 | The house of the titans and other poems |  |
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THE DARK LADY
O, no, I was not wanton with that man.But to his imaginations, yes. I made
Myself a hundred natures. It is writ,
My myriad girlhood, in that printed page.
Or was it I? Did I but play the part
His magic plotted for me? Did he know
That his imaginations lived in me
And swayed me to be one of their own kind,
To act the bawd for whom an emperor
Might cast his world away: or it might be
A maid to whom the world had never come,
All-innocent upon a fairy isle?
Yet at the court of the great queen I had
But one disdainful face, however many
Wild hearts might beat within me: and high lords
And admirals, who had wrecked Armadas, were
Wrecked on a flinty look. O, I remember.
My heart swoons to think upon that hour,
When a young learnèd gentleman, his head
Dizzy with gaudy words that had caught fire
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The latest prince of speech. And I was swept,
Half laughing and half scornful, to my fate.
Yet I had not been one hour in the room
Ere I was lit by many torches, and
Knew, being in that humble lodging-house,
That I had come unto a lordlier court
Than the great queen's, a court where kings and princes
Robeless could awe by their own majesty,
Or, being bare to the spirit, seemed as low
As if they had not legions at their call.
And there were elves that frolicked in his thought,
And giddy knaves whose very sins seemed rooted
In a wild nature, and might win them heaven
To make laughter for angels. I knew a man
Who held these very knaves had much to teach us
As the apostles: and we would lose less
Missing the queen of the dawn out of the myths,
Juno, with grave eyes under heavenly brows
And proud, starred peacocks, than if his rascal Jack
Had never lived in story. Not at once
Did I know all. No man will ever know
The mystery of his being, of multitudes
Within one spirit. Yet I knew from the first
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Taking immortal bodies from sweet sounds,
Leaping into our thought as the gay moon,
A slippery dancer, reels from wave to wave.
He had hardly spoken ere a spirit of his
Had flashed within me, and I had made answer
Out of its nature. He turned upon me eyes
So wonder-wise, so humorous-kind, that I
Was melted from my art of dignity
And became once more the laughing girl who ran
Under her father's elms, who knew no rank
But life; jesting with folly; with her wit
Pelting both lords and grooms. O, the sweet play,
When all the delicate spirit's aflame, and points
With its own fire the airy rapier, nor knows
In that obscurity of delight the end
That it desires, the point in the other's breast.
For we are both half fearing and half faining
The exquisite anguish of our piercèd heart.
So flashed our speech. The first of many times.
I had not more easily as a small child
Told my heart stories than I could to him
Tell everything in thought, as if he were
An ampler, wiser heart-nurse to myself.
And though I was all love I shrank from that,
The mating of lips and body, lest having all
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Be absent from his court. And when I was
Within myself, the angels of wisdom and love
Held passionate council in me. I was rent
By images of love and by their martyrdoms,
For I had buried many an image deep
In the heart's doubt what would be noble to do.
And for there was that warfare in me the girl
Was ripened to full woman. I looked back
Upon the woman I had been before
As she upon her childhood. I was, I think,
The only creature that by flesh and blood
Entered the court of his spirit: and all others
Came through some crystal mystic gate unto
The throne of his heart as vassals might, and left
Not tribute of pearl, ivory or gold
But breathed their very spirits into him
That he would dress as emperors and clowns,
Play one against another. I do believe
The mighty dead from unimagined homes
Dreamed back their greatness and their frailty,
The very lion-front that awed the world,
Shaking it by the thunder of words that fell
From the imperious heaven of the high will.
And how could it be other? We are not gods
To create life, and only what is given us
Order and rule. I know it, I, that was
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Ere he had spoken, find living in myself
His latest imagination, the very trick
Of its mad mood, and hear it afterwards
Dressed in the actor's body cry on a stage.
If it was so with me, might he not be
A hostel for all life? For some design,
I know not what. Perhaps that we who play
Upon our surfaces might pry more deep
In our rich mystery, the way be pointed
That life must travel. I thought it so, that he
Was magicked by the gods for their design,
And I was handmaid to it. O how frail
The instruments the gods must use in us!
There came to the queen's court their masterpiece,
A boy that stayed the breath, all glow and fire,
Unflawed, so airy ivory of limb
He might have leaped from an archangel's dream.
And was it destiny that two such wonders
Of soul and body should meet, be to each other
Mystery and enchantment: beauty that had
No soul but beauty itself: and the wise soul,
Baffled in reading where there was not mind,
Fell into dreaming, and at last was stayed
On the body's miracle. And I grew sick
Seeing the dawn of an unnatural love,
The kind that marred the Grecian genius, and closed
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With Homer's tale. I cried upon myself
As all corrupt to so misread the eyes
That rested on the boy, or the sweet words.
But when I knew that I had not misread,
O, what heart-shaking, what deep fountains of scorn
Or pity broke out like madness. I lay awake
Buffeted by fierce winds from heaven and hell,
Searching the blackness of my night for God.
And knew not whether God or devil counselled,
Self-love, or love that crucifies itself,
Or anguish of long-stemmed desire to have
What passes from it. But I thought to stay
That love unnatural lest his spirit's walls
Should thicken, and there be a solitude
In that high court. And I used every art
Of heart and body and gave the body to him,
And had no joy in giving. The holy fires
Whereof the Elohim compounded us
If they glow not to one pure breathing, but
Are all disordered, war in us and burn us
By hurt of beauty or love, or wisdom cries,
A mourner in the thick of erring delight.
And he to whom I was no mystery,
But a dear friend, stayed not his heart on me,
For that infinitude of his wide mind,
Searching ever for the undiscovered heart,
Wandered away from me unto that one
Beautiful, baleful and uncharted star
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And a new madness shook me, making me
All pitiless, with a mad woman's will
To win her way even if soul be lost.
And all affections in me, made bitter, changed
In dark reverse unto their opposites.
I was as one who hears an angel sing
To a sweet lute, then turns to her dark angel
To sing the same song to the trembling strings,
And pure and holy are made poisonous.
When we are maddened, and the goblins in us
Riot in incredible loves and hates,
I do not know if god or demon guides
The storm while we are blinded. I was not
The same although I moved to the same end.
For now I was all hopeless in love, yet played
With all my woman's art upon the boy,
Meeting him in palace chambers or
In garden alleys. I was I know not what
Unconquered and rich wonder to his youth
That had won all easily before, but now
Met but a lovely mockery when he prayed;
And the unravished beauty was to him,
As with that other, the sole star of the heart.
And so I drew him, half forgetting at times
My purpose, for he was a masterpiece
Of heaven, and how sweet to play with, till
My purpose and some wildness in my blood
Conspired together. I yielded to him, became
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And one, the outer image of a god.
And in intoxication of conquest the boy
Wore all a victor's airs with me until
Even rumour had no further secrets to tell.
And then at last one day I met the other
And he had known, and never was there face
So ravaged, and my heart in every beat
Let rain a drop all fiery red. There was
I know not what wild pity in my eyes,
And the god knows that at no other time
Was I so lost from myself, so terribly his.
Yet at his anguished words I wore the air
Of one bred in the gay court of the world
Above the ceremony by which the herd
Order their ways, one who took carelessly
This love or that, and knew no obligation
But to win fuel to keep high one's fire.
He could not read me, my heart-aching humour—
For I was not then in his heart that never
Misread, but only an apparition to his eyes—
When I likened myself to him, the myriad-minded
Who gathered knaves and heroes with like love
To snatch the inmost secret of them, so I,
Seeking as rich a wisdom, must, being woman,
Who win only by the body, search the soul
At its full tide in the completeness of love,
When, to the vigilant spirit, it is quick
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Spirits enough to be a mate for him
Learned in so many hearts. He threw at me
A single word. I, who had masked my soul
As the proud queen of harlots to deceive,
Was yet angered he should be credulous,
And all that was still virginal in me,
And all my passion he should be deceived,
Cried furiously in bitter and wild speech
That spurned him. When god and devil through one voice
Cry the same words they scorch with double fire.
And he, the mighty seer, looked for a moment
Upon me as if spirit and sense in him
Were sundered. With no other word he went.
He saw me never again. Yet I was victor
Slaying the unnatural with the natural love.
And I do think for all my bruisèd heart
I was more happy than he. I can but guess
From that he made the bitter Troilus speak
Of Cressid in how many blazing fires
His anger burned me. Still I dreamed of that
Rich court so many coloured once. But now,
O, what dark travellers scourged to that dark house
Brought as unto the nether sovereignty
Tribute of raving madness, guilt and fear,
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With pigments of midnight, eclipse and fire
Could make them visible for ever. And yet
I think that I, who had vanished from his eyes,
Was still within him. For he, who painted me
In many scarlet dyes, came ere the end
To breathe forgiveness. I had once imagined
For his delight myself to be a maid
Bred on a fairy isle who knew not man,
And I played for him with what innocence
The maid would greet a lover who came to her.
And at the last he had fondled in his thought
My tender fantasy, and made himself
An enchanter with spirits at his command
And they had loved each other. So I think
That he had come to know himself and me.
O, why are we not certain of our fate!
There was another dread enchanter imagined
A circle in the kingdom of the dead,
Where sinful lovers, who are blown about
In an eternal storm, cling to each other.
I thought that I, even on that stormy air,
Would have eternal joy were I the one
To whom his hands clung in the eternal shade.
And brooding on that poet's tale I dreamt
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Who held to me, but when I saw his face
It was not the face I loved, but was the face
Beautiful, mad, hopeless, of that boy.
And I awoke. I had been weeping in sleep
And all my pillow was a wetness of tears.
| The house of the titans and other poems | |