SONNETS (1902)
SONNET I
“HEROES HOMERIC”
O mighty men and conquerors of renown,
Heroes Homeric, English souls of note,
For whom our sapient trusty rulers vote
Rewards in wealth, and whom the people crown
With adulation in the decked-out town
Through which ye ride while the gay banners float
From roof and window,—what if red War smote
No more the veldt, but English field and down?
Three years to conquer one small race ye took,
Yet England deemed you worthy of high fame
And paved with gold the path by which ye came
Homeward, with ringing rein and jocund look!
At your most dire mistakes all Europe shook
With laughter, and true seers grew hot with shame.
SONNET II
THE EDUCATION BILL
Once more in serried ranks the warriors close!
On one side men whose passion is to be
For ever fetterless, for ever free;
Upon the other, Freedom's bitterest foes
Who, while ye sleep and rulers nod and doze
Would bear across the blue protesting sea
Rome's weapons of ancestral devilry
To brand and mar the stainless form that rose
Triumphant once, and hurled Rome's myriads down,
And won from heaven sublime Truth's starry crown,
And saved for ever the human race from hell
More dark and grim and terrible and dire
Than heart can dream. Heed no pale priestly liar,
Lest the world shrink to one black prison-cell.
SONNET III
“IN ART'S HIGH NAME”
In Art's high name, in Love's name, in the name
Of man and woman, loose not thou thine hold,
O man, on woman! Woman, still enfold
In thy white arms man's strong form without shame.
Believe not Tolstoy, though the Russian's aim
Be noble. Nay, in lands and epochs old
The eternal truth by angels' lips was told:
Woman is man's sweet heritage to claim.
The truth as preached by Tolstoy is the lie
Most black that yet has darkened sea and sky
And robbed of every flower the fragrant land.
If woman's body be a thing impure
No sun can live, no star's crown can endure
And falls the sceptre from the Lord's right hand.
SONNET IV
RE-INCARNATE ENEMIES
We have lived before, and met in ancient days,
Plucked golden flowers beneath strange Eastern light
And watched strange stars resplendent through the night
In epochs past remembrance. In thy gaze
Old magic lingers, and a dream of ways
Wherein wild swords once clashed in desperate fight:
Footsteps have followed us—hate still would smite,
And foemen's armour glitters through time's haze.
O love, my wife, my darling, have we won
So much to lose at length the sweet reward?
Are those alive to-day whose forms abhorred,
Darkling, once towered between us and the sun?
O God, have mercy! Grant us power to shun
To-day the vengeance of some ghostly sword.
SONNET V
“PALE TIME IS NOUGHT”
Pale time is nought. Through era on era pass
Our souls in forms enduring for awhile,
Wherein we laugh and weep, and groan and smile,
And struggle fresh experience to amass.
But this time . . . ah! this fateful time, alas,
We should have conquered hate and wrath and guile,
And risen for ever upward. From the Nile
Or Tiber's reeds to Thames' bright flowers and grass
Through life on life we have moved,—but now to-day,
God help me, dark foes bar us on our way,
Foes we have vanquished in the ages dead.
By strange chance aided, they spring forth again
And, with an agony of speechless pain,
I see them threaten thy gold peerless head.
SONNET VI
THE UNSEEN STRUGGLE
It may be that on England's fate depends
The future of the planet. Here, maybe,
Beside our English hills, our English sea,
Struggle vast forces for stupendous ends.
Beyond our gaze the unseen strife extends,
Far past the stars, to dim futurity,—
And something of defeat or victory
With England's mighty life our own life blends.
Titanic battling earthly battle implies.
Our puny cannons whisper, but huge hosts
Wield the grim thunders of the awful skies.
Who knows what breathless part with good or ill,
With angel warriors or accurséd ghosts,
England may take? The road lies open still.
SONNET VII
ENGLAND AND ART
Be true to Art and Beauty. Milton's creed,
Coldly sublime, grasps not with equal span
The whole of Nature, or the whole of man:
Not by such dreams now prosper or succeed
Nations, whose souls and dawning spirits need
Food other than pale legends Puritan.
Through warmer veins the English red blood ran
When Shakespeare's fire linked thought to ardent deed.
From France and Italy learn the creed of Greece
Renascent. Learn that form is still divine;
Yea, that God's spirit speaks through curve and line
Of shoulder,—that through glory and subtle scent
Of woman's hair angels breathe balm and peace,
On things unutterably pure intent.
The late William Morris confessed himself quite unable to read Milton,
on account of that poet's peculiar blending of metaphysical theology with
a “cold classicalism.”
“‘For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of
the angels.’
This verse has been so utterly enigmatical to the translators,
and so apparently contradictory to what has preceded it, that they
have ventured on an explanation in the margin. ‘That is,’ they say, ‘a
covering, in sign that she is under the power of her husband.’ Now the
meaning of εξουσια, rendered ‘power’ in the authorised version, is really
‘authority.’ By no possible licence or contortion of terms can it be
made to mean ‘covering.’ Still less is there anything to justify an explanation
which is in palpable opposition to the words of the text. There
can be no better illustration of the pride and ignorance with which man,
even to our own day, insists upon woman's subjection to him, than that
he should presume to put in a marginal note, which in the minds of the
ignorant has almost the authority of the text itself, in explanation of the
words, ‘For this cause ought woman to have authority on her head
because of the angels,’ this means, ‘a covering, in sign that she is under
the power of her husband.’ Had women been the translators, the
explanation would have been different. The true internal significance is
that woman is the connecting link between man and the angels, and that
it is through her affectional atomic union with them that a channel is
formed by which alone the Divine Feminine can descend to man; and
the reason why the apostles were divinely impressed to forbid the women
to shave their heads was, in the inverse sense, analogous to that which
caused Delilah to shave the head of Samson when she wished to deprive
him of his strength. There is a certain quality which pertains to the
electricity that resides in hair, as to its essential atoms, of which, if I
spoke further, I should only excite, still more than I have already done, the
ridicule and scepticism of men of science, for it is far beyond their ken,
which renders it an important factor in the transmission of force derived
from those whom Paul calls ‘the angels,’ and to tamper with this transmitting
medium of electric magnetic force is to limit woman's power,
and therefore her authority in her own special sphere of operations, over
man.”—Scientific Religion. By Laurence Oliphant. 1888. Pp. 356, 357.
SONNET VIII
“FOR FRANCE”
It may be that the future holds for France
In spite of gloom and languor and decay
The golden glory of a dawn of day,
An untouched fair superb inheritance.
It may be that her restless eyes shall glance
On flowers immortal, when in bloomless grey
Regions our English yearnings fade away
While death's cold waves inexorably advance.
If this be so, the truth is plain to see.
Through errors deadly, sins of lying and lust,
France, proudly faithful to a mighty trust,
Has held that God and beauty of form are one.
For this her faith she deathless, it may be,
Shall shame the starlight and surpass the sun.
SONNET IX
TO VIOLET
To think that thou art hurt,—and hurt through me!
Thou—unto whom each gentle flower that blows,
White snowdrop, orange lily, crimson rose,
Each leaf, each breath of summer o'er the sea,
Brought thoughts divine with utter purity,
Dreams no man's coarser spirit shares or knows;
Thou—who didst in thy perfect trust repose
On God's own bosom, safe eternally,
So thou didst deem,—that I should wound or slay
The very spirit the tender Love-God gave
To lift me safely past sin and the grave,
To bring me surely to his heaven at last,
When I consider this, the sunlit day,
Darkens, and all God's skies seem overcast.
SONNET X
“REMEMBER”
Remember still the fate of England hangs
Most dubious in the balance. Greece and Rome
Had each their hour, then Time's sea, wave and foam,
Swept over countless joys and countless pangs.
Not yet the gate of dire ill-fortune clangs,
Closed fast for ever. Who shall dream or tell
What waits of golden heaven or black-browed hell
In front,—of joy or pain's remorseless fangs?
Guard England ever, O God whose hand has brought
So far the race upon its stormy way
And given to us far lands to guide and sway,
And the sea's soul for helpmate and for bride.
Grant us the spirit of ceaseless prayer, that nought
May weaken love, confuse us, or divide.
SONNET XI
“FOR GOOD OR EVIL”
For good or evil, yea for joy or shame,
For bright truth spoken, or shameless folly and lie,
No city ever yet beneath God's sky
On God's vast womanhood put in a claim
So heavy. Christ's pure dreams and Satan's game
Here blend unceasingly. More women crown
With grace and beauty this our marvellous town
Than earth has ever seen, or star can name.
Most strange, most wonderful! O Wordsworth, bard
Of womanless dim mountains, what a theme
For nobler song is here in streets that teem
With sweet magnetic power that can be felt
By those who can their surface self discard,
That Woman's magic through brain-cells may melt.
SONNET XII
Written on the evening of the Coronation Day of King Edward the Seventh.
Aug. 9, 1902.
The great day closes, full of sound and light
And prayerful murmurs, and superb display.
Gently the sunlit
moments steal away
Into the magic moments of the night.
All London flames, immeasurably bright
With mimic stars in colourful array,
While overhead the summer heavens are gay
With nobler stars, millions in flow and flight.
London, old London, city of love and crime,
Grim with the sins and passions of the past,
For just one moment, starry-browed, sublime
Shines out, and seems divinely fair to be,
Grand with supreme desire, a yearning vast
As boundless heavens that meet a boundless sea.
SONNET XIII
“WOE TO THE MAN”
Woe to the man who having touched a Bride
Elect in heaven, a daughter of the spheres,
To earth descends and quits his angel-peers
And lives as man,—his very soul has died.
He who once wandered by a seraph's side
Through groves unearthly now with terror hears
The wizard music that with passionate tears
He heard of old, by hearing deified.
I marked the voices of vast angel-hosts—
And all with one terrific grim accord
Cried out in Love's name, “Keen-edged is the sword
That through that man's most hapless heart shall smite
Who of love-commerce with an angel boasts,
Unless as hers his inmost soul be white.”
SONNET XIV
“IS THERE REDEMPTION?”
Is there redemption for the utmost crime
Of having sinned against a love so sweet
It sought the starriest airs with fearless feet
And poured strange fragrance through the fields of time?
May erring man supreme forgiveness meet,
Be raised again, once more God's mountains climb,
Once more the chant of deathless joy repeat
And mix his song with ocean's mighty rhyme?
If all be lost on earth, if hope and love
And health must vanish, are there yet in store
Flowers that shall perish not, but evermore
Deepen in fragrance as our tired steps move
Onward? May awful sorrow one day prove
Of sinless life the channel and the door?
SONNET XV
THE SONS OF SCIENCE
I sometimes with a horror past all speech
Shrink from the hands of those we fondly call
Truth-seeking sons of Science. God help all
Whose hapless bodies come within their reach!
Lies are their daily food, and lies they preach
From house to house, in school or lecture hall.
Their coarse foul fleshly blood-tinged hands appal:
Love they disdain, and mercy they impeach.
England is blinded, hood-winked once again.
“Cancer research!” Unutterable crime.
No truth that saves the race, no gift sublime
Was ever wrenched from out the hideous pain
Of writhing rabbits. Mankind will not climb
To heaven through Vivisection's hell-deep drain.
SONNET XVI
CHRIST'S METHOD
Not thus did Christ the Eternal loving King
Teach truth to man. Not thus did Christ extract
The core of pain, but by strong word and act,
By touch of hand, by glance o'ermastering
The foul disease, the dark invasive thing
Within the suffering body pent and packed.
Love, ever love—by love he could attract,
And draw from deadliest pain its deepest sting.
Learn, ye whose chosen office is to heal,
That all disease is subject to the power
Of Love,—that Love is as a river sweet
Pouring with silvery ripples of appeal
Gifts pure and priceless at our foolish feet:
Health is Love's fruit and Sympathy's white flower.
SONNET XVII
UNIVERSE-SWEETNESS
Ere love's divine ineffable embrace
Be fully won, within some garden-close
Drink all the fragrance of the perfect rose
And let the South West breeze caress thy face.
Give thou to woman the pure inmost grace
Of the delicious-hearted heliotrope:
Love with the rich carnation's power and scope;
Let not God's blossoms worst thee in the race.
See that she giveth thee within her breast
The secret-scented souls of all the flowers
And their strange dim heaven-message in her hair:
Yea, win thou likewise from the summer air
A sweetness unimagined, unconfessed
Save to the starlit night's most sacred hours.
SONNET XVIII
I.
“FOR LOVE'S SAKE”
For love's sake keep thine inmost body pure:
Pure not in coarse Convention's meagre sense
But pure through effort terribly intense
High joys to gain, whose sweetness shall endure.
The sea is thine, all flowers are thine, the sure
Strong sun is thine, and morning on the hills:
From these win somewhat of the Force that fills
The world with raptures thy soul may secure.
For love's sake let not any stain abide
Upon the deathless body thou mayest give
Supremely splendid to a deathless Bride,
With whom in God's bright mansions thou mayest live
Unfound of grief for ever. Fugitive
Is every joy, to pureness unallied.
SONNET XIX
II.
“GOD'S MOTHERHOOD”
Yet pure alone through Woman's breath and hands
Thou must be. Not in solitude, apart,
Canst thou win entrance to God's inmost heart.
Through Woman pour upon God's chosen lands
His streams of healing. Whoso understands
Knows that the flower of life divine we meet
Within her lips most saving and most sweet:
Yea, guardian at the gate of heaven she stands.
God's Motherhood is in her snow-white breast
Wherein our souls and bodies sink to rest,
There finding the repose of nerve and limb
That man alone through Womanhood can know
When Womanhood and woman's God bestow
Themselves in union strange and pure on him.
SONNET XX
“CONFLICTING GODS”
Conflicting gods above our bodies strive
For empire. Who are we that we should think
That we alone life's mighty fountains drink,
That we alone are passionate and alive?
Through us wild spirits struggle to arrive
At their own ends, fast-forging link by link
Strange chains of deeds at which our souls might shrink,
It may be, to assist or to connive.
Christ and the gods of Greece are battling still.
Not in Miltonian giant dreams alone
Satan would hurl the Lord God from his throne,
But here in London night's airs leap and thrill
With blasts of mad infernal trumpets blown
And swords celestial flash, to save or kill.
SONNET XXI
“THE DIVINE FEMININE”
Herein the everlasting mystery lies
And its solution. Christ himself bestows
Upon the world the purity that glows
In woman's heart, and shines through woman's eyes.
When all my soul yearned out to Grecian skies
And longed to touch the ineffable pure rose
Of Venus' lips, I was not wrong, God knows!
I was immensely right, supremely wise.
The subtle fragrance that through Venus pours
And through all flowers, love-nourished by the sun,
In its most pure and perfect depths is one
With Life that through Christ's sacred body saves.
The eternal Beauty that the poet adores
On Calvary bled, and sprang from Grecian waves.
SONNET XXII
THE VIRGIN MARY
Of old I held the grandest simplest thing
Was the sweet human love, and still I hold
Deep in my heart the faith I held of old,
But added light the changing seasons bring.
The Force that stooped from heaven a Christ to mould
Was the strange Mother-power to which we cling
As children,—Love that broods with dovelike wing
O'er all the sorrowing earth it would enfold.
The mystic dream from youth's swift gaze withheld
May yet be fragrant at the very heart
Of this our universe, the crown of Art,
And the most sacred tenderest fact of all:
The fact that God through woman's womb expelled
The poison there induced through woman's fall.
