THE STAR AND THE GARTER
Little or great, determinate
In law from Fate, the Ultimate.
If this be meaningless, much more
Vacant your speech and sophic skill
(My feminine and fair Escobar ! 1)
To prove mere circumstance is no bar
Against the freedom of the will.
However this may be, we are
Here and not otherwhere, star to star !
Hence then act thou! Restrain the ‘‘ Damn!”
Evoked by ‘‘ I am that I am.”
Perpend! (Hark back to Hamlet !)
You stand thus poised upon the cliff
Freewill—I await that will; (One) laughter ;
(Two) the old kiss; (Three) silence after.
No? Then vacate the laboratory !
Psychology must crown the event,
And sociology content,
Ethics suffice, the simple story !
(Oh! that a woman ever went
Through course of science, full and whole,
Without the loss of beauty’s scent,
And grace, and subtlety of soul.
Ah God! this Law maketh hearts ache,
‘Who eateth shall not have his cake.’’)
If
XIV.
AccEpr measIam! I give
All you can take. If you dislike
Some fragments of the life I live,
They are not yours: I scorn to strike
One sword-swift pang against your peace.
See! T’mamountaineer. Release
That spirit from your bonds: or come
With me upon the mountains, cease
This dull round, this addition sum
Of follies we call France: indeed
Cipher! And if at times I need
The golden dawn upon the Alps,
The gorges of Himalayan rock,
The grey and ancient hills, the scalps
Of hoary hills, the rattling shock
Of avalanche adown the hills—
Why, what but you, your image, fills
1 A medizeval logician.
My heart in these? I want you there.
For whom but you do I ply pen,
Talk with unmentionable men
Of proofs and types—dull things !— for whom
But you am I the lover? Bloom,
O flower, immortal flower, love, love!
Linger about me and above,
Thou perfumed haze of incense-mist !
The air hath circled me and kissed
Here in this room, on mountains far,
Yonder to seaward, toward yon star,
With your own kisses. Yes! I see
The roseate embroidery
Yonder—I know: it seems to give
The lie to me in throat and teeth.
That is the surface: underneath
I live in you: in you I live.
XV.
WILE you not learn to separate
The essential from the accidental,
Love from desire, caprice from fate,
The inmost from the merely mental?
Our star, the sun, gives life and light :
Let that decay, the zeons drown
Sense in stagnation ; death and night
Smite the fallen fragments of the crown
Of spring: but serves the garter so?
What wandering meteor is this
Across the archipelago
Luminous of our starry bliss?
Let that be lost: the smile disputes
The forehead’s temple with the frown,
When gravitation’s arrow shoots,
And stockings happen to slip down.
You are my heart: the central fire
Whereby my being burns and moves,
The mainspring of my life’s desire,
The essential engine that approves
The will to live : and these frail friends,
The women I shall draw you, fail
Of more importance to earth’s ends
| Than to my hfe a finger-nail.
"Twere pain, no doubt, were torn away
One, a minute distemperature.