Collected Works (Vol. I)

172 THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST Her glimmering limbs, when shadows creep Among blue tresses that escape The golden torque that binds her hair, Whose swarthy splendours drench the air. She comes! she comes! ‘The spirit glances In quick delight to hold her kiss ; The fuming air shimmers and dances ; The moonlight’s trembling ecstasies Swoon ; and her soul, as my soul, trances, Knowing no longer aught that is ; Only united, moving, mixed, A music infinitely fixed. Music that throbs, and soars, and burns, And breaks the possible, to dwell One moving monotone, nor turns, Making hell heaven, and heaven hell, The steady impossible song that yearns And brooks no mortal in its swell— This monotone immortal lips Make in our infinite eclipse ! Formless, above all shape and shade ; Lampless, beyond all light and flame ; Timeless, above all age and grade ; Moveless, beyond the mighty name ; A mystic mortal and a maid, Filled with all things to fill the same, To overflow the shores of God, Mingling our proper period. The agony is passed: behold How shape and light are born again ; How emefald and starry gold Burn in the midnight ; how the pain Of our incredible marriage-fold And bed of birthless travail wane ; And how our molten limbs divide, And self and self again abide. The agony of extreme joy, And horror of the infinite blind Passions that sear us and destroy, Rebuilding for the deathless mind A deathless body, whose alloy Is gold and fire, whose passions find The tears of their caress a dew, Fiery, to make creation new. This agony and bloody sweat, This scarring torture of desire, Refine us, madden us, and set The feast of unbegotten fire Before our mouths, that mingle yet In this ; the mighty-moulded lyre Of many stars still strikes above Chords of the mastery of love. This subtle fire, this secret flame, Flashes between us as she goes Beyond the night, beyond the Name, Back to her unsubstantial snows; Cold, glittering, intense, the same Now, yesterday, for aye! she glows No woman of my mystic bed ; A star, far off, forgotten, dead. Only to me looks out for ever From her cold eyes a fire like death ; Only to me her breasts can never Lose the red brand that quickeneth ; Only to me her eyelids sever And lips respire her equal breath; Still in the unknown star I see The very god that is of me. The day’s pale countenance is lifted, The rude sun’s forehead he uncovers; No soft delicious clouds have drifted, No wing of midnight’s bird that hovers ; Yet still the hard blind blue is.rifted, And still my star and I as lovers Yearn to each other through the sky With eyes half closed in ecstasy. Night, Night, O mother Night, descend ! O daughter of the sleeping sea ! O dusk, O sister-spirit, lend Thy wings, thy shadows, unto me!