Spirits in Bondage Read online

Not even their own loveliness can know,

  Being but cosmic dust and dead.

  And if some tears be shed,

  Some evil God have power,

  Some crown of sorrow sit

  Upon a little world for a little hour—

  Who shall remember? Who shall care for it?

  XII

  DE PROFUNDIS

  Come let us curse our Master ere we die,

  For all our hopes in endless ruin lie.

  The good is dead. Let us curse God most High.

  Four thousand years of toil and hope and thought

  Wherein man laboured upward and still wrought

  New worlds and better, Thou hast made as naught.

  We built us joyful cities, strong and fair,

  Knowledge we sought and gathered wisdom rare.

  And all this time you laughed upon our care,

  And suddenly the earth grew black with wrong,

  Our hope was crushed and silenced was our song,

  The heaven grew loud with weeping. Thou art strong.

  Come then and curse the Lord. Over the earth

  Gross darkness falls, and evil was our birth

  And our few happy days of little worth.

  Even if it be not all a dream in vain

  —The ancient hope that still will rise again—

  Of a just God that cares for earthly pain,

  Yet far away beyond our labouring night,

  He wanders in the depths of endless light,

  Singing alone his musics of delight;

  Only the far, spent echo of his song

  Our dungeons and deep cells can smite along,

  And Thou art nearer. Thou art very strong.

  O universal strength, I know it well,

  It is but froth of folly to rebel;

  For thou art Lord and hast the keys of Hell.

  Yet I will not bow down to thee nor love thee,

  For looking in my own heart I can prove thee,

  And know this frail, bruised being is above thee.

  Our love, our hope, our thirsting for the right,

  Our mercy and long seeking of the light,

  Shall we change these for thy relentless might?

  Laugh then and slay. Shatter all things of worth,

  Heap torment still on torment for thy mirth—

  Thou art not Lord while there are Men on earth.

  XIII

  SATAN SPEAKS

  I am the Lord your God: even he that made

  Material things, and all these signs arrayed

  Above you and have set beneath the race

  Of mankind, who forget their Father’s face

  And even while they drink my light of day

  Dream of some other gods and disobey

  My warnings, and despise my holy laws,

  Even tho’ their sin shall slay them. For which cause,

  Dreams dreamed in vain, a never-filled desire

  And in close flesh a spiritual fire,

  A thirst for good their kind shall not attain,

  A backward cleaving to the beast again.

  A loathing for the life that I have given,

  A haunted, twisted soul for ever riven

  Between their will and mine—such lot I give

  White still in my despite the vermin live.

  They hate my world! Then let that other God

  Come from the outer spaces glory-shod,

  And from this castle I have built on Night

  Steal forth my own thought’s children into light,

  If such an one there be. But far away

  He walks the airy fields of endless day,

  And my rebellious sons have called Him long

  And vainly called. My order still is strong

  And like to me nor second none I know.

  Whither the mammoth went this creature too shall go.

  XIV

  THE WITCH

  Trapped amid the woods with guile

  They’ve led her bound in fetters vile

  To death, a deadlier sorceress

  Than any born for earth’s distress

  Since first the winner of the fleece

  Bore home the Colchian witch to Greece—

  Seven months with snare and gin

  They’ve sought the maid o’erwise within

  The forest’s labyrinthine shade.

  The lonely woodman half afraid

  Far off her ragged form has seen

  Sauntering down the alleys green,

  Or crouched in godless prayer alone

  At eve before a Druid stone.

  But now the bitter chase is won,

  The quarry’s caught, her magic’s done,

  The bishop’s brought her strongest spell

  To naught with candle, book, and bell;

  With holy water splashed upon her,

  She goes to burning and dishonour

  Too deeply damned to feel her shame,

  For, though beneath her hair of flame

  Her thoughtful head be lowly bowed

  It droops for meditation proud

  Impenitent, and pondering yet

  Things no memory can forget,

  Starry wonders she has seen

  Brooding in the wildwood green

  With holiness. For who can say

  In what strange crew she loved to play,

  What demons or what gods of old

  Deep mysteries unto her have told

  At dead of night in worship bent

  At ruined shrines magnificent,

  Or how the quivering will she sent

  Alone into the great alone

  Where all is loved and all is known,

  Who now lifts up her maiden eyes

  And looks around with soft surprise

  Upon the noisy, crowded square,

  The city oafs that nod and stare,

  The bishop’s court that gathers there,

  The faggots and the blackened stake

  Where sinners die for justice’ sake?

  Now she is set upon the pile,

  The mob grows still a little while,

  Till lo! before the eager folk

  Up curls a thin, blue line of smoke.

  ‘Alas!’ the full-fed burghers cry,

  ‘That evil loveliness must die!’

  XV

  DUNGEON GRATES

  So piteously the lonely soul of man

  Shudders before this universal plan,

  So grievous is the burden and the pain,

  So heavy weighs the long, material chain

  From cause to cause, too merciless for hate,

  The nightmare march of unrelenting fate,

  I think that he must die thereof unless

  Ever and again across the dreariness

  There came a sudden glimpse of spirit faces,

  A fragrant breath to tell of flowery places

  And wider oceans, breaking on the shore

  From which the hearts of men are always sore.

  It lies beyond endeavour; neither prayer

  Nor fasting, nor much wisdom winneth there,

  Seeing how many prophets and wise men

  Have sought for it and still returned again

  With hope undone. But only the strange power

  Of unsought Beauty in some casual hour

  Can build a bridge of light or sound or form

  To lead you out of all this strife and storm;

  When of some beauty we are grown a part

  Till from its very glory’s midmost heart

  Out leaps a sudden beam of larger light

  Into our souls. All things are seen aright

  Amid the blinding pillar of its gold,

  Seven times more true than what for truth we hold

  In vulgar hours. The miracle is done

  And for one little moment we are one

  With the eternal stream of loveliness

  That flows so calm, aloft from all distress

  Yet
leaps and lives around us as a fire

  Making us faint with overstrong desire

  To sport and swim for ever in its deep—

  Only a moment.

  O! but we shall keep

  Our vision still. One moment was enough,

  We know we are not made of mortal stuff.

  And we can bear all trials that come after,

  The hate of men and the fool’s loud bestial laughter

  And Nature’s rule and cruelties unclean,

  For we have seen the Glory—we have seen.

  XVI

  THE PHILOSOPHER

  Who shall be our prophet then,

  Chosen from all the sons of men

  To lead his fellows on the way

  Of hidden knowledge, delving deep

  To nameless mysteries that keep

  Their secret from the solar day!

  Or who shall pierce with surer eye!

  This shifting veil of bittersweet

  And find the real things that lie

  Beyond this turmoil, which we greet

  With such a wasted wealth of tears?

  Who shall cross over for us the bridge of fears

  And pass in to the country where the ancient Mothers dwell?

  Is it an elder, bent and hoar

  Who, where the waste Atlantic swell

  On lonely beaches makes its roar,

  In his solitary tower

  Through the long night hour by hour

  Pores on old books with watery eye

  When all his youth has passed him by,

  And folly is schooled and love is dead

  And frozen fancy laid abed,

  While in his veins the gradual blood

  Slackens to a marish flood?

  For he rejoiceth not in the ocean’s might,

  Neither the sun giveth delight,

  Nor the moon by night

  Shall call his feet to wander in the haunted forest lawn.

  He shall no more rise suddenly in the dawn

  When mists are white and the dew lies pearly

  Cold and cold on every meadow,

  To take his joy of the season early,

  The opening flower and the westward shadow,

  And scarcely can he dream of laughter and love,

  They lie so many leaden years behind.

  Such eyes are dim and blind,

  And the sad, aching head that nods above

  His monstrous books can never know

  The secret we would find.

  But let our seer be young and kind

  And fresh and beautiful of show,

  And taken ere the lustyhead

  And rapture of his youth be dead;

  Ere the gnawing, peasant reason

  School him over-deep in treason

  To the ancient high estate

  Of his fancy’s principate,

  That he may live a perfect whole,

  A mask of the eternal soul,

  And cross at last the shadowy bar

  To where the ever-living are.

  XVII

  THE OCEAN STRAND

  O leave the labouring roadways of the town,

  The shifting faces and the changeful hue

  Of markets, and broad echoing streets that drown

  The heart’s own silent music. Though they too

  Sing in their proper rhythm, and still delight

  The friendly ear that loves warm human kind,

  Yet it is good to leave them all behind,

  Now when from lily dawn to purple night

  Summer is queen,

  Summer is queen in all the happy land.

  Far, far away among the valleys green

  Let us go forth and wander hand in hand

  Beyond those solemn hills that we have seen

  So often welcome home the falling sun

  Into their cloudy peaks when day was done—

  Beyond them till we find the ocean strand

  And hear the great waves run,

  With the waste song whose melodies I’d follow

  And weary not for many a summer day,

  Born of the vaulted breakers arching hollow

  Before they flash and scatter into spray,

  On, if we should be weary of their play

  Then I would lead you further into land

  Where, with their ragged walls, the stately rocks

  Shunt in smooth courts and paved with quiet sand

  To silence dedicate. The sea-god’s flocks

  Have rested here, and mortal eyes have seen

  By great adventure at the dead of noon

  A lonely nereid drowsing half a-swoon

  Buried beneath her dark and dripping locks.

  XVIII

  NOON

  Noon! and in the garden bower

  The hot air quivers o’er the grass,

  The little lake is smooth as glass

  And still so heavily the hour

  Drags, that scarce the proudest flower

  Pressed upon its burning bed

  Has strength to lift a languid head—

  Rose and fainting violet

  By the water’s margin set

  Swoon and sink as they were dead

  Though their weary leaves be fed

  With the foam-drops of the pool

  Where it trembles dark and cool

  Wrinkled by the fountain spraying

  O’er it. And the honey-bee

  Hums his drowsy melody

  And wanders in his course a-straying

  Through the sweet and tangled glade

  With his golden mead o’erladen,

  Where beneath the pleasant shade

  Of the darkling boughs a maiden—

  Milky limb and fiery tress,

  All at sweetest random laid—

  Slumbers, drunken with the excess

  Of the noontide’s loveliness.

  XIX

  MILTON READ AGAIN

  (IN SURREY)

  Three golden months while summer on us stole

  I have read your joyful tale another time,

  Breathing more freely in that larger clime

  And learning wiselier to deserve the whole.

  Your Spirit, Master, has been close at hand

  And guided me, still pointing treasures rare,

  Thick-sown where I before saw nothing fair

  And finding waters in the barren land,

  Barren once thought because my eyes were dim.

  Like one I am grown to whom the common field

  And often-wandered copse one morning yield

  New pleasures suddenly; for over him

  Falls the weird spirit of unexplained delight,

  New mystery in every shady place,

  In every whispering tree a nameless grace,

  New rapture on the windy seaward height.

  So may she come to me, teaching me well

  To savour all these sweets that lie to hand

  In wood and lane about this pleasant land

  Though it be not the land where I would dwell.

  XX

  SONNET

  The stars come out; the fragrant shadows fall

  About a dreaming garden still and sweet,

  I hear the unseen bats above me bleat

  Among the ghostly moths their hunting call,

  And twinkling glow-worms all about me crawl.

  Now for a chamber dim, a pillow meet

  For slumbers deep as death, a faultless sheet,

  Cool, white and smooth. So may I reach the hall

  With poppies strewn where sleep that is so dear

  With magic sponge can wipe away an hour

  Or twelve and make them naught. Why not a year,

  Why could a man not loiter in that bower

  Until a thousand painless cycles wore,

  And then—what if it held him evermore?

  XXI

  THE AUTUMN MORNING

  See! the pale autumn dawn

&
nbsp; Is faint, upon the lawn

  That lies in powdered white

  Of hoar-frost dight

  And now from tree to tree

  The ghostly mist we see

  Hung like a silver pall

  To hallow all.

  It wreathes the burdened air

  So strangely everywhere

  That I could almost fear

  This silence drear

  Where no one song-bird sings

  And dream that wizard things

  Mighty for hate or love

  Were close above.

  White as the fog and fair

  Drifting through the middle air

  In magic dances dread

  Over my head.

  Yet these should know me too

  Lover and bondman true,

  One that has honoured well

  The mystic spell

  Of earth’s most solemn hours

  Wherein the ancient powers

  Of dryad, elf, or faun

  Or leprechaun

  Oft have their faces shown

  To me that walked alone

  Seashore or haunted fen

  Or mountain glen

  Wherefore I will not fear

  To walk the woodlands sere

  Into this autumn day

  Far, far away.

  PART TWO

  HESITATION

  XXII

  L’APPRENTI SORCIER

  Suddenly there came to me

  The music of a mighty sea

  That on a bare and iron shore.

  Thundered with a deeper roar

  Than all the tides that leap and run

  With us below the real sun:

  Because the place was far away,

  Above, beyond our homely day,

  Neighbouring close the frozen clime

  Where out of all the woods of time,

  Amid the frightful seraphim

  The fierce, cold eyes of Godhead gleam,

  Revolving hate and misery

  And wars and famines yet to be.

  And in my dreams I stood alone

  Upon a shelf of weedy stone,

  And saw before my shrinking eyes

  The dark, enormous breakers rise,

  And hover and fall with deafening thunder

  Of thwarted foam that echoed under

  The ledge, through many a cavern drear,

  With hollow sounds of wintry fear.

  And through the waters waste and grey,

  Thick-strown for many a league away,

  Out of the toiling sea arose

  Many a face and form of those

  Thin, elemental people dear