Yellow Nineties 2.0

<emph rend="bold"><emph rend="indent3" > MUNDI VICTIMA</emph></emph> I HENCEFORTH for each of us remains the world. The gates have closed behind us, we are hurled From the fixed paradise of our content Into an outer world of banishment, And, in this anger of the garden's Lord, His serene angel with the fiery sword Has yet more pitilessly cast us forth, You by the gate that looks upon the North And I by the gate looking on the South. And so the lamentations of your mouth I shall not hear, nor tears for this distress Water my hours' unwatered barrenness. For love is ended, love that was to be Endless ; nay, love endures perpetually, But I shall never kiss your lips again, Nor hold your hand, nor feel your arms enchain Body and soul in one extreme embrace, Nor find again the kingdom of your face. For I have lost you, you return no more. And I have lost in you the years before You gathered all my years within the glance Of your supreme and triumphing countenance. And all the years whose desultory flame Shall yet smoke flickeringly after them. Passion has burnt itself clean out for you. I go back empty-hearted, to renew The unprofitable, the vain following Of every vain, unprofitable thing ; You, with all seemly wishes satisfied, Go forth to be the most unhappy bride 14THE SAVOY The sun shall shine upon in rich men's halls. Hearken, I hear a voice, a voice that calls ; What shall remain for him ? sadly it cries : Desolate years, eternal memories. And what for her ? it cries, it cries with tears : Eternal memories, desolate years. II If the astrologers speak truth, who tell That the stars make for us our heaven and hell, My passionate and perverse horoscope, Where the intellectual forces may not cope With Scorpio, Herschel, Venus, and the Moon, Marked in my life that love in me should swoon Into the arms of strange affinities. It was myself looked at me with your eyes, Where Venus and the Moon with Herschel strove In some ambiguous paradox of love. When first I touched your hand I felt the thrill Knit heart to heart, and at the touch your will Became as my will, and my will became As your will, and an unappeasable flame Was lighted when your lips and mine first met In that long kiss my lips shall not forget When I am aged with eternity. I knew that my desire had come to me, And that the world was ended and begun, And I should never more beneath the sun Go lightly forth on any wayfaring. I knew that I should suffer for this thing, For this completion of the impossible, This mystical marriage of heaven and hell, With anguish and with extreme agony, Knowing that my desire had come to me. MUNDI VICTIMA 15 III I gaze upon your portrait in my hand. And slowly, in a dream, I see you stand Silent before me, with your pressing gaze Of enigmatic calm, and all your face Smiling with that ironical repose Which is the weariness of one who knows. Dare I divine, then, what your visage dreams, So troubled and so strangely calm it seems ? Consuming eyes consenting to confess The extreme ardour of their heaviness, The lassitude of passionate desires Denied, pale smoke of unaccomplished fires ; Ah ! in those shell-curved, purple eyelids bent Towards some most dolorous accomplishment, And in the painful patience of the mouth, (A sundered fruit that waits, in a great drouth, One draught of living water from the skies) And in the carnal mystery of the eyes, And in the burning pallor of the cheeks : Voice of the Flesh ! this is the voice that speaks, In agony of spirit, or in grief Because desire dare not desire relief. IV I have known you, I have loved you, I have lost. Here in one woman I have found the host Of women, and the woman of all these Who by her strangeness had the power to please The strangeness of my difficult desires ; And here the only love that never tires Even with the monotony of love. It was your strangeness I was amorous of, Mystery of variety, that, being known, yet does Leave you still infinitely various, 16THE SAVOY And leave me thirsting still, still wondering At your unknowable and disquieting Certainty of a fixed uncertainty. And thus I knew that you were made for me, For I have always hated to be sure, And there is nothing I could less endure Than a fond woman whom I understood. I never understood you : mood by mood I watched you through your changes manifold, As the star-gazing shepherd from his fold Watches the myriad changes of the moon. Is not love's mystery the supreme boon ? Ah rare, scarce hoped-for, longed-for, such a goal As this most secret and alluring soul ! Your soul I never knew, I guessed at it, A dim abode of what indefinite And of what poisonous possibilities ! Your soul has been a terror to mine eyes, Even as my own soul haunts me, night and day, With voices that I cannot drive away, And visions that I scarce can see and live. And you, from your own soul a fugitive, Have you not fled, did not your pride disown The coming of a soul so like your own, Eyes that you fancied read you, yet but drew Unknown affinities, yourself from you, And hands that held your destiny, because The power that held you in them, yours it was ? Did you not hate me, did you not in vain Avoid me and repel me and refrain ? Was not our love fatal to you and me, The rapture of a tragic ecstasy Between disaster and disaster, given A moment's space, to be a hell in heaven ? Love, being love indeed, could be no less, For us, than an immortal bitterness, A blindness and a madness, and the wave Of a great sea that breaks and is a grave. MUNDI VICTIMA 17 Ah, more to us than many prosperous years, So brief a rapture and so many tears ; To have won, amid the tumults round about, The shade of a great silence from the shout Of the world's battles and the idle cry Of those vain faiths for which men live and die ! And have we not tasted the very peace So passionate an escape must needs release, Being from the world so strangely set apart, The inmost peace that is the whirlpool's heart ? V Let me remember when you loved me best. When the intolerable rage possessed The spirit of your senses, and the breath As of the rushing of the winds of death Rapt you from earth, and in a fiery trance Exalted your transfigured countenance And bade your heart be rapturously still ? Or in the holy silence of that thrill Which stirs the little heart of grass, and swings The worlds upon their windy chariotings ? Or in the haunted trouble of those deep Enchantments of your visionary sleep, Ardent with dreams, and the delicious strife Of phantoms passionate with waking life ? Or when, as a fond mother o'er her child, You bent above me, and the mother smiled Upon the man re-born to be her own, Flesh of her very flesh, bone of her bone ? Of all your kisses which supremest one Out of the immeasurable million ? Or which denied, as on a certain day You tremulously turned your lips away, And I, who wronged you, thinking you unkind, Found it love's penance for a troubled mind, Grieved it had done some little wrong to love ? 18THE SAVOY Out of your silences which most did move The eternal heart of silence, ancient peace ? Or did you love me best, and then increase The best with better, till at last we stood, As he who was love's laureate in each mood Of passionate communion, bids us stand, First among lovers when but hand in hand VI It is all over, I am left alone. O visiting ghost, these eyes have never known So cold, calm, tearless, proud, dispassionate, Desperate, desolate, importunate, Whose wrong denied you life, and rent from me Your love, to be this ghost of memory ? Not yours, though you have left me ; and not mine, Though I have bade you leave me : the divine Right of the world's injustice, and that old Tyranny of dumb, rooted things, which hold The hearts of men in a hard bondage. Yet, Not for the world's sake, let me not forget That, in the world's eyes, I have done you wrong. And since to the world's judgment must belong The saving and damnation of all souls Whom that usurped sovereignty controls, Indeed I have done you wrong. I loved you more Than your own soul. I had not loved before, And love possessed me, fixed my wandering mind, And drove me onward, heedless, deaf, and blind, Wrapt in the fiery whirlwind, passion, drove Life to annihilation upon love. I had not loved before : I had been love's lord, I had delicately feasted at the board Where Folly's guests luxuriously admire Each dainty waiting handmaiden desire ; Where, when the feast is over, choice is free. I had feasted long, I had chosen riotously, MUNDI VICTIMA 19 Kisses, and roses, and warm scented wine, I had bound my forehead with the tangled vine, I had bound about my heart the tangled hair Of laughing light loves ; I had found love fair, Of delicate aspect, and free from guile, And I had bartered kisses for a smile, And my vine-wreath for poppies twined for sleep, And of a sleepy bowl I had drunk deep, And, dreaming, never dreamed that hearts could ache, For over-much desire, or for love's sake. And then you came. The rose of yesterday Petal by petal drooped, withering away, And all my bright flowers drooped, withering dead, And the vine-wreath had fallen from my head, And the wine-red poppies dripped to earth, and spilled The bowl of sleep, and all the air was filled, As with the fluttering voices of soft doves, With lamentations of the little loves. Then a new life was born of the last breath Of that which never lived ; I knew that death Which love is, ere it is eternity. And then I knew that love, I had thought so fair, Is terrible of aspect, and heavy care Follows the feet of love where'er he goes, And lovers' hearts, because of many woes, Ache sorer than all hearts most desolate, And dearest love works most the work of hate. VII The world has taken you, the world has won. In vain against the world's dominion We fought the fight of love against the world. For since about the tree of knowledge curled The insidious snake, the snake's voice whispering Has poisoned every fair and fruitful thing. Did not the world's voice treacherously move Even your fixed soul ? Did you not hold our love 20THE SAVOY Guilty of its own ardour, and the immense Sacrifice to its own omnipotence A sacrilege and not a sacrifice ? Even in our love our love could not suffice (Not the rapt silence whose warm wings abound With all the holy plenitude of sound, At love's most shadowy and hushed hour of day) To keep the voices of the world away. O subtle voices, luring from the dream The dreamer, till love's very vision seem The unruffled air that phantom feet have crossed In the mute march of that processional host Whose passing is the passing of the wind ; Avenging voices, hurrying behind The souls that have escaped, and yet look back Reluctantly along the flaming track ; O mighty voices of the world, I have heard Between our heart-beats your reiterate word, And I have felt our heart-beats slackening. VIII Love, to the world, is the forbidden thing ; And rightly, for the world is to the strong, And the world's honour and increase must belong To the few mighty triumphing through hate And to the many meek who humbly wait The grudging wage of daily drudgery. The world is made for hate, for apathy, For labouring greed that mines the earth for gold, And sweats to gather dust into its hold : Is not the world bought for a little dust ? Kingdoms are shaken from their ancient trust, And kingdoms stablished upon treacheries ; Under the temple-roof of the same skies The stones of altars older than their gods Are beaten down, and in the old abodes The smoke of a new incense blinds the stars ; MUNDI VICTIMA 21 The rind of earth is eaten up by wars, As a rat, gnawing, leaves a mouldering heap ; And the world drowses in a downy sleep, The world being sworn confederate with success. Yet will it pardon the forgetfulness Of laughing loves that linger but a night In the soft perfumed chambers of delight. How should it pardon love ? love whose intent Is from the world to be in banishment, Love that admits but fealty to one, Love that is ever in rebellion. The world is made for dutiful restraint, Its martyrs are the lover and the saint, All whom a fine and solitary rage Urges on some ecstatic pilgrimage In search of any Holy Sepulchre. The lover is a lonely voyager Over great seas and into lonely lands, He speaks a tongue which no man understands, Much given to silence, no good citizen, His utmost joy to be apart from men, For his creating mind has given birth, God-like, to a new heaven and a new earth ; Where, if he dwell apart or in the crowd, He talks with angels in a fiery cloud Upon the mount of vision all his days. Therefore the world, beholding in his face Only the radiance of reflected light Left by that incommunicable sight, Which to the dim eyes of the world may seem But the marsh-glimmer of a fevered dream, Bids love renounce love, or be cast aside. Has not the world's hate ever crucified, From age to age, rejoicing in its loss, Love on the same inevitable cross, In every incarnation from above Of the redeeming mystery of love ? 22THE SAVOY IX The world has taken you, the world has won. Accursed be the world ! Was it well done To give the world, once more, its victory ? Was it well done to let you go from me ? For your own sake I suffered you to go. Did I do right, for your sake ? Say not no, Say not that I have left you to your fate, That I have made my own life desolate, Casting adrift upon a shoreless tide, While you, blind, shipwrecked, and without a guide. Fasting and footsore, desolately went Across an undiscovered continent ! Should I have held you fast, in spite of all ? Perchance. Yet it was well, whate'er befall, To have renounced love, merely for love's sake. Ah, when in lonely nights I lie awake, And hear the windy voices of the rain, At least I shall not hear your voice complain "If you had loved me, you had let me go ! " Have we not loved and sorrowed ? and we know It is well to have loved and sorrowed and not striven. And to endure hell, having passed through heaven, To know what heaven is, having passed through hell. Love's moment is a moment of farewell. Sorrow and weariness are all our years, And life is full of sighing, and much tears. What shall your life be in the years to come ? The world, that recks not of love's martyrdom, Shall praise in you a weary passionate face, Where tears and memories have left their trace, Into a finer beauty fashioning Your beauty, ever an unquiet thing. MUNDI VICTIMA 23 You shall have riches : jewels shall be brought From the earth's ends to please a wandering thought, And the red heart of rubies shall suspire To kiss your fingers, and the inner fire That wastes the diamond's imprisoned soul Shall flame upon your brows, an aureole, And your white breast shall be devoutly kissed By the pale fasting lips of amethyst, And the cold purity of pearls enmesh Your throat that keeps my kisses in its flesh. Your beauty shall be clothed in raiment fit For the high privilege, to cover it ; You shall be served ere any wish arise With more than had seemed meet in your own eyes ; You shall be shielded lest the sun should light A rose too red on cheeks that blossom white ; You shall be shielded from the wind that may Tangle a tress delicately astray ; You shall be fenced about with many friends ; You shall be brought to many journeys' ends By leisured stages ; what was mine of old Shall now be yours, cities and skies of gold, And golden waters, and the infinite Renewal of the myriad-vested night. Where cool stars tesselated the lagoon, In Venice, under some old April moon, Shall not some April, too, for you be lit By the same moon that then wept over it ? Shall you not drive beneath the boulevard trees In that young Paris where I lived at ease? And you shall see the women I have known, Before your voice called me to be your own Out of that delicate, pale, lilac air. And all this you shall find, as I did, fair, And all this you shall find, as now I find, Withered as leaves a ruinous winter wind Casts in the face of any summer's guest Revisiting some valley of old rest. 24THE SAVOY You will remember me in all these things, I shall go with you in your wanderings, I shall be nearer to you, far away, Than he who holds you by him, night and day ; Close let him hold you, close : what can he do ? For am I not the heart that beats in you ? And if, at night, you hear beside your bed The night's slow trampling hours with ceaseless tread Bearing the haggard corpse of morning on, You shall cry in vain for sleep's oblivion, Haunted by that unsleeping memory That wakes and watches with you ceaselessly. What shall your life be ? Loneliness, regret, A weary face beside a hearthstone set, A weary head upon a pillow laid Heavier than sleep ; pale lips that are afraid Of some betraying smile, and eyes that keep Their haunting memory strangled in its sleep. "O mother !" is it I who hear you cry ? "O mother ! mother !" is it only I ? "O my lost lover !" shall she not, even she, Hear, and one moment pity you and me ? She must not hear, only the silence must Share in the jealous keeping of that trust. And when, perchance, telling some idle thing, Your husband rests his finger on my ring ; When your eye rests upon the casket where My letters keep the scent of days that were, My verses keep the perfume that was yours, And the key tells you how my love endures ; When you shall read of me, shall hear my name, On idle lips, in idle praise or blame ; Ah, when the world, perhaps, some day shall cry My name with a great shouting to the sky ; You must be silent, though your eyes, your cheek, Will answer for your heart, you must not speak, Though you would gladly dare a thousand harms To cry "The joy of life was in his arms !" MUNDI VICTIMA 25 Though you would give up all to cry one cry : "I loved him, I shall love him till I die, I am the man you tell of, he is I !" XI I write this for the world's eye, yet for one. When she shall hear of me, and not alone, Let her know always that my heart is hers, As it was always. If my fancy errs Into strange places, wildly following The flying track of any flitting thing, If I recapture any cast aside Garlands, or twine for roses that have died Fresh roses, or bid flower-soft arms entwine My forehead flushed with some bewildering wine, Then let her know that I am most forlorn. There is no penance harder to be borne Than, amid happy faces and the voice Of revellers who in revelling rejoice, To hear one's own sad heart keep time in vain With some sad unforgotten old refrain. For me, the world's eternal silence dwells Not in the peace of those ecstatic cells Where recollection goes the way of prayer Into the void, the welcoming void air, But here, in these bright crowds to be alone. Then let her know that I am most her own ! Yet, if it might but save my soul from her, O come to me, Folly the Comforter, Fling those wild arms around me, take my hand, And lead me back to that once longed-for land, Where it is always midnight, and the light Of many tapers has burnt out the night, And swift life finds no moment set apart For rest, and the seclusion of the heart, And the return of any yesterday. Come to me, Folly, now, take me away ; 26THE SAVOY I will be faithful to you until death Puff out this wavering and unsteady breath. Folly, the bride of such unhappy men As I am, were you not my mistress, when, Love having not yet chosen me to be proud, I followed all the voices of the crowd ? But I forsook you : I return anew, And for my bride I claim, I capture you. Folly, I will be faithful to you now. I will pluck all your roses for my brow, And, with the thorns of ruined roses crowned, I will drink every poison life has found In the enchantments that your fingers brew. Finally I commend myself to you, Multitudinous senses : carry me Upon your beating wings where I may see The world and all the glory of the world, And bid my soul from lust to lust be hurled, Endlessly, precipitously, on. Only in you is there oblivion, Multitudinous senses ; in your fire I light and I exterminate desire. Though it cry all night long, shall I not steep My sorrow in the fever of your sleep ? Where, if no phantom with faint fingers pale Beckon to me, wildly, across the veil Of the dim waving of her sorcerous hair, I may yet find your very peace, despair ! Benignant principalities and powers Of evil, powers of the world's abysmal hours, Take me and make me yours : I am yours : O take The sacrifice of soul and body, break The mould of this void spirit, scatter it Into the vague and shoreless infinite, Pour it upon the restless arrogant Winds of tumultuous spaces ; grant, O grant That the loosed sails of this determinate soul Hurry it to disaster, and the goal MUNDI VICTIMA 27 Of swiftest shipwreck ; that this soul descend The unending depths until oblivion end In self-oblivion, and at last be lost Where never any other wandering ghost, Voyaging from other worlds remembered not, May find it and remind of things forgot.

ARTHUR SYMONS.