Collected Works (Vol. III)

162 ORPHEUS Whose moony glimmer hath a purple vein Hidden—so I athirst of the sad stain Drink up her body’s life, as if to spite Its quiet, as if the venom were to drain Into my life—that hurts me not at all, Struck by a stronger buffet: let me call All deaths! they come not, seeing I am broken In this one horror where a man may fall. I am alive, and live not: I am dead, And die not: on my desolated head No dew may drop, no word of God be spoken, None heard, if by some chance some word be said. The wheels of Fate are over me; quite crushed Lies my pale body where her body blushed, Quite dead! there is no single sob that stirs, No pulse of blood of all that filled and flushed Her cheek and mine, her breast and mine: and lo! How sunset’s bloom is faded on the snow ! There is no Jaugh of all those laughs of hers, Those tender thrills of laughter I used to know. Nor in all nature weep the careless eyes, Nor any soul of life may sympathise, All I once was in this is torn and rended— Scorned and forsaken the lone lyre lies. Hath that not yet some sympathy with me? That lyre that was myself, my heart’s decree And ruler, subtle at the dawn, and splendid Noonwards, and soft at day’s declivity! I flung it in my anguish to the ground, I raise it, and its music hath not found One string or snapped or loosened, and the tune Is the old triumph garlanded and crowned ! Folly and hate! Blithe mockery of sorrow ! Shrill me no harsh lies of some sweet to- morrow !1 Soothe me no hateful mysteries of the moon, How one life lends what other lives may borrow ! I hate that foolish counterfoil of grief That one pain to its friend may give relief— Eurydice replace Eurydice Long hence—no separation sharp and brief But dwelling in the intermediate Halls between Hades and the house of Fate: Atropos cut, and pass to Clotho, and she Respin the shuttle in some other state. What shall it boot me now to gather flowers From this young hope to wile the angry hours ? That many thousand years shall pass, and show Eurydice again amid her bowers, Forgetting, and myself again be born, Clasp her grave beauty in the middle corn, Forgetting also: Time as fallen snow Blotting the mind and memory that adorn At least our present littleness: nor hope Of larger excellence, extended scope, Shall help me here, forgetting : nothing skills Of this poor truth—to flatter with the trope ! Wooing in mockery !--nothing skills but this To raise her now, and resuspire the kiss, United by the splendour of the will’s Success—to marry, to be made of bliss, I care not whether here or there: to live In memory and identity: to give No part of self or soul to Lethe’s water: To grapple Nature, interpose an “if” 1 Follow references to various ancient theories of immortality, reincarnation, and so on.