• Peace in her chamber, wheresoe'er
• It be, a holy place:
• The thought still brings my soul such grace
• As morning meadows wear.

• Whether it still be small and light,
• A maid's who dreams alone,
• As from her orchard-gate the moon
• Its ceiling showed at night:

• Or whether, in a shadow dense
• 10 As nuptial hymns invoke,
• Innocent maidenhood awoke
• To married innocence:

• There still the thanks unheard await
• The unconscious gift bequeathed;
• And there my soul this hour has breathed
• An air inviolate.

   

• In a soft-complexioned sky,
• Fleeting rose and kindling grey,
• Have you seen Aurora fly
• At the break of day?
• So my maiden, so my modest may
• Blushing cheek and gleaming eye
• Lifts to look my way.

• Where the inmost leaf is stirred
• With the heart-beat of the grove,
• 10 Have you heard a hidden bird
• Cast her note above?
• So my lady, so my lovely love,
• Echoing Cupid's prompted word,
• Makes a tune thereof.

• Have you seen, at heaven's mid-height,
• In the moon-wrack's ebb and tide,
• Venus leap forth burning white,
• Dian pale and hide?
• So my bright breast-jewel, so my bride,
• 20 One sweet night, when fear takes flight,
• Shall leap against my side.

   

• I have been here before,
• But when or how I cannot tell:
• I know the grass beyond the door,
• The sweet keen smell,
• The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

• You have been mine before,—
• How long ago I may not know:
• But just when at that swallow's soar
• Your neck turned so,
• 10Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

• Then, now,—perchance again! . . . .
• O round mine eyes your tresses shake!
• Shall we not lie as we have lain
• Thus for Love's sake,
• And sleep, and wake, yet never break the chain?

   

• A little while a little love
• The hour yet bears for thee and me
• Who have not drawn the veil to see
• If still our heaven be lit above.
• Thou merely, at the day's last sigh,
• Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone;
• And I have heard the night-wind cry
• And deemed its speech mine own.

• A little while a little love
• 10 The scattering autumn hoards for us
• Whose bower is not yet ruinous
• Nor quite unleaved our songless grove.
• Only across the shaken boughs
• We hear the flood-tides seek the sea,
• And deep in both our hearts they rouse
• One wail for thee and me.

• A little while a little love
• May yet be ours who have not said
• The word it makes our eyes afraid
• 20To know that each is thinking of.
• Not yet the end: be our lips dumb
• In smiles a little season yet:
• I'll tell thee when the end is come
• How we may best forget.

   

• Say, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
• Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
• Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
• Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
• Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
• Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
• Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember,
• Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.

• What were my prize, could I enter thy bower,
• 10 This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
• Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,
• Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
• Deep in warm pillows (the sun's bed is colder!)
• Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
• My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
• My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.

• What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,—
• My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
• Waters engulfing or fires that devour?—
• 20 Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
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• Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,
• The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell;
• Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city,
• The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.

• Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
• One day when all days are one day to me?—
• Thinking, ‘I stirred not, and yet had the power,’—
• Yearning, ‘Ah God, if again it might be!’
• Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
• 30 So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,—
• Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way. . . .
• Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal shall we meet?

   

• I did not look upon her eyes,
• (Though scarcely seen, with no surprise,
• 'Mid many eyes a single look,)
• Because they should not gaze rebuke,
• Thenceforth, from stars in sky and brook.

• I did not take her by the hand,
• (Though little was to understand
• From touch of hand all friends might take,)
• Because it should not prove a flake
• 10Burnt in my palm to boil and ache.

• I did not listen to her voice,
• (Though none had noted, where at choice
• All might rejoice in listening,)
• Because no such a thing should cling
• In the sea-wind at evening.

• I did not cross her shadow once,
• (Though from the hollow west the sun's
• Last shadow runs along so far,)
• Because in June it should not bar
• 20My ways, at noon when fevers are.

• They told me she was there: but I,
• Who saw her not, did fear and fly
• The means brought nigh of seeing her.
• Thus must this day be bitterer,
• I felt; yet did not speak nor stir.

• So nightly shall the crows troop home
• One less; one less the wailings come
• From tongues of foam that chafe the sand;
• One less, from sleep's dumb quaking land,
• 30The dreams shall at my bed's foot stand.

   

• Along the grass sweet airs are blown
• Our way this day in Spring.
• Of all the songs that we have known
• Now which one shall we sing?
• Not that, my love, ah no!—
• Not this, my love? why, so!—
• Yet both were ours, but hours will come and go.

• The grove is all a pale frail mist,
• The new year sucks the sun.
• 10Of all the kisses that we kissed
• Now which shall be the one?
• Not that, my love, ah no!—
• Not this, my love?—heigh-ho
• For all the sweets that all the winds can blow!

• The branches cross above our eyes,
• The skies are in a net:
• And what's the thing beneath the skies
• We two would most forget?
• Not birth, my love, no, no,—
• 20 Not death, my love, no, no,—
• The love once ours, but ours long hours ago.

   

• So it is, my dear.
• All such things touch secret strings
• For heavy hearts to hear.
• So it is, my dear.

• Very like indeed:
• Sea and sky, afar, on high,
• Sand and strewn seaweed,—
• Very like indeed.

• But the sea stands spread
• 10As one wall with the flat skies,
• Where the lean black craft like flies
• Seem well-nigh stagnated,
• Soon to drop off dead.

• Seemed it so to us
• When I was thine and thou wast mine,
• And all these things were thus,
• But all our world in us?

• Could we be so now?
• Not if all beneath heaven's pall
• 20 Lay dead but I and thou,
• Could we be so now!

   

• As when desire, long darkling, dawns, and first
• The mother looks upon the newborn child,
• Even so my lady stood at gaze and smiled
• When her soul knew at length the Love it nursed.
• Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst
• And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay
• Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
• Cried on him, and bonds of birth were burst.

• Now, shielded in his wings, our faces yearn
• 10 Together, as his fullgrown feet now range
• The grove, and his warm hands our couch prepare:
• Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn
• Be born his children, when Death's nuptial change
• Leaves us for light the halo of his hair.

   

• O Thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
• Unto my lips dost evermore present
• The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
• Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
• The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
• Who without speech hast owned him, and intent
• Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
• And murmured o'er the cup, Remember me!—

• O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
• 10 And what to Love the glory,—when the whole
• Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal
• And weary water of the place of sighs,
• And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
• Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!

   

• When do I see thee most, beloved one?
• When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
• Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
• The worship of that Love through thee made known?
• Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,)
• Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
• Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
• And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

• O Love, my love! if I no more should see
• 10Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
• Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
• How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
• The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
• The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

   

• What smouldering senses in death's sick delay
• Or seizure of malign vicissitude
• Can rob this body of honour, or denude
• This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
• For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
• With these my lips such consonant interlude
• As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
• The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.

• I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
• 10 When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,—
• A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—
• A god when all our life-breath met to fan
• Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran,
• Fire within fire, desire in deity.

   

• At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:
• And as the last slow sudden drops are shed
• From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,
• So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
• Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start
• Of married flowers to either side outspread
• From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,
• Fawned on each other where they lay apart.

• Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
• 10 And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.
• Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams
• Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;
• Till from some wonder of new woods and streams
• He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.

   

• To all the spirits of love that wander by
• Along the love-sown fallowfield of sleep
• My lady lies apparent; and the deep
• Calls to the deep; and no man sees but I.
• The bliss so long afar, at length so nigh,
• Rests there attained. Methinks proud Love must weep
• When Fate's control doth from his harvest reap
• The sacred hour for which the years did sigh.

• First touched, the hand now warm around my neck
• 10 Taught memory long to mock desire: and lo!
• Across my breast the abandoned hair doth flow,
• Where one shorn tress long stirred the longing ache:
• And next the heart that trembled for its sake
• Lies the queen-heart in sovereign overthrow.

   

• That called them; and they threw their tresses back,
• And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
• For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
• To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:
• And looking round, I saw as usual
• That she was standing there with her long locks
• Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.

• For always when I see her now, she laughs.
• And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,
• 10The life of this dead terror; as in days
• When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell
• Something of those days yet before the end.

• I brought her from the city—one such day
• When she was still a merry loving child,—
• The earliest gift I mind my giving her;
• A little image of a flying Love
• Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands
• A dart of gilded metal and a torch.
• And him she kissed and me, and fain would know
• 20Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
• And why the arrow. What I knew I told
• Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales.
• And when she heard that he could rule the loves
• Of men and women, still she shook her head
• And wondered; and, ‘Nay, nay,’ she murmured still,
• ‘So strong, and he a younger child than I!’
• And then she'd have me fix him on the wall
• Fronting her little bed; and then again
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• She needs must fix him there herself, because
• 30I gave him to her and she loved him so,
• And he should make her love me better yet,
• If women loved the more, the more they grew.
• But the fit place upon the wall was high
• For her, and so I held her in my arms:
• And each time that the heavy pruning-hook
• I gave her for a hammer slipped away
• As it would often, still she laughed and laughed
• And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,
• Just as she hung the image on the nail,
• 40It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:
• And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand
• The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.
• And so her laughter turned to tears: and ‘Oh!’
• I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—
• ‘That I should be the first to make you bleed,
• Who love and love and love you!’—kissing still
• The fingers till I got her safe to bed.
• And still she sobbed,—‘not for the pain at all,’
• She said, ‘but for the Love, the poor good Love
• 50You gave me.’ So she cried herself to sleep.

• Another later thing comes back to me.
• 'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,
• When still from his shut palace, sitting clean
• Above the splash of blood, old Metternich
• (May his soul die, and never-dying worms
• Feast on its pain for ever!) used to thin
• His year's doomed hundreds daintily, eachmonth
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• Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,
• Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take
• 60That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks
• Keep all through winter when the sea draws in.
• The first I heard of it was a chance shot
• In the street here and there, and on the stones
• A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.
• Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,
• My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife
• Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair
• And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped
• Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still
• 70A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips
• So hot all day where the smoke shut us in.

• For now, being always with her, the first love
• I had—the father's, brother's love—was changed,
• I think, in somewise; like a holy thought
• Which is a prayer before one knows of it.
• The first time I perceived this, I remember,
• Was once when after hunting I came home
• Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me,
• And sat down at my feet upon the floor
• Leaning against my side. But when I felt
• 80Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers
• So high as to be laid upon my heart,
• I turned and looked upon my darling there
• And marked for the first time how tall she was;
• And my heart beat with so much violence
• Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose
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• But wonder at it soon and ask me why;
• And so I bade her rise and eat with me.
• And when, remembering all and counting back
• The time, I made out fourteen years for her
• 90And told her so, she gazed at me with eyes
• As of the sky and sea on a grey day,
• And drew her long hands through her hair, and asked me
• If she was not a woman; and then laughed:
• And as she stooped in laughing, I could see
• Beneath the growing throat the breasts half globed
• Like folded lilies deepset in the stream.

• Yes, let me think of her as then; for so
• Her image, Father, is not like the sights
• Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth
• 100Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
• Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.
• Her face was ever pale, as when one stoops
• Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair
• And the hair's shadow made it paler still:—
• Deep-serried locks, the darkness of the cloud
• Where the moon's gaze is set in eddying gloom.
• Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem
• Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains
• The flower of the year's pride, her high neck bore
• 110That face made wonderful with night and day.
• Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words
• Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips
• She had, that clung a little where they touched
• And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,
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• That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath
• The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak,
• Had also in them hidden springs of mirth,
• Which under the dark lashes evermore
• Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low
• 120Between the water and the willow-leaves,
• And the shade quivers till he wins the light.

• I was a moody comrade to her then,
• For all the love I bore her. Italy,
• The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed
• Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands
• To lop the poisonous thicket from her path,
• Cleaving her way to light. And from her need
• Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life
• Which I was proud to yield her, as my father
• 130Had yielded his. And this had come to be
• A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate
• To wreak, all things together that a man
• Needs for his blood to ripen: till at times
• All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still
• To see such life pass muster and be deemed
• Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,
• To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—
• Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.
• And though she ruled me always, I remember
• 140That once when I was thus and she still kept
• Leaping about the place and laughing, I
• Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt
• And putting her two hands into my breast
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• Sang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes?
• 'Tis long since I have wept for anything.
• I thought that song forgotten out of mind,
• And now, just as I spoke of it, it came
• All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,
• Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears
• 150Holding the platter, when the children run
• To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—

   

• La bella donna*
• Piangendo disse:

   

• ‘Come son fisse
• Le stelle in cielo!
• Quel fiato anelo
• Dello stanco sole,
• Quanto m'assonna!
• E la luna, macchiata
• 160Come uno specchio
• Logoro e vecchio,—
• Faccia affannata.
• Che cosa vuole?

• ‘Chè stelle, luna, e sole,
• Ciascun m'annoja
• E m'annojano insieme;
• Non me ne preme
• Nè ci prendo gioja.
• E veramente,
• 170Che le spalle sien franche
• E le braccia bianche
• E il seno caldo e tondo,
• Non mi fa niente.
• Chè cosa al mondo
• Posso più far di questi
• Se non piacciono a te, come dicesti?’

• La donna rise
• E riprese ridendo:—
• ‘Questa mano che prendo
• 180E dunque mia?
• Tu m'ami dunque?
• Dimmelo ancora,
• Non in modo qualunque,
• Ma le parole
• Belle e precise
• Che dicesti pria.

• ‘ Siccome suole
• La state talora
  page: 184  
• (Dicesti) un qualche istante
• 190 Tornare innanzi inverno,
• Così ta fai ch'io scerno
• Le foglie tutte quante,
• Ben ch'io certo tenessi
• Per passato l'autunno.

• ‘Eccolo il mio alunno!
• Io debbo insegnargli
• Quei cari detti istessi
• Ch'ei mi disse una volta!
• Oimè! Che cosa dargli,’
• 200(Ma ridea piano piano
• Dei baci in sulla mano,)
• ‘Ch'ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo tolta?’

• That I should sing upon this bed!—with you
• To listen, and such words still left to say!
• Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers,
• As on the very day she sang to me;
• When, having done, she took out of my hand
• Something that I had played with all the while
• And laid it down beyond my reach; and so
• 210Turning my face round till it fronted hers,—
• ‘Weeping or laughing, which was best?’ she said.

• But these are foolish tales. How should I show
• The heart that glowed then with love's heat, each day
• More and more brightly?—when for long years now
• The very flame that flew about the heart,
• And gave it fiery wings, has come to be
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• The lapping blaze of hell's environment
• Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.

• Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night
• 220Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul
• Dread firstlings of the brood that rend it now.
• It chanced that in our last year's wanderings
• We dwelt at Monza, far away from home,
• If home we had: and in the Duomo there
• I sometimes entered with her when she prayed.
• An Image of Our Lady stands there, wrought
• In marble by some great Italian hand
• In the great days when she and Italy
• Sat on one throne together: and to her
• 230And to none else my loved one told her heart.
• She was a woman then; and as she knelt,—
• Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,—
• They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land
• (Whose work still serves the world for miracle)
• Made manifest herself in womanhood.
• Father, the day I speak of was the first
• For weeks that I had borne her company
• Into the Duomo; and those weeks had been
• Much troubled, for then first the glimpses came
• 240Of some impenetrable restlessness
• Growing in her to make her changed and cold.
• And as we entered there that day, I bent
• My eyes on the fair Image, and I said
• Within my heart, ‘Oh turn her heart to me!’
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• And so I left her to her prayers, and went
• To gaze upon the pride of Monza's shrine,
• Where in the sacristy the light still falls
• Upon the Iron Crown of Italy,
• On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet
• 250The daybreak gilds another head to crown.
• But coming back, I wondered when I saw
• That the sweet Lady of her prayers now stood
• Alone without her; until further off,
• Before some new Madonna gaily decked,
• Tinselled and gewgawed, a slight German toy,
• I saw her kneel, still praying. At my step
• She rose, and side by side we left the church.
• I was much moved, and sharply questioned her
• Of her transferred devotion; but she seemed
• 260Stubborn and heedless; till she lightly laughed
• And said: ‘The old Madonna? Aye indeed,
• ‘She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.’
• Then silent to the soul I held my way:
• And from the fountains of the public place
• Unto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles,
• Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air;
• And stately with her laugh's subsiding smile
• She went, with clear-swayed waist and towering neck
• And hands held light before her; and the face
• 270Which long had made a day in my life's night
• Was night in day to me; as all men's eyes
• Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread
• Beyond my heart to the world made for her.

• Ah there! my wounds will snatch my sense again:
• The pain comes billowing on like a full cloud
• Of thunder, and the flash that breaks from it
• Leaves my brain burning. That's the wound he gave,
• The Austrian whose white coat I still made match
• With his white face, only the two were red
• 280As suits his trade. The devil makes them wear
• White for a livery, that the blood may show
• Braver that brings them to him. So he looks
• Sheer o'er the field and knows his own at once.

• Give me a draught of water in that cup;
• My voice feels thick; perhaps you do not hear;
• But you must hear. If you mistake my words
• And so absolve me, I am sure the blessing
• Will burn my soul. If you mistake my words
• And so absolve me, Father, the great sin
• 290Is yours, not mine: mark this: your soul shall burn
• With mine for it. I have seen pictures where
• Souls burned with Latin shriekings in their mouths:
• Shall my end be as theirs? Nay, but I know
• 'Tis you shall shriek in Latin. Some bell rings,
• Rings through my brain: it strikes the hour in hell.

• You see I cannot, Father; I have tried,
• But cannot, as you see. These twenty times
• Beginning, I have come to the same point
• And stopped. Beyond, there are but broken words
• 300Which will not let you understand my tale.
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• It is that then we have her with us here,
• As when she wrung her hair out in my dream
• To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.
• Her hair is always wet, for she has kept
• Its tresses wrapped about her side for years;
• And when she wrung them round over the floor,
• I heard the blood between her fingers hiss;
• So that I sat up in my bed and screamed
• Once and again; and once to once, she laughed.
• 310Look that you turn not now,—she's at your back:
• Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close,
• Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad.

• At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills
• The sand is black and red. The black was black
• When what was spilt that day sank into it,
• And the red scarcely darkened. There I stood
• This night with her, and saw the sand the same.

---

• What would you have me tell you? Father, father,
• How shall I make you know? You have not known
• 320The dreadful soul of woman, who one day
• Forgets the old and takes the new to heart,
• Forgets what man remembers, and therewith
• Forgets the man. Nor can I clearly tell
• How the change happened between her and me.
• Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heart
• When most my heart was full of her; and still
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• In every corner of myself I sought
• To find what service failed her; and no less
• Than in the good time past, there all was hers.
• 330What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spread
• For one first year of all eternity
• All round you with all joys and gifts of God;
• And then when most your soul is blent with it
• And all yields song together,—then it stands
• O' the sudden like a pool that once gave back
• Your image, but now drowns it and is clear
• Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns
• Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight.
• How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
• 340Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
• That hear no more your voice you hear the same,—
• ‘God! what is left but hell for company,
• But hell, hell, hell?’—until the name so breathed
• Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire?
• Even so I stood the day her empty heart
• Left her place empty in our home, while yet
• I knew not why she went nor where she went
• Nor how to reach her: so I stood the day
• When to my prayers at last one sight of her
• 350Was granted, and I looked on heaven made pale
• With scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh.

• O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you
• Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapes
• Of fear and hatred? May I find you yet
page: 190  
• Mine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame,
• We may have sweetness yet, if you but say
• As once in childish sorrow: ‘Not my pain,
• My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love,
• Your broken love!’

• My Father, have I not
• Yet told you the last things of that last day
• On which I went to meet her by the sea?
• O God, O God! but I must tell you all.

• Midway upon my journey, when I stopped
• To buy the dagger at the village fair,
• I saw two cursed rats about the place
• I knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That day
• Was not yet over; for three hours to come
• I prized my life: and so I looked around
• 370For safety. A poor painted mountebank
• Was playing tricks and shouting in a crowd.
• I knew he must have heard my name, so I
• Pushed past and whispered to him who I was,
• And of my danger. Straight he hustled me
• Into his booth, as it were in the trick,
• And brought me out next minute with my face
• All smeared in patches and a zany's gown;
• And there I handed him his cups and balls,
• And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring
• 380For half an hour. The spies came once and looked;
• And while they stopped, and made all sights and sounds
• Sharp to my startled senses, I remember
page: 191  
• A woman laughed above me. I looked up
• And saw where a brown handsome harlot leaned
• Half through a tavern window thick with vine.
• Some man had come behind her in the room
• And caught her by her arms, and she had turned
• With that coarse empty laugh. I saw him there
• Munching her neck with kisses, while the vine
• 390Crawled in her back.

• And three hours afterwards,
• When she that I had run all risks to meet
• Laughed as I told you, my life burned to death
• Within me, for I thought it like the laugh
• Heard at the fair. She had not left me long;
• But all she might have changed to, or might change to,
• (I know nought since—she never speaks a word—)
• Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet,
• Not told you all this time what happened, Father,
• 400When I had offered her the little knife,
• And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,
• And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet?

• ‘Take it,’ I said to her the second time,
• ‘Take it and keep it.’ And then came a fire
• That burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood,
• And sea and sky were blood and fire, and all
• The day was one red blindness; till it seemed
• Within the whirling brain's entanglement
• That she or I or all things bled to death.
• 410And then I found her lying at my feet
page: 192  
• And knew that I had stabbed her, and saw still
• The look she gave me when she took the knife
• Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then,
• And fell, and her stiff bodice scooped the sand
• Into her bosom.

• And she keeps it, see,
• Do you not see she keeps it?—there, beneath
• Wet fingers and wet tresses, in her heart.
• For look you, when she stirs her hand, it shows
• 420The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such
• A dagger as our women of the coast
• Twist in their garters.

• Father, I have done:
• And from her side now she unwinds the thick
• Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through,
• But like the sand at Iglio does not change.
• Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,
• I have told all: tell me at once what hope
• Can reach me still. For now she draws it out
• 430Slowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father,
• She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh
• Soon, when she shows the crimson blade to God.

   

• Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
• Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
• Whose head is on my knee to-night;—
• (Have all our dances left it light
• With their wild tunes?)— Ah, Jenny, queen
• Of kisses which the blush between
• Could hardly make much daintier!— Nay,
• Poor flower left torn since yesterday
• Until to-morrow leave you bare;
• 10Poor handful of bright spring-water
• Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face! —
• Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
• Thus with your head upon my knee;—
• Whose person or whose purse may be
• The lodestar of your reverie?

• This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
• A change from mine so full of books,
• Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
• So many captive hours of youth,—
page: 194  
• 20The hours they thieve from day and night
• To make one's cherished work come right,
• And leave it wrong for all their theft,
• Even as to-night my work was left:
• Until I vowed that since my brain
• And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
• My feet should have some dancing too:—
• And thus it was I met with you.
• Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part,
• For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
• 30You seem too tired to get to bed.

• It was a careless life I led
• When rooms like this were scarce so strange
• Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
• The many aims or the few years?
• Because to-night it all appears
• Something I do not know again.

• The cloud's not danced out of my brain,—
• The cloud that made it turn and swim
• While hour by hour the books grew dim.
• 40Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
• For all your wealth of loosened hair,
• Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd
• And warm sweets open to the waist,
• All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—
• You know not what a book you seem,
• Half-read by lightning in a dream!
page: 195  
• How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
• And I should be ashamed to say:—
• Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!
• 50But while my thought runs on like this
• With wasteful whims more than enough,
• I wonder what you're thinking of.

• If of myself you think at all,
• What is the thought?—conjectural
• On sorry matters best unsolved?—
• Or inly is each grace revolved
• To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
• To think!) perhaps you're merely glad
• That I'm not drunk or ruffianly
• 60And let you rest upon my knee.

• For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
• You're thankful for a little rest,—
• Glad from the crush to rest within,
• From the heart-sickness and the din
• Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch
• Mocks you because your gown is rich;
• And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,
• Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
• Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak
• 70And other nights than yours bespeak;
• And from the wise unchildish elf,
• To schoolmate lesser than himself
• Pointing you out, what thing you are:—
page: 196  
• Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
• From shame and shame's outbraving too,
• Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
• But most from the hatefulness of man
• Who spares not to end what he began,
• Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,
• 80Who, having used you at his will,
• Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
• I serve the dishes and the wine.

• Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up,
• I've filled our glasses, let us sup,
• And do not let me think of you,
• Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
• What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
• Your head there, so you do not sleep;
• But that the weariness may pass
• 90And leave you merry, take this glass.
• Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
• If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd
• Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!

• Behold the lilies of the field,
• They toil not neither do they spin;
• (So doth the ancient text begin,—
• Not of such rest as one of these
• Can share.) Another rest and ease
• Along each summer-sated path
• 100From its new lord the garden hath,
page: 197  
• Than that whose spring in blessings ran
• Which praised the righteous husbandman,
• Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
• The lilies sickened unto death.

• What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
• Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
• Like winter on the garden-bed.
• But you had roses left in May,—
• They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
• 110But must your roses die away?
• Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
• Still red as from the broken heart,
• And here's the naked stem of thorns.

• Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns
• As yet of winter. Sickness here
• Or want alone could waken fear,—
• Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
• Except when there may rise unsought
• Haply at times a passing thought
• 120Of the old days which seem to be
• Much older than any history
• That is written in any book;
• When she would lie in fields and look
• Along the ground through the blown grass,
• And wonder where the city was,
• Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
• They told her then for a child's tale.

• Jenny, you know the city now.
• A child can tell the tale there, how
• 130Some things which are not yet enroll'd
• In market-lists are bought and sold
• Even till the early Sunday light,
• When Saturday night is market-night
• Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
• And market-night in the Haymarket.
• Our learned London children know,
• Poor Jenny, all your mirth and woe;
• Have seen your lifted silken skirt
• Advertize dainties through the dirt;
• 140Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
• On virtue; and have learned your look
• When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
• Along the streets alone, and there,
• Round the long park, across the bridge,
• The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
• Wind on together and apart,
• A fiery serpent for your heart.

• Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
• Suppose I were to think aloud,—
• 150What if to her all this were said?
• Why, as a volume seldom read
• Being opened halfway shuts again,
• So might the pages of her brain
• Be parted at such words, and thence
• Close back upon the dusty sense.
page: 199  
• For is there hue or shape defin'd
• In Jenny's desecrated mind,
• Where all contagious currents meet,
• A Lethe of the middle street?
• 160Nay, it reflects not any face,
• Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
• But as they coil those eddies clot,
• And night and day remember not.

• Why, Jenny, you're asleep at last!—
• Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—
• So young and soft and tired; so fair,
• With chin thus nestled in your hair,
• Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue
• As if some sky of dreams shone through!

• 170 Just as another woman sleeps!
• Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps
• Of doubt and horror,—what to say
• Or think,—this awful secret sway,
• The potter's power over the clay!
• Of the same lump (it has been said)
• For honour and dishonour made,
• Two sister vessels. Here is one.

• My cousin Nell is fond of fun,
• And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
• 180So mere a woman in her ways:
• And if her sweet eyes rich in youth
• Are like her lips that tell the truth,
page: 200  
• My cousin Nell is fond of love.
• And she's the girl I'm proudest of.
• Who does not prize her, guard her well?
• The love of change, in cousin Nell,
• Shall find the best and hold it dear:
• The unconquered mirth turn quieter
• Not through her own, through others' woe:
• 190The conscious pride of beauty glow
• Beside another's pride in her,
• One little part of all they share.
• For Love himself shall ripen these
• In a kind soil to just increase
• Through years of fertilizing peace.

• Of the same lump (as it is said)
• For honour and dishonour made,
• Two sister vessels. Here is one.

• It makes a goblin of the sun.

• 200 So pure,—so fall'n! How dare to think
• Of the first common kindred link?
• Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn
• It seems that all things take their turn;
• And who shall say but this fair tree
• May need, in changes that may be,
• Your children's children's charity?
• Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!
• Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd
• Till in the end, the Day of Days,
page: 201  
• 210At Judgment, one of his own race,
• As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—
• His daughter, with his mother's eyes?

• Each of such curdled lives alike
• A life for which my twelve hours strike
• And time must be and time must end.
• Hard to keep sight of! What might tend
• To give the thought clear presence? Well,
• Remember it is possible,
• Whether I please or do not please,
• 220That in the making each of these
• A separate man has lost his soul.

• Fair shines the gilded aureole
• In which our highest painters place
• Some living woman's simple face.
• And the stilled features thus descried
• As Jenny's long throat droops aside,—
• The loving underlip drawn in,
• The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
• And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
• 230With Raffael's or Da Vinci's hand
• To show them to men's souls, might stand,
• Whole ages long, the whole world through,
• For preachings of what God can do.
• What has man done here? How atone,
• Great God, for this which man has done?
• And for the body and soul which by
page: 202  
• Man's pitiless doom must now comply
• With lifelong hell, what lullaby
• Of sweet forgetful second birth
• 240Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
• What measure of God's rest endows
• The many mansions of his house.

• If but a woman's heart might see
• Such erring heart unerringly
• For once! But that can never be.

• Like a rose shut in a book
• In which pure women may not look,
• For its base pages claim control
• To crush the flower within the soul;
• 250Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,
• Pale as transparent psyche-wings,
• To the vile text, are traced such things
• As might make lady's cheek indeed
• More than a living rose to read;
• So nought save foolish foulness may
• Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
• And so the life-blood of this rose,
• Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows
• Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
• 260Yet still it keeps such faded show
• Of when 'twas gathered long ago,
• That the crushed petals' lovely grain,
• The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
page: 203  
• Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
• Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
• Love roses better for its sake:—
• Only that this can never be:—
• Even so unto her sex is she.

• Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
• 270The woman almost fades from view.
• A cipher of man's changeless sum
• Of lust, past, present, and to come,
• Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
• To challenge from the scornful sphinx.

• Like a toad within a stone
• Seated while Time crumbles on;
• Which sits there since the earth was curs'd
• For Man's transgression at the first;
• Which, living through all centuries,
• 280Not once has seen the sun arise;
• Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
• The earth's whole summers have not warmed;
• Which always—whitherso the stone
• Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
• Aye, and shall not be driven out
• Till that which shuts him round about
• Break at the very Master's stroke,
• And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
• And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
• 290Even so within this world is Lust.

• Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
• Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
• You'd not believe by what strange roads
• Thought travels, when your beauty goads
• A man to-night to think of toads!
• Jenny, wake up. . . . Why, there's the dawn!

• And there's an early waggon drawn
• To market, and some sheep that jog
• Bleating before a barking dog;
• 300And the old streets come peering through
• Another night that London knew;
• And all as ghostlike as the lamps.

• So on the wings of day decamps
• My last night's frolic. Glooms begin
• To shiver off as lights creep in
• Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
• And the lamps doubled shade grows blue,—
• Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,
• Like a wise virgin's, all one night!
• 310And in the alcove coolly spread
• Glimmers with dawn your empty bed;
• And yonder your fair face I see
• Reflected lying on my knee,
• Where teems with first foreshadowings
• Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings.

• And somehow in myself the dawn
page: 205  
• Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn
• Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.
• But will it wake her if I heap
• 320These cushions thus beneath her head
• Where my knee was? No,—there's your bed,
• My Jenny, while you dream. And there
• I lay among your golden hair
• Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
• These golden coins.

• For still one deems
• That Jenny's flattering sleep confers
• New magic on the magic purse,—
• Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
• 330Between the threads fine fumes arise
• And shape their pictures in the brain.
• There roll no streets in glare and rain,
• Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
• But delicately sighs in musk
• The homage of the dim boudoir;
• Or like a palpitating star
• Thrilled into song, the opera-night
• Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
• Or at the carriage-window shine
• 340Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
• Whirls through its hour of health (divine
• For her) the concourse of the Park.
• And though in the discounted dark
• Her functions there and here are one,
• Beneath the lamps and in the sun
page: 206  
• There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
• Apparelled beyond parallel.
• Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.

• For even the Paphian Venus seems
• 350A goddess o'er the realms of love,
• When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:
• Aye, or let offerings nicely placed
• But hide Priapus to the waist,
• And whoso looks on him shall see
• An eligible deity.

• Why, Jenny, waking here alone
• May help you to remember one!
• I think I see you when you wake,
• And rub your eyes for me, and shake
• 360My gold, in rising, from your hair,
• A Danaë for a moment there.

• Jenny, my love rang true! for still
• Love at first sight is vague, until
• That tinkling makes him audible.

• And must I mock you to the last,
• Ashamed of my own shame,—aghast
• Because some thoughts not born amiss
• Rose at a poor fair face like this?
• Well, of such thoughts so much I know:
page: 207  
• 370In my life, as in hers, they show,
• By a far gleam which I may near,
• A dark path I can strive to clear.

• Only one kiss. Goodbye, my dear.

   

• This is her picture as she was:
• It seems a thing to wonder on,
• As though mine image in the glass
• Should tarry when myself am gone.
• I gaze until she seems to stir,—
• Until mine eyes almost aver
• That now, even now, the sweet lips part
• To breathe the words of the sweet heart:—
• And yet the earth is over her.

• 10In painting her I shrined her face
• Mid mystic trees, where light falls in
• Hardly at all; a covert place
• Where you might think to find a din
• Of doubtful talk, and a live flame
• Wandering, and many a shape whose name
• Not itself knoweth, and old dew,
• And your own footsteps meeting you,
• And all things going as they came.

   

• Than that whose spring in blessings [ran]
• Which praised the righteous husbandm[an,]
• Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
• The lilies sickened unto death.

• What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
• Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
• Like winter on the garden-bed.
• But you had roses left in May,—
• They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
• 10But must your roses die away?
• Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
• Still red as from the broken heart,
• And here's the naked stem of thorns.

• Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing war[ns]
• As yet of winter. Sickness here
• Or want alone could waken fe[ar,—]
• Nothing but passion wrin[gs a tear.]
• Except when there m[ay rise unsought]
• Haply at times [a passing thought]
• 20Of the old day[s which seem to be]
• Much older t[han any history]
• That is writ[ten in any book;]
• When she [would lie in fields and look]
• Along the [ground through the blown grass,]
• And wo[nder where the city was,]
• Far out [of sight, whose broil and bale]
• They [told her then for a child's tale.]

• [Jenny,] you know the city now.
• [A child] can tell the tale there, how
• 30[Some] things which are not yet enroll'd
• [In m]arket-lists are bought and sold
• Even till the early Sunday light,
• When Saturday night is market-night
• Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
• And market-night in the Haymarket.
• Our learned London children know,
• Poor Jenny, all your mirth and woe;
• Have seen your lifted silken skirt
• Advertize dainties through the dirt;
• 40Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
• On virtue; and have learned your look
• When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
• Along the streets alone, and there,
• [Round] the long park, across the bridge,
• [The cold lam]ps at the pavement's edge
• [Wind on together a]nd apart,
• [A fiery serpent for your] heart.

• [Let the thoughts pass, an emp]ty cloud!
• [Suppose I were to think aloud,—]
• 50[What if to her all this were said?]
• [Why, as a volume seldom read]
• [Being opened halfway shuts again,]
• [So might the pages of her brain]
• [Be parted at such words, and thence]
• [Close back upon the dusty sense.]