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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Hours of Fiammetta, by Rachel Annand
+Taylor
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Hours of Fiammetta
+       A Sonnet Sequence
+
+
+Author: Rachel Annand Taylor
+
+
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2007  [eBook #23392]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOURS OF FIAMMETTA***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Ruth Hart
+
+
+
+THE HOURS OF FIAMMETTA
+
+A Sonnet Sequence
+
+by
+
+RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Thou which lov'st to be
+Subtle to plague thyself"--
+
+
+
+London:
+Elkin Mathews, Vigo Street
+MCMX
+
+
+_The "Epilogue of the Dreaming Women" is reprinted by
+permission of the "English Review."_
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+There are two great traditions of womanhood. One presents the
+Madonna brooding over the mystery of motherhood; the other, more
+confusedly, tells of the acolyte, the priestess, the clairvoyante of
+the unknown gods. This latter exists complete in herself, a personality
+as definite and as significant as a symbol. She is behind all the
+processes of art, though she rarely becomes a conscious artist, except
+in delicate and impassioned modes of living. Indeed, matters are cruelly
+complicated for her if the entanglements of destiny drag her forward
+into the deliberate aesthetic effort. Strange, wistful, bitter and
+sweet, she troubles and quickens the soul of man, as earthly or as
+heavenly lover redeeming him from the spiritual sloth which is more
+to be dreaded than any kind of pain.
+
+The second tradition of womanhood does not perish; but, in these
+present confusions of change, women of the more emotional and
+imaginative type are less potent than they have been and will be again.
+They appear equally inimical and heretical to the opposing camps of
+hausfrau and of suffragist. Their intellectual forces, liberated and
+intensified, prey upon the more instinctive part of their natures, vexing
+them with unanswerable questions. So Fiammetta mistakes herself to
+some degree, loses her keynote, becomes embittered and perplexed.
+The equilibrium of soul and body is disturbed; and she fortifies herself
+in an obstinate idealism that cannot come to terms with the assaults of
+life. No single sonnet expresses absolute truth from even her own point
+of view. The verses present the moods, misconceptions, extravagances,
+revulsions, reveries--all the obscure crises whereby she reaches a state
+of illumination and reconciliation regarding the enigma of love as it is,
+making her transition from the purely romantic and ascetic ideal
+fostered by the exquisitely selective conspiracies of the art of the great
+love-poets, through a great darkness of disillusion, to a new vision
+infinitely stronger and sweeter, because unafraid of the whole truth.
+
+Fiammetta is frankly an enthusiast of the things of art; and her
+meditations unfortunately betray the fact that Etruscan mirrors are as
+dear to her as the daisies, and that she cannot find it more virtuous to
+contemplate a few cows in a pasture than a group of Leonardo's people
+in their rock-bound cloisters. For the long miracle of the human soul
+and its expression is for her not less sacredly part of the universal
+process than the wheeling of suns and planets: a Greek vase is to her as
+intimately concerned with Nature as the growing corn--with that Nature
+who formed the swan and the peacock for decorative delight, and who
+puts ivory and ebony cunningly together on the blackthorn every
+patterned Spring.
+
+The Shaksperean form of sonnet yields most readily the piercing
+quality of sound that helps to describe a malady of the soul. But the
+system of completed quatrains in that model suits more assured and
+dominating passion than the present matter provides. A more agitated
+hurry of the syllables, a more involved sentence-structure, sometimes a
+fainter rime-stress, seem necessary to the music of bewilderment.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+           THE PROLOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN.
+        I. THE PRELUDE
+       II. PERILS.
+      III. THE PEACE TO BE.
+       IV. STATUES.
+        V. THE WEDDING-GARMENT.
+       VI. THE DEATH OF PROCRIS.
+      VII. THE WARNING.
+     VIII.  THE ACCUSATION.
+       IX. THE MEDIAEVAL MIRROR-CASES (1).
+        X. THE MIRROR-CASES (2).
+       XI. THE PASSION-FLOWER.
+      XII. THE VOICE OF LOVE (1).
+     XIII. THE VOICE OF LOVE (2).
+      XIV. DREAM-GHOSTS.
+       XV. MEMORIA SUBMERSA.
+      XVI. A PORTRAIT BY VENEZIANO.
+     XVII. THE ENIGMA.
+    XVIII. THE DOUBT.
+      XIX. THE SEEKER.
+       XX. THE HIDDEN REVERIE.
+      XXI. SOUL AND BODY (1).
+     XXII. SOUL AND BODY (2).
+    XXIII. THE JUSTIFICATION.
+     XXIV. ASPIRATIONS.
+      XXV. THE ANAESTHETIC.
+     XXVI. DIVINATION.
+    XXVII. SUB-CONSCIOUSNESS.
+   XXVIII. SATIETY.
+     XXIX. THE CONFESSION (1).
+      XXX. THE CONFESSION (2).
+     XXXI. COMRADES.
+    XXXII. THE SUM OF THINGS.
+   XXXIII. REACTION.
+    XXXIV. THE IDEALIST.
+     XXXV. WOMAN AND VISION.
+    XXXVI. ART AND WOMEN.
+   XXXVII. DESTINY.
+   XXXVIII. CONFLICT.
+     XXXIX. PREDECESSORS.
+        XL. TRANSITION.
+       XLI. THE VIRTUE OF PRIDE.
+      XLII. SPELL-BOUND.
+     XLIII. THE NIGHT OBSCURE OF THE SOUL.
+      XLIV. THE CONQUEST OF IMMORTALITY.
+       XLV. WOMEN OF TANAGRA.
+      XLVI. THE INVENTORY.
+     XLVII. COMFORT (1).
+    XLVIII. COMFORT (2).
+      XLIX. THE CHANGE.
+         L. AT THE END.
+        LI. THE SOUL OF AGE.
+       LII. HYPNEROTOMACHIA.
+      LIII. THE REVOLT.
+       LIV. AFTER MANY YEARS.
+        LV. TREASURE.
+       LVI. THE SOUL TO THE BODY.
+      LVII. THE IRONIST.
+     LVIII. IN VAIN.
+       LIX. RESERVATIONS.
+        LX. THE NEW LOVE.
+       LXI. THE WAYS OF LOVE.
+            THE EPILOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN.
+
+
+
+THE PROLOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN
+
+We carry spices to the gods.
+     For this are we wrought curiously,
+     All vain-desire and reverie,
+To carry spices to the gods.
+
+We carry spices to the gods.
+     Sacred and soft as lotos-flowers
+     Are those long languorous hands of ours
+That carry spices to the gods.
+
+We know their roses and their rods,
+     Having in pale spring-orchards seen
+     Their cruel eyes, and in the green
+Strange twilights having met the gods.
+
+Sometimes we tire. Upon the sods
+     We set the great enamels by,
+     Wherein the occult odours lie,
+And play with children on the sods.
+
+Yet soon we take, O jealous gods,
+     Those gracious caskets once again,
+     Storied with oracles of pain,
+That keep the spices for the gods.
+
+We carry spices to the gods.
+     Like sumptuous cold chalcedony
+     Our weary breasts and hands must be
+To carry spices to the gods.
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE PRELUDE
+
+Thou sayest, "_O pure Palace of my Pleasures,
+     O Doors of Ivory, let the King come in.
+With silver lamps before him, and with measures
+     Of low lute-music let him come. Begin,
+Ye suppliant lilies and ye frail white roses,
+     Imploring sweetnesses of hands and eyes,
+To let Love through to the most secret closes
+     Of all his flowery Court of Paradise_." . . .
+Sunder the jealous gates. Thine ivory Castle
+     Is hung with scarlet, is the Convent of Pain.
+With purple and with spice indeed the Vassal
+     Receives her King whom dark desires constrain.
+Rejoice, rejoice!--But far from flutes and dances
+The cloistered Soul lies frozen in her trances.
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+PERILS
+
+Ah! Since from subtle silk of agony
+     Our veils of lamentable flesh are spun,
+Since Time in spoiling violates, and we
+     In that strait Pass of Pangs may be undone,
+Since the mere natural flower and withering
+     Of these our bodies terribly distil
+Strange poisons, since an alien Lust may fling
+     On any autumn day some torch to fill
+Our pale Pavilion of dreaming lavenders
+     With frenzy, till it is a Tower of Flame
+Wherein the soul shrieks burning, since the myrrhs
+     And music of our beauty are mixed with shame
+Inextricable,--some drug of poppies give
+This bitter ecstasy whereby we live!
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE PEACE TO BE
+
+Quell this consuming fever, quickly give
+     Some drug of poppies white!--But Peace will come?
+O ashen savourless alternative,
+     Quietude of the blind and deaf and dumb
+That all swift motions must alike assuage,--
+     When we are exiled from youth's golden hosts
+To pace the calm cold terraces of age,
+     With unvexed senses, being but houseled ghosts,
+Wise, with the uncoloured wisdom of the souls
+     With whom great passions have no more to do,
+Serene, since ours the dusty arles Death doles,
+     Oblivions dim of all there is to rue!--
+Peace comes to hearts of whom proud Love has tired;
+Beyond all danger dwell the undesired.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+STATUES
+
+The great Greek lovers of gold and ivory things,
+     Austere and perfect things, albeit they wrought
+Girl-shapes with driven raiment, conquering wings,
+     And smiling queens of Cnidos, turned and sought
+A more inviolate beauty that should keep
+     Their secret dream. Their grave sweet geniuses
+Of love and death, of rapture or of sleep,
+     Are delicately severed from all excess.--
+Ah! suppliant, honey-white, the languor cleaves
+     About the dolorous weak body He,
+The Dark Eros, with staunchless spear-thrust grieves;
+     Heavy the seal of that mortality.
+No wounds disgrace the haughty acolytes
+Of heavenly sorrows, of divine delights.
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE WEDDING-GARMENT
+
+Thought it be blither than roses in thine eyes,
+     Shall I not rend this raiment of pangs and fears,
+This Colchian cloth white flames ensorcelise,
+     This gaudy-veil distained with blood and tears?--
+What praise? "_O marriage-beauty garlanded
+     For festival, O sumptuous flowery stole
+For rites of adoration!_"--See instead
+     A cilice drenched with torment of my soul!
+Nevertheless the fibres implicate
+     Proud exultations; burning, have revealed
+Rich throes of triumph, sweetness passionate
+     As pained lilies reared in thorn-plots yield.
+Ah! silver wedding-garment of the bride,
+Ah! fiery cilice, I am satisfied!
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE DEATH OF PROCRIS
+
+Come gaze on Procris, poor soon-perished child!
+     Why did her innocent virginity
+Follow Desire within his arrowy wild?
+     She dies pursuing the cruel ecstasy
+That keeps as mortal wounds for them that find.
+     Serene her pensive body lies at last
+Like a mown poppy-flower to sleep resigned,
+     Softly resigned. The wildwood things aghast,
+With pitiful hearts instinctive, sweet as hers,
+     Approach her now: love, death, and virgin grace,
+Blue distance, and the stricken foresters,
+     And all the dreaming, healing, woodland place
+Are patterned into tender melodies
+Of lovely line and hue--a music of peace!
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE WARNING
+
+As delicate gorgeous rains of dusky gold
+     Heavy white lilies, Love importunate
+Besets the soul,--as that wild Splendour told
+     Pale Danae her haughty heavenly fate.
+Not speared in burning points but spun in strands
+     My senses: drowsily burning webs are they
+That veil me head to foot. While on mine hands
+     And hair and lids thy kisses die away
+Through all my being their strange echoes thrill
+     And from the body's flowery mysticism
+I draw the last white honey. What is thine ill?
+     What wouldst thou more of that great symbolism?
+Beyond this ultimate moment nothing lies
+But moonless cold and darkness. Ah! be wise!
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE ACCUSATION
+
+Mere night! The unconsenting Soul stands by,
+     A moaning protestant. "Ah, not for this,
+And not for this, through rose and thorn was I
+     Drawn to surrender and the bridal-kiss.
+Annunciations lit with jewelled wings
+     Of sudden angels mid the lilies tall,
+Proud prothalamia chaunting enraptured things,--
+     O sumptuous fables, why so prodigal
+Of masque and music, of dreams like foam-white swans
+     On lakes of hyacinthus? Must Love seek
+Great allies, Beauty sound her arriere-bans
+     That all her splendours betray us to this bleak
+Simplicity whereto blind satyrs run?"--
+The irony seems old, old as the sun.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE MEDIEVAL MIRROR-CASES
+
+I
+
+Rondels of old French ivory to-day
+     (Poor perished beauty's deathless mirror-cases!)
+Reveal to me the delicate amorous play
+     Of reed-like flowering folk with pointed faces.
+Lovers ride hawking; over chess delight;
+     The Castle of Ladies renders up its keys,
+Its roses all being flung; a gracious knight
+     Kneels to his garlander mid orchard-trees.
+Passionate pilgrims, do ye keep so fast
+     Your dream of miracles and heights? Ah, shent
+And sore-bewildered shall ye couch at last
+     In bitter beds of disillusionment.
+In the Black Orchard the foul raven grieves
+White Love, on some Montfaucon of the thieves.
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE MIRROR-CASES
+
+II
+
+O treasonable heart and perverse words,
+     Ye darken beauty with your plots of pain!
+What languors beat through me like muted chords?
+     I know indeed that suffering shall profane
+These lovers, sweet as viols or violet-spices.
+     Strangely must end their dreamy chess-playing,
+Strange wounds amaze their broidered Paradises,
+     And stain the falconry and garlanding.
+Their bodies must be broken as on wheels,
+     Their souls be carded with implacable shame,--
+Molten like wax, be crushed beneath the seals
+     Of sin and penance. Yet, with wings aflame,
+Love, Love more lovely, like a triumpher,
+Shall break his malefactor's sepulchre.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE PASSION-FLOWER
+
+The passion-flower bears in her violet Cup
+     The senses of her bridal, and they seem
+Symbols of sacred pangs,--Love lifted up
+     To expiate the beauty of his dream.
+Come and adore, ye crafty imagers,
+     This piece of ivory and amethyst.
+Let Music, Colour, decorated Verse,
+     Meditate, each like some sad lutanist,
+This Paten, and the marvels it uncovers,
+     Identities of joy and anguish. Rod,
+Nails, bitter garlands, all ecstatic lovers
+     Blindly repeat the dolours of a God.
+Subdue this mournful matter unto Art,
+Ivory, amethyst, serene of heart.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE VOICE OF LOVE
+
+I
+
+"Mine, mine!" saith Love, "Deny me many times.
+     Yet mine that body wherein mine arrow thrills,
+And mine the fugitive soul that bleeding climbs
+     Hunting a vision on the frozen hills.
+Mine are her stigmata, sad rhapsodist.--
+     And when to the delighted bridal-bowers
+They bring thee starlike through the silver mist
+     Of music and canticles and myrtle-flowers,
+And the dark hour bids the consentless heart
+     Surrender to disillusion, since in all
+The labyrinth of deed no counterpart
+     Can pattern Passion's archetype, nor shall
+The chalice of sense endure her flaming wine,
+Superb and bitter dreamer, thou most art mine."
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE VOICE OF LOVE
+
+II
+
+"Mine, mine!" saith Love, "Although ye serve no more
+     Mine images of ivory and bronze
+With flute-led dances of the days of yore,
+     But leave them to barbarian orisons
+Of dull hearth-loving hearts, mistaking me:
+     Yet from mine incense ye shall not divorce
+Remembrance. Fools, these recantations be
+     Ardours that prove you still idolators;
+And, though ye hurry through the circling hells
+     Of bright ambition like hopes and energies,
+That haste bewrays you. My great doctrine dwells
+     Immortal in those fevered heresies,
+And all the inversions of my rites proclaim
+The mournful memory of mine altar-flame."
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+DREAM-GHOSTS
+
+White house of night, too much the ghosts come through
+     Your crazy doors, to vex and startle me,
+Touching with curious fingers cold as dew
+     Kissing with unloved kisses fierily
+That dwell, slow fever, through my veins all day,
+     And fill my senses as the dead their graves.
+They are builded in my castles and bridges? Yea,
+     Not therefore must my dreams become their slaves.
+If once we passed some kindness, must they still
+     Sway me with weird returns and dim disgust?--
+Though even in sleep the absolute bright Will
+     Would exorcise them, saying, "These are but dust,"
+They show sad symbols, that, when I awaken,
+I never can deny I have partaken.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+MEMORIA SUBMERSA
+
+Can souls forget what bodies keep the while?
+     Is this among their dark antinomies?
+The spiritual joy is volatile:
+     The flesh is faithful to her memories.
+This living silk, this inarticulate
+     Remembrance of the nerves enwinds us fast:
+Delicate cells, obscure and obstinate,
+     Secrete the bitter essence of the Past.
+Ah! Was the fading web of rose and white
+     All macerated by the kisses of old
+As rare French queens with perfume? (So, by night,
+     They lived like lilies mid their cloth-of-gold.)
+Within the sense, howe'er the soul abjure,
+Like flavours and fumes these ancient things endure.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+A PORTRAIT BY VENEZIANO
+
+Strange dancing-girl with curls of golden wire,
+     With strait white veil, and sinister jewel strung
+Upon your brows, your sombre eyes desire
+     Some secret thing. Garlanded leaves are young
+Around your head, and, in your beauty's hours,
+     Venice yet loved that joy's enthusiast
+Be frail, fantastic as gilt iris-flowers.
+     O startling reveller from out the Past,
+Long, long ago through lanes of chrysophrase
+     The Dark Eros compelled his exquisite
+Evil apostle. This painter made your praise,
+     A piece of art, a curious delight.
+But your ghost wanders. Yesterday your sweet
+Accusing eyes challenged me in the street.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THE ENIGMA
+
+Eternally grieving and arraigning eyes,
+     Why vex my heart? What is it I can do?
+Can I call back the hounds of Time with sighs,
+     Or find inviolate peace to bring you to,
+Pluck frenzy from the amazed soul of man,
+     Or curb the horses of raging poverty
+That trample you until--escape who can,--
+     Or spill the honey from rich revelry
+And strip the silken days?--Alas! alas!
+     I am so dream-locked that I cannot know
+Why it is not much easier to pass
+     To death than let love's haughty cloister show
+A common hostel for such taverners.--
+Ye know, who are perhaps my ransomers.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE DOUBT
+
+I am pure, because of great illuminations
+     Of dreamy doctrine caught from poets of old,
+Because of delicate imaginations,
+     Because I am proud, or subtle, or merely cold.
+Natheless my soul's bright passions interchange
+     As the red flames in opal drowse and speak:
+In beautiful twilight paths the elusive strange
+     Phantoms of personality I seek.
+If better than the last embraces I
+     Love the lit riddles of the eyes, the faint
+Appeal of merely courteous fingers,--why,
+     Though 'tis a quest of souls, and I acquaint
+My heart with spiritual vanities,--
+Is there indeed no bridge twixt me and these?
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE SEEKER
+
+Curious and wistful through your soul I go.
+     With silver-tinkling feet I penetrate
+Sealed chambers, and a puissant incense throw
+     Upon the smouldering braziers, love and hate:
+And chaunt the grieved verses of a dirge
+     For dying gods, remembering flutes and shawms:
+With perverse moods I trouble you, and urge
+     The sense to beauty. Give me some sweet alms,
+Some reverie, some pang of a damasked sword,
+     Some poignant moment yet unparalleled
+In my dream-broidered chronicles, some chord
+     Of mystery Love's music never knelled
+Before;--but nought of the rough alchemy
+That disillusions all felicity.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+THE HIDDEN REVERIE
+
+The life of plants, rising through dim sweet states,
+     Cloisters the rich love-secret more and more,
+Gathers it jealously within the gates
+     Of the hushed heart; but, mightier than before,
+The mystery prevails and overpowers
+     Stem, leaf, and petal. So the passion lies
+In this tranced flowery being which is ours
+     Like to a hidden wound; yet softly dyes
+With dolorous beauty all the stuff of life,
+     Each dream and vision and desire subduing
+With muted pulses, that great counter-strife
+     Of soul with its own rhythmic pangs imbuing.
+Deny it and disdain it. Lo! there beat
+Red stigmata in heart and hands and feet.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+SOUL AND BODY
+
+It may be all my pain is woven wrong,
+     And this wild "I" is nothing but a dream
+The body exhales, as roses at evensong
+     Their passionate odour. Verily it may seem
+That this most fevered and fantastic wear
+     Of nerves and senses is myself indeed,
+The rest, illusion taken in that snare.--
+     But still the fiery splendour and the need
+Can bite like actual flame and hunger. Ah!
+     If Sense, bewildered in the spiral towers
+Of Matter, dreamed this great Superbia
+     I call the Soul, not less the Dream hath powers;
+Not less these Twain, being one, are separate,
+Like lovers whose love is tangled hard with hate.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+SOUL AND BODY
+
+II
+
+Sometimes the Soul in pure hieratic rule
+     Is throned (as on some high Abbatial chair
+Of moon-pearl and rose-rubies beautiful)
+     Within the body grown serene and fair:
+Sometimes it weds her like a lifted rood;
+     But she endures, and wills no anodyne,
+For then she flowers within the mystic Wood,
+     And hath her lot with gods--and seems divine:
+Sometimes it is her lonely oubliet,
+     Sometimes a marriage-chamber sweet with spice:
+It is her triumph-car with flutes beset,
+     The altar where she lies a sacrifice.--
+Cold images! The truth is not in these.
+Both are alive, both quick with rhapsodies.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE JUSTIFICATION
+
+Life I adore, and not Life's accidents.
+     A garlanded and dream-fast thurifer
+My Soul comes out from beauty's purple tents
+     That incense-troubled Love may grieve and stir,
+Be ransomed from satiety's sad graves,
+     And go to God up the bright stair of Wonder.
+Since passion makes immortal Time's tired slaves
+     I am of those that delicately sunder
+Corruptions of contentment from the breast
+     As with rare steel. Like music I unveil
+Last things, till, weary of earthen cups and rest,
+     You seek Montsalvat and the burning Grail.
+Ah! blindly, blindly, wounded with the roses,
+I bear my spice where Ecstasy reposes.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+ASPIRATIONS
+
+Light of great swords, banners all blazoned gold,
+     Bright lists of danger where with trumpets pass
+Riders like those for whom bride-bells are bold
+     To beautiful desperate conflict, Michaelmas
+Of golden heroes, how my sad soul saith
+     Your praise! Nor does to you her love deny,
+Solemn strange Cups that carry dreamy death
+     To quench those fevers when they flame too high.
+But now the Victories have broken wings;
+     The spirit of Rapture from the day of deeds
+Is banished, and must spend on sorcerous strings
+     Her heart that perishes of splendid needs.--
+Saints, lovers, high crusaders, give me too
+Some simple and impassioned thing to do.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+THE ANAESTHETIC
+
+Like a white moth caught heavily, heavily,
+     In the honeyed heart of some white drowsy flower,
+I lay behind the leaves of apathy,
+     Where not the reddest pang has any power.
+Then, like one drowning, I rose and lapsed again
+     On dim sweet tides of the great anodyne.
+Why must they hale me back to drink the pain
+     That seethes in consciousness, an evil wine?
+I love the closing trances, howsoever
+     Their seals be broken: they are wise and kind.
+If death can give such fumes of poppy, never
+     Shall I revile him. Oh! uncertain mind!
+Hast thou an equal pleasure in the proud
+Flame-builded pillar, and the pillar of cloud?
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+DIVINATION
+
+I weary of your hesitating will;
+     This flicker of "should" and "should not" crazes me.
+Rest from these vain debates of good and ill:
+     Let me your secret swift diviner be.
+In the memorial blue dusk of sense,
+     Where, spirals of doves or wreaths of ravens, rise
+Auguries sweet or dread, the blue dusk whence
+     The cresseted houses of the stars surprise
+The heart with their mysterious horoscopes,
+     I know the issues ere great battles begin,
+The ashen values of bright-burning hopes,
+     The ultimate hours of sacrifice or sin.
+Do I obey the Wisdom? If I list,
+I too, beloved, can play the casuist.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+SUB-CONSCIOUSNESS
+
+Sometimes as Martha suddenly stood amazed
+     By Mary's mystic eyes, and sometimes as
+That very dreamer Mary might have gazed
+     Upon the Daughter of Herodias,
+The conscious Soul that other Soul discovers,
+     The strange idolator who still regrets
+Golden Osiris, Tammuz lord of lovers,
+     Attis the sad white god of violets.
+In jasper caves she lies behind her veils;
+     And jars of spice, and gilded ears of corn,
+And wine-red roses and rose-red wine-grails
+     Feed her long trances while the far flutes mourn.
+She lies and dreams daemonic passionate things:
+Cherubim guard her gates with monstrous wings.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+SATIETY
+
+Ah! love me not with honey-sweet excesses,
+     With passionate prodigalities of praise,
+With wreaths of daisied words and quaint caresses,
+     Adore me not in charming childish ways.
+This pastoral is beautiful enough:
+     But never shall it antidote my drouth:
+I want a reticent ironic Love
+     With smiling eyes and faintly mocking mouth.
+Sweetness is best when bitterly 'tis bought:
+     So in Love's deadly duel I would not be
+Victorious, and the peace I long have sought,
+     Sure knowledge of his great supremacy,
+Would buy with pangs, like that bright cuirassier,
+The queen-at-arms that knew the Peliad's spear.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+THE CONFESSION
+
+I
+
+I am initiate,--long disciplined
+     In delicate austerities of art:
+The clear compulsions of the sovran mind
+     Constrain the dreamy panics of my heart.
+Plato and Dante, Petrarch, Lancelot,
+     Revealed me very Love, flame-clad, august.
+Also I strove to be as we are not,
+     Loyal, and honourable, and even just.
+My webs of life in reveries were dyed
+     As veils in vats of purple: so there stole
+Serene and sumptuous and mysterious pride
+     Through the imperial vesture of my soul.--
+And lo! like any servile fool I crave
+The dark strange rapture of the stricken slave.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+THE CONFESSION
+
+II
+
+I have a banner and a great duke's way,
+     I have an High Adventure of my own.
+Yet would I rather squire a knightlier,--Nay!
+     Be the least harper by his red-hung throne.
+I am not satisfied with any love
+     Till I can say, "O stronger far than I!"
+Is it a shame to hide the aching of,
+     A sacred mystery to justify?
+Through all our spiritual discontents
+     Thrills the strange leaven of renunciation.--
+Ah! god unknown behind the Sacraments
+     Unfailing of the earthly expiation,
+Lift up this amethyst-encumbered Vine,
+Crush from her pain some ransom-cup of Wine.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+COMRADES
+
+Yet for the honourable felicity
+     Of comradeship I can be chivalrous,
+And through love's transmutations fierily
+     Constant as the gemmed paladin Sirius
+To that fair pact. We go, gay challengers,
+     Beneath dark rampires of forbidden thought,
+Thread life's dim gardens masked like revellers
+     Where dreams of roses red are dearly bought.
+We shall ride haughtily as bright Crusaders,
+     As hooded palmers fare with humbled hearts,
+And we shall find, adoring blithe invaders,
+     The City of Seven Towers, of Seven Arts.--
+Then the Last Quest, (lead you the dreadful way!)
+Among the unimagined Nebulae!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+THE SUM OF THINGS
+
+TO ANOTHER WOMAN
+
+Well, I am tired, who fared to divers ends,
+     And you are not, who kept the beaten path;
+But mystic Vintagers have been my friends,
+     Even Love and Death and Sin and Pride and Wrath.
+Wounded am I, you are immaculate;
+     But great Adventurers were my starry guides:
+From God's Pavilion to the Flaming Gate
+     Have I not ridden as an immortal rides?
+And your dry soul crumbles by dim degrees
+     To final dust quite happily, it appears,
+While all the sweetness of her nectaries
+     Can only stand within my heart like tears.
+O throbbing wounds, rich tears, and splendour spent,--
+Ye are all my spoil, and I am well content.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+REACTION
+
+Give me a chamber paved with emerald
+     And hung with arras green as evening skies,
+Broidered with halcyons, moons, and heavily thralled
+     White lilies, cold rare comfort for the eyes.
+Of triumph built was radiant yesterday:
+     Like an imperial eagle to the sun
+My soul bare up her dreams the glorious way
+     Through flagrant ordeals august, and won
+To burning eyries, till beneath her wing
+     Rankled the shaft. Her Archer was abroad;
+And hooded with strange darkness, shuddering
+     Down pain's dull spiral, sank she on the sod.
+Close round, green dusk of dews! No more we dare
+The blue inviolate castles of the air.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+THE IDEALIST
+
+For such an one let lovers cry, Alas!
+     Since passion's leaguer shall break through in vain
+To that cold centre of bright adamas.--
+     Storm through her being, rapturous spears of pain!
+Ye shall not wound that queen of gracious guile,
+     The soul that with immortal trance keeps troth:
+For Helen is in Egypt all the while,
+     Learning great magic from the Wife of Thoth.
+Throned white and high on red-rose porphyry,
+     And coifed with golden wings, she lifts her eyes
+O'er Nile's green lavers where most sacredly
+     The Pattern of the myriad Lotos lies,
+Unto those clear horizons jasper-pale
+Her heavenly Brethren ride in silver mail.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+WOMAN AND VISION
+
+Vainly the Vision of Life entreats those eyes
+     Where stars of glamour mock at revelations.
+But singular fiery moments do surprise
+     With dreadful or delicious divinations
+The whorls of our blue Labyrinth: the sweet
+     Blind sense of touch tells like an undersong
+Marvellous matters. What though snared feet,
+     And wounded hands, and ravelled coils of wrong,
+Plead that the solemn Vision might make whole
+     Our imperfection?--Fevered second-sight,
+Audacious wisdom of the blinded soul,
+     Dim delicate auroras of delight
+That thrill the Dark from startled finger-tips,
+Are ye less precious an Apocalypse?
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+ART AND WOMEN
+
+The Triumph of Art compels few womenkind;
+     And these are yoked like slaves to Eros' car,--
+No victors they! Yet ours the Dream behind,
+     Who are nearer to the gods than poets are.
+For with the silver moons we wax and wane,
+     And with the roses love most woundingly,
+And, wrought from flower to fruit with dim rich pain,
+     The Orchard of the Pomegranates are we.
+For with Demeter still we seek the Spring,
+     With Dionysos tread the sacred Vine,
+Our broken bodies still imagining
+     The mournful Mystery of the Bread and Wine.--
+And Art, that fierce confessor of the flowers,
+Desires the secret spice of those veiled hours.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+DESTINY
+
+The great religions of the Rose and Grape
+     Have bound us in to their sad Paradise:
+We dream in crucial symbols, nor escape
+     The cypress-garden where the slain god lies.
+Daughters of lamentation round the Cross
+     Where Beauty suffers garlanded with thorn,
+Remembrancers through all the Night of Loss,
+     We bear the spikenard of the Easter Morn.
+The yearning Springs, the brooding Autumns seethe
+     Like philtres in our veins. O dark Election,
+Are then the sacrificial doors we wreathe
+     With lilies fiery gates of Resurrexion?
+And does the passion of our spices feed
+Love's bright Arabian miracle indeed?
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+CONFLICT
+
+Why should a woman find her dream of love
+     Irised by the strange ecstasy of Art?
+Is not Eros a terrible lord enough
+     That she must bear both Hunters of the heart,
+The Golden Archer and the Scarlet too?
+     Then bitter anomalies annul her choir
+Of puissant and subtle instincts, rended through
+     By gorgeous dualisms of vain-desire.
+For Love outrages Art's clear disciplines,
+     And Art lures Love to guilt of cryptic treason:
+The spirit of imagination pines,
+     Captive in webs of exquisite unreason.
+Alas for this translated soul of hers,
+The rose's, that must be the garlander's!
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+PREDECESSORS
+
+Faery of Sheba, idol moulded in
+     Onyx milk-white, moon-mailed and casqued with gems;
+Ye gold-swathed queens of Egypt, Isis' kin,
+     With bright god-hawks and snakes for diadems;
+Serene masque-music of Greek girls that bear
+     The sacred Veil to that Athenian feast;
+Hypatia, casting from thine ivory chair
+     The gods' last challenge to the godless priest;
+Fantastic fine Provencals wistfully
+     Hearkening Love, the mournful lute player;
+Diamond ladies of that Italy
+     When Art and Wisdom Passion's angels were--
+Ye give this grail (touch with no mad misprision!)
+Of Beauty's rose-red miracled tradition.
+
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+TRANSITION
+
+But these recoil in riddles and reserves.--
+     The dream's untuned. Ah! vanished chords thereof!
+Ah! keen divisions of the jangled nerves
+     That strung so long the gracious lutes of love!--
+Hurry to sell old magian Lamps for new,
+     Though beauty's moonlike domes dissolve and pass:
+If all things change, ye would be changing too,
+     Crazed hearts that know not your desire, alas!
+Still, through these wintry treasons that forswear
+     The lovely bitter bondage of our god,
+Rare perennations of the soul prepare--
+     And Music yet shall seal the period
+With some new star,--with sad pure hands unveil
+For ransomed eyes again the gilded Grail.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+THE VIRTUE OF PRIDE
+
+My troubled bosom shall be cinct with pride,
+     Girdled with red asterias. Is it sin
+If I have cast lover and friend aside,
+     Scorning them as myself who cannot win
+The strengths of beauty, the heavenly altitudes?--
+     O sad and sacred Spirit of Disdain,
+What penances upon thine ivory roods
+     Within the burning Castles of thy pain!--
+Thy mystic will no motion ever knew
+     Outwith the splendid danger of extremes;
+Thy sorrowful refusals pass thee through
+     The great concentrics of star-builded dreams,
+Unto the crypt of absolute ecstasy,
+To God or Nothing--where thine heart would be.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+SPELL-BOUND
+
+I have been frozen. Once I was not cold.
+     But I have strayed within some glittering
+Night Of Lapland miracle, have leagued of old
+     With glaives and banners of wild Polar light.
+Yet if I could dissolve in tears this core
+     Of ice, my heart, undo these crystal spells,
+We should be sisters of incense evermore
+     Like the crowned Lover of the Canticles.
+Through the great honeycomb of my soul should steep
+     The secrets of the lilies, and her fire
+Be ambergris, her agate flagons keep
+     The sorcelled hydromel which brings Desire
+To that mysterious Dark where still prevails
+The dream of roses and of nightingales.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+THE NIGHT OBSCURE OF THE SOUL
+
+When the Soul travails in her Night Obscure,
+     The nadir of her desperate defeat,
+What heavenly dream shall help her to endure,
+     What flaming Wisdom be her Paraclete?
+No curious Metaphysic can withhold
+     The heart from that mandragora she craves:--
+Unreasonable, old as Earth is old,
+     The blind ecstatic miracle that saves.
+Far off the pagan trumpeters of Pride
+     Call to the blood.--Love moans.--Some fiery fashion
+Of rapture like the anguish of the bride
+     Leaps from the dark perfection of the Passion,
+Crying: "O beautiful God, still torture me,
+For if thou slay me, I will trust in Thee."
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+THE CONQUEST OF IMMORTALITY
+
+Ah! not in earthy dull durations I
+     Mine heirdom of Eternity implore.
+Give one star-drunken moment ere I die,
+     Then doom me dreadless to the implacable Door.
+That mystical Assumption shall disown
+     Time's haughtiest lieges. Grey mortality
+Will disenchant the jewel-breded throne
+     Of Cassiopeia when more burningly
+My deed exults with angels. I will borrow
+     From continuity no larva-lease:
+Through sworded crises and great compts of sorrow
+     I seek the splendour that shall never cease
+Though Death coin from my soul through endless years
+Dim drachmas of his infinite arrears.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+WOMEN OF TANAGRA
+
+Have these forgotten they are toys of Death
+     That in his sad aphelions of desire
+They still regret the joy that perisheth,
+     And Spring's great reveries that exceed and tire,--
+Faintly accusing Love's unmercied yokes
+     With almost wanton grace, the craft and art
+Of precious frailty that with subtle strokes
+     Of sweetness finds the core of Passion's heart?
+They carry fans and mirrors, or make fast
+     The mournful flute-like cadence of a veil.
+Slight fans that winnowed souls, mirrors that glassed
+     The burning brooding wings which never fail!
+Still in such lovely vanities to-day
+The gods their secret wisdom hide away.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+THE INVENTORY
+
+TO HER FRIEND
+
+I love all sumptuous things and delicate,
+     Ethereal matters richly paradised
+In Art's proud certitudes. I love the great
+     Greek vases, carven ivory, subtilised
+Arras of roses, Magians dyed on glass,
+     Graven chalcedony and sardonyx,
+Nocturnes that through the nerves like fever pass,
+     Arthurian kings, Love on the crucifix,
+All sweet mysterious verse, the Byzantine
+     Gold chambers of Crivelli, marble that flowers
+In shy adoring angels, patterned vine
+     And lotos, and emblazoned Books of Hours,--
+_And you, whose smiling eyes to ironies
+Reduce both me and mine idolatries_.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+COMFORT
+
+I
+
+I sang the Dolorous Stroke of Disillusion,
+     Yet never have I broken faith with Joy:
+Flame-broidered trance and starless cold confusion
+     Of slain and flying dreams shall not destroy
+The radiant oath to that bright Suzerain
+     Whose lightning-lovely succour ambushed lies
+Even in the most impossible strait of pain.
+     Mystical paradox, divine surprise
+Of rapture! By intensities alone
+     Their spirits enter in to exultation
+For whom the burning winds of their sad zone
+     Bear down the Dove of the Imagination,
+Who suffer superbly, _in scarlet violetted,
+As the Sacred Kings of the Lillie_ mourned their dead.*
+
+* See Favine's "Book of Chivalry."
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+COMFORT
+
+II
+
+And that is marvellous comfort;--and yet poor
+     To what mere woman-mystery can give,
+The strange simplicity that will endure
+     The pangs of death, most resolute to live.
+This God of riddles that shaped a thing so frail
+     For his worst torment hid mysterious powers
+Within her breast who can like lilies prevail
+     Through rains of doom that conquer brassy towers.
+Her heart lies broken; when some trivial chord
+     Of sweetness chimes reveille through the sense,--
+A rose, a song, a smile, a courtly word.
+     She wakes, and sighs, and softly passes thence
+Back to the masquers, though her soul's veiled Pyx
+Enclose the solemn fruits of the Crucifix.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+THE CHANGE
+
+I spun my soul about with soft cocoons
+     Of pleasure golden-pale. For me, for me
+Were precious things put forth by crescent moons,
+     Of pearl and milky jade and ivory.
+Grave players on ethereal harpsichords,
+     My senses wrought a music exquisite
+As patterned roses, all my life's accords
+     Were richer, ghostlier than peacocks white.
+So in my paradise reserved and fair
+     I grew as dreamlike as the Elysian dead;
+Until a passing Wizard smote me there,
+     And suddenly my soul inherited
+Some gorgeous terrible dukedom of desire
+Like those in bright Andromeda's realms of fire.
+
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+AT THE END
+
+The fiery permutations of the soul
+     Are infinite, but how to be revealed?
+On what impassive matter must the whole
+     Inveterate coil of good and ill be sealed!
+How much too simple all the tale of deeds
+     To pattern out these labyrinthine things,
+These knots of bright unreason, ghostly bredes
+     Veiled weavers weave, moving with silver wings
+Within the duskling sense. Most diverse visions
+     Their visionaries darkly reconcile
+At one sad end. Fate's delicate derisions
+     Through the same hell of penance may beguile
+Two women, who meet with alien eyes downcast;
+Yet one stand first with Love, and one the last.
+
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+THE SOUL OF AGE
+
+I have seen delicate aged women wrought
+     Most tenderly by Time, their passionate past
+By the wise vigils of forgiving thought
+     Amerced of pain, mere beauty at the last.
+So may my soul be chaste, serene, enriched
+     Like an Etruscan mirror one has found
+In kind oblivions, graciously bewitched
+     With precious patinas, a various round
+Of milky opal, or turkis, or emerald,
+     Glistered with rubies faint and smoky pearls,
+Where swirls of incised pattern have enthralled
+     Figures of sweet archaic gods and girls,
+And I shall say: "Thou art a curious toy,
+O soul that mirrored Love and Wrath and Joy!"
+
+
+
+
+
+LI I
+
+HYPNEROTOMACHIA
+
+Ah! Pride and Wrath and Mirth and Pain and Pity,
+     Some amethystine day at last will be,
+When your bright guard and Phantasy's hill-city
+     Shall be like wonders on a tapestry;
+And we shall touch between tired orisons
+     The symbolism of those freaked crowns and wings,--
+Then gaze across the falling Avalons,
+     The resignations of autumnal things,
+And see among the pointed cypresses
+     The one god left, the smiling perverse god,
+The Love that will not leave the loverless,
+     Contending with the Stranger of the Rod,--
+Until these twain become as one, and all
+The Soul and Sense be starrily vesperal.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIII
+
+THE REVOLT
+
+Not so, my Soul? Rather for thee the fate
+     Of those hieratic Carthaginian queens
+Who needs must vanish through the gods' own gate,
+     Even holy Flame, with music and great threnes
+Idolatrous, as on soft gorgeous wings,
+     If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed
+Their beauty's sacred unisons?--Fair things
+     Desire their revel-raiment be their shroud.
+Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage!
+     Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth,
+These penitential usages of age
+     That expiate proud cruelties of youth,
+And bring thee to the last and perfect art,
+To love the lovely with a selfless heart?
+
+
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+AFTER MANY YEARS
+
+By mute communions and by salt sad kisses,
+     By Pity's webs that still with fiery strands
+Wove us together, by the unplumbed abysses
+     Where we have gazed and never loosened hands,
+By holy water we have given each other
+     At Beauty's blessed doors, and by the hearts
+Of sweet Delight and Agony her brother,
+     By bright new marriages in all great arts,
+By the rare wisdom like miraculous amber
+     Won by the desolate grey sound of tears,
+By wedding-music of the flute and tambour
+     Prevailing o'er Time's cruel plot of years,
+By all the proud prayers granted and denied us,
+Fate has no sword at all that can divide us.
+
+
+
+
+
+LV
+
+TREASURE
+
+Not mine the silver ride of the redeemer,
+     Not mine the secret vision of the saint,
+Not mine the martyrdoms of Truth's dark dreamer
+     Nor bitter beatitudes of Art. O quaint
+Undoing of youth's horoscope! No splendours
+     Nor laurels, nor wisdom in a myrrhine bowl!
+Here is the treasure that the past surrenders,
+     A spoil of roses coffered in the soul,--
+Much like another woman's! Rare perfumes
+     And cleaving thorns, faded pathetic store
+Of kisses and sighs, would those heroic dooms
+     I craved of old have yet enriched me more?
+I have not dwelt in Galilee nor Tyre
+Nor Athens. But I have my heart's desire.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+THE SOUL TO THE BODY
+
+I know thou hast a secret of thine own
+     Which I desire. But once I broke with thee
+And walked among the asphodel alone:
+     Therefore thou wilt reserve this reverie,
+Like sumptuous flame closed up in alabaster.
+     They half betray, these curious magian hands:
+Faint music of thy breast has throbbed the faster,
+     If I have touched it with my charming-wands.
+And yet,--the wonder any woman knows
+     Thou dost deny the proud Soul that has fed
+Among the lilies of the White Eros.--
+     Ere I go down among the witless Dead
+Give, give the secret, for my bliss or rue,
+Lest lack of that should craze my wisdom through.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+THE IRONIST
+
+Among high gods the absolute ironist
+     Is Love. Therefore, when some cleft lightning mocks
+Thine arrogant rapture, sad idealist,
+     Admire the wild play of his paradox.
+Great satires of reversal have astounded
+     His bigots: proud fine dreamers confident
+Before an idol in their image are hounded
+     Through comedies of disillusionment.
+Not heavenly Plato, not the Florentine,
+     Not any mage of Epipsychidion
+Can the true nature of the god divine.
+     Heresiarchs like Heine and like Donne,
+Bitter and sweet, and hot and cold, know best
+The incomparable anguish of his jest.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+IN VAIN
+
+I said: "Confession's bitter cautery
+     Shall fierily search my soul, destroy her ill."
+Natheless, the wounded wasting malady
+     Is her unexorcised sad sovran still.
+Oh! that alembic fever of interwed
+     Desire and dream and sense, rapture and rue!
+As soon as my sincerest words are said
+     And heard they seem apostate and untrue.
+For only speech more richly dubious
+     Than shoaling water, or a ringdove's breast,
+Than lighted incense more miraculous
+     With fumes of strange remembrance, could attest
+The morbid beauty of that wasting ill
+Whereof I am the cureless lover still.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+RESERVATIONS
+
+Though cold clear cruelties like diamond
+     Burthen this silken text of dim surmise,
+Surely thou knowest I am pity's bond
+     If one but look at me with stricken eyes.
+If like a herald I have blazoned Pride,
+     I am Humility's own renegade.
+For fruits of good and evil have I sighed?
+     If Love forbid them, Love shall be obeyed.
+Though the wroth soul may excommunicate
+     Her body, yet I see the flagrant strife
+Of earthy and heavenly elements create
+     Colour, change, music. For the Tree of Life
+Burns with this precious mystery of sorrows
+That Love the Phoenix find immortal morrows.
+
+
+
+
+
+LX
+
+THE NEW LOVE
+
+Ah! what if thy last canticle be said,
+     Bright Archer of illusion adored of old,
+Thou dream-fast Love in raiment burning-red,
+     Wreathed with white doves, quivered with burning gold?
+Pass with thy Triumph of Lovers, Aucassin,
+     Tristram, and Pharamond, and Lancelot,
+Dante, and Rudel, all thy haughty kin,
+     Princes in that high heaven, as we are not.--
+With some gilt couchant sphinx both casqued and crowned,
+     All mailed in amethyst the new god comes,
+Whose brooding beautiful eyes at last have found
+     Our uncanonical dark martyrdoms,
+Who from the sombre catacombs of these
+Brings his great miracles and mysteries.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXI
+
+THE WAYS OF LOVE
+
+Hail the implacable Iconoclast
+     Whose images of ivory and gold
+Make proud the dust that his enthusiast
+     In her dark trance may very God behold.
+From the clear music of his delicate
+     Peripheries and porches of delight
+He draws her down through cruel gate on gate,
+     Through immemorial, blind, implacable rite
+That strips her of her dream-branched veils of youth,
+     And naked, agonised like trodden grapes,
+Drags her before the imperishable Truth,
+     The flaming Ecstacy wherefrom he shapes
+Real myth and doctrine. Therefore I lift up
+My heart like some great jubilant scarlet Cup.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EPILOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN
+
+Take back this armour. Give us broideries.
+     Against the Five sad Wounds inveterate
+In our dim sense, can that defend, or these?
+     In veils mysterious and delicate
+Clothe us again, in beautiful broideries.
+
+Take back this justice. Give us thuribles.
+     While ye do loudly in the battle-dust,
+We feed the gods with spice and canticles.
+     To our strange hearts, as theirs, just and unjust
+Are idle words. Give graven thuribles.
+
+Keep orb and sceptre. Give us up your souls
+     That our long fingers wake them verily
+Like dulcimers and citherns and violes;
+     Or at the burning disk of ecstasy
+Impose rare sigils on your gem-like souls.
+
+Give mercies, cruelties, and exultations,
+     Give the long trances of the breaking heart;
+And we shall bring you great imaginations
+     To urge you through the agony of Art.
+Give cloud and flame, give trances, exultations.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOURS OF FIAMMETTA***
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