LIBER SECUNDUS VEL AMORIS
17!
O Zeus,” I cried, ‘‘ art thou to rise
Out of Olympus’ ecstasies !
Omnipotent ! but to control
The first breath of a human soul !—”
The thunder rolled through heaven again,
Void was the spring-delighted plain
Of that gigantic phantasy.
I turned to my Eurydice
Evenassheturned. The faint breath glows,—
The lightning of a living rose.
The bright eyes gleam—night’s spotless stars
Glimmering through folded nenuphars.
The red mouth moves, still to the word:
‘* Ves, love!” and ‘‘yes, love!” Then I
heard
No sound and saw no sight—the world
Folded its mighty wings, and curled
Its passion round us; bade forget
The joy with which our eyes were wet.
All faded, folded in the bliss ;
Unfolded the first fadeless kiss.
Then my soul woke, not sundering lips,
But winged against the black eclipse
Of sense: my soul on wings did poise
Her glory in the vast turquoise
Of the whole sky : expanded far
Beyond the farthest sun or star,
Beyond all space, all time. I saw
The very limits of the law
That hath no bounds: beheld the bliss
Of that first wonder of the kiss
In its true self: how very love
Is God, and hath its substance of
Pure light : and how love hath its cause
Beyond religions, worlds, and laws;
Is in itself the first : and moves
All evolution, and disproves
God in affirming God: all this
In that one rapture of the kiss
I knew, and all creation’s pain
Fell into nothing in my brain,
As I, remaining man, involved
All life’s true purpose, and dissolved
The phantoms (of itself create)
In a mysterious sweet state,
Wherein some tune began to move
Whose likeness and whose life was love.
Roll, strong life-current of these very veins,
Into my lover’s soul, my soul that is!
Thrill, mighty life of nerves, exultant strains
Triumphant of all music in a kiss |
Fade! fade, oh strenuous sense
Into the soul intense
Of life beyond your weak imagining !
And, O thou thought, dissever
Thy airy life for ever
While the bright sounds are lifted up to spring
Beyond this tide of being,
Shadows and sense far fleeing
Into a shadow deeper than the Ocean
When passes all the mind’s commotion
To a serener sky, a mighty calm emotion !
The whole world fades, folds over its wide
pinions
Into a darkness deeper than its own.
Silence hath shattered all the dream-
dominions
Of lifeand light : the grey bird’s soul is flown
Into a soundless night,
Lampless: a vivid flight
Beyond the thrones and stars of heaven down
hurled,
Till the great blackness heaves
An iron breast, and cleaves
The womb of night, another mightier world.
Lost is my soul, and faded
The light of life that braided
Its comet tresses into golden fire,
Fade, fade, the phantoms of desire !
Speed, speed the song of love upon the living
lyre!
Lo! I abide not, and my lover's glory
Abides not: in the swaying of those tides
Gathers beneath some mighty promontory
One mightier wave, deep drowns it, and
abides. .
Save that one wave alone
Nought in the void is known,
That wave of love, that sole exultant splen-
dour
Throned o’er all being, supreme;
A single-shining beam .
Burning with love, unutterably tender.