Tannhäuser

Cherubim with averted faces kept ! Nay ! This one secret I suspect, and gloat Over the solemn purport of the dream With subtle shuddering of joy, —and that Keener delight, a sense of deadly fear ! This secret : Thou art darkness in Thyself, And evil wrapped in light, and ugliness Vested in beauty ! Therefore is my love No petty passion like these country-folk's : No fertile glory (as the Love of God) : But vast and barren as the winter sea, Holding I know not what enormous soul In its salt bitter bosom, underneath The iron waters and the serpent foam ; Below, where sight and sound are set no more, But only the intolerable weight Of its own gloomy selfhood. This am I : This passion, lion-mouthed and adder-eyed. A mass compressed, a glowing central core. Like molten metal in the crucible ! Death's secret is some sweetness ultimate, Sweeter than poison. Ah ! My very words, Chance phrases, ravel out the tale for me— Sweetness and death — poison and love. Consider How this same striving to the Infinite, Which I intend by "love," is likest to That journey's wonder to the womb of death : 39