 | Songs of A Worker |  |
146
CANTO THE SECOND.
I am that curst and hopeless one. My face
Has caught the brown glow of these Southern seasons,
And warm new virgin worlds have burnt the trace
Of half a summer on me; in its place
Is none the less that memory of treasons
And faithless faces, and that love, half hate,
The rest despair and lust, that woe—that fate—
That evil I perceive, not one man's doom,
But a great death in a decorous tomb
Called Europe.
Has caught the brown glow of these Southern seasons,
And warm new virgin worlds have burnt the trace
Of half a summer on me; in its place
Is none the less that memory of treasons
And faithless faces, and that love, half hate,
The rest despair and lust, that woe—that fate—
That evil I perceive, not one man's doom,
But a great death in a decorous tomb
Called Europe.
Would the taintless sun could reach
To burn away the dull dust at my heart,
And quite transmute its yearnings, and then teach
The ruined intuitions of pure feeling
One frank, warm love of this unsullied part
Of lovely, passionate earth. I mock that thought!
The old world's wound is past the new world's healing,
And Europe holds the child that Europe taught.
To burn away the dull dust at my heart,
And quite transmute its yearnings, and then teach
The ruined intuitions of pure feeling
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Of lovely, passionate earth. I mock that thought!
The old world's wound is past the new world's healing,
And Europe holds the child that Europe taught.
The last days in a desolate-peopled city
Were long with wretchedness. I felt the whole
Dissembled pang that inwardly depraves
The love alike of king and courtezan,
And dries the very sources of soft pity,
Hardening the farewell word the heart most craves
To leave behind. I understood each man
In his consummate coldness, and the lying
Of every woman's love and jewelled smile
Was bare to me in secret. I saw dying
In agonizing bonds, beneath the vile
Enamelled falsehood of triumphant fashion,
All lonely loveliness of truth and passion,
Stung to a poisoned death by one small asp,
The deathless fiend, Mistrust—from kiss to kiss,
From heart to heart, crawling for aye unseen;
Given in the ready hands, unheeding clasp,
Lying in wait beneath each coming bliss,
Spoiling the fair place where a true past hath been.
Were long with wretchedness. I felt the whole
Dissembled pang that inwardly depraves
The love alike of king and courtezan,
And dries the very sources of soft pity,
Hardening the farewell word the heart most craves
To leave behind. I understood each man
In his consummate coldness, and the lying
Of every woman's love and jewelled smile
Was bare to me in secret. I saw dying
In agonizing bonds, beneath the vile
Enamelled falsehood of triumphant fashion,
All lonely loveliness of truth and passion,
Stung to a poisoned death by one small asp,
The deathless fiend, Mistrust—from kiss to kiss,
From heart to heart, crawling for aye unseen;
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Lying in wait beneath each coming bliss,
Spoiling the fair place where a true past hath been.
And so I did not curse her whom I curst
In the appalling hour that taught me first
To see her as she is; to be alone
For ever with the angel overthrown,
The self she spoiled, and left me. No, the throne
She has not moved from hath a chain as cruel
As gold can be, drawn tight across the heart,
Till the restraint hath cankered every part,
And joyless is the splendour of each jewel,
And pitiless the semblance of each joy
Put on her daily. He who out of love
Or hate should change or slay her, would destroy
One long, keen punishment some Lord above
Sees and remits not. For she may not fall,
And she shall never dare to love at all.
Sitting at noontide in the gilded hall
Of one of those vain-glorious palaces,
Haunted ere night time by some shrieking host
Of void, disconsolate souls, whose miseries
Stalk tombless through the shifting centuries.
That shadowy horror that appalleth most,
The loneliness of kings, took hold on me.
Surely it laid a cold hand on my heart,
And with the cruel, supernatural speech
Of one who knoweth all things, made me see
And measure and consider, part by part,
The soul of Cleopatra; then of each
Most exquisite and exorable queen,
And still, in clear discourse, unshrinking, keen,
Told me the truth concerning many a dame,
Adored and of an all unspotted fame,
Laid bare the shallow secret or the shame,
And bade me then be wise with scarce a taunt.
And many times, in the histories of doom
Written of men and women, over whom
The graves are tearless, and the past makes vaunt
Of hollow praise or passionless lament,
I saw the face, I found the lineament
In all respects of her I was content
To bind myself the slave of: in my soul
She was the prophecy of page on page,
That named her with the name some former age
Counted its curse, and left its aureole.
In the appalling hour that taught me first
To see her as she is; to be alone
For ever with the angel overthrown,
The self she spoiled, and left me. No, the throne
She has not moved from hath a chain as cruel
As gold can be, drawn tight across the heart,
Till the restraint hath cankered every part,
And joyless is the splendour of each jewel,
And pitiless the semblance of each joy
Put on her daily. He who out of love
Or hate should change or slay her, would destroy
One long, keen punishment some Lord above
Sees and remits not. For she may not fall,
And she shall never dare to love at all.
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Of one of those vain-glorious palaces,
Haunted ere night time by some shrieking host
Of void, disconsolate souls, whose miseries
Stalk tombless through the shifting centuries.
That shadowy horror that appalleth most,
The loneliness of kings, took hold on me.
Surely it laid a cold hand on my heart,
And with the cruel, supernatural speech
Of one who knoweth all things, made me see
And measure and consider, part by part,
The soul of Cleopatra; then of each
Most exquisite and exorable queen,
And still, in clear discourse, unshrinking, keen,
Told me the truth concerning many a dame,
Adored and of an all unspotted fame,
Laid bare the shallow secret or the shame,
And bade me then be wise with scarce a taunt.
And many times, in the histories of doom
Written of men and women, over whom
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Of hollow praise or passionless lament,
I saw the face, I found the lineament
In all respects of her I was content
To bind myself the slave of: in my soul
She was the prophecy of page on page,
That named her with the name some former age
Counted its curse, and left its aureole.
And then I scarcely know what fatal rage
Urged me to seek such wisdom's sad extreme,
To probe yet further, and to find the core
Of all her life; to overthrow each dream,
To question, to examine, to explore,
To rack each reticent nerve of memory,
Piercing and ruining the lovely ore
Of many a fond illusion, just to see
How hollow the clear hollowness might be—
In truth, to work out with a fearful might
Myself mine own unmitigated hell;
For, when I stood in the cold, cruel light,
And knew the depths, and gazed up to the height
Of that consummate knowledge, O! I fell—
Yea, weeping as the hopeless souls may weep,
And for one little hope of her—to keep
One undestroyed deception as before
To love and live in,—would have knelt once more
And served the blindest God that men adore.
Alas! if some world-conquering Emperor,
Roaming among his ruins, with the sun
For compeer, and the moon, that weeping nun,
For pale, reproachful consort, should repent,
Loathing the loneliness of empire won,
And yearn to bring again the sweet content
Of people there, and life, and grace, and sound,
To fill once more each hollow tenement,
And lift the fallen temples from the ground,
Whom, yearning so, the sun's red taunt at noon
Must answer, and the misery of the moon
Mock him at night with silence; then my own
Great hopelessness were a thing not unknown,
Nor quite unparalleled, nor all alone.
Urged me to seek such wisdom's sad extreme,
To probe yet further, and to find the core
Of all her life; to overthrow each dream,
To question, to examine, to explore,
To rack each reticent nerve of memory,
Piercing and ruining the lovely ore
Of many a fond illusion, just to see
How hollow the clear hollowness might be—
In truth, to work out with a fearful might
Myself mine own unmitigated hell;
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And knew the depths, and gazed up to the height
Of that consummate knowledge, O! I fell—
Yea, weeping as the hopeless souls may weep,
And for one little hope of her—to keep
One undestroyed deception as before
To love and live in,—would have knelt once more
And served the blindest God that men adore.
Alas! if some world-conquering Emperor,
Roaming among his ruins, with the sun
For compeer, and the moon, that weeping nun,
For pale, reproachful consort, should repent,
Loathing the loneliness of empire won,
And yearn to bring again the sweet content
Of people there, and life, and grace, and sound,
To fill once more each hollow tenement,
And lift the fallen temples from the ground,
Whom, yearning so, the sun's red taunt at noon
Must answer, and the misery of the moon
Mock him at night with silence; then my own
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Nor quite unparalleled, nor all alone.
I had long ceased from that consuming need,
To seek her where she was, to have indeed
The sight and presence of her; now, alas!
It mattered little how her days might pass,
I knew and saw; having so felt and seen,
There could not be one thing that had not been;
And in some rugged and remotest cell—
Rock-guarded, sea-environed solitude,
Silenced and overawed by my great mood
Of mightier desolation—I could tell
Her deepest thought that hour, and see and dwell
Most intimately with her in the home
Of inward self-avowal. There with crowds
In some cold glittering capital—at Rome,
In languid ease; at Venice, in disguise—
I reached her through the glitter and the shrouds,
I alone; for my soul's enlightened eyes
Had read her inward self, and did divine
A soul dividing solitude with mine.
To seek her where she was, to have indeed
The sight and presence of her; now, alas!
It mattered little how her days might pass,
I knew and saw; having so felt and seen,
There could not be one thing that had not been;
And in some rugged and remotest cell—
Rock-guarded, sea-environed solitude,
Silenced and overawed by my great mood
Of mightier desolation—I could tell
Her deepest thought that hour, and see and dwell
Most intimately with her in the home
Of inward self-avowal. There with crowds
In some cold glittering capital—at Rome,
In languid ease; at Venice, in disguise—
I reached her through the glitter and the shrouds,
153
Had read her inward self, and did divine
A soul dividing solitude with mine.
And once, beholding vain eternity,
Made of irreparable life—aghast,
With nearness of her face for destiny,
And all the future plighted to the past,
Seen like an arid country, red and vast,
Scathed by one present memory—I besought
Some death that were not momentary—aught,
For blindness and oblivion and reprieve,
A grief not all of mine to share and grieve,
A labour to be lost upon, a wide
Inhuman wilderness, wherein to hide—
A darkness of a forest.
Made of irreparable life—aghast,
With nearness of her face for destiny,
And all the future plighted to the past,
Seen like an arid country, red and vast,
Scathed by one present memory—I besought
Some death that were not momentary—aught,
For blindness and oblivion and reprieve,
A grief not all of mine to share and grieve,
A labour to be lost upon, a wide
Inhuman wilderness, wherein to hide—
A darkness of a forest.
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