Poems Lyrical and Dramatic :: :: University of Virginia Library

The page lies open: line on swimming line
The illuminated letters faintly shine:
But the lamp, dwindled to one livid spark,
Burns like a glow-worm swathed in grasses dark,
And Night, contending with her moonshine, weaves
A broadening shadow 'twixt the rounded leaves;
For through the lattice with its diamond-panes
The over-flooded heavens' green glory rains,
Like slant light filtering through the green sea's waves,
Strewing with twilight hues her buried caves,
And chequers all the floor with dazzling squares,
The wall, the groined roof, and the steep stone stairs

They read not now, those twain, the poet-sage
Whose thought's waves blaze across the inspirèd page,
As the strong winds plough up his deep calm soul,
Ruffling the level till the great seas roll
With boiling under-currents upward hurled
From prisons far below the firm-set world,
Winds of strong love and virtue and holy scorn.
They read not now of Courage wisdom-born,
Of Temperance, child of calm or shame or truth,
Nor the pure brother's love of youth for youth,
Twin Sophists plunged where laughing waters met,
And Gorgias tangled in a starry net,
Of piety puzzled, or, fallen on crossing seas,
Poor Ion laughed at by old Socrates,
Nor of the city of the truly wise
Where life walks free, nor the soul's destinies,
But Abelard's sweet voice was smitten dumb,
Reading of love in the Symposium.

He told how Love drew up the soul to see
Secrets of time and of eternity,
How man left earth beneath him, upward led
To where sweet Passion and sweet Science wed,

And upward ever, till at length he stood
Close face to face with the Idea of Good;
But this high Love's first impulse ever came
Cloaked in the guise of some sweet earth-born flame,
When all man's body burns and spirit swims
With the glory of golden hair and snow-white limbs.

Then Abelard turned to Heloïse, and their eyes
Met, and truth darted through shame's thin disguise,
And, with a shock as when two storm-clouds meet,
Soul stormed to soul, and brake in tears, and fleet
The bright flame darted death-fraught from their gaze,
And the bolt fell, and filled all heaven with the blaze.
And now they sit with drinking looks and lips,
And hot blood tingling to the finger-tips,
The book forgot, unclosed, the lamp burned out,
The wizard moonlight hovering round about
With all the magic of its gauzy wings,
A green flame burning on the yellow strings
Of Heloïse' hair, and face rapt as a saint's,
And on their lips the perfumed twilight faints.

Long had they put away the gloomy creed
Of holy men that starve and gods that bleed
That the whole world might quicken from their blood,
But passion-watered doubt, the tender bud,
Had grown to sweet philosophy, the flower
Of luscious scent, the fruit of many a shower.
And now had dropped from off the starry sky
The darkness of a desolate world, the cry
That man is evil, and most vile his love,
And all good dwells apart, beyond, above,
Save in dim cloisters and secluded cells,
Unlettered minds, cold lives, and muttered spells,
Fastings and flagellations, nettles, briars,
The bath of ice, the crucible of fires.—
These things they had long put from them, wiser grown,
And sucked the honey of Plato, and freely sown
Their spirits with the seed of ancient lore,
And put by wisdom in a golden store.

But alway with cold reverence they drank
The deep still fount in common, and each shrank
From touch of other's hand or fervent look,
If, as it chanced, some passage in the book

Awoke unwary fire on either's cheek;
And Abelard would alway calmly speak,
Parting this thought from that with trenchant skill,
Unravelling the close web with patient will;
And Heloïse heard, and wondered, and he seemed
A god to her, no less: of him she dreamed
Wild wildered visions in the thoughtless night,
And paler sought him in the morning white.
And still they soared together, and her sire
Marked not as yet the young maid's hidden fire,
Nor deemed of Abelard save as a cold man.

But on this eve the rainbow paths that span
Love's gulfy heavens, full of cloud and storm,
Home of fierce airs and pent blasts raging warm,
Brake under them, and through the dizzy dome
They fell sheer downward into surge and foam,
And wildered with deep thoughts and strange and sweet
And fiery images on pinions fleet,
Like feverish dreams that make the sick brain swim,
Locked frantic breast to breast and limb to limb.

II.

A year had passed, and one dark moonless hour
Heloïse had left her home.

“Ah! gentlest flower,
Share thou with me my life, my hope, my fame.
The priest's consent shall wipe from thee this shame
And from thy babe. This will I bear for thee—
To sanction once the world's cold blasphemy.
Nay, we shall kneel before the altar, thou
And I, to take on us the foolish vow,
Feel in our ears the mutterings of the mass,
And in our nostrils, when the white priests pass,
The fumes of swaying censers, in our eyes
The colours of the blazing tapestries
And all the broideries on the gaudy stoles:
And vile ascetics shall unite our souls,
Puffing their sallow cheeks with windy pride,
Fancied fruition of a strength denied
To all for whom such ordinance was framed,
(Thou knowest the foul words making love ashamed)
And”—

“Never, never shall that hour be born!
What care have we for the weak fool's weak scorn?
Is't not enough, my Abelard, for me
In sight of those divinest eyes to be,
To drink thy wisdom and to hear thy voice,
And in the triumph of thy fame rejoice?

What care have I for the poor name of wife,
Who share the inner secret of thy life?
Are all wives, then, so favoured and so pure
That I would change with them my name obscure,
Mistress of Abelard and of his fate?
Name me the queen that owns a name so great!
Nay, better for thee, far from paltry cares
And all the crown of thorns a father wears,
To dwell apart with studious hours serene,
And of the rest bid Heloïse reign the queen,
Spare hours and profitless, when brain and breast
Once in the turning moon crave love and rest.
Not thine to list to children's peevish cries,
Waste precious days in social vanities,
And sink into that slave of lust and sloth,
The father of a family: I am loth
To be thy wife, for wives I see but few
Who win the high love I have won from you.
Chaste, virtuous, cold, they give and take enough,
Much faithful duty and a little love;—
But we, we have learned other things than these,
Our love is of the soul, free, high, at ease,
And like the lark, that owns no vassalage,
Would pine and perish prisoned in a cage.”

III.

“Philosophy be now mine only bride,
Pent in by cloister walls on every side,
More than a man in mind, but less in frame;
Fulbert, thy vengeance crowns despair with shame.
I never shall be what I might have been:
Walking with hope love knew no fear between.
Some, like the snake, that fears for his sweet mate,
Dread their own kiss, and feel love mixed with hate;
Their sighs seem poison, murder their embrace,
Yet their heart overflows with wells of grace;
Their will at variance with itself, they nurse
Destruction wreathed with love, the supreme curse.
In such sweet hope and fear wage piteous strife,
Doubt and self-knowledge sap the joys of life;
But I, whom hope and love led hand in hand,
Whose toil was joy, whose joy was self-command,
Whose single spirit nursed no deathless feud,
Who loved companionship and solitude,
I, like a snake mangled and impotent,
Turn on my vitals mine own discontent.
And she, the free bird, prisoned like her mate,
Beats on the bars her wings disconsolate,

The priestess of a creed she knows untrue,
No star to cheer the midnight of her view,
Devote to vows she cannot count sincere,
Living a false life in an unfit sphere;
Hedged with stone-walls that shut the sunlight out,
Though a worse prison compasses about
Her soul, and from all high communion parts,
A hard flint wall of narrow human hearts.
Poor bird, she spends the daylight dreaming of
My withered glory, and her broken love,
The marriage forced upon her, and our child—
My brain and heart at war make riot wild,
Despair grows too like hope in thoughts like these.
Back to thy fate, my heart; stagnate and freeze,
Till death unlock thy stream and let thee flow
Warm to the deep sea, whither all things go;
Then thou shalt clasp her, or with quiet breath
Sleep in the shadows of the fields of death.
And future ages at thy name shall say,
He lived in anguish, and he passed away
From a dark life by a mean death removed;
“But he had glory, and he was beloved.”