 | The house of the titans and other poems |  |
66
AN IDLE REVERIE
She passed by, shadowing the shining waters,Noble and naiad-like her image, purpled
Against the sunblaze. As she wandered on
The old heart-sickness for beauty came upon me,
Because that imagination of her I had
Might shine on heaven or earth, be interlinked
With those pure, grave-eyed, immortal dawn-maidens
And glow unfading by them. It might be
The light of some long night in time; that beauty
Bowed to such sorrow that the soul beholding
From its transfiguring anguish must be born
Pure flame, as if it had known for itself
Of cross, of passion and the martyr's pyre.
And as from flowers that are invisible
Fragrance is blown, so from the vanished image
Fancies came thick, heart-troubling, honey-rich.
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And become slave to it. But remembrance came.
There had been nothing seen, nothing at all
But a radiant shadow in a blur of light.
Was it all self-begotten fantasy?
O agony of uncomprehended being
That I might never know why those divine
Dawn-maidens with so pure a lustre dwelt
For an instant within me. Or why I dreamed
A martyrdom of innocent heroic youth;
Why an heart-aching love. O did her spirit
Carry in secret all its history,
Its starry dynasties from heaven to earth?
Was it whispered into my spirit in passing?
Did I imagine all from my own depths?
Is there a summit of being where the spirit,
An undraped fire, flashes its fire within
All other spirits, withholding nothing? Are
Our secret exaltations, ecstasies,
The loves more intimate than earth has given,
The martyrdoms as dark as Calvary,
Are they all born in that intensity
Of innumerable, interlinkèd being?
Is it because there nothing is withheld
And we are made richer by dream than life,
Our deepest love is given unto beauty
We have never seen, to lips we have never
Kissed nor heard in confession of love?
O might it be that in those reveries
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More precious than their virtue distils for us!
Our imaginations may be but flakes of fire
That drift upon us from the burning clouds
About a being that knows the innermost beat
Of every heart. Was it from that exhaustless
Secret well the soul of Shakespeare drew
To give us creatures that are not of himself?
O could our idleness grow to such virtue!
Our lonely reverie break into multitude!
How unwavering the will, how stern the heart,
To receive unbroken all that revelation,
The being of many risen within our own!
I tremble, fearful at the first glowing of
The magic-lovely, dragon-haunted air,
Where all beauty is shadowed by its demon,
And we are at once blessed and betrayed.
O child, who set my thoughts flying so far,
The ripples from thy passing feet have spread,
Not dying away, but gathering power to cast
Me heavenward, dizzy on their foam of light,
To beat at blazing gates, to cry on the Innermost
To know why I am so shaken by a shadow:
Not even a face seen, no heart-troubling eyes,
Only some wonder I imagined dwelling
In a radiant shadow in a blur of light.
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