Collected Works (Vol. II)

ORACLES 30 Thou art not cold, but bitter is thy burning cry to me. My tiny heart were fitter for a mortal than for thee. But I cast away the mortal, and I choose the tortured way, And I stand before thy portal, and my face is cold and grey. Thou lovest me with a love more terrible than death; But thou art in the above, and my wings feel no wind’s breath. ) Thou art all too fierce and calm, too bitter and sweet, alas ! Thou weavest a cruel charm on my soul that is as glass. I know thee not, who art naked; I le be- neath thy feet Who hast called till my spirit achéd with a pang too deathly sweet. Thou hast given thee to me dying, and made thy bed to me. I shiver, I shrink, and, sighing, lament it cannot be. I have no limbs as a God’s to close thee in and hold : Too brief are my periods, and my hours are barren of gold. I am not thewed as Jove to kill thee in one caress ! / Not agolden shower is my love, but a child’s tear of distress. Give me the strength of a panther, the tiger's strenuous sides, The lion’s limbs that span there some thrice the turn of the tides, The mutinous frame, the terror of the royal Minotaur, That our loves may make a mirror of the dreadful soul of war! For love is an equal soul, and shares an equal breath. I am nought—and thou the whole? It were not love, but Death. Give me thy life and strength, let us struggle for mastery, As the long shore’s rugged length that battles with the sea. I am thine, I am thine indeed! My form is vaster grown, And our limbs and lips shall bleed on the starry solar throne. My life is made as thine; my blessing and thy curse Beget, as foam on wine, a different universe. I foam and live and leap: thou laughest, fightest, diest ! In agony swift as sleep thou hangest as the Christ. My nails are in thy flesh ; my sweat is on thy brow ; We are one, we are made afresh, we are Love and Nature now. I am swifter than the wind: I am wider than the sea: I am one with all mankind: and the earth is made as we. The stars are spangles bright on the canopy of our bed, And the sun is a veil of light for my lover’s golden head. © Goddess, maiden, and wife! Is the marriage bed in vain? Shall my heart and soul and life shrink back to themselves again? Be thou my one desire, my soul in day as in night ! My mind the home of the Higher! heart the centre of Light! My A LITANY.! 1. BLACK thine abyss of noon Flings forth the thunder-swoon. Smite us, and slay, Amoun, Amoun, Achiha ! 1 The Table of Correspondences will eluci- date any doubtful point in this poem.