THE ETERNAL WEDDING

He. Even as a wind that hasteth round the world From out cold hours fill'd with shadow of earth, To pour alight against the risen sun; So unto thee adoring, out of its shadow Floweth my spirit, into the light of thee Which Beauty is, and Joy. From my own fate, From out the darkness wherein long I fared Worshipping stars and morsels of the light, Through doors of golden morning now I pass Into the great whole light and perfect day Of shining Beauty, open to me at last. Yea, into thee now do I pass, beloved: Beauty and thou are mine!

She. And I am thine! I am desirable to my desire: Thence am I clean as immortality With Beauty and Joy, the fiery power of Beauty.

He. And by my spirit made marvellous here by thee, Poured out all clear into the gold of thee, Not myself only do I know; I have Golden within me the whole fate of man: That every flesh and soul belongs to one Continual joyward ravishment, whose end Is here, in this perfection. Now I know— For all my speculation soareth up, A bird taking eternity for air,— Now being mixt with thee, in the burning midst Of Beauty for my sense and mind and soul,— That life hath highest gone which hath most joy. For like great wings forcefully smiting air And driving it along in rushing rivers, Desire of joy beats mightily pulsing forward The world's one nature, and all the loose lives therein, Carried and greatly streaming on a gale Of craving, swept fiercely along in beauty;— Like a great weather of wind and shining sun, When the airs pick up whole huge waves of sea, Crumble them in their grasp and high aloft Sow them glittering, a white watery dust, To company with light: so we are driven Onward and upward in a wind of beauty, Until man's race be wielded by its joy Into some high incomparable day, Where perfectly delight may know itself,— No longer need a strife to know itself, Only by its prevailing over pain.

She. Beloved, but no pain may strive with us.

He. No, for we are flown far ahead of life: The feet of our Spirit have wonderfully trod The dangers of the rushing fate of life, As summer-searching birds tread with their wings Mountainous surges in the air. But many, Not strongly fledge to ride the world's great rapture, Must break, down fallen into steep confusion, Where we climb easily and tower with joy. Nevertheless doth life foretell in us How it shall all make seizure at the last Upon this height of ecstasy, this fort Life like an army storms: Captains we are In the great assault; and where we stand alone Within these hours, built like establisht flames Round us, at long last all man's life shall stand At peace with joy, wearing delighted sense As meadows wear their golden pleasure of flowers. Certain my heart dwells in these builded hours, That there is no more beauty beyond thee. Thou art my utter beauty; and—behold The marvel, God in Heaven!—I am thine. Therefore we know, in this height-guarded place Whereto the speed of our desire hath brought us; Here in this safety crowning, like a fort Built upon topmost peaks, the height of beauty,— We know to be glad of life as we were gods Timelessly glad of deity; yea, to enjoy Fleshly, spiritual Being till the swift Torrent of glee (as hurled star-dust can change Dim earthly weather to a moment like the sun,) Doth startle life to self-adoring godhead,— Divine body of Power and divine Burning soul of Light and self-desire. And having given ourselves all to amazement, We are made like a prophesying song Of life all joy, a bride in the arms of God.— Yea, God shall marry his people at the last; And every man and woman who has sworn That only joy can make this Being sacred, Weaves at the wedding-garment.

She. Ah, my beloved, Feelest thou too that out of earth and time We are transgressing into Heavenly hours? Or, threading the dark worldly multitude And making lightning of its path, there comes A zeal from God posting along our lives.

He. For some eternal pulse hath chosen us, Some divine anger beats within our hearts.

She. Anger? But how far off is love from anger!

He. Nay, both belong to joy; joy's kind is twain. And close as in the pouring of sun-flame Are mingled glory of light and fury of heat, Joy utters its twin radiance, love and anger; If joy be not indeed all sacred wrath With circumstance; indignant memory Of what hath been, when the new lusts of God Exulted unimaginably, before Rigours of law fastened like creeping habit Upon their measureless wont, and forced them drive Their ranging music of delighted being Through the fixt beating tune of a circling world.— Is not love so? Amazement of an anger Against created shape and narrowness? The bound rage of the uncreated Spirit Whose striving doth impassion us and the world? A wrath that thou and I are not one being?

She. Yes, and not only words that thou and I Out of our sexes with a flame's escape Are fashioned into one. The Spirit in us Hath, like imagination in a prison, Kindled itself free of all boundary, So that it hath no room but its own joy, Ample as at the first, before it fell Into this burthenous habit of a world. What have we now to do with the world? We are Made one unworldly thing; we are past the world; Yea, and unmade: we are immortality.

He. And only fools abominably crazed, Those who will set imagination down As less in truth than their dim sensual wit, Dare doubt that, while these dreams of ours, these bodies, Still quiver in the world each with its own Delight, the great divine wrath of our love Hath stricken off from us the place of the world! Yea, as we walk in spiritual freedom Upright before the shining face of God, Behold, as it were the shadow of our stature Thrown by that light, we draw the world behind us,— That world wherein, darkly I remember, We thought we were as twain.

She. Yet, since God means That love should sunder our fixt separateness And make our married spirits leap together, As lightning out of the clouds of sexual flesh, Into one sexless undivided joy; Why hath he made us a divided flesh? We being single ecstasy, now as strange As if a shadow stained where no one stood The ground in the noon-glare, seemeth to me The long blind time wherein our lives and the world Lay stretcht out dark upon the light of heaven, Like shadow of some bulk that took the glory; While yet there stood not over it, to shade The splendour from it, our heaven-fronting love, This great new soul that our two souls have kindled. Yea, and how like, that in the world's chance-medley This our exulting destiny had been slain, Though here it lords the world as a man his shadow!

He. But the world is not chance, except to those Most feeble in desire: who needeth aught Shall have it, if he fill his soul with the need. While still our ignorant lives were drowned beneath The flooding of the earthly fate, and chance Seemed pouring mightily dark and loud between us, Unspeakable news oft visited our hearts: We knew each other by desire; yea, spake Out of the strength of darkness flowing o'er us, Across the hindering outcry of the world One to another sweet desirable things. Until at last we took such heavenly lust Of those unheard messages into our lives, We were made abler than the worldly fate. We held its random enmity as frost The storming Northern seas, and fastened it In likeness of our love's imagining; Or as a captain with his courage holds The mutinous blood of an army aghast with fear, And maketh it unwillingly dare his purpose, Our lust of love struck its commandment deep Into the froward turbulence of world That parted us. Suddenly the dark noise Cleft and went backward from us, and we stood Knowing each other in a quiet light; And like wise music made of many strings Following and adoring underneath Prevailing song, fate lived beneath our love, Under the masterful excellent silence of it, A multitudinous obedience.

She. Yea, but not this my marvel: not that we Should master with desire the sundering world, We who bore in our hearts such destiny, There was no force knew to be dangerous Against it, but must turn its malice clean Into obsequious favour worshipping us. Rather hath this astonisht me, that we Have not for ever lived in this high hour. Only to be twin elements of joy In this extravagance of Being, Love, Were our divided natures shaped in twain; And to this hour the whole world must consent. Is it not very marvellous, our lives Can only come to this out of a long Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He. Shall life do more than God? for hath not God Striven with himself, when into known delight His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth,— This mystery of a world sign of his striving? Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind With labouring in the wonder of it, that here Being—the world and we—is suffered to be!— But, lying on thy breast one notable day, Sudden exceeding agony of love Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge. I was not: yet I saw the will of God As light unfashion'd, unendurable flame, Interminable, not to be supposed; And there was no more creature except light,— The dreadful burning of the lonely God's Unutter'd joy. And then, past telling, came Shuddering and division in the light: Therein, like trembling, was desire to know Its own perfect beauty; and it became A cloven fire, a double flaming, each Adorable to each; against itself Waging a burning love, which was the world;— A moment satisfied in that love-strife I knew the world!—And when I fell from there, Then knew I also what this life would do In being twain,—in being man and woman! For it would do even as its endless Master, Making the world, had done; yea, with itself Would strive, and for the strife would into sex Be cloven, double burning, made thereby Desirable to itself. Contrived joy Is sex in life; and by no other thing Than by a perfect sundering, could life Change the dark stream of unappointed joy To perfect praise of itself, the glee that loves And worships its own Being. This is ours! Yet only for that we have been so long Sundered desire: thence is our life all praise.— But we, well knowing by our strength of joy There is no sundering more, how far we love From those sad lives that know a half-love only, Alone thereby knowing themselves for ever Sealed in division of love, and therefore made To pour their strength out always into their love's Fierceness, as green wood bleeds its hissing sap Into red heat of a fire! Not so do we: The cloven anger, life, hath left to wage Its flame against itself, here turned to one Self-adoration.—Ah, what comes of this? The joy falters a moment, with closed wings Wearying in its upward journey, ere Again it goes on high, bearing its song, Its delight breathing and its vigour beating The highest height of the air above the world.

She. What hast thou done to me!—I would have soul, Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held By flesh. Now, inly delighted with desire, My body knows itself to be nought else But thy heart's worship of me; and my soul Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air. Nay, all my body is become a song Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song.

He. And mine is all like one rapt faculty, As it were listening to the love in thee, My whole mortality trembling to take Thy body like heard singing of thy spirit.

She. Surely by this, Beloved, we must know Our love is perfect here,—that not as holds The common dullard thought, we are things lost In an amazement that is all unware; But wonderfully knowing what we are! Lo, now that body is the song whereof Spirit is mood, knoweth not our delight? Knoweth not beautifully now our love, That Life, here to this festival bid come Clad in his splendour of worldly day and night, Filled and empower'd by heavenly lust, is all The glad imagination of the Spirit?

He. Were it not so, Love could not be at all: Nought could be, but a yearning to fulfil Desire of beauty, by vain reaching forth Of sense to hold and understand the vision Made by impassion'd body,—vision of thee! But music mixt with music are, in love, Bodily senses; and as flame hath light, Spirit this nature hath imagined round it, No way concealed therein, when love comes near, Nor in the perfect wedding of desires Suffering any hindrance.

She. Ah, but now, Now am I given love's eternal secret! Yea, thou and I who speak, are but the joy Of our for ever mated spirits; but now The wisdom of my gladness even through Spirit Looks, divinely elate. Who hath for joy Our Spirits? Who hath imagined them Round him in fashion'd radiance of desire, As into light of these exulting bodies Flaming Spirit is uttered?

He. Yea, here the end Of love's astonishment! Now know we Spirit, And Who, for ease of joy, contriveth Spirit. Now all life's loveliness and power we have Dissolved in this one moment, and our burning Carries all shining upward, till in us Life is not life, but the desire of God, Himself desiring and himself accepting. Now what was prophecy in us is made Fulfilment: we are the hour and we are the joy, We in our marvellousness of single knowledge, Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate And drawing into his light the greeting fire Of God,—God known in ecstasy of love Wedding himself to utterance of himself.



MARRIAGE SONG

I

Come up, dear chosen morning, come, Blessing the air with light, And bid the sky repent of being dark: Let all the spaces round the world be white, And give the earth her green again. Into new hours of beautiful delight, Out of the shadow where she has lain, Bring the earth awake for glee, Shining with dews as fresh and clear As my beloved's voice upon the air. For now, O morning chosen of all days, on thee A wondrous duty lies: There was an evening that did loveliness foretell; Thence upon thee, O chosen morn, it fell To fashion into perfect destiny The radiant prophecy. For in an evening of young moon, that went Filling the moist air with a rosy fire, I and my beloved knew our love; And knew that thou, O morning, wouldst arise To give us knowledge of achieved desire. For, standing stricken with astonishment, Half terrified in the delight, Even as the moon did into clear air move And made a golden light, Lo there, croucht up against it, a dark hill, A monstrous back of earth, a spine Of hunched rock, furred with great growth of pine, Lay like a beast, snout in its paws, asleep; Yet in its sleeping seemed it miserable, As though strong fear must always keep Hold of its heart, and drive its blood in dream. Yea, for to our new love, did it not seem, That dark and quiet length of hill, The sleeping grief of the world?—Out of it we Had like imaginations stept to be Beauty and golden wonder; and for the lovely fear Of coming perfect joy, had changed The terror that dreamt there! And now the golden moon had turned To shining white, white as our souls that burned With vision of our prophecy assured: Suddenly white was the moon; but she At once did on a woven modesty Of cloud, and soon went in obscured: And we were dark, and vanisht that strange hill. But yet it was not long before There opened in the sky a narrow door, Made with pearl lintel and pearl sill; And the earth's night seem'd pressing there,— All as a beggar on some festival would peer,— To gaze into a room of light beyond, The hidden silver splendour of the moon. Yea, and we also, we Long gazed wistfully Towards thee, O morning, come at last, And towards the light that thou wilt pour upon us soon!

II

O soul who still art strange to sense, Who often against beauty wouldst complain, Doubting between joy and pain: If like the startling touch of something keen Against thee, it hath been To follow from an upland height The swift sun hunting rain Across the April meadows of a plain, Until the fields would flash into the air Their joyous green, like emeralds alight; Or when in the blue of night's mid-noon The burning naked moon Draws to a brink of cloudy weather near, A breadth of snow, firm and soft as a wing, Stretcht out over a wind that gently goes,— Through the white sleep of snowy cloud there grows An azure-border'd shining ring, The gleaming dream of the approaching joy of her;— What now wilt thou do, Soul? What now, If with such things as these troubled thou wert? How wilt thou now endure, or how Not now be strangely hurt?— When utter beauty must come closer to thee Than even anger or fear could be; When thou, like metal in a kiln, must lie Seized by beauty's mightily able flame; Enjoyed by beauty as by the ruthless glee Of an unescapable power; Obeying beauty as air obeys a cry; Yea, one thing made of beauty and thee, As steel and a white heat are made the same! —Ah, but I know how this infirmity Will fail and be not, no, not memory, When I begin the marvellous hour. This only is my heart's strain'd eagerness, Long waiting for its bliss.— But from those other fears, from those That keep to Love so close, From fears that are the shadow of delight, Hide me, O joys; make them unknown to-night!

III

Thou bright God that in dream earnest to me last night, Thou with the flesh made of a golden light, Knew I not thee, thee and thy heart, Knew I not well, God, who thou wert? Yea, and my soul divinely understood The light that was beneath thee a ground, The golden light that cover'd thee round, Turning my sleep to a fiery morn, Was as a heavenly oath there sworn Promising me an immortal good: Well I knew thee, God of Marriages, thee and thy flame! Ah, but wherefore beside thee came That fearful sight of another mood? Why in thy light, to thy hand chained, Towards me its bondage terribly strained, Why came with thee that dreadful hound, The wild hound Fear, black, ravenous and gaunt? Why him with thee should thy dear light surround? Why broughtest thou that beast to haunt The blissful footsteps of my golden dream?— All shadowy black the body dread, All frenzied fire the head,— The hunger of its mouth a hollow crimson flame, The hatred in its eyes a blaze Fierce and green, stabbing the ruddy glaze, And sharp white jetting fire the teeth snarl'd at me, And white the dribbling rage of froth,— A throat that gaped to bay and paws working violently, Yet soundless all as a winging moth; Tugging towards me, famishing for my heart;— Even while thou, O golden god, wert still Looking the beautiful kindness of thy will Into my soul, even then must I be, With thy bright promise looking at me, Then bitterly of that hound afraid?— Darkness, I know, attendeth bright, And light comes not but shadow comes: And heart must know, if it know thy light, Thy wild hound Fear, the shadow of love's delight. Yea, is it thus? Are we so made Of death and darkness, that even thou, O golden God of the joys of love, Thy mind to us canst only prove, The glorious devices of thy mind, By so revealing how thy journeying here Through this mortality, doth closely bind Thy brightness to the shadow of dreadful Fear?— Ah no, it shall not be! Thy joyous light Shall hide me from the hunger of fear to-night.

IV

For wonderfully to live I now begin: So that the darkness which accompanies Our being here, is fasten'd up within The power of light that holdeth me; And from these shining chains, to see My joy with bold misliking eyes, The shrouded figure will not dare arise. For henceforth, from to-night, I am wholly gone into the bright Safety of the beauty of love: Not only all my waking vigours plied Under the searching glory of love, But knowing myself with love all satisfied Even when my life is hidden in sleep; As high clouds, to themselves that keep The moon's white company, are all possest Silverly with the presence of their guest; Or as a darken'd room That hath within it roses, whence the air And quietness are taken everywhere Deliciously by sweet perfume.



EPILOGUE



EPILOGUE

What shall we do for Love these days? How shall we make an altar-blaze To smite the horny eyes of men With the renown of our Heaven, And to the unbelievers prove Our service to our dear god, Love? What torches shall we lift above The crowd that pushes through the mire, To amaze the dark heads with strange fire? I should think I were much to blame, If never I held some fragrant flame Above the noises of the world, And openly 'mid men's hurrying stares, Worshipt before the sacred fears That are like flashing curtains furl'd Across the presence of our lord Love. Nay, would that I could fill the gaze Of the whole earth with some great praise Made in a marvel for men's eyes, Some tower of glittering masonries, Therein such a spirit flourishing Men should see what my heart can sing: All that Love hath done to me Built into stone, a visible glee; Marble carried to gleaming height As moved aloft by inward delight; Not as with toil of chisels hewn, But seeming poised in a mighty tune. For of all those who have been known To lodge with our kind host, the sun, I envy one for just one thing: In Cordova of the Moors There dwelt a passion-minded King, Who set great bands of marble-hewers To fashion his heart's thanksgiving In a tall palace, shapen so All the wondering world might know The joy he had of his Moorish lass. His love, that brighter and larger was Than the starry places, into firm stone He sent, as if the stone were glass Fired and into beauty blown. Solemn and invented gravely In its bulk the fabric stood, Even as Love, that trusteth bravely In its own exceeding good To be better than the waste Of time's devices; grandly spaced, Seriously the fabric stood. But over it all a pleasure went Of carven delicate ornament, Wreathing up like ravishment, Mentioning in sculptures twined The blitheness Love hath in his mind; And like delighted senses were The windows, and the columns there Made the following sight to ache As the heart that did them make. Well I can see that shining song Flowering there, the upward throng Of porches, pillars and windowed walls, Spires like piercing panpipe calls, Up to the roof's snow-cloud flight; All glancing in the Spanish light White as water of arctic tides, Save an amber dazzle on sunny sides. You had said, the radiant sheen Of that palace might have been A young god's fantasy, ere he came His serious worlds and suns to frame; Such an immortal passion Quiver'd among the slim hewn stone. And in the nights it seemed a jar Cut in the substance of a star, Wherein a wine, that will be poured Some time for feasting Heaven, was stored. But within this fretted shell, The wonder of Love made visible, The King a private gentle mood There placed, of pleasant quietude. For right amidst there was a court, Where always musked silences Listened to water and to trees; And herbage of all fragrant sort,— Lavender, lad's-love, rosemary, Basil, tansy, centaury,— Was the grass of that orchard, hid Love's amazements all amid. Jarring the air with rumour cool, Small fountains played into a pool With sound as soft as the barley's hiss When its beard just sprouting is; Whence a young stream, that trod on moss, Prettily rimpled the court across. And in the pool's clear idleness, Moving like dreams through happiness, Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, and sauntering went With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl, A brinded loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipt Into the water; but quick as fear Back his shining brown head slipt To crouch on the gravel of his lair, Where the cooled sunbeams broke in wrack, Spilt shatter'd gold about his back. So within that green-veiled air, Within that white-walled quiet, where Innocent water thought aloud,— Childish prattle that must make The wise sunlight with laughter shake On the leafage overbowed,— Often the King and his love-lass Let the delicious hours pass. All the outer world could see Graved and sawn amazingly Their love's delighted riotise, Fixt in marble for all men's eyes; But only these twain could abide In the cool peace that withinside Thrilling desire and passion dwelt; They only knew the still meaning spelt By Love's flaming script, which is God's word written in ecstasies.

And where is now that palace gone, All the magical skill'd stone, All the dreaming towers wrought By Love as if no more than thought The unresisting marble was? How could such a wonder pass? Ah, it was but built in vain Against the stupid horns of Rome, That pusht down into the common loam The loveliness that shone in Spain. But we have raised it up again! A loftier palace, fairer far, Is ours, and one that fears no war. Safe in marvellous walls we are; Wondering sense like builded fires, High amazement of desires, Delight and certainty of love, Closing around, roofing above Our unapproacht and perfect hour Within the splendours of love's power.



The "Hymn to Love" is reprinted by permission from "The Vineyard."

THE END