Artemis to Actæon (1909)/The Mortal Lease
II
THE MORTAL LEASE
IBecause the currents of our love are pouredThrough the slow welter of the primal floodFrom some blind source of monster-haunted mud,And flung together by random forces storedEre the vast void with rushing worlds was scored—Because we know ourselves but the dim scudTossed from their heedless keels, the sea-blown budThat wastes and scatters ere the wave has roared—
Because we have this knowledge in our veins,Shall we deny the journey's gathered lore—The great refusals and the long disdains,The stubborn questing for a phantom shore,The sleepless hopes and memorable pains,And all mortality's immortal gains?
IIBecause our kiss is as the moon to drawThe mounting waters of that red-lit seaThat circles brain with sense, and bids us beThe playthings of an elemental law,Shall we forego the deeper touch of aweOn love's extremest pinnacle, where we,Winging the vistas of infinity,Gigantic on the mist our shadows saw?
Shall kinship with the dim first-moving clodNot draw the folded pinion from the soul,And shall we not, by spirals vision-trod,Reach upward to some still-retreating goal,As earth, escaping from the night's control,Drinks at the founts of morning like a god?
IIIAll, all is sweet in that commingled draughtMysterious, that life pours for lovers' thirst,And I would meet your passion as the firstWild woodland woman met her captor's craft,Or as the Greek whose fearless beauty laughedAnd doffed her raiment by the Attic flood;But in the streams of my belated bloodFlow all the warring potions love has quaffed.
How can I be to you the nymph who dancedSmooth by Ilissus as the plane-tree's bole,Or how the Nereid whose drenched lashes glancedLike sea-flowers through the summer sea's long roll—I that have also been the nun entrancedWho night-long held her Bridegroom in her soul?
IV"Sad Immortality is dead," you say,"And all her grey brood banished from the soul;Life, like the earth, is now a rounded whole,The orb of man's dominion. Live to-day."And every sense in me leapt to obey,Seeing the routed phantoms backward roll;But from their waning throng a whisper stole,And touched the morning splendour with decay.
"Sad Immortality is dead; and weThe funeral train that bear her to her grave.Yet hath she left a two-faced progenyIn hearts of men, and some will always seeThe skull beneath the wreath, yet always craveIn every kiss the folded kiss to be."
VYet for one rounded moment I will beNo more to you than what my lips may give,And in the circle of your kisses liveAs in some island of a storm-blown sea,Where the cold surges of infinityUpon the outward reefs unheeded grieve,And the loud murmur of our blood shall weavePrimeval silences round you and me.
If in that moment we are all we areWe live enough. Let this for all requite.Do I not know, some wingèd things from farAre borne along illimitable nightTo dance their lives out in a single flightBetween the moonrise and the setting star?
VIThe Moment came, with sacramental cupLifted—and all the vault of life grew brightWith tides of incommensurable light—But tremblingly I turned and covered upMy face before the wonder. Down the slopeI heard her feet in irretrievable flight,And when I looked again, my stricken sightSaw night and rain in a dead world agrope.
Now walks her ghost beside me, whisperingWith lips derisive: "Thou that wouldst forego—What god assured thee that the cup I bringGlobes not in every drop the cosmic show,All that the insatiate heart of man can wringFrom life's long vintage?—Now thou shalt not know."
VIIShall I not know? I, that could always catchThe sunrise in one beam along the wall,The nests of June in April's mating call,And ruinous autumn in the wind's first snatchAt summer's green impenetrable thatch—That always knew far off the secret fallOf a god's feet across the city's brawl,The touch of silent fingers on my latch?
Not thou, vain Moment! Something more than thouShall write the score of what mine eyes have wept,The touch of kisses that have missed my brow,The murmur of wings that brushed me while I slept,And some mute angel in the breast even nowMeasures my loss by all that I have kept.
VIIIStrive we no more. Some hearts are like the brightTree-chequered spaces, flecked with sun and shade,Where gathered in old days the youth and maidTo woo, and weave their dances: with the nightThey cease their flutings, and the next day's lightFinds the smooth green unconscious of their tread,And ready its velvet pliancies to spreadUnder fresh feet, till these in turn take flight.
But other hearts a long long road doth span,From some far region of old works and wars,And the weary armies of the thoughts of manHave trampled it, and furrowed it with scars,And sometimes, husht, a sacred caravanMoves over it alone, beneath the stars.