Coventry Patmore

“ Are these thine arms about my bosom link’d?
Are these thy hands that tremble near my heart,
Where join two hearts, for juncture more distinct?
By thee and by my maiden zone caress’d,
What dim, waste tracts of life shine sudden, like moonbeams
On windless ocean shaken by sweet dreams!
Ah, stir not to depart!
Kiss me again, thy Wife and Virgin too!
O Love, that, like a rose,
Deckest my breast with beautiful repose,
Kiss me again, and clasp me round the heart,
Till fill’d with thee am I
As the cocoon is with the butterfly! ”

“ And I lay bleeding on the bitter land,
Afraid to stir against thy least command,
But losing all my pleasant life-blood, whence
Force should have been heart’s frailty to withstand.
Life is not life at all without delight,
Nor has it any might;
And better than the insentient heart and brain
Is sharpest pain;
And better for the moment seems it to rebel,
If the great Master, from his lifted seat,
Ne’er whispers to the wearied servant ‘Well!’
Yet what returns of love did I endure,
When to be pardon’d seem’d almost more sweet
Than aye to have been pure! ”

“ And swear the threaten’d doom is ne’er to dread
That’s come, though not yet past.
All front the horror and are none aghast;
Brag of their full-blown rights and liberties,
Nor once surmise
When each man gets his due the Nation dies;
Nay, still shout ‘Progress!’ as if seven plagues
Should take the laggard who would stretch his legs.
Forward! glad rush of Gergesenian swine;
You’ve gain’d the hill-top, but there’s yet the brine.
Forward! to meet the welcome of the waves
That mount to ’whelm the freedom which enslaves. ”

“ A dreadful God was with me in the dark—’
‘How many a Maid—
Has never told me that! And thou’rt afraid—’
‘He’ll come no more,
Or come but twice,
Or thrice,
Or only thrice ten thousand times thrice o’er!’
‘For want of wishing thou mean’st not to miss.
We know the Lover, Psyche, by the kiss!’
‘If speech of honey could impart the sweet,
The world were all in tears and at his feet!
But not to tell of that in tears come I, but this:
I’m foolish, weak, and small,
And fear to fall. ”

“ When God has doom’d a glorious Past to die,
Are there no knaves and fools?
For ages yet to come your kind shall count for nought.
Smoke of the strife of other Powers
Than ours,
And tongues inscrutable with fury fraught
‘Wilder the sky,
Till the far good which none can guess be wrought.
Stand by!
Since tears are vain, here let us rest and laugh,
But not too loudly; for the brave time’s come,
When Best may not blaspheme the Bigger Half,
And freedom for our sort means freedom to be dumb. ”

“ Her mere refused smile
Makes up the sum of that which may be lost!
Who is this Fair
Whom each hath seen,
The darkest once in this bewailed dell,
Be he not destin’d for the glooms of hell?
Whom each hath seen
And known, with sharp remorse and sweet, as Queen
And tear-glad Mistress of his hopes of bliss,
Too fair for man to kiss? ”

“ My very body’s joy were but increased;
More pleasant ’tis to please thee than be pleased.
Thy love has conquer’d me; do with me as thou wilt,
And use me as a chattel that is thine!
Kiss, tread me under foot, cherish or beat,
Sheathe in my heart sharp pain up to the hilt,
Invent what else were most perversely sweet;
Nay, let the Fiend drag me through dens of guilt;
Let Earth, Heav’n, Hell
’Gainst my content combine;
What could make nought the touch that made thee mine!
Ah, say not yet, farewell!’
‘Nay, that’s the Blackbird’s note, the sweet Night’s knell. ”

“ Less than thine Eros, in a summer night!’
‘Nay, do not jeer, but help my puzzled plight:
Because he loves so marvellously me,
And I with all he loves in love must be,
How to except myself I do not see.
Yea, now that other vanities are vain,
I’m vain, since him it likes, of being withal
Weak, foolish, small!’
‘How can a Maid forget her ornaments!
The Powers, that hopeless doom the proud to die,
Unask’d smile pardon upon vanity,
Nay, praise it, when themselves are praised thereby.’
‘Ill-match’d I am for a God’s blandishments! ”

“ Those wretched who have not
Even afar beheld the shining wall,
And those who, once beholding, have forgot,
And those, most vile, who dress
The charnel spectre drear
Of utterly dishallow’d nothingness
In that refulgent fame,
And cry, Lo, here!
And name
The Lady whose smiles inflame
The sphere.
Bring, Love, anear,
And bid be not afraid
Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid,
And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought;
For I will sing of nought
Less sweet to hear
Than seems
A music in their half-remember’d dreams. ”

“ Laugh and fling pebbles on the rainbow’d crest
Of its untired unrest.
III. WINTER.
I, singularly moved
To love the lovely that are not beloved,
Of all the Seasons, most
Love Winter, and to trace
The sense of the Trophonian pallor on her face.
It is not death, but plenitude of peace;
And the dim cloud that does the world enfold
Hath less the characters of dark and cold
Than warmth and light asleep,
And correspondent breathing seems to keep
With the infant harvest, breathing soft below
Its eider coverlet of snow. ”

“ If God would not, thus far, give tongue,
Ah, why did He his secret give
To one that has the gift of song?
But all He does He doubtless means,
And, if the Mystery that smites Prophets dumb
Here, to the grace-couch’d eyes of some,
Shapes to its living face the clinging shroud,
Perchance the Skies grow tired of screens,
And ’tis His Advent in the Cloud.
VENUS AND DEATH.
With fetters gold her captivated feet
Lay, sunny sweet;
In that palm was the poppy, Sleep; in this
The apple, Bliss;
Against the mild side of his Spouse and Mother
One small God throve, and in’t, meseem’d, another. ”

“ The lonely suns, the mystic hazes and throng’d sparkles bright
That, named and number’d right
In sweet, transpicuous words, shall glow alway
With Love’s three-stranded ray,
Red wrath, compassion golden, lazuline delight.’
Thus, in reproof of my despondency,
My Mentor; and thus I:
O, season strange for song!
And yet some timely power persuades my lips.
Is’t England’s parting soul that nerves my tongue,
As other Kingdoms, nearing their eclipse,
Have, in their latest bards, uplifted strong
The voice that was their voice in earlier days? ”

“ The freedom of the few
That, in our free Land, were indeed the free,
Can song renew?
Ill singing ’tis with blotting prison-bars,
How high soe’er, betwixt us and the stars;
Ill singing ’tis when there are none to hear;
And days are near
When England shall forget
The fading glow which, for a little while,
Illumes her yet,
The lovely smile
That grows so faint and wan,
Her people shouting in her dying ear,
Are not two daws worth two of any swan! ”

“ He finds a fair capacity,
And fills it with himself, and glad would die
For that sole She.’
‘Know’st thou some potion me awake to keep,
Lest, to the grief of that ne’er-slumbering Bliss,
Disgraced I sleep,
Wearied in soul by his bewildering kiss?’
‘The Immortals, Psyche, moulded men from sods
That Maids from them might learn the ways of Gods.
Think, would a wakeful Youth his hard fate weep,
Lock’d to the tired breast of a Bride asleep?’
‘Ah, me, I do not dream,
Yet all this does some heathen fable seem!’
‘O’ermuch thou mind’st the throne he leaves above! ”

“ O, Unknown Eros? What this breeze
Of sudden wings
Speeding at far returns of time from interstellar space
To fan my very face,
And gone as fleet,
Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat,
With ne’er a light plume dropp’d, nor any trace
To speak of whence they came, or whither they depart?
And why this palpitating heart,
This blind and unrelated joy,
This meaningless desire,
That moves me like the Child
Who in the flushing darkness troubled lies,
Inventing lonely prophecies,
Which even to his Mother mild
He dares not tell;
To which himself is infidel ”

“ Thunder has done its worst among its twigs,
Where the great crest yet blackens, never pruned,
But in its heart, alway
Ready to push new verdurous boughs, whene’er
The rotting saplings near it fall and leave it air,
Is all antiquity and no decay.
Rich, though rejected by the forest-pigs,
Its fruit, beneath whose rough, concealing rind
They that will break it find
Heart-succouring savour of each several meat,
And kernell’d drink of brain-renewing power,
With bitter condiment and sour,
And sweet economy of sweet,
And odours that remind
Of haunts of childhood and a different day. ”

“ Between unequals sweet is equal love.’
‘Nay, Mother, in his breast, when darkness blinds,
I cannot for my life but talk and laugh
With the large impudence of little minds!’
‘Respectful to the Gods and meek,
According to one’s lights, I grant
’Twere well to be;
But, on my word,
Child, any one, to hear you speak,
Would take you for a Protestant,
(Such fish I do foresee
When the charm’d fume comes strong on me,)
Or powder’d lackey, by some great man’s board,
A deal more solemn than his Lord!
Know’st thou not, Girl, thine Eros loves to laugh?
And shall a God do anything by half? ”

“ Between those quivering plumes that thro’ fine ether pant,
For hopeless, sweet eternity?
What God unhonour’d hitherto in songs,
Or which, that now
Forgettest the disguise
That Gods must wear who visit human eyes,
Art Thou?
Thou art not Amor; or, if so, yon pyre,
That waits the willing victim, flames with vestal fire;
Nor mooned Queen of maids; or, if thou’rt she,
Ah, then, from Thee
Let Bride and Bridegroom learn what kisses be!
In what veil’d hymn
Or mystic dance
Would he that were thy Priest advance
Thine earthly praise, thy glory limn? ”

“ Is she who boasts her more than mortal chaste!’
‘Find’st thou me worthy, then, by day and night,
But of this fond indignity, delight?’
‘Little, bold Femininity,
That darest blame Heaven, what would’st thou have or be?’
‘Shall I, the gnat which dances in thy ray,
Dare to be reverent? Therefore dare I say,
I cannot guess the good that I desire;
But this I know, I spurn the gifts which Hell
Can mock till which is which ’tis hard to tell.
I love thee, God; yea, and ’twas such assault
As this which made me thine; if that be fault ”

“ That heav’st as if for bliss of her and me,
And separatest not dear heart from heart,
Though each ’gainst other beats too far apart,
For yet awhile
Let it not seem that I behold her smile.
O, weary Love, O, folded to her breast,
Love in each moment years and years of rest,
Be calm, as being not. ”

“ Retaining still such weal
As spurned Lovers feel,
Preferring far to all the world’s delight
Their loss so infinite,
Or Poets, when they mark
In the clouds dun
A loitering flush of the long sunken sun,
And turn away with tears into the dark.
Know, Dear, these are not mine
But Wisdom’s words, confirmed by divine
Doctors and Saints, though fitly seldom heard
Save in their own prepense-occulted word,
Lest fools be fool’d the further by false hope,
And wrest sweet knowledge to their own decline ”

“ Ever seal’d wedlock so conjoint with bliss;
And whose good singular eternally
’Tis now, with nameless peace and vehemence,
To enjoy thy married smile,
That mystery of innocence;
Ora pro me!
Sweet Girlhood without guile,
The extreme of God’s creative energy;
Sunshiny Peak of human personality;
The world’s sad aspirations’ one Success;
Bright Blush, that sav’st our shame from shamelessness;
Chief Stone of stumbling; Sign built in the way
To set the foolish everywhere a-bray;
Hem of God’s robe, which all who touch are heal’d ”

“ Yea, does from her own law, to hint it, err,
As ’twere a trust too huge for her.
Maiden and Youth pipe wondrous clear
The tune they are the last to hear.
’Tis the strange gem in Pleasure’s cup.
Physician and Philosopher,
In search of acorns, plough it up,
But count it nothing ’mong their gains;
Nay, call it pearl, they’d answer, ‘Lo,
Blest Land where pearls as large as pumpkins grow!’
And would not even rend you for your pains.
To tell men truth, yet keep them dark
And shooting still beside the mark,
God, as in jest, gave to their wish,
The Sign of Jonah and the Fish. ”

“ And Egypt’s brick-kilns, where the lost crowd plods,
Blaspheming its false Gods;
Peace-beaming Star, by which shall come enticed,
Though nought thereof as yet they weet,
Unto thy Babe’s small feet,
The Mighty, wand’ring disemparadised,
Like Lucifer, because to thee
They will not bend the knee;
Ora pro me!
Desire of Him whom all things else desire!
Bush aye with Him as He with thee on fire!
Neither in His great Deed nor on His throne—
O, folly of Love, the intense
Last culmination of Intelligence,—
Him seem’d it good that God should be alone! ”

“ Be for a billion years,
How shall I stop my tears
That life was once so low and Love arrived so late!’
‘Sadness is beauty’s savour, and pain is
The exceedingly keen edge of bliss;
Nor, without swift mutation, would the heav’ns be aught.’
‘How to behave with him I’d fain be taught. ”

“ Amidst ingenious blasphemies.
Wouldst raise the poor, in Capuan luxury sunk?
The Nation lives but whilst its Lords are drunk!
Or spread Heav’n’s partial gifts o’er all, like dew?
The Many’s weedy growth withers the gracious Few!
Strange opposites, from those, again, shall rise.
Join, then, if thee it please, the bitter jest
Of mankind’s progress; all its spectral race
Mere impotence of rest,
The heaving vain of life which cannot cease from self,
Crest altering still to gulf
And gulf to crest
In endless chace,
That leaves the tossing water anchor’d in its place! ”