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

My goddess, my glorious goddess, unchanging as death or despair,
Wild passion-flower blent in thy tresses with blossoms less mournfully fair,
Whose sufferings soar above joy, and whose joy is to love or to wine,
As the cataracts roar to the river's, the song of the planets to mine.

I have seen thee in forests and mountains, in stars, and the throb of the storm,
Through the pillars of granite in caverns have caught a stray glimpse of thy form;
In the infinite frenzy of music have heard thee, in sobs, and in tears,
In the agonies deep below hell, and the raptures high over the spheres.

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In the numberless sand of the shore, in the numberless laugh of the sea,
In the sunlight, the moonlight, the starlight, the light of eyes lighted by thee,
The scorn that cast over the world, the love that was deeper than death,
The love that has fed me with calm, and the strife with tempestuous breath;

In the multitude, yes, or the desert, or desolate void of great night,
With a dome of black vapour above on an ocean of phosphorous white,
In the ruby-red glare of the dawn upon peaks of immaculate snow,
By the emerald light of pure rivers, or lakes where the lotus-leaves grow;

Among blossoms of carmine, and berries of scarlet, and leaves silver-grey,
Pink petals all purfled with amber, and sprinkled with fire-coloured spray,

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In tangles and trammels and clusters of foliage, water-flag, fern,
And in amorous meshes of bronze-dappled gold, where caresses may burn.

Where, where upon earth art thou not? Having kissed thee, who robs me of mine?
Not famine, nor fever, nor fear, I have known thee, and thou art divine,
Have caught thee, and held thee, and kissed thee, and called thee mine own to the grave,
And all thine ineffable love has gone over my soul like a wave.

Though the lightning should blast, or the pestilence, yes, or the slander of men,
Though his body a honey-comb grow, and his house be a wild beast's den,
Though he drink his own tears, craving water, and gnaw his own flesh, craving bread,
Let the singer be true to his goddess, nor curse her before he be dead.

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She comforts the death-throe of love, she peoples the desolate world,
She fills the long dreams of despair with a glory of heavens unfurled.
She shakes out the tresses of stars: she rends the impassable veil:
She cleaves to the heart's heart of nature, and crosses the mystical pale.

My goddess, my glorious goddess, unchanging through mutable years,
My lips have long bled on thy hands, I have watered thy feet with hot tears.
Thy goad has been sharp to endurance, but better than love and most sweet
To clasp thee with passionless fervour and weep on thy pitiless feet.

In the dawn of the world they have maddened, they madden and throng to thee now,
With the murderous fire in the heart and the wreath on the death-damped brow.

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They have strewn the cold hills with their bones, they have thrilled with ineffable pain,
And they sleep in the bosom of death, with the love all purged out of their brain.

Yet the unendurable throb of the hearts that have warmed with thy wine,
Still beats to us swan-like music and agonies more than divine,
O'er deserts of centuries still from the vocal oases of eld;
But to me thou hast given the pangs, and the chaplet of bay-leaf withheld.

Whom, whom do I see with the lyre by the throng of the chariot course,
Come to wrap the perennial robe of his voice round a conquering horse?
Whom, whom in the waves round Lesbos, and whom o'er the scorious brink
Of the hissing unfathomed volcano in fire and in agony sink?

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Whom, whom in his grey head's glory, accursed in his child and wife,
With the slanderous stain of madness, and staining his age with strife?
Whom struck by a stone from heaven, in exile and age? and whom
Eaten of dogs like Actæon and buried afar from home?

Whom preying on gloom in prison for love that was offered to hate?
Whom wasting in youth and fame for a mad love baffled by fate?
Whom living alone in the spirit, and that for a child's love dead,
And hearing the stars of his Paradise singing her name overhead?

Whom by the Rhine stream's purple embayed in the amber of morn,
Growing to stature of gods and cursing the hour he was born?

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Whom from his bitter bondage, with roar of a lion long bound,
Bursting the meshes and shaking the forest with terrors of sound?

Whom found in his youthful beauty, of bread and of life bereft?
Whom with his hot tears steeping a daisy his share had cleft?
Whom dying in altered Hellas with words of fire on his tongue?
Whom tossed by the waves off Pisa with worlds in his heart unsung?

All, all, and what others? my goddess, lie drenched with the dew-spring of death,
But fill all the populous earth with fires of unquenchable breath;
As the trenchant fire-tongues of the sunlight they find the heart's innermost shrine,
And show through the gloom with a flash the scarce diamonds hid in the mine.

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Youth clasps to his bosom the record of sorrows long over and past,
When the throb of life's earliest tempest comes on through the day over-cast,
And the fire-wells of agony open with sullen hot rain of despair,
That washes with ominous torrents the ominous weight of the air.

And the maiden with heavy wet tresses and heavy rings under the eyes,
Droops head in the dusking twilight, and dreams till the twilight dies,
Of the old love broken and blighted, the new love less than it seemed,
While some snatch of a long-dead singer brings back to her all she has dreamed.

Thou art high above all, O my goddess, though deep and unbearably deep
Are the agonies thou hast to give and the steps to thy sanctuary steep.

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'Tis the touch of thy lips we implore, having which, the world's laurel may rust,
In the heart of thy votaries live, and accept in thy bosom their dust.