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.