Collected Works (Vol. III)

LIBER PRIMUS VEL CARMINUM 157 Are hairs upon my body. Rivers roll To make one tear in my superb caresses, When on myself myself begets a child, A system of a thousand planets piled ! Iam: the least, the greatest: the frail life Of some small coral-insect still may tremble With love for me, and call me queen and wife ; The shy plant of the water may dissemble Its love beneath the fronds; reply to strife With strife, and all its tiny being crumble Under my rough and warrior husband-kiss, Whose pain shall burn, and alter, and be bliss! I am: no word beside that solemn one Reigns in sound’s kingdom to express my station, Who, clothed and crowned with suns beyond the sun, Bear on the mighty breast of foam Tha- _ lassian, Bear on my bosom, jutting plenilune, Maiden, the fadeless Rose of the Creation ! The whole flower-life of earth and sky and sea From me was born, and shall return to me! I am: for men and beings passionate, For mine own self calm as the river-cleaving Lotus-borne lord of Silence: I create Or discreate, both in my bosom heaving : My lightest look is mother of a Fate : My fingers sapphire-ringed with sky are weaving Ever new flowers and lawns of life, designed Nobler and newer in mine olden mind. Iam: I am not, but all-changing move The worlds evolving in a golden ladder Spiral or helical, fresh gusts of love Filling one sphere from the last sphere grown gladder ; All gateways leading far to the above. Even as the bright coilsof the emerald adder Climb one by one in glory of sunlight, climb My children to me up the steep of Time. Iam: before me all the years are dead, And all the fiery locks of sunrise woven Into the gold and scarlet of my head: In me all skies and seas are shaken and cloven : All life and light and love about me shed Begotten in me, in my moving moven, Are as my tears: all worlds that ever swam As dew of kisses on my lips: I am. But thou, chief lover, in whose golden heart The melody and music lifts its pean, Whose lyre fulfilled of me, fathered of Art And that Sun’s song beyond the Empyréan, Who art myself, not any more apart, Having called my children by the call Pandean, Mellowed with Delphian gold, the Ephesian quiver, To float down Time for ever and for ever ;— [am thy lyre and thou mine harper: thou My music, I thy spirit: thou the lover And I the bride: the glory of my brow Deeper delight, new ardour, to discover Stoops in thine heart; my loveand light endow Thy life with fervour as I bend me over The starry curve and surface of the sea, And kiss thy very life out into ine. O central fountain of my yearning veins ! O mountain single-soaring, thou art blended Into my heaven: prescient of the pains That shall bring forth —what worlds? my heart is rended ! My womb reverberates the solar strains, The lyre vibrating in me: sharp and splendid My face glows, gladdens; nuptial ecstasy Is all the guerdon and the spoil of me! Tam: the universe grown old must bear A scion ere it sink to daedal slumber. Thou art my strength, and I am only fair. Our kisses are as stars; our loves en- cumber With multitude the fields of space, and where Our kisses tune the worlds, their lives out- number The moments of eternity : apart Tam for ever: and, in me, thou art ! EXPLICUP LIBER PRIMUS,