| NAY, let us walk from fire unto fire, | |
| From passionate pain to deadlier delight,— | |
| I am too young to live without desire, | |
| Too young art thou to waste this summer night | |
| Asking those idle questions which of old | 5 |
| Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told. | |
| |
| For, sweet, to feel is better than to know, | |
| And wisdom is a childless heritage, | |
| One pulse of passion—youth’s first fiery glow,— | |
| Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage: | 10 |
| Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy, | |
| Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and eyes to see! | |
| |
| Dost thou not hear the murmuring nightingale | |
| Like water bubbling from a silver jar, | |
| So soft she sings the envious moon is pale, | 15 |
| That high in heaven she is hung so far | |
| She cannot hear that love-enraptured tune,— | |
| Mark how she wreathes each horn with mist, yon late and labouring moon. | |
| |
| White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream, | |
| The fallen snow of petals where the breeze | 20 |
| Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam | |
| Of boyish limbs in water,—are not these | |
| Enough for thee, dost thou desire more? | |
| Alas! the Gods will give nought else from their eternal store. | |
| |
| For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown | 25 |
| Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour | |
| For wasted days of youth to make atone | |
| By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never, | |
| Hearken they now to either good or ill, | |
| But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will. | 30 |
| |
| They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease, | |
| Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine, | |
| They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees | |
| Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine, | |
| Mourning the old glad days before they knew | 35 |
| What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do. | |
| |
| And far beneath the brazen floor they see | |
| Like swarming flies the crowd of little men, | |
| The bustle of small lives, then wearily | |
| Back to their lotus-haunts they turn again | 40 |
| Kissing each other’s mouths, and mix more deep | |
| The poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep. | |
| |
| There all day long the golden-vestured sun, | |
| Their torch-bearer, stands with his torch a-blaze, | |
| And when the gaudy web of noon is spun | 45 |
| By its twelve maidens through the crimson haze | |
| Fresh from Endymion’s arms comes forth the moon, | |
| And the immortal Gods in toils of mortal passions swoon. | |
| |
| There walks Queen Juno through some dewy mead | |
| Her grand white feet flecked with the saffron dust | 50 |
| Of wind-stirred lilies, while young Ganymede | |
| Leaps in the hot and amber-foaming must, | |
| His curls all tossed, as when the eagle bare | |
| The frightened boy from Ida through the blue Ionian air. | |
| |
| There in the green heart of some garden close | 55 |
| Queen Venus with the shepherd at her side, | |
| Her warm soft body like the briar rose | |
| Which would be white yet blushes at its pride, | |
| Laughs low for love, till jealous Salmacis | |
| Peers through the myrtle-leaves and sighs for pain of lonely bliss. | 60 |
| |
| There never does that dreary north-wind blow | |
| Which leaves our English forests bleak and bare, | |
| Nor ever falls the swift white-feathered snow, | |
| Nor doth the red-toothed lightning ever dare | |
| To wake them in the silver-fretted night | 65 |
| When we lie weeping for some sweet sad sin, some dead delight. | |
| |
| Alas! they know the far Lethæan spring, | |
| The violet-hidden waters well they know, | |
| Where one whose feet with tired wandering | |
| Are faint and broken may take heart and go, | 70 |
| And from those dark depths cool and crystalline | |
| Drink, and draw balm, and sleep for sleepless souls, and anodyne. | |
| |
| But we oppress our natures, God or Fate | |
| Is our enemy, we starve and feed | |
| On vain repentance—O we are born too late! | 75 |
| What balm for us in bruisèd poppy seed | |
| Who crowd into one finite pulse of time | |
| The joy of infinite love and the fierce pain of infinite crime. | |
| |
| O we are wearied of this sense of guilt, | |
| Wearied of pleasure’s paramour despair, | 80 |
| Wearied of every temple we have built, | |
| Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer, | |
| For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high: | |
| One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo! we die. | |
| |
| Ah! but no ferry-man with labouring pole | 85 |
| Nears his black shallop to the flowerless strand, | |
| No little coin of bronze can bring the soul | |
| Over Death’s river to the sunless land, | |
| Victim and wine and vow are all in vain, | |
| The tomb is sealed; the soldiers watch; the dead rise not again. | 90 |
| |
| We are resolved into the supreme air, | |
| We are made one with what we touch and see, | |
| With our heart’s blood each crimson sun is fair, | |
| With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree | |
| Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range | 95 |
| The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change. | |
| |
| With beat of systole and of diastole | |
| One grand great life throbs through earth’s giant heart, | |
| And mighty waves of single Being roll | |
| From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part | 100 |
| Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, | |
| One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. | |
| |
| From lower cells of waking life we pass | |
| To full perfection; thus the world grows old: | |
| We who are godlike now were once a mass | 105 |
| Of quivering purple flecked with bars of gold, | |
| Unsentient or of joy or misery, | |
| And tossed in terrible tangles of some wild and wind-swept sea. | |
| |
| This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn | |
| Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil, | 110 |
| Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn | |
| To water-lilies; the brown fields men till | |
| Will be more fruitful for our love to-night, | |
| Nothing is lost in nature, all things live in Death’s despite. | |
| |
| The boy’s first kiss, the hyacinth’s first bell, | 115 |
| The man’s last passion, and the last red spear | |
| That from the lily leaps, the asphodel | |
| Which will not let its blossoms blow for fear | |
| Of too much beauty, and the timid shame | |
| Of the young bride-groom at his lover’s eyes,—these with the same | 120 |
| |
| One sacrament are consecrate, the earth | |
| Not we alone hath passions hymeneal, | |
| The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth | |
| At daybreak know a pleasure not less real | |
| Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood | 125 |
| We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good. | |
| |
| So when men bury us beneath the yew | |
| Thy crimson-stainèd mouth a rose will be, | |
| And thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew, | |
| And when the white narcissus wantonly | 130 |
| Kisses the wind its playmate, some faint joy | |
| Will thrill our dust, and we will be again fond maid and boy. | |
| |
| And thus without life’s conscious torturing pain | |
| In some sweet flower we will feel the sun, | |
| And from the linnet’s throat will sing again, | 135 |
| And as two gorgeous-mailèd snakes will run | |
| Over our graves, or as two tigers creep | |
| Through the hot jungle where the yellow-eyed huge lions sleep | |
| |
| And give them battle! How my heart leaps up | |
| To think of that grand living after death | 140 |
| In beast and bird and flower, when this cup, | |
| Being filled too full of spirit, bursts for breath, | |
| And with the pale leaves of some autumn day | |
| The soul earth’s earliest conqueror becomes earth’s last great prey. | |
| |
| O think of it! We shall inform ourselves | 145 |
| Into all sensuous life, the goat-foot Faun, | |
| The Centaur, or the merry bright-eyed Elves | |
| That leave their dancing rings to spite the dawn | |
| Upon the meadows, shall not be more near | |
| Than you and I to nature’s mysteries, for we shall hear | 150 |
| |
| The thrush’s heart beat, and the daisies grow, | |
| And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun | |
| On sunless days in winter, we shall know | |
| By whom the silver gossamer is spun, | |
| Who paints the diapered fritillaries, | 155 |
| On what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies. | |
| |
| Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows | |
| If yonder daffodil had lured the bee | |
| Into its gilded womb, or any rose | |
| Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree! | 160 |
| Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring, | |
| But for the lovers’ lips that kiss, the poets’ lips that sing. | |
| |
| Is the light vanished from our golden sun, | |
| Or is this dædal-fashioned earth less fair, | |
| That we are nature’s heritors, and one | 165 |
| With every pulse of life that beats the air? | |
| Rather new suns across the sky shall pass, | |
| New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass. | |
| |
| And we two lovers shall not sit afar, | |
| Critics of nature, but the joyous sea | 170 |
| Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star | |
| Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be | |
| Part of the mighty universal whole, | |
| And through all æons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul! | |
| |
| We shall be notes in that great Symphony | 175 |
| Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, | |
| And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be | |
| One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years | |
| Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die, | |
| The Universe itself shall be our Immortality! | 180 |
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