ceaseless waters would be wearing down, Alone giveth him stubborn substance, holds him Upright and hard against impious fate. All things within it would the world possess, And have them in the tide of its desire: Man hath his nature of the vehement world; He is a torrent like the stars and beasts Flowing to answer the fierce world's desire. But like a giant wading in the sea Stands in the rapture, and refusing it, And looking upward out of it to find Who knows what sign?--spirit, virginity; A power caught by the power of the world; The spirit in whose unknown hope doth man Deny the mastery of his fortune here; Virginity, whose pride, impassion'd only To be as she herself would be, nor thence To loosen for the world's endeavouring, And, though all give the rash obedience, stand Her own possession,--this virginity, This pride of the spirit, asking no reward But to be pride unthrown, this is the force Whereby man hath his courage in the strange Fearful turmoil of being conscious man. Yea, worshipping this spirit, he will at last Grow into high divine imagination, Wherein the envious wildness of the world Yieldeth its striving up to him, and takes His mind, building the endless stars like stone To house his towering joy of self-possessing. This made you dumb; ignorant knowledge of this, Blind vision of virginity's mightiness, Did chide the exclamation in your hearts. And think not you have seen, in Judith's grief, Virginity drown'd in the pouring world. For what is done is naught; what is, is all: And Judith is virginity's appointed. Even by her injury she showeth us, As fire by violence may be revealed, How sovereign is virginity.-- But let us now consult what way her grief, Which is not to be understood by us, May spend itself, with naught to urge its power. Let us within our walls keep close this tale, Close as the famine and the thirst were kept Devouring us by the Assyrians. Let there be no news going through the land Out of Bethulia but this: that we At Judith's hands had our deliverance, But she from Holofernes and his crew Unwilling and astonisht reverence, As they were men with minds opprest by God.

THE ETERNAL WEDDING

_He_. Even as a wind that hasteth round the world From out cold hours fill'd with shadow of earth, To pour alight against the risen sun; So unto thee adoring, out of its shadow Floweth my spirit, into the light of thee Which Beauty is, and Joy. From my own fate, From out the darkness wherein long I fared Worshipping stars and morsels of the light, Through doors of golden morning now I pass Into the great whole light and perfect day Of shining Beauty, open to me at last. Yea, into thee now do I pass, beloved: Beauty and thou are mine!

_She_. And I am thine! I am desirable to my desire: Thence am I clean as immortality With Beauty and Joy, the fiery power of Beauty.

_He_. And by my spirit made marvellous here by thee, Poured out all clear into the gold of thee, Not myself only do I know; I have Golden within me the whole fate of man: That every flesh and soul belongs to one Continual joyward ravishment, whose end Is here, in this perfection. Now I know-- For all my speculation soareth up, A bird taking eternity for air,-- Now being mixt with thee, in the burning midst Of Beauty for my sense and mind and soul,-- That life hath highest gone which hath most joy. For like great wings forcefully smiting air And driving it along in rushing rivers, Desire of joy beats mightily pulsing forward The world's one nature, and all the loose lives therein, Carried and greatly streaming on a gale Of craving, swept fiercely along in beauty;-- Like a great weather of wind and shining sun, When the airs pick up whole huge waves of sea, Crumble them in their grasp and high aloft Sow them glittering, a white watery dust, To company with light: so we are driven Onward and upward in a wind of beauty, Until man's race be wielded by its joy Into some high incomparable day, Where perfectly delight may know itself,-- No longer need a strife to know itself, Only by its prevailing over pain.

_She_. Beloved, but no pain may strive with us.

_He_. No, for we are flown far ahead of life: The feet of our Spirit have wonderfully trod The dangers of the rushing fate of life, As summer-searching birds tread with their wings Mountainous surges in the air. But many, Not strongly fledge to ride the world's great rapture, Must break, down fallen into steep confusion, Where we climb easily and tower with joy. Nevertheless doth life foretell in us How it shall all make seizure at the last Upon this height of ecstasy, this fort Life like an army storms: Captains we are In the great assault; and where we stand alone Within these hours, built like establisht flames Round us, at long last all man's life shall stand At peace with joy, wearing delighted sense As meadows wear their golden pleasure of flowers. Certain my heart dwells in these builded hours, That there is no more beauty beyond thee. Thou art my utter beauty; and--behold The marvel, God in Heaven!--I am thine. Therefore we know, in this height-guarded place Whereto the speed of our desire hath brought us; Here in this safety crowning, like a fort Built upon topmost peaks, the height of beauty,-- We know to be glad of life as we were gods Timelessly glad of deity; yea, to enjoy Fleshly, spiritual Being till the swift Torrent of glee (as hurled star-dust can change Dim earthly weather to a moment like the sun,) Doth startle life to self-adoring godhead,-- Divine body of Power and divine Burning soul of Light and self-desire. And having given ourselves all to amazement, We are made like a prophesying song Of life all joy, a bride in the arms of God.-- Yea, God shall marry his people at the last; And every man and woman who has sworn That only joy can make this Being sacred, Weaves at the wedding-garment.

_She_. Ah, my beloved, Feelest thou too that out of earth and time We are transgressing into Heavenly hours? Or, threading the dark worldly multitude And making lightning of its path, there comes A zeal from God posting along our lives.

_He_. For some eternal pulse hath chosen us, Some divine anger beats within our hearts.

_She_. Anger? But how far off is love from anger!

_He_. Nay, both belong to joy; joy's kind is twain. And close as in the pouring of sun-flame Are mingled glory of light and fury of heat, Joy utters its twin radiance, love and anger; If joy be not indeed all sacred wrath With circumstance; indignant memory Of what hath been, when the new lusts of God Exulted unimaginably, before Rigours of law fastened like creeping habit Upon their measureless wont, and forced them drive Their ranging music of delighted being Through the fixt beating tune of a circling world.-- Is not love so? Amazement of an anger Against created shape and narrowness? The bound rage of the uncreated Spirit Whose striving doth impassion us and the world? A wrath that thou and I are not one being?

_She_. Yes, and not only words that thou and I Out of our sexes with a flame's escape Are fashioned into one. The Spirit in us Hath, like imagination in a prison, Kindled itself free of all boundary, So that it hath no room but its own joy, Ample as at the first, before it fell Into this burthenous habit of a world. What have we now to do with the world? We are Made one unworldly thing; we are past the world; Yea, and unmade: we are immortality.

_He_. And only fools abominably crazed, Those who will set imagination down As less in truth than their dim sensual wit, Dare doubt that, while these dreams of ours, these bodies, Still quiver in the world each with its own Delight, the great divine wrath of our love Hath stricken off from us the place of the world! Yea, as we walk in spiritual freedom Upright before the shining face of God, Behold, as it were the shadow of our stature Thrown by that light, we draw the world behind us,-- That world wherein, darkly I remember, We thought we were as twain.

_She_. Yet, since God means That love should sunder our fixt separateness And make our married spirits leap together, As lightning out of the clouds of sexual flesh, Into one sexless undivided joy; Why hath he made us a divided flesh? We being single ecstasy, now as strange As if a shadow stained where no one stood The ground in the noon-glare, seemeth to me The long blind time wherein our lives and the world Lay stretcht out dark upon the light of heaven, Like shadow of some bulk that took the glory; While yet there stood not over it, to shade The splendour from it, our heaven-fronting love, This great new soul that our two souls have kindled. Yea, and how like, that in the world's chance-medley This our exulting destiny had been slain, Though here it lords the world as a man his shadow!

_He_. But the world is not chance, except to those Most feeble in desire: who needeth aught Shall have it, if he fill his soul with the need. While still our ignorant lives were drowned beneath The flooding of the earthly fate, and chance Seemed pouring mightily dark and loud between us, Unspeakable news oft visited our hearts: We knew each other by desire; yea, spake Out of the strength of darkness flowing o'er us, Across the hindering outcry of the world One to another sweet desirable things. Until at last we took such heavenly lust Of those unheard messages into our lives, We were made abler than the worldly fate. We held its random enmity as frost The storming Northern seas, and fastened it In likeness of our love's imagining; Or as a captain with his courage holds The mutinous blood of an army aghast with fear, And maketh it unwillingly dare his purpose, Our lust of love struck its commandment deep Into the froward turbulence of world That parted us. Suddenly the dark noise Cleft and went backward from us, and we stood Knowing each other in a quiet light; And like wise music made of many strings Following and adoring underneath Prevailing song, fate lived beneath our love, Under the masterful excellent silence of it, A multitudinous obedience.

_She_. Yea, but not this my marvel: not that we Should master with desire the sundering world, We who bore in our hearts such destiny, There was no force knew to be dangerous Against it, but must turn its malice clean Into obsequious favour worshipping us. Rather hath this astonisht me, that we Have not for ever lived in this high hour. Only to be twin elements of joy In this extravagance of Being, Love, Were our divided natures shaped in twain; And to this hour the whole world must consent. Is it not very marvellous, our lives Can only come to this out of a long Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

_He_. Shall life do more than God? for hath not God Striven with himself, when into known delight His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth,-- This mystery of a world sign of his striving? Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind With labouring in the wonder of it, that here Being--the world and we--is suffered to be!-- But, lying on thy breast one notable day, Sudden exceeding agony of love Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge. I was not: yet I saw the will of God As light unfashion'd, unendurable flame, Interminable, not to be supposed; And there was no more creature except light,-- The dreadful burning of the lonely God's Unutter'd joy. And then, past telling, came Shuddering and division in the light: Therein, like trembling, was desire to know Its own perfect beauty; and it became A cloven fire, a double flaming, each Adorable to each; against itself Waging a burning love, which was the world;-- A moment satisfied in that love-strife I knew the world!--And when I fell from there, Then knew I also what this life would do In being twain,--in being man and woman! For it would do even as its endless Master, Making the world, had done; yea, with itself Would strive, and for the strife would into sex Be cloven, double burning, made thereby Desirable to itself. Contrived joy Is sex in life; and by no other thing Than by a perfect sundering, could life Change the dark stream of unappointed joy To perfect praise of itself, the glee that loves And worships its own Being. This is ours! Yet only for that we have been so long Sundered desire: thence is our life all praise.-- But we, well knowing by our strength of joy There is no sundering more, how far we love From those sad lives that know a half-love only, Alone thereby knowing themselves for ever Sealed in division of love, and therefore made To pour their strength out always into their love's Fierceness, as green wood bleeds its hissing sap Into red heat of a fire! Not so do we: The cloven anger, life, hath left to wage Its flame against itself, here turned to one Self-adoration.--Ah, what comes of this? The joy falters a moment, with closed wings Wearying in its upward journey, ere Again it goes on high, bearing its song, Its delight breathing and its vigour beating The highest height of the air above the world.

_She_. What hast thou done to me!--I would have soul, Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held By flesh. Now, inly delighted with desire, My body knows itself to be nought else But thy heart's worship of me; and my soul Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air. Nay, all my body is become a song Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song.

_He_. And mine is all like one rapt faculty, As it were listening to the love in thee, My whole mortality trembling to take Thy body like heard singing of thy spirit.

_She_. Surely by this, Beloved, we must know Our love is perfect here,--that not as holds The common dullard thought, we are things lost In an amazement that is all unware; But wonderfully knowing what we are! Lo, now that body is the song whereof Spirit is mood, knoweth not our delight? Knoweth not beautifully now our love, That Life, here to this festival bid come Clad in his splendour of worldly day and night, Filled and empower'd by heavenly lust, is all The glad imagination of the Spirit?

_He_. Were it not so, Love could not be at all: Nought could be, but a yearning to fulfil Desire of beauty, by vain reaching forth Of sense to hold and understand the vision Made by impassion'd body,--vision of thee! But music mixt with music are, in love, Bodily senses; and as flame hath light, Spirit this nature hath imagined round it, No way concealed therein, when love comes near, Nor in the perfect wedding of desires Suffering any hindrance.

_She_. Ah, but now, Now am I given love's eternal secret! Yea, thou and I who speak, are but the joy Of our for ever mated spirits; but now The wisdom of my gladness even through Spirit Looks, divinely elate. Who hath for joy Our Spirits? Who hath imagined them Round him in fashion'd radiance of desire, As into light of these exulting bodies Flaming Spirit is uttered?

_He_. Yea, here the end Of love's astonishment! Now know we Spirit, And Who, for ease of joy, contriveth Spirit. Now all life's loveliness and power we have Dissolved in this one moment, and our burning Carries all shining upward, till in us Life is not life, but the desire of God, Himself desiring and himself accepting. Now what was prophecy in us is made Fulfilment: we are the hour and we are the joy, We in our marvellousness of single knowledge, Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate And drawing into his light the greeting fire Of God,--God known in ecstasy of love Wedding himself to utterance of himself.

MARRIAGE SONG

I

Come up, dear chosen morning, come, Blessing the air with light, And bid the sky repent of being dark: Let all the spaces round the world be white, And give the earth her green again. Into new hours of beautiful delight, Out of the shadow where she has lain, Bring the earth awake for glee, Shining with dews as fresh and clear As my beloved's voice upon the air. For now, O morning chosen of all days, on thee A wondrous duty lies: There was an evening that did loveliness foretell; Thence upon thee, O chosen morn, it fell To fashion into perfect destiny The radiant prophecy. For in an evening of young moon, that went Filling the moist air with a rosy fire, I and my beloved knew our love; And knew that thou, O morning, wouldst arise To give us knowledge of achieved desire. For, standing stricken with astonishment, Half terrified in the delight, Even as the moon did into clear air move And made a golden light, Lo there, croucht up against it, a dark hill, A monstrous back of earth, a spine Of hunched rock, furred with great growth of pine, Lay like a beast, snout in its paws, asleep; Yet in its sleeping seemed it miserable, As though strong fear must always keep Hold of its heart, and drive its blood in dream. Yea, for to our new love, did it not seem, That dark and quiet length of hill, The sleeping grief of the world?--Out of it we Had like imaginations stept to be Beauty and golden wonder; and for the lovely fear Of coming perfect joy, had changed The terror that dreamt there! And now the golden moon had turned To shining white, white as our souls that burned With vision of our prophecy assured: Suddenly white was the moon; but she At once did on a woven modesty Of cloud, and soon went in obscured: And we were dark, and vanisht that strange hill. But yet it was not long before There opened in the sky a narrow door, Made with pearl lintel and pearl sill; And the earth's night seem'd pressing there,-- All as a beggar on some festival would peer,-- To gaze into a room of light beyond, The hidden silver splendour of the moon. Yea, and we also, we Long gazed wistfully Towards thee, O morning, come at last, And towards the light that thou wilt pour upon us soon!

II

O soul who still art strange to sense, Who often against beauty wouldst complain, Doubting between joy and pain: If like the startling touch of something keen Against thee, it hath been To follow from an upland height The swift sun hunting rain Across the April meadows of a plain, Until the fields would flash into the air Their joyous green, like emeralds alight; Or when in the blue of night's mid-noon The burning naked moon Draws to a brink of cloudy weather near, A breadth of snow, firm and soft as a wing, Stretcht out over a wind that gently goes,-- Through the white sleep of snowy cloud there grows An azure-border'd shining ring, The gleaming dream of the approaching joy of her;-- What now wilt thou do, Soul? What now, If with such things as these troubled thou wert? How wilt thou now endure, or how Not now be strangely hurt?-- When utter beauty must come closer to thee Than even anger or fear could be; When thou, like metal in a kiln, must lie Seized by beauty's mightily able flame; Enjoyed by beauty as by the ruthless glee Of an unescapable power; Obeying beauty as air obeys a cry; Yea, one thing made of beauty and thee, As steel and a white heat are made the same! --Ah, but I know how this infirmity Will fail and be not, no, not memory, When I begin the marvellous hour. This only is my heart's strain'd eagerness, Long waiting for its bliss.-- But from those other fears, from those That keep to Love so close, From fears that are the shadow of delight, Hide me, O joys; make them unknown to-night!

III

Thou bright God that in dream earnest to me last night, Thou with the flesh made of a golden light, Knew I not thee, thee and thy heart, Knew I not well, God, who thou wert? Yea, and my soul divinely understood The light that was beneath thee a ground, The golden light that cover'd thee round, Turning my sleep to a fiery morn, Was as a heavenly oath there sworn Promising me an immortal good: Well I knew thee, God of Marriages, thee and thy flame! Ah, but wherefore beside thee came That fearful sight of another mood? Why in thy light, to thy hand chained, Towards me its bondage terribly strained, Why came with thee that dreadful hound, The wild hound Fear, black, ravenous and gaunt? Why him with thee should thy dear light surround? Why broughtest thou that beast to haunt The blissful footsteps of my golden dream?-- All shadowy black the body dread, All frenzied fire the head,-- The hunger of its mouth a hollow crimson flame, The hatred in its eyes a blaze Fierce and green, stabbing the ruddy glaze, And sharp white jetting fire the teeth snarl'd at me, And white the dribbling rage of froth,-- A throat that gaped to bay and paws working violently, Yet soundless all as a winging moth; Tugging towards me, famishing for my heart;-- Even while thou, O golden god, wert still Looking the beautiful kindness of thy will Into my soul, even then must I be, With thy bright promise looking at me, Then bitterly of that hound afraid?-- Darkness, I know, attendeth bright, And light comes not but shadow comes: And heart must know, if it know thy light, Thy wild hound Fear, the shadow of love's delight. Yea, is it thus? Are we so made Of death and darkness, that even thou, O golden God of the joys of love, Thy mind to us canst only prove, The glorious devices of thy mind, By so revealing how thy journeying here Through this mortality, doth closely bind Thy brightness to the shadow of dreadful Fear?-- Ah no, it shall not be! Thy joyous light Shall hide me from the hunger of fear to-night.

IV

For wonderfully to live I now begin: So that the darkness which accompanies Our being here, is fasten'd up within The power of light that holdeth me; And from these shining chains, to see My joy with bold misliking eyes, The shrouded figure will not dare arise. For henceforth, from to-night, I am wholly gone into the bright Safety of the beauty of love: Not only all my waking vigours plied Under the searching glory of love, But knowing myself with love all satisfied Even when my life is hidden in sleep; As high clouds, to themselves that keep The moon's white company, are all possest Silverly with the presence of their guest; Or as a darken'd room That hath within it roses, whence the air And quietness are taken everywhere Deliciously by sweet perfume.

EPILOGUE