Poems By Richard Chenevix Trench: New ed |
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THE WORLD. |
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136
THE WORLD.
‘O beauteous world, what features fair
Thine needs would show beyond compare,
If it were possible to find
Thy glories all in one combined!
Show me, O Lord, the world—the bright
Fair world reveal unto my sight.’
Thine needs would show beyond compare,
If it were possible to find
Thy glories all in one combined!
Show me, O Lord, the world—the bright
Fair world reveal unto my sight.’
Such prayer the young man made, whose way
Soon after through the desert lay,
Where he far off a woman spied,
Wandering, by none accompanied.
‘Who art thou?’ he exclaimed.—“In me
See her whom thou hast longed to see.”
—‘What meanest thou?’ More plain reply
This time she made—“The World am I.”
—‘Then let me see thy countenance fair,
Whose beauty doth all hearts ensnare.’
She from her face the veil withdrew,
And straight the hidden was in view;
A visage painted all and bleared,
Where signs of all things foul appeared:
One bloody hand she raised on high,
Crooked was the other and awry.
‘How? what is this?’ he shuddering
Exclaimed—‘What mean'st thou, loathsome thing?’
“I with this bloody hand,” she said,
“Strike evermore my lovers dead:
That crookëd hand its shape has won
With beckoning new lovers on;
Those ever hurl I forth with might,
And these with sorceries I invite.
Myself must wonder, being so,
I never dearth of lovers know.”
—‘But tell me yet, how this may be,
That when such thousands wait on thee
Already, thou dost ever seek
More lovers still?’ She then did speak:
“Though these be many, never yet
A man among them have I met;
Who rightly bear of man the name,
My company avoid like shame;
And thus remain I desolate,
Even while on me such thousands wait.”
Soon after through the desert lay,
Where he far off a woman spied,
Wandering, by none accompanied.
‘Who art thou?’ he exclaimed.—“In me
See her whom thou hast longed to see.”
—‘What meanest thou?’ More plain reply
This time she made—“The World am I.”
—‘Then let me see thy countenance fair,
Whose beauty doth all hearts ensnare.’
She from her face the veil withdrew,
And straight the hidden was in view;
A visage painted all and bleared,
Where signs of all things foul appeared:
One bloody hand she raised on high,
Crooked was the other and awry.
‘How? what is this?’ he shuddering
Exclaimed—‘What mean'st thou, loathsome thing?’
137
“Strike evermore my lovers dead:
That crookëd hand its shape has won
With beckoning new lovers on;
Those ever hurl I forth with might,
And these with sorceries I invite.
Myself must wonder, being so,
I never dearth of lovers know.”
—‘But tell me yet, how this may be,
That when such thousands wait on thee
Already, thou dost ever seek
More lovers still?’ She then did speak:
“Though these be many, never yet
A man among them have I met;
Who rightly bear of man the name,
My company avoid like shame;
And thus remain I desolate,
Even while on me such thousands wait.”
My brother, let her answer be
Deep graven on thy memory:
A man, my brother, wouldst thou prove,
Far keep thee from this beldame's love.
Deep graven on thy memory:
A man, my brother, wouldst thou prove,
Far keep thee from this beldame's love.
| Poems | |