 | Poems and dramas of George Cabot Lodge |  |
105
LIFE IN LOVE
I
1
Clear and profound and dark as well-water,Grave eyes transfused with gold, you were not blind;—
You were not numb, brave breathless heart of joys,
Proud heart of mercies and mysterious tears,—
You were not faithless, when the shrine lay bare
And there was splendour in the sanctuary,
As momently between us, from afar,
White thro' the mist, rose-hued as with the young
Life-blood of love's desire, soul signed to soul! ...
You were not blind, wild eyes whose glance disclosed
Love's power and purpose which no tongue can tell;
Loosed and abandoned heart, which, swift as fire,
Seized the soul's heritage, you were not numb,
When first we saw the spirit and the source
Of life's pure essence, like a light revealed
Within us, radiant and alone;—when first
We knew the whole and best of love remained,
Sphered in the new transcendency of life
Beyond us, like a still unravished bride;—
When first we felt, in one another's arms,—
Strange and extreme to us, almost as death,—
106
We were with love together—yet alone!
Grave eyes, brave heart, in vain, it seemed in vain
We saw, we dared, we were not faithless then,
We were not weak.—Yea, love itself seemed vain
That one first day of wonder and no words!
For, hour by hour and all the new day long,
And hour by hour and all the thrilled night thro',
And while your hands clung and your lips assured,
And while my life-blood thundered on your breast,
We were alone—together, yet alone! ...
2
So was it shown to us as in a vision,That day;—and once again, that sleepless night,
As in a trance we seemed to go afar
From love's inveterate violence of being,
From life's incessant uproar, and, alone,
Pause in the thrilled tranquillities of thought. ...
There, with the pulse still rhythmic in our hearts
Of love's wild music, and the flush still warm
About us, of the senses' leaping flame,
We heard the more ineffable song—as yet
Wordless and distant to the inward car—;
We saw the lordlier light—as yet pearl-hued
Thro' the fresh twilights which precede the dawn—;
We felt the loftier hope, the larger whole,
The lovelier rapture of that deeper sense
107
Alone,—with vast completions and austere
Beginnings and perceptions clear and new,
Valid and delicate as truth must be—
Conceived in secret, is matured and born.
And then—and all at first—and in the new
Anguish of solitude—and from the far,
Still, spiritual mansion—ours at last!—,
The life we long had lived and shared appeared
Vague and fantastic thro' the friendless dark,—
As something somewhere for a little while
On the immense horizons, like a dream
On the remote and restless marge of sleep,—
Like the dull rumour and the distant flare,
To one who dwells by a deserted sea,
Of some tumultuous city on the verge. ...
Yes! ... we discerned, in the full, first, strange hour,
How much our lives had been a blinded sense
Of twilight, brief and brave and treacherous,—
A clashing sound of song and lamentation,—
A tragic spectacle of men and things
Innumerable and hurried and estranged,
And all phantasmal, and remote to us,
And insignificant,—like some confused
And shouted tidings, borne by false reports
And faithless messengers, to where the Lord
Still in dark chambers stayed and slept unknown. ...
Then, with a deeper meaning, beautiful
108
Love, and the free hilarities of all
The young earth-children in the rain-swept Spring,
And the tremendous tears that rise like rain
Blown from the dark, unplumbed, adventurous seas
Of spiritual solitude—to fall
Like a confession in the dust of death. ...
And then—and then—as wonderfully we
Received the secret, and our sight, at last,
Cleared with the vigil, and our hearts grew calm,—
Turning, we saw in one another's eyes,
Silent as star-light, silver-clear as song,
The light from peak to peak beacon afar
Thro' darkness ..., and our hearts kindled anew,
And love matured and strengthened to endure
The labour and achieve the heritage. ...
3
For then not yours alone and mine alone,—Darling, we knew at last!—but ours and love's
Was the supreme and sacred best—the soul's
Perfect inheritance; and hand in hand,
Ambitiously, we took the high resolve:
Knowing no beauty of our lives was lost,
No passion scanted, no desire, no joy,
Withered or dispossessed, if all, at last,
Was with the one perfection kindled thro',—
If, for love's pleasure and communion,
109
Inseparable and single, all at once
Thrilled to the deeper sense of life, and proved
All valid, all victorious, all redeemed! ...
Then haste was in our hearts lest we should live
Leaving the best unshared—lest we should die
Dreadfully twain, before the task was done! ...
“Haste! There is haste,” we cried, “for time is now
And brief; and love's far prospect goes away
Down the free high-road of the perfect quest ...
And it may well be long! ...”—Yes! long indeed,
We thought—who knew how much the heart is frail,
How dark the venture and how far the goal—,
Well may it be, in truth it shall be long,
It shall be gradual and austere to bring
The wild wild love into the soul's dominion;
It shall be strange and splendid to prepare
The House of song and fire and festival,
His House at last, his lord-ship, for the Lord;
It shall be wholly arduous and divine
And feasible to lock the lips of Pan
With the tremendous silences of truth,
And task his strong lascivious limbs with toil:
To force true service from the ancient foe,
And lay strict burdens on the winged steed;
And it shall be a triumph and ecstasy
To drive love's lightnings up the sullen night,—
To fashion of the fire that lurks and leaps
110
A lamp to guide us in the spirit's peril! ...
So, in life's haste and in love's jeopardy,
Were we resolved, however hard and long
It well might be, and we however weak,
To lay, with hands of longing and control,
The soul's strong harness on the mighty beast,
So he might labour for us—until at last
We, of his strength, were lifted and unbound ...
4
Soft, sombre hair—strange sweetness of my Love—Clear, rose-pale, sensuous lips, and white, small breasts
Set spaciously asunder—, not in vain,
Not for the moment's rapture are you fair!
Deeper than life, and nobler far than joy,
In you previsioned, may the mind discern,
The heart receive interpretations—signs
Soon to reveal the secret—, as we stand,
Like exiles who return from very far,
Where the calm light lies warm along the threshold,
And the soul's silence in the shining house
Welcomes with love the glad wayfarer home! ...
Home—to the soul! My Darling—now, indeed,
More than the promise is fulfilled, we know! ...
For we have been, in many a night and day,
Perfect to one another; we have loved,
And felt the imperishable hours bring forth
111
And amplitudes of being, and liberties,
And rapt persuasions of the living truth. ...
And we have lived and loved by noon and night,
Seeming transfigured ...; and the loveliness
Of earth and sea and sky has been to us
More spacious and sublimes—a more serene
And spiritual rapture! ... Yes!—and life
Is, in its sensuous strength, a sacred thing
To us; and all its large hilarities,
Flushed youth and sexual impulse in the blood,
The flowing and abundant natural heart's
Affections, and the mind's far gyres of thought,
Yield to the spirit and the finer sense
And understanding, patiently matured,
And stedfast longing and adventurous mind,
Treasures of theirs beyond our partial dreams ...
Home, to the soul! ... My Darling, still and still
The quest is ours—the quest, in sense and soul! ...
Still is the way before us, and the power
Within us, and the longing unassuaged,—
Darling!—and still between us life and love! ...
112
II
That day we saw the sunlight dawn and die,The twilight close, the dusk grow deep and still,
The red moon rise, the white moon climb the hill,
And darkness fill the caverns of the sky...
That night we saw the storm-strewn beaches lie
Endless and pale, the midnight stare with stars,
The ocean flash like countless scimitars,—
And felt the feet of time go soundless by...
That day! That night!—We saw the harvest rise,
Of truth's immortal seed, and yield its grain,
Where thro' the soul's starved acres love had passed...
We were like mariners whose sleepless eyes
Have sought on each horizon's verge in vain
Their landfall—and who come to port at last! ...
113
III
That day love stood like sunrise at the goal;The labyrinth of life seemed filled with light;
And, as we passed, a splendour calm and bright
Wreathed for the brows of death an aureole.
Swiftly, we saw dissolve from pole to pole
Wide gyres of indistinguishable night,
Till, grave with raptures of austere delight,
We stood in the vast day-break of the soul! ...
Then, as in memory's spectral afterglow,
Life seemed a rumour of far things, a tale
Told in a ghostly twilight, long ago ...
And Love, whose guidance we had shared so long,
Paused on the verge of death's inviolate pale
With lips of silence and with eyes of song ...
114
IV
That night of spiritual silencesWe found love's inmost silence, where the days
Are silent, where the perishable phrase
Of song is silent, and where silence is
Like light along majestic distances
Opened before the soul's unswerving gaze ...
Where life is silent, and the blatant ways
Of life, and life's divine uncertainties ...
There we beheld the dark enigmas yield
In silence, and in silence truth appear,
Stainless as star-light on a silver shield ...
And still we felt, as in transcendent skies
Beyond the mind's last outpost, calm and clear,
Silence and glittering tranquillities. ...
| Poems and dramas of George Cabot Lodge | |