Musa Verticordia :: :: University of Virginia Library

Deep in the forest's moist malarious gloom,
Dungeoned in terror of the world, they lie,
Knights of the Grail; as in a sick man's room,
The air is faint with languid agony.

There is no man in all their spectral host,
There is no woman in old Klingsor's crew;
Sir Parsifal is tempted by a ghost,
Half ghost himself; since Love he never knew.

This is the Vale of Lust; the foul surmise
Of vowed virginity, imagining
That in the hell of Klingsor's garden lies
The heaven of Love. But yet the birds that sing

High in the foliage,—though I cannot hear
Their voice, for chimes and chantings—like the flowers,
Fulfil each other's beauty, without fear
Of retribution for their nuptial hours.

2.

Had you no message, Master, but this tale,
The little lamp that lit the Middle Age,—
The lie that lovers cannot win the Grail,
And Love can prove no godly parentage?

Could tawdry gardens such as Klingsor's draw
Into their clumsy toils a man made wise
By one o'er-mastering passion? 'Tis the law
Of Love alone that leads to Paradise.

Of Love; not pleasure; but that poignant bliss,
The joy of union, so akin to pain;
The sense of mutual mingling; not the kiss
Of folly, vapid, volatile, and vain.

On such false kisses trembling mystics pore;
Their mind is ravished of its maidenhead;
Possessed by Kundry, ever more and more
Damned by the dream of their desire and dread.

3.

I'll read the riddle, if you will;
Not as the Churches wish it read,

Not as they count the good and ill,
Or separate the quick and dead;

But by the oneness of the whole
Creation:—Love may be the Spear,
But if it pierce a morbid soul,
Pushed into folly by the fear

Of Love itself, the wound is Lust;
The worst corruption of the best;
Then venom gathers to the thrust
Whose wholesome wounding once was blest.

Yet may the hurt of Lust be healed,
If Love can once again be won;
The fount of pain by passion sealed,
The flame extinguished by the sun.