EXPRESSION

Dim watery lights gleaming on gibbering faces,
Faces speechful, barren of soul and sordid,
Huddled and chewing a jest, lewd and gabbled insidious:
Laughter, born of its dung, flashes and floods like sunlight,
Filling the room with a sense of a soul lethargic and kindly,
Touches my soul with a pathos, a hint of a wide desolation.

I saw the face of God to-day,
I heard the music of His smile,
And yet I was not far away,
And yet in Paradise the while.

I lay upon the sparkling grass,
And God’s own mouth was kissing me,
And there was nothing that did pass
But blazed with divinity.

Divine—divine—upon my eyes,
Upon mine hair—divine—divine,
The fervour of the golden skies,
The ardent gaze of God on mine.

Then spake I to the tree,
“Were ye your own desire
What is it ye would be?”

Answered the tree to me,
“I am my own desire,
I am what I would be.

“If you were your desire
Would you lie under me,
And see me as you see?”

“I am my own desire
While I lie under you,
And that which I would be
Desire will sing to you.”

I wander—I wander—O will she wander here
Where’er my footsteps carry me I know that she is near,
A jewelled lamp within her hand and jewels in her hair;
I lost her in a vision once and seek her everywhere.

My spirit whispers she is near, I look at you and you:
Surely she has not passed me, I sleeping as she flew.
I wander—I wander, and yet she is not here,
Although my spirit whispers to me that she is near.

She stood—a hill-ensceptred Queen,
The glory streaming from her;
While Heaven flashed her rays between,
And shed eternal summer.

The gates of morning opened wide
On sunny dome and steeple;
Noon gleamed upon the mountain-side
Thronged with a happy people;

And twilight’s drowsy, half closed eyes
Beheld that virgin splendour
Whose orbs were as her darkening skies,
And as her spirit, tender.

Girt with that strength, first-born of right,
Held fast by deeds of honour,
Her robe she wove with rays more bright
Than Heaven could rain upon her.

Where is that light—that citadel?
That robe with woof of glory?
She lost her virtue and she fell,
And only left her story.

My Maker shunneth me:
Even as a wretch stricken with leprosy,
So hold I pestilent supremacy.
Yea! He hath fled far as the uttermost star,
Beyond the unperturbed fastnesses of night
And dreams that bastioned are
By fretted towers of sleep that scare His light.

Of wisdom writ, whereto
My burdened feet may haste withouten rue,
I may not spell—and I am sore to do.
Yea, all (seeing my Maker hath such dread),
Even mine own self-love, wists not but to fly
To Him, and sore besped
Leaves me, its captain, in such mutiny.

Will, deemed incorporate
With me, hath flown ere love, to expiate
Its sinful stay where He did habitate.
Ah me, if they had left a sepulchre;
But no—the light hath changed not, and in it
Of its same colour stir
Spirits I see not but phantasmed feel to flit.

Air, legioned with such, stirreth,
So that I seem to draw them with my breath,
Ghouls that devour each joy they do to death,
Strange glimmering griefs and sorrowing silences
Bearing dead flowers unseen whose charnel smell
Great awe to my sense is
Even in the rose-time when all else is well.

By what pale light or moon-pale shore
Drifts my soul in lonely flight?
Regions God had floated o’er
Ere He touched the world with light?

Not in Heaven and not in earth
Is this water, is this moon;
For there is no starry birth,
And no dawning and no noon.

Far away—O far away,
Mist-born—dewy vapours rise
From the dim gates of the day
Far below in earthly skies.

I walk and I wonder
To hear the birds sing;
Without you, my lady,
How can there be Spring?
I see the pink blossoms
That slept for a year,
But who could have waked them
While you were not near?

Birds sing to the blossoms,
Blind, dreaming your pink;
These blush to the songsters,
Your music they think:
So well had you taught them
To look and to sing,
Your bloom and your music,
The ways of the Spring.

A silver rose to show
Is your sweet face;
And like the heavens’ white brow,
Sometime God’s battle-place,
Your blood is quiet now.

Your body is a star
Unto my thought;
But stars are not too far,
And can be caught—
Small pools their prisons are.

To sweeten a swift minute so
With such rare fragrance of sweet speech,
And make the after hours go
In a blank yearning each on each;
To drain the springs till they be dry,
And then in anguish thirst for drink;
So but to glimpse her robe thirst I,
And my soul hungers and I sink.

There is no word that we have said
Whereby the lips and heart are fire;
No look the linked glances read
That held the springs of deep desire.
And yet the sounds her glad lips gave
Are on my soul vibrating still;
Her eyes that swept me as a wave
Shine my soul’s worship to fulfil.

Her hair, her eyes, her throat and chin—
Sweet hair, sweet eyes, sweet throat, so sweet,
So fair because the ways of sin
Have never known her perfect feet—
By what far ways and marvellous
May I such lovely heaven reach?
What dread, dark seas and perilous
Lie ’twixt love’s silence and love’s speech?

And all her soft dark hair
Breathed for him like a prayer,
And her white lost face
Was prisoned to some far place.
Love was not denied—
Love’s ends would hide,
And flower and fruit and tree
Were under its sea.
Yea, its abundance knelt
Where the nerves felt
The springs of feeling flow
And made pain grow!
There seemed no root or sky,
But a pent infinity
Where apparitions dim
Sculptured each whim
In flame and wandering mist
Of kisses to be kist.

Lady, you are my God—
Lady, you are my Heaven.

If I am your God
Labour for your Heaven.

Lady, you are my God,
And shall not love win Heaven?

If love made me God
Deeds must win my Heaven.

If my love made you God,
What more can I for Heaven?

If you are fire and I am fire,
Who blows the flame apart
So that desire eludes desire
Around one central heart?

A single root and separate bough,
And what blind hands between
That make our longing’s mutual glow
As if it had not been?

I have lived in the underworld so long:
How can you, a creature of light,
Without terror understand the song
And unmoved hear what moves in night?

I am a spirit that yours has found,
Strange, undelightful, obscure,
Created by some other God, and bound
In terrible darkness, breathing breath impure.

Creature of light and happiness,
Deeper the darkness was when you,
With your bright terror eddying the distress,
Grazed the dark waves and shivering further flew.

O, in a world of men and women,
Where all things seemed so strange to me,
And speech the common world called human
For me was a vain mimicry,

I thought—O, am I one in sorrow?
Or is the world more quick to hide
Their pain with raiment that they borrow
From pleasure in the house of pride?

O joy of mine, O longed-for stranger,
How I would greet you if you came:
In the world’s joys I’ve been a ranger,
In my world sorrow is their name.

Dim apprehension of a trust
Comes over me this quiet hour,
As though the silence were a flower,
And this, its perfume, dark like dust.

My individual self would cling
Through fear, through pride, unto its fears:
It strives to shut out what it hears,
The founts of being murmuring.

O! Need, whose hauntings terrorize;
Whether my maiden ways would hide,
Or lose and to that need subside,
Life shrinks and instinct dreads surprise.

God’s mercy shines;
And our full hearts must make record of this,
For grief that burst from out its dark confines
Into strange sunlit bliss.

I stood where glowed
The merry glare of golden whirring lights
Above the monstrous mass that seethed and flowed
Through one of London’s nights.

I watched the gleams
Of jagged warm lights on shrunk faces pale:
I heard mad laughter as one hears in dreams
Or Hell’s harsh lurid tale.

The traffic rolled,
A gliding chaos populous of din,
A steaming wail at doom the Lord had scrawled
For perilous loads of sin.

And my soul thought:
“What fearful land have my steps wandered to?
God’s love is everywhere, but here is naught
Save love His anger slew.”

And as I stood
Lost in promiscuous bewilderment,
Which to my mazèd soul was wonder-food,
A girl in garments rent

Peered ’neath lids shamed
And spoke to me and murmured to my blood.
My soul stopped dead, and all my horror flamed
At her forgot of God.

Her hungered eyes,
Craving and yet so sadly spiritual,
Shone like the unsmirched corner of a jewel
Where else foul blemish lies.

I walked with her
Because my heart thought, “Here the soul is clean,
The fragrance of the frankincense and myrrh
Is lost in odours mean.”

She told me how
The shadow of black death had newly come
And touched her father, mother, even now
Grim-hovering in her home,

Where fevered lay
Her wasting brother in a cold, bleak room,
Which theirs would be no longer than a day,
And then—the streets and doom.

Lord! Lord! Dear Lord!
I knew that life was bitter, but my soul
Recoiled, as anguish-smitten by sharp sword,
Grieving such body’s dole.

Then grief gave place
To a strange pulsing rapture as she spoke;
For I could catch the glimpses of God’s grace,
And a desire awoke

To take this trust
And warm and gladden it with love’s new fires,
Burning the past to ashes and to dust
Through purified desires.

We walked our way,
One way hewn for us from the birth of Time;
For we had wandered into Love’s strange clime
Through ways sin waits to slay.

Love’s euphony,
In Love’s own temple that is our glad hearts,
Makes now long music wild deliciously;
Now Grief hath used his darts.

Love infinite,
Chastened by sorrow, hallowed by pure flame—
Not all the surging world can compass it.
Love—Love—O tremulous name!

God’s mercy shines;
And my full heart hath made record of this,
Of grief that burst from out its dark confines
Into strange sunlit bliss.