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Page 1 of 21903 · PDF PAGE 76
THE TWENTY-FIRST DAY “ Mal. Dispute it like a man. Macd. I shall do so. But I must also feel it as a man.” Macbeth. I had a fearful dream (on going away) Of scorpion women curled in my caress, And twenty days they closed on my distress Not giving me relief, but gold and gray, Cold and intense ; the one-and-twentieth day They drew my life out, one exceeding stress, Volcanic anguish !—Here’s the strange excess : I called, ere waking, on the name Eheieh ! Solve me the riddle of the dream who can ! That night I sought a new toy for a lure, And she …
1903 · PDF PAGE 41
ALICE : AN ADULTERY “ Commit not with man’s sworn spouse.” King Lear. Against the fiat of that God discrowned, Unseated by Man’s justice, and replaced, By Law most bountiful and maiden-faced And mother-minded : passing the low bound Of man’s poor law we leapt at last and found Passion ; and passing the dim halls disgraced Found higher love and larger and more chaste, A calm sphinx waiting in secluded ground. Hear the sad rhyme of how love turned to lust, And lust invigorated love, and love Shone brighter for the stain it rose above, Gathering r…
1903 · PDF PAGE 9
Society. What uncouth bypaths of human ex- perience, across what mapless tracks beyond the social pale, must have led hither—hither to death in this Anglo-Saxon-blasted corner of Japan, here, at the very outpost of the East. He spoke my thought. “ Here I lie,” he said, “ east of all things. All my life I have been travelling eastward, and now there is now no further east to go.” “ There is America,” I said. I had to say something. “ Where the disappearance of man has followed that of manners : the exit of God has not wished to lag behind that o…
1903 · PDF PAGE 17
For it is abominable to correlate the life and work of any man, whenever that work approaches the standard of genius. Work of that sort is perfectly independent of life. The purest poems spring alike from the foulest soil and from the cleanest kept. Any stimulus may stimulate. Knowing Shelley almost by heart, the present writer is still ignorant of his domestic affairs—and thanks God for it. Here, however, we have no work of genius to save from soilure. The poem is less than the man, as the editor has pointed out in his sufficiently able introd…
1903 · PDF PAGE 66
…alarms, Because my lover calls me spouse, And takes me to her arms. This night no sound of breakers be !— Unless my Alice be the sea. Of man and maid in all the world Is stilled the swift caress, Because my lover has me curled In her own loveliness. No kiss be such a night as this !— Unless by Alice be the kiss. 46
1903 · PDF PAGE 97
…We have forgotten all the days of fear, The nights of torment when the kiss expired, Lost upon lips with love not overtired, But fearing many things—the after year, The end, the man—O no, not him ! the tear, The children’s sorrow, and our own shame fired Not less in doing all that love desired : We have forgotten, surely—being here ! We have forgotten every shape of sorrow, Knowing no end to one night’s ecstasy In the night’s kiss from morning that we borrow, From the hard usurer, Eternity— Seeing we have it in our power to die Before the new k…
1903 · PDF PAGE 114
III Is love indeed eternal ? Otherwise Is evolution an eternal plan ? Must I move upward in the stream of Man, God-ward : my life as Christ to sacrifice, As Buddha to repress : to grow so wise, Space, time shall lie within my finger-span ? I know not which I wish : either I can ; Not both, unless all meditation lies. I am not sure : if love as great as ours May not be God to part of us at least, Leaving the Rest to find its heights and powers In other spheres ; that, night’s enamoured priest ; This, on the lake the dewy lotus-flowers That lift …
1903 · PDF PAGE 35
…n His furnace, Fate, My destiny drew near the glowing shore Where California hides her golden ore, Her rubies and her beryls ; (I) Manifold fruits and flowers alike create Glories most unimaginable, more Than Heaven’s own meadows match ; yet this is sore, A stain ; not one of these is delicate. Save only the clear green within the sea— Because that rolls all landless from Japan. I did not know until I missed it here How beautiful that beauty is to me, That life that bears Death’s sigil traced too clear, Blue lines within the beauty that i…
1903 · PDF PAGE 63
THE FIFTEENTH DAY “ Were kisses all the joys in bed, One woman would another wed.” Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music. Another day rose of unceasing fire : Kisses made monstrous for their sterile storm Maddening with sea-sounds, as of lute or shawm Fluting and clashing in extreme desire ; The silly “ Thus far and no farther,” nigher Each hour to break (poor arbitrary form !) As each kiss bade our bodies wed and warm Give love one chance before its wave retire. Not so : this trial was the tiniest Man ever knew, confronted afterward With giant fear…
1903 · PDF PAGE 75
…e shed upon our life, We clung still closer, till the soul ran through Body to body, twined like sunny snakes, Sinlessly knowing we were man and wife. 55
1903 · PDF PAGE 96
… married chastity.” Phœnix and Turtle. Yet ere the stars paled slowly in the east I could not sleep : and she—how else ? What rest May a man know until his quiet breast Beats to her tune ? I garbed me as a priest And moved towards my Host—on God I feast ! We lay in naked chastity, caressed Child-like or dreaming, till the dawn repressed Our sighs : that nuptial yet hath never ceased. That was the best : far sundered by the tide Dolorous, endless as Oceanus, A serpent-river girdling the large earth, Still in that pure embrace we bring to birth A…
1903 · PDF PAGE 16
…ULTERY.” Almost the first remark that we made on laying down the MS. submitted for our judgment was that it is always doubtful how far a man is justified in stripping bare his soul for the public benefit. “ Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?” asks Browning ; “ unlock my heart with a sonnet- key ?” And his answer is :— “ With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart,” once more ! Did Shakespeare ? If so, the less shakespeare he !” Very well ; but Browning himself went even farther, and permitted the posthumous publication of the actual lo…
1903 · PDF PAGE 77
…nd of the chrysanthemum, Where all the flowers lack scent, the birds are dumb, The fruits are tasteless : where the jewelled lea And the many-leavéd greenery Is dwarf : French gem-work on a baby’s thumb. The Yankee God frowned also on the plan. We had enough, no more. But I insist, Still thinking I was master of my heart : Saying, “ Another month to be a man, Another month to kiss her and be kissed, And then—all time to Magic and to Art !” 57
1903 · PDF PAGE 53
…t fear ;— Leaving the body’s love to follow at even. Seemeth it not absurd ? to use the thought, The utterly divine impersonal Mind of a man, the pure, the spiritual, To such a purpose rather less than nought, A woman’s love—considering that all Wise men assure us that it may be bought ! 33
1903 · PDF PAGE 10
…What poetry ?” I told him Shelley. “ Do you read Ibsen ?” he queried, keening visibly. After a moment’s pause : “ He is the Sophocles of manners,” I said, rewarded royally for months of weary waiting. My strange com- panion sat up transfigured. “ The Hour,” he murmured, “ and the Man ! . . . What of Tennyson ?” “ Which Tennyson ?” I asked. The answer seemed to please him. “ In Memoriam ?” he replied. “ He is a neurasthenic counter-jumper.” “ And of the Idylls ?” “ Sir Thomas did no wrong ; can impotence excuse his posthumous emasculation ?” vii
1903 · PDF PAGE 64
THE SIXTEENTH DAY “ My chastity’s the jewel of our house Bequeathed down from many ancestors, Which were the greatest obloquy i’ th’ world For me to lose.” All’s Well. There was no secret cave of the wood’s womb Where we might kiss all day without a start Of fear that meant to stay and must depart, Nor any corner where the sea’s perfume Might shelter love in some wave-carven tomb. But Maytime shone in us ; with words of art I drew her down reluctant to my heart, When night was silence and my bed the gloom. So without sin we took strange sacrame…
1903 · PDF PAGE 8
…ge, nor falter, nor repent.” I moved forward, and he saw me. “ Who are you ?” he asked. “ I am travelling in the East,” I said. “ I love Man also ; I have come to see you. Who are you ?” He laughed pleasantly. “ I am the child of many prayers.” There was a pause. I stood still, thinking. Here was surely the very strangest outcast of v
1903 · PDF PAGE 7
interruption as Mr. Shandy, and from behind the hideous yellow partition came sounds as of the constant babbling of a human voice. Repeated glances in this direction drew from my enter- tainer the information that it was “ only her husband,” indicating the yellow-haired girl with the stem of her short clay pipe. She added that he was dying. Curiosity, Compassion’s Siamese twin, prompted a desire to see the sufferer. The old lady rose, not without difficulty, lifted the curtain, and let it fall behind me as I entered the gloom which lay beyond. …
1903 · PDF PAGE 18
…facts, a fatal fault in such jewel-work as a sonnet should be, and approaching the abyss of didacticism. Again, he is fatally obscure in many places. Often the sonnet-metre is at fault, and his un- doubtedly great gift of compression fails to compass all his ideas into the fourteen permissible lines. Some are quite unintelligible without reference to the Shakespearian ambiguity at the head ; others are still obscure unless a clear under- standing of, and sympathy with, the man’s position (and the woman’s) at the time be ever xv
1903 · PDF PAGE 15
and hers ; not “ how wonderful it is,” that is, his poem. The poem is simple, understandable, direct, not verbose. More I demand not, seeing it is written (almost literally so) in blood ; for I am sure that he was dying of that love for Alice, whose marvellous beauty it was his mission (who may doubt it ?) to reveal. For the burning torch of truth may smoke, but it is our one sure light in passion and distress. The jewelled silence of the star is, indeed, the light of a serener art ; but love is human, and I give nothing for the tawdry gems of …