I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days; | |
I fled Him, down the arches of the years; | |
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways | |
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears | |
I hid from Him, and under running laughter. | 5 |
Up vistaed hopes I sped; | |
And shot, precipitated, | |
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears, | |
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. | |
But with unhurrying chase, | 10 |
And unperturbèd pace, | |
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, | |
They beat—and a Voice beat | |
More instant than the Feet— | |
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’ | 15 |
I pleaded, outlaw-wise, | |
By many a hearted casement, curtained red, | |
Trellised with intertwining charities; | |
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd, | |
Yet was I sore adread | 20 |
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside). | |
But, if one little casement parted wide, | |
The gust of His approach would clash it to. | |
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue. | |
Across the margent of the world I fled, | 25 |
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars, | |
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars; | |
Fretted to dulcet jars | |
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon. | |
I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon; | 30 |
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over | |
From this tremendous Lover— | |
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see! | |
I tempted all His servitors, but to find | |
My own betrayal in their constancy, | 35 |
In faith to Him their fickleness to me, | |
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit. | |
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue; | |
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind. | |
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet, | 40 |
The long savannahs of the blue; | |
Or whether, Thunder-driven, | |
They clanged his chariot ’thwart a heaven, | |
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet:— | |
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue. | 45 |
Still with unhurrying chase, | |
And unperturbèd pace, | |
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, | |
Came on the following Feet, | |
And a Voice above their beat— | 50 |
‘Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.’ | |
I sought no more that after which I strayed | |
In face of man or maid; | |
But still within the little children’s eyes | |
Seems something, something that replies, | 55 |
They at least are for me, surely for me! | |
I turned me to them very wistfully; | |
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair | |
With dawning answers there, | |
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair. | 60 |
‘Come then, ye other children, Nature’s—share | |
With me’ (said I) ‘your delicate fellowship; | |
Let me greet you lip to lip, | |
Let me twine with you caresses, | |
Wantoning | 65 |
With our Lady-Mother’s vagrant tresses, | |
Banqueting | |
With her in her wind-walled palace, | |
Underneath her azured daïs, | |
Quaffing, as your taintless way is, | 70 |
From a chalice | |
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.’ | |
So it was done: | |
I in their delicate fellowship was one— | |
Drew the bolt of Nature’s secrecies. | 75 |
I knew all the swift importings | |
On the wilful face of skies; | |
I knew how the clouds arise | |
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings; | |
All that’s born or dies | 80 |
Rose and drooped with; made them shapers | |
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine; | |
With them joyed and was bereaven. | |
I was heavy with the even, | |
When she lit her glimmering tapers | 85 |
Round the day’s dead sanctities. | |
I laughed in the morning’s eyes. | |
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather, | |
Heaven and I wept together, | |
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine; | 90 |
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart | |
I laid my own to beat, | |
And share commingling heat; | |
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart. | |
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek. | 95 |
For ah! we know not what each other says, | |
These things and I; in sound I speak— | |
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences. | |
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth; | |
Let her, if she would owe me, | 100 |
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me | |
The breasts o’ her tenderness: | |
Never did any milk of hers once bless | |
My thirsting mouth. | |
Nigh and nigh draws the chase, | 105 |
With unperturbèd pace, | |
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy; | |
And past those noisèd Feet | |
A voice comes yet more fleet— | |
‘Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me!’ | 110 |
Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke! | |
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me, | |
And smitten me to my knee; | |
I am defenceless utterly. | |
I slept, methinks, and woke, | 115 |
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep. | |
In the rash lustihead of my young powers, | |
I shook the pillaring hours | |
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears, | |
I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years— | 120 |
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. | |
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, | |
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream. | |
Yea, faileth now even dream | |
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist; | 125 |
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist | |
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist, | |
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account | |
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed. | |
Ah! is Thy love indeed | 130 |
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed, | |
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount? | |
Ah! must— | |
Designer infinite!— | |
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it? | 135 |
My freshness spent its wavering shower i’ the dust; | |
And now my heart is as a broken fount, | |
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever | |
From the dank thoughts that shiver | |
Upon the sighful branches of my mind. | 140 |
Such is; what is to be? | |
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind? | |
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds; | |
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds | |
From the hid battlements of Eternity; | 145 |
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then | |
Round the half-glimpsèd turrets slowly wash again. | |
But not ere him who summoneth | |
I first have seen, enwound | |
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned; | 150 |
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith. | |
Whether man’s heart or life it be which yields | |
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields | |
Be dunged with rotten death? | |
Now of that long pursuit | 155 |
Comes on at hand the bruit; | |
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea: | |
‘And is thy earth so marred, | |
Shattered in shard on shard? | |
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me! | 160 |
Strange, piteous, futile thing! | |
Wherefore should any set thee love apart? | |
Seeing none but I makes much of naught’ (He said), | |
‘And human love needs human meriting: | |
How hast thou merited— | 165 |
Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot? | |
Alack, thou knowest not | |
How little worthy of any love thou art! | |
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, | |
Save Me, save only Me? | 170 |
All which I took from thee I did but take, | |
Not for thy harms, | |
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms. | |
All which thy child’s mistake | |
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: | 175 |
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’ | |
Halts by me that footfall: | |
Is my gloom, after all, | |
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? | |
‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, | 180 |
I am He Whom thou seekest! | |
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.’ |