Algernon Charles Swinburne

I am that which began; Out of me the years roll; Out of me God and man; I am equal and whole; God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul. Before ever land was, Before ever the sea, Or soft hair of the grass, Or fair limbs of the tree, Or the fresh-coloured fruit of my branches, I was, and thy soul was in me. First life on my sources First drifted and swam; Out of me are the forces That save it or damn; Out of me man and woman, and wild-beast and bird; before God was, I am. Beside or above me Nought is there to go; Love or unlove me, Unknow me or know, I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow. I the mark that is missed And the arrows that miss, I the mouth that is kissed And the breath in the kiss, The search, and the sought, and the seeker, the soul and the body that is. I am that thing which blesses My spirit elate; That which caresses With hands uncreate My limbs unbegotten that measure the length of the measure of fate. But what thing dost thou now, Looking Godward, to cry "I am I, thou art thou, I am low, thou art high"? I am thou, whom thou seekest to find him; find thou but thyself, thou art I. I the grain and the furrow, The plough-cloven clod And the ploughshare drawn thorough, The germ and the sod, The deed and the doer, the seed and the sower, the dust which is God. Hast thou known how I fashioned thee, Child, underground? Fire that impassioned thee, Iron that bound, Dim changes of water, what thing of all these hast thou known of or found? Canst thou say in thine heart Thou hast seen with thine eyes With what cunning of art Thou wast wrought in what wise, By what force of what stuff thou wast shapen, and shown on my breast to the skies? Who hath given, who hath sold it thee, Knowledge of me? Hath the wilderness told it thee? Hast thou learnt of the sea? Hast thou communed in spirit with night? have the winds taken counsel with thee? Have I set such a star To show light on thy brow That thou sawest from afar What I show to thee now? Have ye spoken as brethren together, the sun and the mountains and thou? What is here, dost thou know it? What was, hast thou known? Prophet nor poet Nor tripod nor throne Nor spirit nor flesh can make answer, but only thy mother alone. Mother, not maker, Born, and not made; Though her children forsake her, Allured or afraid, Praying prayers to the God of their fashion, she stirs not for all that have prayed. A creed is a rod, And a crown is of night; But this thing is God, To be man with thy might, To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live out thy life as the light. I am in thee to save thee, As my soul in thee saith; Give thou as I gave thee, Thy life-blood and breath, Green leaves of thy labour, white flowers of thy thought, and red fruit of thy death. Be the ways of thy giving As mine were to thee; The free life of thy living, Be the gift of it free; Not as servant to lord, nor as master to slave, shalt thou give thee to me. O children of banishment, Souls overcast, Were the lights ye see vanish meant Alway to last, Ye would know not the sun overshining the shadows and stars overpast. I that saw where ye trod The dim paths of the night Set the shadow called God In your skies to give light; But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is in sight. The tree many-rooted That swells to the sky With frondage red-fruited, The life-tree am I; In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves: ye shall live and not die. But the Gods of your fashion That take and that give, In their pity and passion That scourge and forgive, They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall die and not live. My own blood is what stanches The wounds in my bark; Stars caught in my branches Make day of the dark, And are worshipped as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark. Where dead ages hide under The live roots of the tree, In my darkness the thunder Makes utterance of me; In the clash of my boughs with each other ye hear the waves sound of the sea. That noise is of Time, As his feathers are spread And his feet set to climb Through the boughs overhead, And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are bent with his tread. The storm-winds of ages Blow through me and cease, The war-wind that rages, The spring-wind of peace, Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of my blossoms increase. All sounds of all changes, All shadows and lights On the world's mountain-ranges And stream-riven heights, Whose tongue is the wind's tongue and language of storm-clouds on earth-shaking nights; All forms of all faces, All works of all hands In unsearchable places Of time-stricken lands, All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands. Though sore be my burden And more than ye know, And my growth have no guerdon But only to grow, Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or deathworms below. These too have their part in me, As I too in these; Such fire is at heart in me, Such sap is this tree's, Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and of seas. In the spring-coloured hours When my mind was as May's, There brake forth of me flowers By centuries of days, Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as rays. And the sound of them springing And smell of their shoots Were as warmth and sweet singing And strength to my roots; And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits. I bid you but be; I have need not of prayer; I have need of you free As your mouths of mine air; That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me fair. More fair than strange fruit is Of faiths ye espouse; In me only the root is That blooms in your boughs; Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your vows. In the darkening and whitening Abysses adored, With dayspring and lightning For lamp and for sword, God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the wrath of the Lord. O my sons, O too dutiful Toward Gods not of me, Was not I enough beautiful? Was it hard to be free? For behold, I am with you, am in you and of you; look forth now and see. Lo, winged with world's wonders, With miracles shod, With the fires of his thunders For raiment and rod, God trembles in heaven, and his angels are white with the terror of God. For his twilight is come on him, His anguish is here; And his spirits gaze dumb on him, Grown grey from his fear; And his hour taketh hold on him stricken, the last of his infinite year. Thought made him and breaks him, Truth slays and forgives; But to you, as time takes him, This new thing it gives, Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives. For truth only is living, Truth only is whole, And the love of his giving, Man's polestar and pole; Man, pulse of my centre, and fruit of my body, and seed of my soul. One birth of my bosom; One beam of mine eye; One topmost blossom That scales the sky; Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that is I.

In the month of the long decline of roses I, beholding the summer dead before me, Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent, Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions Half divided the eyelids of the sunset; Till I heard as it were a noise of waters Moving tremulous under feet of angels Multitudinous, out of all the heavens; Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage, Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow; And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels, Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight, Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel, Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not, Winds not born in the north nor any quarter, Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine; Heard between them a voice of exultation, "Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded, Even like as a leaf the year is withered, All the fruits of the day from all her branches Gathered, neither is any left to gather. All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms, All are taken away; the season wasted, Like an ember among the fallen ashes. Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight, Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost, We bring flowers that fade not after autumn, Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons, Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser), Woven under the eyes of stars and planets When low light was upon the windy reaches Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows And green fields of the sea that make no pasture: Since the winter begins, the weeping winter, All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever."

Here, where the world is quiet; Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams; I watch the green field growing For reaping folk and sowing, For harvest-time and mowing, A sleepy world of streams. I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep; Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep. Here life has death for neighbour, And far from eye or ear Wan waves and wet winds labour, Weak ships and spirits steer; They drive adrift, and whither They wot not who make thither; But no such winds blow hither, And no such things grow here. No growth of moor or coppice, No heather-flower or vine, But bloomless buds of poppies, Green grapes of Proserpine, Pale beds of blowing rushes Where no leaf blooms or blushes Save this whereout she crushes For dead men deadly wine. Pale, without name or number, In fruitless fields of corn, They bow themselves and slumber All night till light is born; And like a soul belated, In hell and heaven unmated, By cloud and mist abated Comes out of darkness morn. Though one were strong as seven, He too with death shall dwell, Nor wake with wings in heaven, Nor weep for pains in hell; Though one were fair as roses, His beauty clouds and closes; And well though love reposes, In the end it is not well. Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands; Her languid lips are sweeter Than love's who fears to greet her To men that mix and meet her From many times and lands. She waits for each and other, She waits for all men born; Forgets the earth her mother, The life of fruits and corn; And spring and seed and swallow Take wing for her and follow Where summer song rings hollow And flowers are put to scorn. There go the loves that wither, The old loves with wearier wings; And all dead years draw thither, And all disastrous things; Dead dreams of days forsaken, Blind buds that snows have shaken, Wild leaves that winds have taken, Red strays of ruined springs. We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; To-day will die to-morrow; Time stoops to no man's lure; And love, grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps that no loves endure. From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal, Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night.

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses Now lie dead. The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, To the low last edge of the long lone land. If a step should sound or a word be spoken, Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand? So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless, Through branches and briars if a man make way, He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless Night and day. The dense hard passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb To the strait waste place that the years have rifled Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time. The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain. Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not; As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not, Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. Over the meadows that blossom and wither Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; Only the sun and the rain come hither All year long. The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath. Only the wind here hovers and revels In a round where life seems barren as death. Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, Haply, of lovers none ever will know, Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping Years ago. Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither," Did he whisper? "look forth from the flowers to the sea; For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither, And men that love lightly may die—but we?" And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened, And or ever the garden's last petals were shed, In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, Love was dead. Or they loved their life through, and then went whither? And were one to the end—but what end who knows? Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them? What love was ever as deep as a grave? They are loveless now as the grass above them Or the wave. All are at one now, roses and lovers, Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. Not a breath of the time that has been hovers In the air now soft with a summer to be. Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep, When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter We shall sleep. Here death may deal not again for ever; Here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left nought living to ravage and rend. Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, While the sun and the rain live, these shall be; Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing Roll the sea. Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.

Ave Faustina Imperatrix, morituri te salutant. Lean back, and get some minutes' peace; Let your head lean Back to the shoulder with its fleece Of locks, Faustine. The shapely silver shoulder stoops, Weighed over clean With state of splendid hair that droops Each side, Faustine. Let me go over your good gifts That crown you queen; A queen whose kingdom ebbs and shifts Each week, Faustine. Bright heavy brows well gathered up: White gloss and sheen; Carved lips that make my lips a cup To drink, Faustine, Wine and rank poison, milk and blood, Being mixed therein Since first the devil threw dice with God For you, Faustine. Your naked new-born soul, their stake, Stood blind between; God said "let him that wins her take And keep Faustine." But this time Satan throve, no doubt; Long since, I ween, God's part in you was battered out; Long since, Faustine. The die rang sideways as it fell, Rang cracked and thin, Like a man's laughter heard in hell Far down, Faustine, A shadow of laughter like a sigh, Dead sorrow's kin; So rang, thrown down, the devil's die That won Faustine. A suckling of his breed you were, One hard to wean; But God, who lost you, left you fair, We see, Faustine. You have the face that suits a woman For her soul's screen — The sort of beauty that's called human In hell, Faustine. You could do all things but be good Or chaste of mien; And that you would not if you could, We know, Faustine. Even he who cast seven devils out Of Magdalene Could hardly do as much, I doubt, For you, Faustine. Did Satan make you to spite God? Or did God mean To scourge with scorpions for a rod Our sins, Faustine? I know what queen at first you were, As though I had seen Red gold and black imperious hair Twice crown Faustine. As if your fed sarcophagus Spared flesh and skin, You come back face to face with us, The same Faustine. She loved the games men played with death, Where death must win; As though the slain man's blood and breath Revived Faustine. Nets caught the pike, pikes tore the net; Lithe limbs and lean From drained-out pores dripped thick red sweat To soothe Faustine. She drank the steaming drift and dust Blown off the scene; Blood could not ease the bitter lust That galled Faustine. All round the foul fat furrows reeked, Where blood sank in; The circus splashed and seethed and shrieked All round Faustine. But these are gone now: years entomb The dust and din; Yea, even the bath's fierce reek and fume That slew Faustine. Was life worth living then? and now Is life worth sin? Where are the imperial years? and how Are you Faustine? Your soul forgot her joys, forgot Her times of teen; Yea, this life likewise will you not Forget, Faustine? For in the time we know not of Did fate begin Weaving the web of days that wove Your doom, Faustine. The threads were wet with wine, and all Were smooth to spin; They wove you like a Bacchanal, The first Faustine. And Bacchus cast your mates and you Wild grapes to glean; Your flower-like lips were dashed with dew From his, Faustine. Your drenched loose hands were stretched to hold The vine's wet green, Long ere they coined in Roman gold Your face, Faustine. Then after change of soaring feather And winnowing fin, You woke in weeks of feverish weather, A new Faustine. A star upon your birthday burned, Whose fierce serene Red pulseless planet never yearned In heaven, Faustine. Stray breaths of Sapphic song that blew Through Mitylene Shook the fierce quivering blood in you By night, Faustine. The shameless nameless love that makes Hell's iron gin Shut on you like a trap that breaks The soul, Faustine. And when your veins were void and dead, What ghosts unclean Swarmed round the straitened barren bed That hid Faustine? What sterile growths of sexless root Or epicene? What flower of kisses without fruit Of love, Faustine? What adders came to shed their coats? What coiled obscene Small serpents with soft stretching throats Caressed Faustine? But the time came of famished hours, Maimed loves and mean, This ghastly thin-faced time of ours, To spoil Faustine. You seem a thing that hinges hold, A love-machine With clockwork joints of supple gold — No more, Faustine. Not godless, for you serve one God, The Lampsacene, Who metes the gardens with his rod; Your lord, Faustine. If one should love you with real love (Such things have been, Things your fair face knows nothing of, It seems, Faustine); That clear hair heavily bound back, The lights wherein Shift from dead blue to burnt-up black; Your throat, Faustine, Strong, heavy, throwing out the face And hard bright chin And shameful scornful lips that grace Their shame, Faustine, Curled lips, long since half kissed away, Still sweet and keen; You'd give him — poison shall we say? Or what, Faustine?

(excerpt) I A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink, Might tempt, should heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think, A baby's feet. Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat They stretch and spread and wink Their ten soft buds that part and meet. No flower-bells that expand and shrink Gleam half so heavenly sweet As shine on life's untrodden brink A Baby's feet. II A baby's hands, like rosebuds furled Whence yet no leaf expands, Ope if you touch, though close upcurled, A baby's hands. Then, fast as warriors grip their brands When battle's bolt is hurled, They close, clenched hard like tightening bands. No rosebuds yet by dawn impearled Match, even in loveliest lands, The sweetest flowers in all the world— A baby's hands. III A baby's eyes, ere speech begin, Ere lips learn words or sighs, Bless all things bright enough to win A baby's eyes. Love, while the sweet thing laughs and lies, And sleep flows out and in, Sees perfect in them Paradise. Their glance might cast out pain and sin, Their speech make dumb the wise, By mute glad godhead felt within A baby's eyes.

Men, brother men, that after us yet live, Let not your hearts too hard against us be; For if some pity of us poor men ye give, The sooner God shall take of you pity. Here are we five or six strung up, you see, And here the flesh that all too well we fed Bit by bit eaten and rotten, rent and shred, And we the bones grow dust and ash withal; Let no man laugh at us discomforted, But pray to God that he forgive us all. If we call on you, brothers, to forgive, Ye should not hold our prayer in scorn, though we Were slain by law; ye know that all alive Have not wit alway to walk righteously; Make therefore intercession heartily With him that of a virgin's womb was bred, That his grace be not as a dry well-head For us, nor let hell's thunder on us fall; We are dead, let no man harry or vex us dead, But pray to God that he forgive us all. The rain has washed and laundered us all five, And the sun dried and blackened; yea, perdie, Ravens and pies with beaks that rend and rive Have dug our eyes out, and plucked off for fee Our beards and eyebrows; never are we free, Not once, to rest; but here and there still sped, Drive at its wild will by the wind's change led, More pecked of birds than fruits on garden-wall; Men, for God's love, let no gibe here be said, But pray to God that he forgive us all. Prince Jesus, that of all art lord and head, Keep us, that hell be not our bitter bed; We have nought to do in such a master's hall. Be not ye therefore of our fellowhead, But pray to God that he forgive us all.

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories, What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre Dolores, Our Lady of Pain? Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin; But thy sins, which are seventy times seven, Seven ages would fail thee to purge in, And then they would haunt thee in heaven: Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, And the loves that complete and control All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows That wear out the soul. O garment not golden but gilded, O garden where all men may dwell, O tower not of ivory, but builded By hands that reach heaven from hell; O mystical rose of the mire, O house not of gold but of gain, O house of unquenchable fire, Our Lady of Pain! O lips full of lust and of laughter, Curled snakes that are fed from my breast, Bite hard, lest remembrance come after And press with new lips where you pressed. For my heart too springs up at the pressure, Mine eyelids too moisten and burn; Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure, Ere pain come in turn. In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's, Out of sight though they lie of to-day, There have been and there yet shall be sorrows That smite not and bite not in play. The life and the love thou despisest, These hurt us indeed, and in vain, O wise among women, and wisest, Our Lady of Pain. Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories That stung thee, what visions that smote? Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores, When desire took thee first by the throat? What bud was the shell of a blossom That all men may smell to and pluck? What milk fed thee first at what bosom? What sins gave thee suck? We shift and bedeck and bedrape us, Thou art noble and nude and antique; Libitina thy mother, Priapus Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek. We play with light loves in the portal, And wince and relent and refrain; Loves die, and we know thee immortal, Our Lady of Pain. Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges; Thou art fed with perpetual breath, And alive after infinite changes, And fresh from the kisses of death; Of languors rekindled and rallied, Of barren delights and unclean, Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid And poisonous queen. Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you? Men touch them, and change in a trice The lilies and languors of virtue For the raptures and roses of vice; Those lie where thy foot on the floor is, These crown and caress thee and chain, O splendid and sterile Dolores, Our Lady of Pain. There are sins it may be to discover, There are deeds it may be to delight. What new work wilt thou find for thy lover, What new passions for daytime or night? What spells that they know not a word of Whose lives are as leaves overblown? What tortures undreamt of, unheard of, Unwritten, unknown? Ah beautiful passionate body That never has ached with a heart! On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody, Though they sting till it shudder and smart, More kind than the love we adore is, They hurt not the heart or the brain, O bitter and tender Dolores, Our Lady of Pain. As our kisses relax and redouble, From the lips and the foam and the fangs Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble, No dream of impossible pangs? With the sweet of the sins of old ages Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore? Too sweet is the rind, say the sages, Too bitter the core. Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time, And bared all thy beauties to one? Ah, where shall we go then for pastime, If the worst that can be has been done? But sweet as the rind was the core is; We are fain of thee still, we are fain, O sanguine and subtle Dolores, Our Lady of Pain. By the hunger of change and emotion, By the thirst of unbearable things, By despair, the twin-born of devotion, By the pleasure that winces and stings, The delight that consumes the desire, The desire that outruns the delight, By the cruelty deaf as a fire And blind as the night, By the ravenous teeth that have smitten Through the kisses that blossom and bud, By the lips intertwisted and bitten Till the foam has a savour of blood, By the pulse as it rises and falters, By the hands as they slacken and strain, I adjure thee, respond from thine altars, Our Lady of Pain. Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining The light fire in the veins of a boy? But he comes to thee sad, without feigning, Who has wearied of sorrow and joy; Less careful of labour and glory Than the elders whose hair has uncurled: And young, but with fancies as hoary And grey as the world. I have passed from the outermost portal To the shrine where a sin is a prayer; What care though the service be mortal? O our Lady of Torture, what care? All thine the last wine that I pour is, The last in the chalice we drain, O fierce and luxurious Dolores, Our Lady of Pain. All thine the new wine of desire, The fruit of four lips as they clung Till the hair and the eyelids took fire, The foam of a serpentine tongue, The froth of the serpents of pleasure, More salt than the foam of the sea, Now felt as a flame, now at leisure As wine shed for me. Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen, Marked cross from the womb and perverse! They have found out the secret to cozen The gods that constrain us and curse; They alone, they are wise, and none other; Give me place, even me, in their train, O my sister, my spouse, and my mother, Our Lady of Pain. For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives. And pale from the past we draw nigh thee, And satiate with comfortless hours; And we know thee, how all men belie thee, And we gather the fruit of thy flowers; The passion that slays and recovers, The pangs and the kisses that rain On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers, Our Lady of Pain. The desire of thy furious embraces Is more than the wisdom of years, On the blossom though blood lie in traces, Though the foliage be sodden with tears. For the lords in whose keeping the door is That opens on all who draw breath Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores, The myrtle to death. And they laughed, changing hands in the measure, And they mixed and made peace after strife; Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure; Death tingled with blood, and was life. Like lovers they melted and tingled, In the dusk of thine innermost fane; In the darkness they murmured and mingled, Our Lady of Pain. In a twilight where virtues are vices, In thy chapels, unknown of the sun, To a tune that enthralls and entices, They were wed, and the twain were as one. For the tune from thine altar hath sounded Since God bade the world's work begin, And the fume of thine incense abounded, To sweeten the sin. Love listens, and paler than ashes, Through his curls as the crown on them slips, Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes, And laughs with insatiable lips. Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses, With music that scares the profane; Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses, Our Lady of Pain. Thou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle, Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive; In his lips all thy serpents shall nestle, In his hands all thy cruelties thrive. In the daytime thy voice shall go through him, In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache; Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him Asleep and awake. Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses With juice not of fruit nor of bud; When the sense in the spirit reposes, Thou shalt quicken the soul through the blood. Thine, thine the one grace we implore is, Who would live and not languish or feign, O sleepless and deadly Dolores, Our Lady of Pain. Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber, In a lull of the fires of thy life, Of the days without name, without number, When thy will stung the world into strife; When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion Smote kings as they revelled in Rome; And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian, Foam-white, from the foam? When thy lips had such lovers to flatter; When the city lay red from thy rods, And thine hands were as arrows to scatter The children of change and their gods; When the blood of thy foemen made fervent A sand never moist from the main, As one smote them, their lord and thy servant, Our Lady of Pain. On sands by the storm never shaken, Nor wet from the washing of tides; Nor by foam of the waves overtaken, Nor winds that the thunder bestrides; But red from the print of thy paces, Made smooth for the world and its lords, Ringed round with a flame of fair faces, And splendid with swords. There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure, Drew bitter and perilous breath; There torments laid hold on the treasure Of limbs too delicious for death; When thy gardens were lit with live torches; When the world was a steed for thy rein; When the nations lay prone in thy porches, Our Lady of Pain. When, with flame all around him aspirant, Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands, The implacable beautiful tyrant, Rose-crowned, having death in his hands; And a sound as the sound of loud water Smote far through the flight of the fires, And mixed with the lightning of slaughter A thunder of lyres. Dost thou dream of what was and no more is, The old kingdoms of earth and the kings? Dost thou hunger for these things, Dolores, For these, in a world of new things? But thy bosom no fasts could emaciate, No hunger compel to complain Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate, Our Lady of Pain. As of old when the world's heart was lighter, Through thy garments the grace of thee glows, The white wealth of thy body made whiter By the blushes of amorous blows, And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers, And branded by kisses that bruise; When all shall be gone that now lingers, Ah, what shall we lose? Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion, And thy limbs are as melodies yet, And move to the music of passion With lithe and lascivious regret. What ailed us, O gods, to desert you For creeds that refuse and restrain? Come down and redeem us from virtue, Our Lady of Pain. All shrines that were Vestal are flameless, But the flame has not fallen from this; Though obscure be the god, and though nameless The eyes and the hair that we kiss; Low fires that love sits by and forges Fresh heads for his arrows and thine; Hair loosened and soiled in mid orgies With kisses and wine. Thy skin changes country and colour, And shrivels or swells to a snake's. Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller, We know it, the flames and the flakes, Red brands on it smitten and bitten, Round skies where a star is a stain, And the leaves with thy litanies written, Our Lady of Pain. On thy bosom though many a kiss be, There are none such as knew it of old. Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe, Male ringlets or feminine gold, That thy lips met with under the statue, Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves From the eyes of the garden-god at you Across the fig-leaves? Then still, through dry seasons and moister, One god had a wreath to his shrine; Then love was the pearl of his oyster, And Venus rose red out of wine. We have all done amiss, choosing rather Such loves as the wise gods disdain; Intercede for us thou with thy father, Our Lady of Pain. In spring he had crowns of his garden, Red corn in the heat of the year, Then hoary green olives that harden When the grape-blossom freezes with fear; And milk-budded myrtles with Venus And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod; And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us, A visible God." What broke off the garlands that girt you? What sundered you spirit and clay? Weak sins yet alive are as virtue To the strength of the sins of that day. For dried is the blood of thy lover, Ipsithilla, contracted the vein; Cry aloud, "Will he rise and recover, Our Lady of Pain?" Cry aloud; for the old world is broken: Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest, And rears not the bountiful token And spreads not the fatherly feast. From the midmost of Ida, from shady Recesses that murmur at morn, They have brought and baptized her, Our Lady, A goddess new-born. And the chaplets of old are above us, And the oyster-bed teems out of reach; Old poets outsing and outlove us, And Catullus makes mouths at our speech. Who shall kiss, in thy father's own city, With such lips as he sang with, again? Intercede for us all of thy pity, Our Lady of Pain. Out of Dindymus heavily laden Her lions draw bound and unfed A mother, a mortal, a maiden, A queen over death and the dead. She is cold, and her habit is lowly, Her temple of branches and sods; Most fruitful and virginal, holy, A mother of gods. She hath wasted with fire thine high places, She hath hidden and marred and made sad The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces Of gods that were goodly and glad. She slays, and her hands are not bloody; She moves as a moon in the wane, White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy, Our Lady of Pain. They shall pass and their places be taken, The gods and the priests that are pure. They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken? They shall perish, and shalt thou endure? Death laughs, breathing close and relentless In the nostrils and eyelids of lust, With a pinch in his fingers of scentless And delicate dust. But the worm shall revive thee with kisses; Thou shalt change and transmute as a god, As the rod to a serpent that hisses, As the serpent again to a rod. Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it; Thou shalt live until evil be slain, And good shall die first, said thy prophet, Our Lady of Pain. Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it, Now he lies out of reach, out of breath, Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet, Sin's child by incestuous Death? Did he find out in fire at his waking, Or discern as his eyelids lost light, When the bands of the body were breaking And all came in sight? Who has known all the evil before us, Or the tyrannous secrets of time? Though we match not the dead men that bore us At a song, at a kiss, at a crime — Though the heathen outface and outlive us, And our lives and our longings are twain — Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us, Our Lady of Pain. Who are we that embalm and embrace thee With spices and savours of song? What is time, that his children should face thee? What am I, that my lips do thee wrong? I could hurt thee — but pain would delight thee; Or caress thee — but love would repel; And the lovers whose lips would excite thee Are serpents in hell. Who now shall content thee as they did, Thy lovers, when temples were built And the hair of the sacrifice braided And the blood of the sacrifice spilt, In Lampsacus fervent with faces, In Aphaca red from thy reign, Who embraced thee with awful embraces, Our Lady of Pain? Where are they, Cotytto or Venus, Astarte or Ashtaroth, where? Do their hands as we touch come between us? Is the breath of them hot in thy hair? From their lips have thy lips taken fever, With the blood of their bodies grown red? Hast thou left upon earth a believer If these men are dead? They were purple of raiment and golden, Filled full of thee, fiery with wine, Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden, In marvellous chambers of thine. They are fled, and their footprints escape us, Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain, O daughter of Death and Priapus, Our Lady of Pain. What ails us to fear overmeasure, To praise thee with timorous breath, O mistress and mother of pleasure, The one thing as certain as death? We shall change as the things that we cherish, Shall fade as they faded before, As foam upon water shall perish, As sand upon shore. We shall know what the darkness discovers, If the grave-pit be shallow or deep; And our fathers of old, and our lovers, We shall know if they sleep not or sleep. We shall see whether hell be not heaven, Find out whether tares be not grain, And the joys of thee seventy times seven, Our Lady of Pain.

Dead love, by treason slain, lies stark, White as a dead stark-stricken dove: None that pass by him pause to mark Dead love. His heart, that strained and yearned and strove As toward the sundawn strives the lark, Is cold as all the old joy thereof. Dead men, re-arisen from dust, may hark When rings the trumpet blown above: It will not raise from out the dark Dead love.

O heart of hearts, the chalice of love's fire, Hid round with flowers and all the bounty of bloom; O wonderful and perfect heart, for whom The lyrist liberty made life a lyre; O heavenly heart, at whose most dear desire Dead love, living and singing, cleft his tomb, And with him risen and regent in death's room All day thy choral pulses rang full choir; O heart whose beating blood was running song, O sole thing sweeter than thine own songs were, Help us for thy free love's sake to be free, True for thy truth's sake, for thy strength's sake strong, Till very liberty make clean and fair The nursing earth as the sepulchral sea.