The Crucifixion of Man :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Crucifixion of Man

A Narrative Poem: By George Barlow

Barlow, George

[section]

Dedication. To my Friend, ARTHUR HERVEY.

THE CRUCIFIXION OF MAN.

PART I. IN SUSSEX.

I. A MAN'S LETTER.

II.

II. A YOUNG GIRL'S DREAM.

II.

PART II. IN A LONDON HOSPITAL.

I. A WOMAN'S CONFESSION.

II.

II. A MAN'S CONFESSION

II.

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Dedication. To my Friend, ARTHUR HERVEY.

This book, now bright with dawn, now dark with doom,
Now full of midday song, I bring you, friend—
Not all conceived in light, nor yet in gloom,
But in a sphere where light and darkness blend.

I strive in verse to render forth the song
Of life, to life's strange message I give heed:
But where my Art is faulty, yours is strong,
And where I fail, you triumph and succeed.

For you in music render forth the psalm
Of life, aye all its passion, all its power;
Music can reproduce June's heavenliest calm
When no breath stirs the frailest cliff-side flower.

And music too can thunder like the seas:
The world's emotion music can express;
The saint's thoughts praying on his bended knees,
The lover's thrill at beauty's first caress.

Music will lead some stricken soul to seek
Eternal refuge in a Saviour's arms,
Stablish the doubting and uplift the weak,
Expounding heaven's imperishable charms:

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Music will lead a lover to decide
That this night's starry fires shall point the way
To the sweet robbery of another's bride,
The sin that cries for blood at dawn of day.

For music stirs in one the lust to storm
Heaven's breachless walls and unattempted gates,
But draws another towards the perfect form
Whose sovereign whiteness in the darkness waits.

At music's trumpet one man climbs the skies
And gathers strength the untrodden heights to win;
Another dares to meet the queenly eyes
Whose light makes sinning pure and virtue sin.

The same sweet strain in one girl's heart will wake
Desire for heavenly joys that never pall,
Possess another, till her swift steps take
The rose-hung road that leads her to her fall.

One girl will muse: “Is this the heavenly strain
That sun-bright angels round their Master sing?”
Another whisper: “In the moonlit lane
Again to-night my eyes will greet their king!”

Through music the one Spirit who sways the whole,
Creates, pulls down, refashions and destroys,
Speaks—ever music is the world's deep soul
Uttering its giant sorrows, giant joys.

From the first hour when on our planet-home
Love spake, in depths of moonlit forest heard
Or by some far-off sea's forgotten foam,
Its priceless first unfathomable word,

From that first hour hath music reigned supreme,
For music's soul and passion's soul are one;
And music still will reign while young hearts dream
And while sweet darkness follows on the sun.

All dim strange thoughts we struggle, and in vain,
To utter—pangs and joys, and hopes and fears—
In music their impassioned utterance gain;
All human longings sound in human ears.

The past grows vocal, history speaks once more.
Above dense war-ranks nods Achilles' plume:
Pale Dido weeps upon the loveless shore:
Masked murder dogs love's steps through Venice' gloom.

At music's touch man's visions all grow real;
We see the matchless face that Bothwell saw:—
We enter too the realms of the ideal,
The mist-clad land where genius' will is law.

A thousand fairies throng the wood-glades, white
Beneath the rays of an enchanted moon;
Their elfin cohorts flash upon our sight,
Armoured in gems that mock the glittering noon.

At music's summons Oberon's snowy steed
Tramples the clover, jingling silver reins:
When music sounds, an unseen world gives heed;
Its starlight waxes as our sunlight wanes.

While music sounds, what heart can ever doubt
That life eternal waits beyond the tomb?
For music shuts cold slow-foot reason out,
And what our souls desire our souls assume.

While music sounds, no barrier to our hope
Looms dark and threatening on the heavenward way,
For music gives the glad soul boundless scope
And points beyond the night to endless day.

Religion owes to music all its power:
In man's form Jesus on the pale earth trod,
But music round him made the pale earth flower
And changed the mortal man to deathless God.

Death conquered life? Nay, music's eager heart
Repels the thought with everlasting scorn,
And with the sunlight of triumphant Art
Transmutes to stainless gold the crown of thorn!

The Christian Church through music scales the skies:
The humblest chapel built where wild waves foam
On Cornish rocks, or where Welsh mountains rise,
Through music conquers, even as mighty Rome.

And love through music conquers—when we hear
The haunting magic of some wondrous tune,
Lost loves on golden wings come glimmering near
And life's December is as passion's June.

Dark eyes we never thought to see again
In life shine forth, and speechless joys are won:
Music can crowd with life death's ghostly plain
And make night's dreams more cogent than the sun.

Words—even Shakespeare's words—must sometimes fail,
But music never fails: where man has trod
It follows, gathering up life's tragic tale,
Blending with man's the language of a god.

And this immortal tongue is yours, O friend!
While I must labour through the straits of rhyme
And on my course a world of thought expend,
Your Art is subject not to space or time.

To you the lover, yearning to express
Fancies that ravish, eager thoughts that thrill,
Must turn; demanding love's own voice, no less,
He finds your music's cadence tenderer still.

Demanding passion's voice and soul of fire,
He finds your music equal to his theme;
Strong as deep love's illimitable desire,
Sweet as love's truth, and ardent as its dream.

Demanding that love's sadness shall prevail
And that love's temple change into a tomb,
Still can your varying music tell the tale
Of deepening agony and starless gloom.

To you for many a year will poets turn;
Through you their thought that flagged wins timeless wings:
Eyes soften at your strain, and men's hearts burn
To whom in vain the unaided poet sings.

When pen betrays and silent paper wrongs
The poet, stealing witchery from his strain,
Your touch brings victory; yes, to you belongs
The triumph, and to him the priceless gain.

Envious am I, stern fetters we must wear—
What grim restraints the laws of verse impose!
A flower described is only half as fair,
But music adds a fragrance to the rose.

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And when across the heart life's tempest roars
And desolation's trumpet-blast is blown,
Music can catch the clash of echoing shores
And make the night-wind's melody its own.

If I could speak the thoughts that in my brain
Struggle imprisoned, if on music's sea
I once could launch forth, sail that stormy main,
If speech and music wedded once might be,

Then, then indeed, I might shake off time's yoke,
Upon my brow the deathless stars might gleam:
Alas, what poet ever fully spoke
The mastering thought that held him like a dream?

THE CRUCIFIXION OF MAN.

I. PART I. IN SUSSEX.

I. A MAN'S LETTER.

I'm cheerier now. Your letter came
(It helped me much) a week ago.
I never answered it, more shame;
I still was brooding on the blow,

That bitter blow a woman dealt:
I still was smarting from the pain.
You saw me, witnessed what I felt,
Yet dared to bid me, “Hope again!”

You dared to tell me, “Life is fair:
In time you will forget your dream;
Feel sweetness in the summer air,
Hear music in the mountain stream.”

You told me, when we met in town,
To fight on, to be strong and brave;
That, if one foolish woman frown,
Another woman's smile can save.

“Time can extract the sharpest sting.
One woman has wrought you a deadly wrong?
Will never nobler songster sing
Now fate hath hushed one linnet's song?

“She was a lovely woman—true;
I grant you all you would contend;
Hair of the most bewitching hue,
Eyes of seductive brown, my friend!

“And yet I'll wager in a year,
Such are the changeful ways of man,
You'll look back, never shed a tear,
Nay, wonder how your love began:

“Wonder you ever cared for her,
Found witchery in her laughing gaze.
Some other woman you'll prefer;
Each woman has her charming ways.

“Because one gorgeous day in June
Seems perfect, aye beyond our dream,
Will there be no more splendours soon
When the August burning sun-rays gleam?

“Because upon one royal day
In summer every hour seems fair
Must human spirits put away
Faith in new summers, and despair?

“Or when the sun with fervour flames,
Flashing athwart heaven's cloudy bars,

Must high hope perish? Hope proclaims
Beyond the sun the countless stars.

“And so with women. Still they rise,
Soft, blossom-like, for ever new.
Brown were thy lady's faithless eyes?
Love waits thee, friend, in eyes of blue.

“Much faith in God I never had,
Yet he has done this one thing well:
He made the whole earth's future glad
When Eve his first-born daughter fell.

“For now it is so easy—yes,
Too easy indeed—for man to win
The first long lingering lip-caress;
And all things follow from that sin.

“From the first contact of the lips
All things must follow in order due:
The fluttering flag of virtue dips,
And soon the fair ship yields to you.

“The morning kiss leads on to those
Whose rapture is intenser far;
Spring's crocus is not quite the rose,
Nor is your lamp the evening star.

“The morning kiss leads to the night's,
When virtue with her own white hand

Draws down the blind, puts out the lights,
And is a slave at your command.”

Ah! so you said, my cynic friend,
In London, when I told my tale,
My passionate hope that life would end
Since love had proved of no avail:

And here among the country lanes
I feel there's truth in what you say;
In losing love and hope one gains,
For conscience passes quite away.

Love is not left, but life is left
—What vengeance may not life contain!
Vengeance on heaven which wrought the theft
Of love, and wrought the hopeless pain.

For vengeance is the only thing
Now left worth living for, it seems.
Nought else is left in life; no spring,
No sun, no summer of lovely dreams:

No days of hope, no hours of glee,
No golden sunshine on the hills,
No silver moonlight on the sea,
No soft low music in the rills:

No faith in woman, nought in God:—
I toiled for both, I served them well,

And therefore have my footsteps trod
The endless avenues of hell.

The more I toiled, the less I win.
The men who do not love nor pray
Win woman. She exults in sin,
And flings herself for nought away.

Let one man bring a ruby brooch,
The other a life of worship true,
She'll eye the last with mute reproach,
Say to the first, “I worship you!”

One loves her soul, the other loves
Her body, and the last succeeds.
One buys her bonnets, trinkets, gloves;
The other brings her noble deeds.

And noble deeds mean nothing much
To woman. She loves better far
What she can see or taste or touch;
Prefers a rushlight to a star.

“What is my soul?” the woman says.
She knows that she has eyes and hair;
A tongue that flatters—and betrays;
Lips that can fondle—and ensnare:

But nought beyond has weight or worth
With woman,—heaven's a dreary space!
She better loves the dear old earth,
Her proper pleasant dwelling-place.

Heaven has its charms, but not for her;
Its summits loom too cold and dread.
She has the fancy to prefer
A fire, a lover,—and a bed.

The bed must have silk curtains too;
The night-dress must be frilled and laced:
Chaste beauty mocks adornment—true—
But then one is not always chaste.

Eve soon set right God's faulty thought
And wove her leafy flounce and frill:
But if the garment had been bought,
It would have pleased her better still!

If Jesus empty-handed came,
And Judas brought a diamond ring,
Would woman hesitate? She'd claim
Knave Judas, crucify her king.

You know my story.—I was wrong
In struggling hard, in aiming high.
'Tis better to be weak than strong:
All talk of God's love is a lie.

The weak base selfish loveless hound
Wins woman—this is God's wise plan;
To let the lying cur be crowned,
And to discrown the nobler man.

And now what vengeance? Not on those
Who have wronged me (they are wronged as well):
No, as my scheme of vengeance grows,
Its blade selects the Lord of hell.

For earth is hell; aye, evermore
The earth which holds those lovers twain
For me must with its every door
Open on hell and hellish pain.

All things, all persons, fade away;
Stars are but ghosts, a shade the sun:
I see two faces night and day,
Two forms, two only,—and these are one.

For she is one with him. In this
The essence of the horror lies.
Their souls are blended when they kiss:
Their spirits mingle through the eyes.

They are not two: for ever now
By day, by night, when her I see,—
The black hair curling o'er the brow,
The brown eyes (full of purity!),

The forehead noble, grave and high,
The dainty throat that I have kissed,
Lips where the whole world's roses lie,
The blue veins on the slender wrist,—

When these I see, I see besides
Close, closer than all speech can tell,
A man whose mocking smile derides,
And the world darkens into hell.

And who is Lord of hell, on whom
The noblest vengeance can be wrought?
The Lord of pain, of death, the tomb—
Of agony that baffles thought:

Who is the Author of these things?
Of every pang beneath the sky?
Lord of our mortal life that brings
With it pain's immortality:

The Power on whom man's vengeance strong
And stern and deadly can alight;
Vengeance for unimagined wrong,
For sin enthroned, and throneless right:

Vengeance for wrongs so grim, so deep,
They never can be purged away:
When from the sheath man's sword shall leap,
Whom shall its keen point pierce and slay?

Against whom shall man's kingly power
Of grief and anger and hate arise?
Whom shall man judge in this last hour
Of heavenly sophistries and lies?

God, surely: he who made the sun,
The stars, the love that gives man light,
Then, just as love's own heaven was won,
Swept all that heaven with tides of night.

Enough of words—the action shows
The manhood, not the flashing speech.
Moreover clear before me grows
The avenging end that I must reach.

There's such a lovely girl down here,—
The teacher at the village school.
(I shall not fall in love—don't fear!
Once is enough to play the fool.)

Charming! if you were in the place,
It strikes me you and I should fight.
Charming? divine's the word! such grace—
Eyes stealing all the stars' wild light;

Hair full of night's soft darkness, lips
Untasted yet by lips of man;
Hands lovely to the finger-tips;
Complete the picture—if you can.

One day the picture shall be mine
In all its loveliness complete:
I'll study it then, pure line by line;
Own it, from forehead to the feet.

—I carry home her books at night:
We saunter through the country lanes:
She sometimes questions, “Is this right?”
I answer, “If my goodness gains.”

For that old answer ever serves
To lay the doubt in woman's soul.
They love to help a man who swerves
Aside, and rein him to the goal.

Run straight—the thing's prosaic quite.
A good girl better loves to win
A soul from darkness to the light:
Her virtue shines against his sin.

So now this dainty teacher thinks
That what I need she can supply.
This card I flourish, when she shrinks
From wanderings 'neath the starry sky.

“I'm gaining so”—so I proclaim—
“In goodness, virtue, manhood, truth:
Indeed it were a sin, a shame,
Now to cut short your work of ruth.

“Your pitying task continue then,
Dear Annie”—that's the name she bears:
“Make me a model among men;
From my cornfield snatch out the tares.

“If once a woman stooped to take
My weary worn-out life in hand,

Who knows? I might in the ending make
The staunchest lover in the land.”

That's quite enough! We get our stroll:
There are no more objections raised.
She talks of moonlight and the soul
(Sometimes until I feel half dazed!)

She has read a very marvellous book—
Sympneumata, or some such name—
And this she quotes by hook or crook,
Now aptly, now without an aim.

A wondrous book—so I should deem.
It solves all doubts beneath the sky:
There's one especial tender dream
Of lovers' perfect unity.

“Dual” no more, “biune's” the word!
No more the weary lover seeks
(The strangest dream I ever heard:
Savours of Plato, and the Greeks).

This “sympneumatic” union serves
Unending sweetness to provide:
Gives soul-joy, while it thrills the nerves
—A husband, while it brings a bride.

For in far old-world realms that lay
Beyond our trivial moon and sun,
Closed to the starlight of to-day,
The woman and the man were one.

But Satan foiled God's primal plan:
The “biune” form was rent in twain;
The woman torn from out the man
Shivering, and with a ghastly pain.

She, once divided, wandered far,
Helpless without the enclosing form,
The man's strong shape that used to bar
The assaults of hostile spear or storm.

He, once divided, wandered too,
Unable now, from her apart,
To mingle as he used to do
His with the eternal Spirit's heart.

For God inspires the soul of man,
So runs the “sympneumatic” dream,
Through woman: thus, when life began,
Flowed forth God's inspiration-stream.

But now the hapless halves are twain;
They seek each other through the years.
Man strives his long-lost bride to gain:
She strives and seeks, with lonely tears.

And, when the long strange search is done,
The world's redemption is at hand.
At last love's victory will be won
And all will be as God first planned.

The severed halves again unite:
The perfect human being is there,

Married with infinite delight;
And thus will end the world's despair.

... —So runs the dream, and so I hear
In nightly lectures from my love.
Her words fall gently on my ear,
Dark trees around, bright stars above.

I listen, and I vow that all
Beyond all doubt is plain and true:
And yet such daring dreams appal
My spirit, between me and you.

One human being! none to seek—
No passionate huntsmanship to show—
Romance would perish in a week,
And with it all life's worth would go.

Or, if the loved one be a ghost,
A spirit of the sunlit air,
One of the spotless heavenly host,
Shall I seek my “sympneuma” there?

Never! I hold for love and Art
Woman's the fittest after all.
No angel ever won man's heart:
Man's heart was won by woman's fall.

That's my opinion. Annie thinks
Quite otherwise—but we shall see.
I fashion all the strongest links
Of love's chain, while she talks to me.

I listen: while I listen, slips
The chain around her, coil on coil.
One day the sweetness of her lips
Shall compensate for all my toil.

My letter's close—for I must go,
I have to meet her at the school,
And you may trust me quite, you know,
To keep both head and heart quite cool.

Good-bye, and if you're in the mood
Write, urge your light creed's easy claims—
(Think of us sitting in the wood,
So happy!)
Yours most truly,
James.

II. A YOUNG GIRL'S DREAM.

Fair the world is, though the breezes of September
O'er the moors and through the forest-alleys pass:
Though the light of burning August we remember
Is a light for ever lost to us, alas!
Though the glory of the branches and the flowers
Has for ever with the summer passed away,
Love is living yet within the forest-bowers
And his heart is still as tender as in May.

Was the spring-time half as sweet to me, I wonder,
When the pearly snowdrops peeped above the mould,
When the green buds burst their wintry sheaths asunder
And the crocus dared to don its crown of gold—
When the sunlight flashed across the river-billows
As the wild wind lashed them into stormy glee,
And the branches dipping in them of the willows
Deemed they dipped their grey-green leafage in the sea?

Was the summer half as fair with all its gleaming
Of the crimson fuchsias near our cottage gate?
Summer—when the stars of midnight watched me dreaming
At the window, when I left it whispered “Wait!”

Summer—when the rose with passion seemed to languish
And the lily sighed her love-tale to the rose;
When the world's heart scorned the very thought of anguish
And its spirit was a spirit at repose.

Summer—when I wondered, wondered, looking forward,
Who would love me, strove to picture and divine;
Started at a fancied footstep, gazing doorward,—
Sat in fancy, often, with his hand in mine:
Summer—when my heart knew little as I wandered
Counting blossoms, watching butterfly and bee,
Knew so little of the love-lore that it pondered,
Knew so little, O my lover-soul, of thee!

Was the summer half as lovely as the season
That brings perfect love and passion to my heart?
Let the blossoms madden at September's treason!
Pangless, I can watch their glowing tints depart.
For my heart and all its thoughts are given over
To my darling, and there's summer in his gaze:
Let the lily go in mourning for her lover!
All my heart is full of dreams of summer days.

All my heart is full of dreams of love and heaven;
God is good to me, aye good to me indeed:
Love for teacher and for prophet he has given,
Love for sermon and for bible and for creed.
I was lonely in the wild world, I remember,
Lonely through the leafy balmy days of June;
I am happy and companioned in September;
Envious, doubtless, is the silver lonely moon.

Envious doubtless are the sea-birds on the ocean:
On the tossing waters where have they to rest?
Round them stretch the waves in ceaseless angry motion,
Where is any nook for haven or for rest?
Envious, doubtless, are the stars i' the airy spaces;
Leagues they are from any loving star apart;
Lonely sail they, leagues from love in starry faces,
But my darling has his dwelling in my heart.

He will raise me, he will lift me by his passion
Towards a region wholly pure and wholly fair:
We shall love with angels' love in holiest fashion,
Yet find sweetness in the old earth's summer air.
We will visit all the old earth's sacred places
And in every land be happy and at home,
Knit in union closer for the stranger faces;
Dream in Paris, pass our honeymoon in Rome.

We will wander hand in hand, with love and slowly,
Through the cornfields and the towns of Palestine;
Fancy that we see the eyes of Jesus holy,
Dream we hear the voice most tender and divine.
We, the children of the dark-blue Northern ocean,
Born in mist-land, loved and nurtured by the sea,
In the sunny East will gaze with deep emotion
On sunstricken leafless drear Gethsemane.

All our life will be the better for the glory
That once shone through Jesus' figure and his face;
Better shall we understand the sweet old story
When we see with tearful eyes the very place,

As we say, “Beneath this heaven of cloudless weather
Wandered Jesus, here he prayed and here he spoke”—
We shall wander through the vineyards, we together,
Where his loving heart grew weary, where it broke.

Though the beauty and the glamour have departed,
Doubtless, from the fields and hills that Jesus saw,
Yet we'll gaze with love upon them, tender-hearted,
And with something still within the soul of awe:
For the paths that God as perfect man hath taken
Must for ever gleam with wonder, where he trod
Still the human heart with love and faith unshaken
Will behold the man,—beholding him, the God.

We will trace in fancy spots he may have cherished,
Say, “This corner of a vineyard he held dear:”
See in fancy the lone hill-side where he perished
And the rock-tomb whence his risen voice rang clear.
“Here,” we say, “the loving sad disciples wept him;
Here they laid his silent body to repose,
Deeming that the eternal darkness would have kept him
Sleeping ever; here they marvelled, when he rose.”

Here our cottage has been home to me, and pleasure,
Priceless happiness of girlhood, I have known:
To my mother been her darling, her one treasure,
Made my father's life less weary, less alone.

—Now my life at last will leave the lowly places,
Break to noble freedom, burst its prison bars;
But for ever I shall love the dear lost faces,
Love them as the golden morning loves the stars!

I will tell my husband many a simple story;
He will listen, for he loves me, to my tale:
Tell him of our dear old garden's summer glory,
From my girlish dreaming draw aside the veil—
Tell him how I wandered through the hazel cover
Dreaming of him, dreaming of him by the lake;
How I longed to be of service to my lover,
How I yearned to give my life-blood for his sake.

Foolish dreams, it may be,—weak and very girlish;
Yet they have their beauty and value, let them be!
The vast ocean is not angry, is not churlish:
Let the river sing its ditty to the sea!
Let the river tell its quiet tales and simple
Of the blossoms growing in the inland nooks,
Though the sea receive with hardly a surface-dimple
All the life-throbs of a thousand eager brooks.

All my thoughts and dreams are his and he will treasure
Touch them tenderly, transfigure one by one
All my girlish hopes and every girlish pleasure,
As the shadowy vales are lighted by the sun.
All my friends are his—he'll make me love them better,
Never rob me of the true heart of a friend;
Make me faithful to each promise to the letter,
Make me cling to father and mother to the end.

All the children shall be happy at our wedding!
(They will miss their girlish teacher's loving rule)—
While another path and happier I am treading,
They will tread the worn old pathway to the school;
To the same old school with honeysuckle clinging
Round the doorway and festooning from the eaves—
I shall often hear the hymn that they are singing,
Hear their fingers rustle through their lesson-leaves.

I shall see them trotting underneath the larches,
See them in their scarlet tippets and their hoods,
See them enter 'neath the school-house' grey-stone arches,
Hear their laughter in the playground of the woods:
Hear some tiny child's glad cry of sudden pleasure
When he spies the first blue egg within the nest,
Gathers up with careful hands his turquoise-treasure,
Shows it, full of lordly triumph, to the rest.

I shall see the first rich golden daffodilly
Don its gorgeous glittering raiment on the bank,
Mark the snow-white wedding-garment of the lily,
Stand again upon our brook-bridge—just a plank—
Marking, as the gentle West wind lightly winnows
The dark leafage of the rustling alder-tree,
Half a hundred darting gleaming saucy minnows
Make believe that they are salmon in the sea!

Then, that every thought and dream may be the sweeter,
I will turn to him, my husband and my friend:
How the present joy will make the past completer!
How the early days will sanctify the end!

Passing from my pleasant dream of days behind me,
Dream of English gardens, English hill and sky,
Golden splendid Southern sunlight will remind me
That I'm dreaming on the shores of Italy!

Then a loving kiss will bring me to my senses;
I must leave the children, leave them far away,
Leave them labouring over nouns and verbs and tenses,
Leave them lonely at their labour and their play:
I must leave them, for my husband's voice is calling;
Leave the tender lovely dreams of early life;
See the curtain o'er the girl's work swiftly falling—
There's a grander mission waiting for the wife!

II. PART II. IN A LONDON HOSPITAL.

I. A WOMAN'S CONFESSION.

First woman:—

I often wonder in this strange place
Where the dying and dead seem one,
As my eyes meet sorrow in face after face,
What each sad soul has done:
And I think it would ease my own sad heart
As I lie on this hospital bed
To tell you my story, or tell you part
—I shall tell it soon to the dead!

But I want some living soul to hear:
We are in this ward alone,
Will you listen? They've moved your bed quite near,—
In the night I could hear you moan.
If you have loved, and have known love's curse,
You may find it a help to know
That another has suffered—worse, far worse—
Yet did not die of the blow.

I loved him well, but I treated him ill—
(Ah, why was it? Who can say?)
I loved him truly—I love him still—
But I flung my chance away.
Women are mad, and the maddest of all
Is the woman who knows she is fair,
Who has love, she thinks, at her beck and call
And can make men's souls despair.

I treated him ill, and I drove him away;
Then the retribution came—
Not in an hour, not in a day,
But with fiercer than hell's hot flame.
It came with the knowledge of what I had done
And of what my life would be:
I knew the value of what I had won
And had squandered, woe is me!

I knew I had broken the heart of a man
Who would gladly have died for my sake:
Blindness vanished, and light began
Pitiless, clear, to break.
I knew I had changed his dream of bliss
To the madness of despair;
Kissed him, and lied as I let him kiss
My lips and my throat and my hair.

I knew I had changed his love of heart
To a horror fierce and grim;
I knew God never meant we should part
But had marked me out for him:

I knew I had sinned against love most deep,
Most wonderful, pure and high;
I saw one face through the mists of sleep,
One face in the sunlit sky.

I knew I had shaken the faith of a man
Who had served his God full well,—
Had made God's scheme like a devil's plan,
God's heaven a starless hell.
I knew I had turned his heart to fire,
His thoughts to a wild dark dream,—
Had changed the Lord of love to a liar—
Ah, so it was bound to seem!

I knew that he never would grasp the whole—
How my sad heart longed for his tread;
That on earth he never would read my soul,
That I should be like one dead.
I knew that the golden stars would shine
But their glory would be dim;
That the wind would chant love-songs to the pine,—
They would never travel to him.

I knew I had done it—darkened the sun
And the beautiful bright blue sea
For him, for ever—and all through one
Who cared not a straw for me.
I knew that my darling never would know
How the wild repentance came,
The horrible sense that never will go
Of sin and of deep deep shame.

He had given me trust superb, complete;
He had found me alone and sad—
He had laboured to make my whole life sweet
And noble and pure and glad.
He had spent a fortune—not to betray—
To help, to uplift, and to save:
He made my life like a summer day,
I have made his dark as the grave.

Happy we were in the wonderful hours
While yet I had strength to be true:
The garden he gave me was bright with flowers,
And our house was bright all through.
Bright was my bed-room, glad and bright
The sitting-room down below:
All was perfect, a dream of delight;
If it could but have lasted so!

I loved him dearly, and told him so,
But I acted a virtuous part;
He was married—fettered and bound, you know—
And I traded on his true heart.
I said it would ruin me, ruin me quite,
If I gave myself away:
In his eyes I was sinless, spotless, white,
And he would not stoop to betray.

He trusted me so! I was housed and fed,
One may almost say, by his hand.
He stooped like a father and kissed my head:
Oh, the love of a man can be grand!

They talk of the glory of woman's love,
But a man's is grander far;
A woman's wavers,—a man's may prove
As sure as a changeless star.

Is there any woman who ever has done
What this man did for me?
Held aloof from the love she had won
For the sake of its purity?
Was there ever a woman who stood aside
From the love her hand might take
Lest, taking, she wounded a noble pride,
Though, losing, her heart might break?

Yes, his heart was broken oft I know,
For my woman's eyes could see;
Half I could fathom the speechless woe
Though he thought it was hidden from me:
And I knew enough of love to feel
When his eager lips met mine
That here was a love whose strength was steel
Though its pureness was divine.

I was not all that he fondly thought;
It is so easy to sin;
“I love you”—a kiss—and a girl's soon caught—
That is how life's horrors begin.
When God made London, I think that he
Peopled it straight from hell,
And his angels of light then had to flee
From the streets we know so well!

I had had a lover in olden days—
(But his image had grown quite dim;
Never a mark on the lips betrays
The kisses I won from him.
What a mercy it is that kisses sign
On a woman's lips no mark!
They vanish at morn, like soft moonshine,
Or the sweet stars lost in the dark.

If the loving lips we fondly raise
To the lips we love in the end
Told tales of the errors of former days—
But God is a dear good friend!
He kindly ordains that lips should grow
In the moonlight into one,
Then part—that never a soul may know
At the rising of the sun.

He wisely ordains that the wife may come
To her husband's room at night,
Gaze in his face like a rose in bloom
In the glare of the full sunlight,
Gaze in his face with never a qualm,
Fondle his hair, maybe,
With the hand that parted loth from the palm
Of the lover he cannot see.

We are made so—well, it is best we are made
So that some of our deeds die out,
Lost in the weird deep starless shade
Of the past, beyond all doubt:

Well for the husband, well for the wife,
No signs on the lips betray
Last night's rapture dearer than life
When virtue returns with the day.)

—That was hid in the far-off past,
And I had not met James then:
It was not a love with strength to last
When I mixed with nobler men.
It passed away, but it left me stained,
My sense of honour was dim;
Dim indeed—or I could not have pained
James, and sinned against him.

For the thing that I did was mean and vile—
I see it, I know it to-day:
I betrayed the best of men with a smile,
As a woman's smile can betray.
He gave me passion, he brought me bliss,
He made all earth for me fair;
I ensnared the truest of men with a kiss,
As a woman's kiss can ensnare.

I took his money—I took his love—
I kissed him (I loved him too!)—
I did all this, as it were to prove
What a pure-eyed girl can do.
I knew how he loved me, and yet I gave
Coy pure lips to the one,
The body that he would have died to save
To another—the wrong was done.

The horrible mad blind deed was wrought;
I sinned—and I liked it well;
Keen quick pleasure can stifle thought,
And thought to a girl is hell.
One of the reasons I cared for Will
Was this, that he put no strain
On my mind, he let my thoughts lie still:
He never worried my brain.

I sinned in the house James bought for me,
In the beautiful upstairs room
Where the pictures hang of the hills and the sea;
Our palace became love's tomb,
The tomb of the love that came from God
And the birth-place of despair:
I found the pathway to hell well trod—
Plenty of girls had been there.

I held my lover close to my heart,
I loved him because he was base:
I loved him at night and I saw him depart
In the morning, and changed my face;
Virginal, pure, in the afternoon
I let James in at the door—
But my other lover came with the moon,
And I loved the bad man more.

It was pleasant to chatter of light gay things
To a true pure man in the day,
But to know that the golden sun had wings
And would soon be off and away,—

That the sultry summer night would come
And the moonlight white on the bed
And, just outside the door of the home,
A stealthy, a watchful tread.

It was planned so well, lest the two should meet,
For Will was a coward, I knew:
He was handsome—yes—and his lips were sweet;
I loved him ... and hated him too.
I hated and loved and despised him, all
In a breath,—do you understand?
Knew that he crawled as a snake might crawl,
And yet could have licked his hand.

That is the devilish way we are made,
We women—by God, you say?
I think the devil made many a jade,
Or else God did it in play!
We know that a man is a villain, yes—
And yet if an angel came
We should turn to the villain, turn and caress
The devil who wrought our shame.

It was hardly nobly done, I think,
That God should have made us so.
Weighted we are, we are bound to sink,
And to drag man with us, you know:
Weighted we are with others' sins,
With the whole long deathful past,
For who can tell where a crime begins
Or how long its results may last?

All that I did had been done before,
And I only repeated it, I:—
I let sin in at a London door,
But under the deep blue sky
Of midnight in Italy many a time
Had the same old deed been done;
New to me was the sense of crime,
But not to the moon or the sun.

The sun and the moon have seen all this,
They have witnessed it scores of times:
The stars have thrilled at sight of the kiss
As they peeped through the elms and the limes
Here in England, or else peeped down
Through the glistening orange-trees
In the South, or the fir-clumps dense and brown
On the slopes of the Pyrenees.

From the day when Paris fled from Troy
With the guilty Spartan queen
Sin has been rapture, sin has been joy—
Aye, then it was what it had been
Through the viewless years since woman first
Learned the subtle art to deceive,
Which means since the moment when God cursed
The world with the gift of Eve.

We feel what the first fair woman felt
—It is handed down in the brain—
When she found her own red soft lips melt
On the lips she hoped to gain.

Is there a rapture known to the race
Of women? Then that is ours—
As the rose of to-day has the scent and the grace
And the colour of Eden's flowers.

That is the point—we can never escape
From the past of the race, not one:
It will dog our steps like a ghostly shape,
Till the life of the race is done.
Aye, worse than that, I have sometimes thought
As I lay here, dying, alone,
That the very dead have returned and wrought
In our world dark deeds of their own.

There are women who never could get enough
In this world, it seemed, of sin;
The road to the golden gate was rough
And heaven was hard to win,
So they swerved aside—the thing may be—
And returned to the old glad earth,
And they laughed again on the old blue sea
And the green hills heard their mirth.

But, ghostly beings, they could not quite
Inherit the earth once more:
They flashed out pale as the sea-foam white
Upon many a starlit shore;
They wandered under the summer moon,
And they revelled once more in the breath
Of the live pure flowers of the fields of June
And they strove to forget their death.

But it was not enough to ease their pain
Fay-like from the tulip's cup
To gather bright beads and jewels of rain
That the soft June night stored up:
It was not enough to breathe the air
Of the bountiful same blue sea,
To find that the chestnut bloom was fair
In May as it used to be.

They longed for the close warm grip of a man,
And they sighed for the soft love-bed;
In death they were as when life began,
When they never meant to be dead:—
They longed for the sense of a man's love-touch,
For the glitter of eyes and face,
For the passionate kiss they had prized so much
And the wonderful old embrace.

So—it may be, for life is strange
And all that one dreams comes true—
They gave up heaven, and took in exchange
The sight of the deeds we do.
Horrible—yes, I have often thought
As I lay here, lonely and sad,
That the sinful terrible deed I wrought
May have made dark angels glad.

Horrible—yet it may be quite true
(And our punishment lies in this)
That the sight of the sinful deeds we do
May bring such ghosts their bliss.

We are not alone—we are compassed round
By a vast beleaguering band
Though we see no vision, and hear no sound,
And feel not a ghostly hand.

Yet they are there, the hosts of the dead:
The bad—for the good fly far;
They yearn not again as of old to tread
On the earth our wild deeds mar;
They pass to a region pure and high,
They enter the gates of gold,
They stoop not down from the starry sky—
'Tis the bad ghosts we behold.

And these, I have thought, must have helped me well,
For the scheme was Satan's plan;
The deed that I did was conceived in hell,
The thought came not from man:
To use the house James gave me in trust
For a deed so base and low—
To degrade his honour, yes to the dust—
To deal him a coward's blow—

That was not the thought of a woman's heart,
Nor yet was it Will's design:—
Bad he was (though a great great part
Of the blame, no doubt, was mine),
Wicked he was, and I was worse,
But the thing, so deep was the shame,
Must have had some evil spirit to nurse
The first dim spark to a flame.

Behind Will's form some devil stood;
Some devilish shape, maybe,
With dark eyes like my own and as good,
Stood triumphing close to me:
Horrible—when we heard no tread,
Safe from fear of surprise,
Devils of hell were close to the bed
And followed us with their eyes.

Worse—we gave them the power to do
In spirit the self-same thing:
Will's kisses not only thrilled me through—
Each warm kiss served as a sting
To the lust of the ghosts, and drew them close,
Pale weird shapes, each to each;
A phantom-husband was there—who knows?—
And a phantom-bride's soft speech.

That was the depth of our sin and shame,
That the very dead came back:
Our love was never our own to claim,
Ghosts were close on our track.
We sinned for others—we gathered flowers
Of sin for the ghosts to wear;
Will made a phantom exult for hours
When he thought he kissed my hair.

They watched our passion, and what we did
They then had the power to achieve:
Nothing was silent, nought was hid;
No mortal can deceive

The cold grey ghosts who glimmering back
Defy for a time the grave,
Seek through our veins the warmth they lack
And the pleasure the sun once gave.

We won for ourselves a rapture? Nay!
We won for the devils a boon:
We gave them what they were wont to pray
In vain of the stars and moon.
We sinned, that they might likewise sin—
They stole our passion's flames;
We played and lost, that they might win;
We gladdened their frozen frames.

But true pure lovers are ever alone—
With the silent stars of the night,
With the new-born lily, the rose new-blown,
With the great sea's large delight.
They lure to their couch no ghosts of the dead,
No spirits about them stand;
No true man kisses a ghost's instead
When he kisses his lady's hand.

Their room is a palace noble and wide,
And holy thoughts are there:
They rest in their palace, side by side,
Safe under the starlit air.

Then they rise, and they greet the morning sun,
And the whole world seems divine;—
Upon earth such rapture may be won,
But it was not Will's and mine.

Would it be a comfort now to James,
I wonder, to know how small
To the heart he loves and the lips he claims
Was the pleasure after all?
He judged us both by himself, no doubt,
So he misjudged Will and me:
In thinking, he left one factor out—
That alters the whole, you see.

He forgot that in him the poet lay
Latent: the poet's heart
Creates by night and creates by day,
Ever breathing the air of Art.
He created pleasure for me and Will
With his active poet's brain;
He created it then—he creates it still—
Our pleasure and his wild pain.

Where is he? Since I received his note
With the one grim terrible word
And the few stern phrases I know by rote
I have never never heard.
A talk with him now would ease my pain,
One last long quiet chat—
Why did he never write again? ...

Second woman:—

I think I can tell you that.
I have heard you speak and I understand,—
What puzzled me once grows clear,—
I have something written in James' own hand—
Your James—and meant for your ear.
Why did he never write? he did—
And his letter is here with me,
Safe, safe under the pillow hid,
And presently you shall see.

It was written to me, but meant for you
On your dying bed to hear;
Every word of the letter's true—
He died just that way, dear.
I found him steeped in blood on the floor,
The letter close to his hand
—Then I loved him, and hated you far more
Than you ever will understand.

You ... so you began the sin—
Did ever a horror, a crime,
Without the help of a woman begin,
From Eve's to our own wild time?
You began it, and handed to me
Vol. I. of the novel of pain,
That the second volume then might be
Written by me, in the main.

And volume the third—ah! who will write
That volume? I think I can tell—
A child, now drawing a child's delight
From a world that will change to hell;
A child, who inherits, so they say,
My beauty—once I was fair:
Volume the third she'll write some day,
And death shall be hero there.

The bitter evil began with you,
But where will it, when will it end?
The leaven you mixed will work right through
Life after life, and extend.
Life after life will sink to hell
Through you; as you die, you will hear
Satan whisper, “You served me well,
And my servant need not fear!

“Fear not, daughter; your crime was one,
One only, but I took heed,
And a thousand dark deeds shall be done
In the strength of that one dark deed.
The man you taught carried on the task
And became a teacher too—”
And who was his pupil? Can you ask?
She speaks from this bed to you.

Yes, I loved him—loved your James—
Loved him, not as you deem,
Not with the love that wounds and shames,
But with love beyond your dream.

I loved him; but all his heart was dead
When my darling came to me:
You stole it, and sent me a stone instead,
But revenge has come, you see.

Both of us, wrecked in the world, are here,
You dying—I brought low—
Hope has vanished from both, that's clear;
Nothing is left to know—
Nothing of misery, nothing of pain,
Save only this, as you die
To say to yourself, “I sowed the grain
And I am the reaper, I.”

But your true love's letter will tell you all—
He was lover to both, it seems;
Yes: you paved the way for my fall
With your wanton selfish dreams!
You taught James to lie, to deceive;
Finely you played your part
When you taught your lover to disbelieve
For ever in woman's heart.

Now listen, hear what your lover says;
It is all written down quite clear—
The long strange record of hopeless days,
And meant, as I said, for your ear,
For he left a post-script addressed to me
And in it he bade me seek
You—so I've searched by land and sea,
Silent: at last I can speak!

He bade me seek you, and show you this,
And watch your face as you read;
Hardly glad as his live warm kiss
Will this dark word be from the dead;
Dark—but a love-word this was to be,
His last love-letter, he says:
If you cannot read it, give it to me,
For I know each turn and each phrase.

Though I feel at nights death's finger-touch
There is life in me left to read,
And my voice will strengthen, maybe, much
If it makes your false heart bleed.
—Listen; our candle's not burnt out;
There is time till the nurse comes in:
“James to his sweetheart”—you, no doubt—
“A story of love and of sin.”

First woman:—

Read it,—the letter was written for me:
He would never have written to you
A letter of that length—I can see
That at the very first view!
Read it: the letter will sting us both,
It will sting you most, it seems;
He gave you only a broken oath,
He gave me his dying dreams.

II. A MAN'S CONFESSION

I.

Ere I plunge into the darkness, fling the gift of life away,
Yet some words my soul would utter: I who cannot love nor pray
Still can lodge my final protest, still with steady nerve can dare,
With the pistol on my table and the pen within my hand,
To hurl forth a final utterance that the world will understand,
And she too, of all fair women whom I found most fickle and fair.

Ere I plunge into the darkness—ere I lull this weary brain
By the cold touch of a bullet into pulseless peace again—
Yet once more, and for the last time, some relief my soul would seek,
Looking Godward, looking lifeward, looking deathward, with clear eyes,
For I pass my sorrow onward; just the brain it is that dies,
But my vengeance yet is living,—giant-throated, this shall speak.

Yea, though I myself be silent, yet my vengeance shall survive,
Deathless ever, active ever, wholly quenchless, wholly alive;
I shall still impress the living, bursting through death's prison bars:

I shall leave the cold dead resting in their dark inactive graves;
I shall flash along the lightning, I shall thunder through the waves,
I shall shine amid the sunlight, I shall glitter through the stars!

Though men struggle to forget me, they shall not forget me—nay,
My strong influence in the wide world shall be greater day by day
For I leave my curse on all things, and a curse can work its will
When a blessing would be powerless in this world of piteous pain,
Would sink down in the dark waters, never seen to rise again
—When love's last star is extinguished, hate's red star shall burn on still.

For I leave my vengeance active in a living human frame,
Operative through a woman—thus I incarnate my aim—
For our child shall grow to beauty, and shall carry on the crime:
When you listened to my love-suit, you conspired to take away
All the starlight from the darkness, all the sunlight from the day,
Aye, to make the whole world sadder through unmeasured lapse of time.

To our child you have given your beauty: to our child I give my brain,—
All the sense of wrong within it, all the throbbing sense of pain;
She shall wreak a noble vengeance on the world of men and things:

As her beauty ever ripens, as it blossoms like a rose,
So, be sure, a dead man's vengeance in the world he has quitted grows,
Ripens into perfect blossom, spreads yet wider steadier wings.

Where the father's hand is powerless, there the daughter's hand can smite,
For the one bears keen sword-anger, but the other brings delight:
When the strong men quailed at Samson, then Delilah brought him low,
And when Sisera went trampling o'er pale thousands in his day,
When nor sword nor lance could reach him, nor could warriors' curses stay,
Just a nail and hammer slew him, and a woman struck the blow.

So our daughter's hand most tender, when she grows to riper years,
Shall add more of pain and sorrow than a host of swords and spears
Ever added, to the total of the world's vast sum of grief:
As through her its sorrow deepens, as through her its pain-pangs grow,
Fear not—I shall be recipient of the rapture, I shall know—
Through my ghostly veins will ripple a large current of relief.

Now to tell you—ere I enter the eternal realm of night—
All my story, all that happened in the regions of the light,
For this world, they say, is sunlit, though the sun for me grew dim:

I would tell you just what happened, that your woman's soul may see
Why I chose you for a scape-goat, why the very heart of me
Changed from hope to hopeless horror, and from love to hatred grim.

Unto you I was as Satan? I had been as Christ to one.
I spread darkness round your footpath? I had been as stars and sun
To another: I had loved her, but had sworn not to degrade.
I was married, I was fettered, but I swore my love should be
If that love were full of passion, full yet more of purity;
Ours should be the grandest love-song Love the poet ever made.

Ours should be the love of angels—love of soul, with nothing base,
Love that craved the kiss of sunlight, and could look God in the face;
What man's past had failed in doing, we two lovers would achieve:
I by perfect noble passion would redeem the race of man;
She by tender perfect passion stay the curse that first began
When love changed to lower feeling in the trembling heart of Eve.

We were helpers of the future, we were love's strong pioneers
Sent to open out a pathway for the use of future years
Through the thickets of wild passion, and love's darkling lowe deeps;

Sent to mankind with this message—“Lo! one pair of lovers, one,
Climbs at last from old-world darkness towards the fair light of the sun,
Dares at last, alone it may be, to attempt love's loftier steeps.”

Ah! those steeps of lofty passion, we would climb them hand in hand:
Though no frail foot dared to follow, though no soul should understand,
We would carry out the Ideal,—here at last on earth should be
One immense love such as Jesus, had he gazed in woman's eyes
With a heart that throbbed with passion, would have brought her from the skies,
Full of fathomless far sunlight, stolen from eternity.

Ours should be the perfect union; yes, the touch of lip or hand,
Mortal, meant immortal union in some unseen heavenly land
Where the God who first designed us would accomplish all things well:
Every joy was but precursor of delights more tender far
—As the one sweet silver vessel which we call the evening star
Is the first of a flotilla vaster far than tongue can tell.

So I dreamed—and then in action strove to carry out the thing;
Toiled to fill her life with sunshine, made her garden in the spring
Golden with the sunny crocus, rich in summer with the rose;

Made her house a fairy palace,—oh! the dainty things we bought,
And each dainty gift the product of some special loving thought—
Oh! through giving, not receiving, a strong man's pure passion grows.

Did a finger ache? I sorrowed. Did she sigh? I was in grief.
Was the trouble real or fancied? Heaven and earth for her relief
I would move, past words delighted when her smile flashed forth again,
For of all sweet smiles of women hers was loveliest, so I deemed:
All her life I shaped to beauty, day and night I only dreamed
Of one thing—how best to shield her from the least slight shadow of pain.

Then there came one day in summer—how the sun shone out that day!—
When my heart, for ever pondering how to please her, found a way:—
We had seen, bright in a hot-house, on the afternoon before
Such a wonderful white lily,—in its London home it dreamed
Doubtless of the tropic sunshine, and of sister-flowers that gleamed
White against the dark-green foliage, on some far-off tropic shore.

I would buy it, I would bear it down in triumph—yes, that night!—
To the little house in Chelsea,—in the morning pure and white
In the flower-box at her window it should shine against the sun:

She should wake and she should find it, guess whose hand had placed it there,
Stirred the mould, and set it deeply with such loving thought and care
—So the sudden scheme flashed through me,—and no sooner schemed, than done.

Off I hastened—bought the lily—and that night beneath the moon
Climbed up softly to her window, while the gentle air of June
Breathed soft perfume round about me from the clove pinks and the stocks
—Standing safely on a broad limb of the shadowy chestnuttree
Set the pure white lily firmly where she could not fail to see
In the centre of the blossoms in the blue-tiled window-box.

Then I stooped one foot, descending through the chestnut's leafy gloom,
But ... I stopped—a thrill shot through me ... were there voices in the room?...
Should I look? for through the crevice of the blind I well might see—
Should I look? or should I banish the dark cursed thought and go,
The cold cursed thought that froze me, and that blocked my pulses' flow?
So I doubted, and the moment was a soul's eternity.

Then I looked—and saw quite plainly, for the gas was burning there
Turned half down, a woman smiling, with her neck and bosom bare,
Half reclining and half sitting,—standing close beside her one,
Handsome, evil-eyed, dark-bearded—the girl's lover, that was plain:
Twice I looked, and still I doubted—but I did not look again,
For I heard her say, “My darling!” What of doubt was left me? None.

Then I felt as if all history had been leading up to this,
To the horror of their rapture, to the horror of their kiss,
Even from the far-off shaping of the golden firstling star:
God had set the worlds in motion—in my madness, so it seemed—
Just to torture me and damn me, made the moon for this that gleamed
Through the window, on their curtain leaving one long silver bar.

Fragrance came up from the garden,—still the roses there were fair,
Still the sweet heart of the summer breathed its bounty through the air,
Doubtless in the houses round us slept true wives in many a room;
But within me from that moment grew a darkness far more deep
Than the darkness of the mountains where the sombre stormclouds sleep,
And a depth of horror deeper than the wild sea's deepest tomb.

Daily has the horror deepened,—it has made the summer strange,
On all faces round about me stamped a darkness and a change,
Made my thoughts unreal within me, and the world outside me dim:
If I see a pure sweet woman, then I mark within her face
Signs of deadly treason coming—yea, in all men I can trace
Something of the devil's likeness, being of one sex with him.

Ah, true madness had been mercy! there is madness of a kind
Worse beyond all words and sadder, though the eyes of men are blind
To its agony and horror, than the madness counted such.
Can a man be sane for ever, though God's angels round him came
Thronging with their gifts of comfort, who in one wild flash of flame
Has beheld his life's one darling slay a life's love at a touch?

Yes, a deadlier sword of anguish passed throughout my soul that night,
Though the whole blue heaven above me was a maze of starry light
And the earth seemed one wide altar on that balmy night of June,—
Yes, a keener pang shot through me than the pang the sailor feels
On the lonely midnight ocean, when his ship beneath him reels
And he sees the white-lipped breakers in the pale light of the moon.

Figures fail one—weak are figures—for the soul it is that gives
Life its rapture and its horror; not to every man who lives
Comes that one grim deadly moment when the live God disappears,—
When the soul is left to travel Godless, loveless, to its doom,
With God gulfed within the darkness of a never-opening tomb
And love buried in the blackness of the unreturning years.

Miles I wandered in my madness, hardly heeding where I went,
Till I found myself at Richmond, with the darkness well nigh spent;
All the air seemed full of triumph, for another night was done:
Clear as on the mountain-summits or the waste sea's boundless foam,
Pure as ever over Venice, golden as on stately Rome,
Over sin-stained weary London rose the splendour of the sun.

II.

There it rose, the golden sun-flame, changeless since it poured its light
Over chaos, hurling arrows through the dark heart of the night;
Changeless since its fiery splendour lit the first blue surging deep:
Changeless since it changed the waters of the first sea into gold,
Watching over the sea-desert where no ship's sail flashed of old;
Changeless since it saw creation quit the depths of shoreless sleep.

There it shone, the mighty sun-flame, changeless ever and supreme;
Changeless since it saw the blossoms on the banks of Eden gleam;
Changeless since the first rose loved it, since that rose's heart was won—
For the rose had feared the darkness, but the darkness passed away,
For the conquering sun's great passion had created glowing day,
And it kissed the first rose, saying, “Lo! thy bridegroom is the sun.”

There it beamed, the eternal sun-flame, changeless since the rivers heard
In the far-off past its mandate and obeyed the solar word,
Leaping down the craggy mountains, each with laughter on its tongue:
Changeless since the primal forest with its wilderness of boughs
Felt the sun within its branches rest and revel and carouse,
Then when Nature was a maiden, when her eyes and lips were young.

There it flashed, the wondrous sun-fire, changeless since the ancient days
When on woodland after woodland, silent mountains, shipless bays,
Houseless meadows, voiceless prairies, reed-swamps brown before and dun,

Came its light to colour all things and its giant voice to say,
“Mighty were the works of darkness, mightier am I far than they;
Rise and worship at my footstool, am not I your lord the sun?”

Strong as ever, grand as ever, since the far-off wondrous day
When the first man rose to worship, as it dawned amid the grey
Rolling vapours, and the first man knew the deadly night was done,—
Knew the stars were but as servants, knew the night was but a dream,
Knew the god of the gold arrows was the god o'er all supreme,
Rose erect and glad to worship and to bow before the sun.

Full of peerless light for ever, changeless since the wondrous hour
When, while Eden all around them at his touch brake into flower,
Morning saw the first fair woman and her bridegroom wholly one;
While a voice from the far morning said, “Ye dreamed within the night,
But the stars' pale dreams are over—Now embrace beneath my light!
Am not I the lord of passion, as of all things, I the sun?”

Changeless ever, though creation since has passed before its gaze;
Not defrauded of an arrow, never baffled in its blaze,
Though the hearts of men were broken and were bowed beneath its light:
Never dimming its full splendour, though the hearts of men were dim;
Fields where battle's thousands weltered, desperate shipwreck, murder grim,
What were these unto the sun's heart? Hardly a passing shadow of night.

Morn by morn for countless ages has its glory risen the same;
Still it swallows the wild darkness in its torrid gulf of flame;
Still the eternal sun is victor, still it triumphs in its might:
Taking over from the darkness all its sorrow, all its dreams,
Still it mocks them with its sunlight,—as it mocks the starry gleams,
Till the trembling star-ships founder in the ocean of its light.

And that morning over London, as I stood on Richmond Hill,
I could see the great sun rising—but the darkness' horror still
Bore my heart down, even deadlier for the splendour of its light.
What had happened in the darkness? Could the pure and lordly sun
Take no umbrage at the foulness of the deed that had been done?
Was he heedless of the horrors, the adulteries, of the night?

Yes, he poured his golden glory over houses, towers, and trees:
Through the foliage round about me sighed a gentle summer breeze:
One would think in all God's kingdom there were no such thing as night!
At my feet the grasses quivered, and the daisies on the bank
Seemed to whisper, “Lo! he rises, grander far than when he sank;
Virgin are we for the sun's kiss, see our robes of snowy white!”

Far away the river glittered, bright beneath the morning sun;
It was flowing straight towards London, where the deadly deed was done
Which had made for me the darkness wholly victor over light,—
Flowing onward, ever onward, never faltering in its flow:
Though the hearts of men are broken, though our hopes may fade and go,
Never one blue ripple pauses in its ocean-seeking flight.

River, sun, they both are heartless—though a million sins were done
Doubtless last night in the city, does it matter to the sun?
Is the sun's pure virgin lustre marred by foulness of the night?
Is the sun one whit less joyous, as he shakes his golden hair,
Laughing, loose upon the tide-stream of the sinless morning air,
In that murder's face is quailing from before his piercing light?

In the night, in London's darkness, maybe murder has been done;
Lo! a body, gashed and bleeding, prostrate lies before the sun;
'Tis the body of a woman, hacked to pieces in the night:
But the sun smiles at the windows of the live ones just the same,
Glitters on the happy bridegroom, cheers the agéd with his flame,
Greets the swans upon the water with a flash of loving light.

Oh! of all things dark and deadly is there, tell me, is there one
Quite so dark and quite so deadly as the brightness of the sun,
Sent to tell us that all evil has for ever taken flight?
—This it should tell—but it tells us that for ever evil reigns,
That for ever and for ever sin's red dripping dagger stains
Even the glory of the sunrise with its streaks of lurid light.

This it tells us—that in London, when the empire of the sun
Ceases, then the darkling empire of some devil is begun,
Till the moon grows pale for horror and the stars give little light:
Was there ever horror deadlier than the horror that has changed
All my soul into a furnace full of hell-fire, and estranged
All my being, yes for ever, from the faith in God and right?

Now the glory of the sunlight, heightening ever, maybe falls
On the house wherein I left them—now it lights their bed-room walls
And they wake, not knowing death's hand was so near them in the night:

For the hand of love is death's hand, when the deadly deed is done
That in one man's heart for evermore extinguishes the sun
And for evermore must poison even the sources of the light.

Ah! they knew not—little matter—let them wake and smile and kiss
In the very room I gave her—let them seek a moment's bliss,
Even one wild other moment at the ending of the night!
Well it was to leave them living; it is life that must repay,
And their future bears a dagger, since I threw my own away,
And made over into Fate's hand mine, the lover's final right.

Let them wake, and let him leave her—let her gently then begin
To forget him for a moment and to turn her thoughts from sin,
Making ready to receive me, when some hours have winged their flight:
Let it be—she will seem lovelier in the fragrant afternoon
Of this lovely month of sinless spotless balmy perfect June
For the kisses of her lover and the pleasures of the night.

In the afternoon she expects me,—she would let me enter there;
She would let me bend and kiss her, kiss her throat and raven hair;
On her cheeks no blush would mantle (Did her cheeks blush in the night?)
She would greet me even gladly, with a gladness hardly feigned;
She would show the broken lily, sorrow at its beauty stained,
Grieve at soils upon the petals that were once so pure and white.

She would tell me how she found it lying there beneath the sun,
Wondered how the stalk was broken, how the sad sad deed was done
—Now the sun has wholly risen, and all London basks in light:
But for me the night has fallen; for my spirit evermore
Will be darkness over London, over mountain, sea, and shore,—
Darkness mute and everlasting—I am lost within the night!

So I thought, in the wild anguish of that far-off summer morn
When my hope was changed to horror and my love of God to scorn,
When I saw the devil victor and before him God abased.
Through the months that followed after I lived on, though I despaired:
Then I met you in the autumn, very lovely, raven-haired,
Brown-eyed, girlish, lithe of figure, bright of heart and soul, and—chaste.

Chaste—the one word brought my vengeance, clear at last, before my sight.
Of one sex, you, with the sinner, she who in one single night
Had slain God within his palace, murdered Christ behind the stars—
Of one sex, you, with the woman whom of all I loved alone
Might by loving me bring vengeance, might by loving me atone,
Might let daylight through the window of my prison, atween the bars.

Annie—just the very name, too—just the name that I adored,
Just the name that I had worshipped, brought in prayer before the Lord,
Many and many a time invoking sweetest blessings on her head:
Annie—you, the second Annie, should be bearer of the sin
Of the raven-haired first Annie—I would strain each nerve to win
All your soul as she had won mine, she who left it dark and dead.

Could I love you? did it matter? You should love me—that was all!
You were good and chaste and noble (so was I once)—you should fall.
I would carry out God's purpose—I, the witness of his plan.
I had watched him work in London—I could do the very same
In the country in October, I could plot a woman's shame
Just as cunningly as he did; there is genius, even in man!

God was far away, safeguarded—he who wrought the monstrous crime;
He who wrought the woman's nature, shaping it from endless time,
Working in it leaven of darkness, through unknown ancestral ways
Guiding down the stream of evil that should issue in the sea
Of vast horror that had driven all the manhood out of me,
All the manhood, all the godhead, all the dreams of summer days.

God was far away, safeguarded by his angel-armies, there
Far above the loftiest summit, far beyond the starlit air,
Safe, far out of reach, defiant—he who labouring in the gloom,
He who toiling, ever toiling, had amassed the ancestral force
That within one woman's nature took to-day its certain course;
He who built up passion's rapture, then set frenzy in its room:

He who saw my prayers mount upward, pure and snowy-winged and strong—
Bent in seeming to receive them, took vast trouble to prolong
All the glory and the beauty and the splendour of my dream;
He who watched the years of sorrow and the years of passion chained
And the anguish of the spirit that for love's own sake refrained,
Far he was beyond the storm-clouds, past the farthest starry gleam!

Him I could not reach for ever—I could carry on his plan:
I a dwarf, a human pigmy, I a mere frail son of man,
I could imitate his manner, I could sin as well as he:—
True he wrote in blood, the master—I could write a line in lake;
True he slew his millions daily—here was one for me to take,
Just one woman; I could help him to blot out her purity.

I could do as I had been done by, I could render back to God
All the darkness of that morning when the great sun golden-shod
Sprang up radiant over London and my soul was full of night:

I a human weak mere trifler, I a mortal, child of time,
I could make my vengeance deathless, I could sin a sin sublime,
I could keep one corner hell-dark, though the whole world swam in light.

God had changed a woman's nature, he had given a woman's frame
To a villain to make sport of, he had given to sin and shame
Her my whole life's love and darling, he had led me to despair—
Should I shrink now, should I waver? I could make the ruin spread;
I could tear the wreath of blossoms from another sinless head;
Lo! a heart with heaven within it—I could plant hell's horror there.

Was no pity left within me? No: sweet pity's soul was slain
In the darkness everlasting, in the unsounded gulf of pain,
Far beyond the faintest comfort or the smallest gleam of light.
Pity dies of inanition, withers wholly—that is well:
Nought survives but blindest instinct, soulless craving—that is hell;
In man's soul the eternal horror, round his path the eternal night.

Oh! they speak of Christ's redemption and they prate about his woe:
Could his pity ever reach me, could he help and lift me? No.
Far beyond the reach of Jesus, I had sunk within the deep.

Though he rose up on that vessel on the Galilean sea,
Stilled the waves and angry tempest, he would wake not now for me;
He was powerless, nought could rouse him from two thousand years of sleep.

He had vanished, he was helpless, lost amid the mists of time;
God his Father stood convicted of the authorship of crime;
Nothing right was left to lean on, nothing hopeful to believe.
From the far-off sunny morning when the red-gold apple swung
Tempting woman's lips and fancy every human action hung
Poised in flawless chain of sequence, dating from the folly of Eve.

From the night when Adam kissed her, through the ages as they swept
Ever darkening ever onward as sin's turbid torrents leapt
Down the channel of human history, not one chance had been for man:—
All was certain, fixed and deadly. God the living lord of crime
Sat serene above the crime-floods, heedless, cruel, vast, sublime,
And the bitter death of Jesus was one portion of his plan.

Every death was fixed and certain, every rose's wasted bloom,
Every human cry of horror, every tear shed at a tomb;
Every sword had left its scabbard at the high God's certain call:
Yes, the human will might struggle, but the end was foreordained,
Sure, inevitable, monstrous; yes, our human swords were stained,
But the sword of the Creator was the reddest sword of all.

And my darling in that bed-room—human hands had wrought the deed?
Never! straight from God our anguish, our pollution, must proceed:
He it was whose lips had kissed her and had left her beauty blurred;
He it surely was—none other—who with lewd hand had seduced
Her I worshipped, her I died for,—who had seen her tresses loosed,
Who had felt her warm lips moisten, who exulted when she erred.

Loving Jesus could not help me; who had helped him when he died,
When he felt the cold spear traverse with its iron point his side?
Who had leant from heaven to help him, when he murmured “I despair”?
No: the truth was clear and certain. God was helpless in the sky;
Either helpless, or else wicked. Christian creeds were just a lie.
Not one human moan brought answer from the heights of starlit air.

Clear and certain seemed the truth then,—yes, the wicked must succeed.
I had worshipped truth and beauty, acted up to love's own creed,
Prayed and suffered for the woman, chained up passion for her sake:

What was my reward, God's answer? Just to fling her body down
For the human lustful devil to dishonour and discrown;
God had smiled upon the villain, let the true man's whole heart break.

That was justice, that was mercy, that was God's most noble deed—
Thus to let the wicked triumph, and the hideous wrong succeed;
Thus to bend at Satan's footstool, and to make the righteous bend.
This it was to trust Jehovah and to lean upon his word:
Surely of every faith the bible's was most amply proved absurd,
For the Lord of heaven was hostile, or at best a feeble friend.

Many came and proffered comfort—“Lean on loving God,” they said:
(Oh! the horror of the mockery, for the loving God was dead;
He had vanished from my vision, and a Fiend ruled in his room!)
“Trust the deathless love of Jesus—he has suffered for our sakes,
He is surely close and helpful; when the human sad heart breaks,
Lo! his sun of love is shining on the outskirts of the gloom.

“He has suffered—worse than you do—he has borne our every pain;
He has loved—and more than you did—he has died, and he will reign
Now in endless light for ever with the Father there on high

Where each sorrow is wholly ended, where each sin is put away,
Where the night is merged for ever in the glory of the day:
He can soften every anguish, he can soothe our every sigh.

“He, the tender-hearted Saviour, has exhausted human grief:
His most holy pain was endless—yours, a human pang, is brief;
In the Garden did not blood-drops from his suffering forehead flow?
Is there any pang he knows not? any wound he cannot heal?
Take your trouble to the Saviour—he is human, he can feel:
He has drunk the cup of anguish, he has drained the dregs of woe.”

How the whole soul spurned the comfort, for the love of truth was there!
Something strong and pure and godlike through the anguish of despair
Spoke out straight and stern and solemn—“What of Jesus? Could he know,
He who never felt the wonder of a woman's loving kiss,
Passion's rapture, passion's torture, passion's madness, passion's bliss?
Had he seen a woman's dagger slay his Father at a blow?

“How could he, the gentle Jesus who ‘exhausted human pain,’
Ever comprehend the madness that surged wildly through my brain
When I stood and watched the sunrise on that perfect summer morn?

When the sun had power to ravish all wide Nature with its light,
Not the power in one man's spirit to exterminate the night,
All the horror and defiance, all the fierceness and the scorn.

“Had he loved in strong men's manner, had he loved with sweet desire
(Noble, pure as heaven—conceded!)—had his heart with passion's fire
Ever flamed out and exulted, ever throbbed and ever glowed,
Had he loved in man's strong fashion, then and only then, I say,
Could his heart have apprehended what one human heart that day
Felt of fathomless wild anguish,—had he trodden the self-same road.

“Ah! if Jesus in the night-time, in the garden where his brow
Dripped with deathless holy blood-drops—so the Churches tell us now—
If he, loving in man's fashion Mary, Mary Magdalene—
If he, gazing through the branches of the olive-thickets there,
Had seen Judas kiss her bosom and his hand caress her hair,
Gazing—gazing—ever gazing—through the thickets' leafy screen:

“If he gazing, ever gazing, with eyes fastened to the spot,
Had seen Mary's sweet face changing as she swiftly there forgot,
Spurred by force and stress of passion, all the lessons he had taught;
If he gazing, ever gazing, had within the traitor's eyes
Marked the triumph of his treason and the triumph of his lies,
Joy of triumph over Mary, joy of every lustful thought:

“If he gazing, ever gazing (God, will my eyes ever cease
To behold what once I gazed at, till the deep grave brings me peace?”)—
If he gazing, ever gazing, had beheld the woman bend
Kissing Judas on the forehead, and had heard the woman say,
‘Jesus is my friend and teacher and I love him in the day,
But at night I love you, darling—you are dearer than a friend!’

“If he, ever gazing, listening, had with horror seen and heard
What I picture, what I speak of, then I grant you might a word
Real and straight and clear of Jesus with some aptitude have rung.
No: his life was spared the horror. Through the darkness when he died
Came no sense that one he worshipped would be sleeping at the side,
Yes, that very night, of Judas, while upon the cross he hung.

“Not a sense that, while the starlight watched him slowly growing pale,
While the red blood slowly stiffened round the sides of every nail,
She he worshipped would be dreaming, not of heavenly life begun,
Only of the traitor's kisses—that the morning would disclose
Jesus dead upon the gibbet, Mary blushing as a rose
Blushes at the morning message of the warm lips of the sun.”

Others brought me other comfort—comfort—comfort of a kind!
Saying, “God is very loving, though the eyes of man are blind;
In the flesh she has erred against you, in the body she has sinned,
But the soul is safe for ever; stately, queenly, virgin-pure,
This in heaven will surely wait you, so you struggle and endure:
All her real self she will give you”—but such words passed like the wind.

“As a spirit she will love you, as an angel very fair
She will wait beyond the sunset, or within the bright blue air”:—
Could that help me? could that lift me? could that stay the stroke of doom?
If she gave me all her beauty in the life beyond the grave
Would that change the fact of horror that on earth she freely gave
To a villain all her sweetness, all her pure soft earthly bloom?

What is soul, and what is spirit? No, the villain after all
Wins the beauty of the woman, is exalted by her fall;
He obtains what he has toiled for, his reward is large and grand.
Woman gives him what he longs for,—gives the villain his delight
Through the sweet wild frenzied moments of the starlit summer night:
Judas kisses where he pleases—Jesus may but kiss her hand.

Yes: the villain is the victor. If through centuries of pain,
She an angel, I an angel, I may win her, still 'tis plain
Then there will be something wanting, somewhat even then amiss.

Still the angel is the loser, and the selfish soul that sins,
Wastes, destroys, defiles, dishonours, is the happy soul who wins:
The good shepherd wins affection, but the robber wins the kiss.

So I sinned—with noble fulness—took you wholly to my heart;
Used, to conquer you and win you, all love's boundless ceaseless art—
Love and passion simulated, for my power of love was gone:—
Won the prize methinks the sooner, being in earnest now no more;
When a man's too much in earnest, on himself he shuts the door;
Let his passion seem nigh setting—soon will woman's passion dawn!

Then I felt, deep in my spirit, when the sweet strange sin was done,
What the dim woods feel in autumn at the swift touch of the sun,—
Something radiant, something sun-bright, seemed to flash along my soul:
For my soul had changed its posture—sin no longer seemed the same;
Woman now was not an angel, but a tigress-heart to tame;
Man was hunter, no more lover, and hell's portal was the goal.

There was rapture in the darkness, there was glory now in crime;
Aye, the deadlier now the sinning, by so much the more sublime
Did it seem to one soul-maddened, spirit-frenzied and distraught:—

All the sins of all the nations were one sin within my brain:
Having ruined you and wrecked you, what a victory I should gain!
All the Roman emperors' passions would clink glasses in my thought.

All the crimes of ancient Venice, where within the summer gloom
On one side an arras waited in the glory of her bloom
Often, moulded so divinely, some sweet woman wondrous fair,
On the other side the dagger that should curtly with its gleam
Veto kisses, cool caresses, and bring death into the dream,
Leaving just a stiff dead body on the marble palace-stair—

All the crimes of ancient Venice, where one knew not what might be,
Beauty's kiss, or coward's stiletto,—then a plunge within the sea
Of a corpse at sullen midnight,—or again at perfect morn
Glances full of eager passion from dark eyes of lovely light,
Love begotten in the sunshine and accomplished in the night,
Or a cast-off lover poisoned, when love changes into scorn—

All the old Italian love-crimes, all, I now should understand:
See Lucretia Borgia waiting with the poison in her hand;
Feel the rapture in my spirit that a thousand lovers felt;
Goodness surely had its glory—sin was full of rapture too,
And that rapture I would fathom. Just as goodness once I knew,
So I now would know its converse—let the cards be freshly dealt!

Yes, of all the prizes waiting, all the soul of man can win,
Is there any prize so noble as the prize they call a sin?
Even the pureness of a woman for the immense unspoken prize:
Her to chase and her to conquer—her to tempt sweet day by day,
Till at last with rush of rapture all her soul she flings away
And you know yourself victorious by the hunger in her eyes.

If God kept this prize from Jesus, yet he has another son
And an elder, even Satan, and he loves him—though we shun
In our timid folly Satan, yet God loves him passing well:
Jesus is the younger only; on the elder God bestows
Not the lily, not the snowdrop, but the fiery-glowing rose,
Even woman—born that Satan might decoy her into hell.

God gave empire unto Jesus, many a rapture vast and grand,
Made him ruler of the nations, lord of many a lovely land,
Him the ages still shall worship, to the very end of time;
But to Satan God gave rapture far diviner even than this—
Woman's soul and woman's body, woman's worship, woman's kiss:
Jesus wins the worn-out beauties, Satan wins them in their prime.

—Then another thought. 'Twas something, I a mortal, I so small,
Still to feel that I could wrestle with the living Lord of all;
That in me the weak blind mortal there was somewhat strangely strong:

Just a verse or two, a stanza, of my poem, it might be
(Even as you hear a gull's cry through the storm-wind and the sea)
Might be heard for all God's chanting, might outsound the Eternal's song.

I, confused, defeated, battered, wrecked and ruined—I, distraught,
Still maintained intact within me one indomitable thought,
Even the thought that where was justice there was heaven, and where were lies
There was hell and there was Satan: aye, though Satan still might pose
As a God within the Churches, with a surplice like the snows
And his hands upon the thunder and the fire-bolts of the skies.

I could dwell within the forest of my dark thoughts, in the cave
Of mine anguish, silent, lonely as the lone rock in the wave:—
Though God flashed the stars like torches all across the midnight air,
I could darken still my cavern—or could bid my lantern shine
Unextinguished for his starlight; cave and lantern both were mine,
Mine the majesty of sorrow, mine the kinghood of despair.

That is all—my heart seems easier—that is all I have to say;
Life is strange—I cannot right it save by flinging life away
As a man's stern strong last protest, as a man's firm clear appeal

To the Power that lies behind God, if such Power indeed there be,
Even as the mightier storm-wind is behind the mightiest sea—
To the Power that solves the secrets that the viewless years conceal.

Now I pass into the darkness. Will the darkness of death's night
Ever open out before me, and reveal a wondrous light?
Shall I cast my burden from me, as the sun casts off night's gloom?
Truly I know not, but I enter the vast darkness without fear:
Not one star is left to light me through life's utter blackness here;
Have the stars, maybe, migrated to the skies beyond the tomb?

Second woman:—
She's quiet—the candle's quite burnt out—
The moon falls soft on her face;
Is she living still? ... I almost doubt ...
She must once have had beauty, grace.
I can see the charm that drew James on,
I can understand her fall:
If she looked like that when the moonlight shone,
I can understand it all!