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Coventry Patmore
The Unknown Eros

VIII.  ‘SING US ONE OF THE SONGS OF SION.’

 
   How sing the Lord’s Song in so strange a Land?
A torrid waste of water-mocking sand;
Oases of wild grapes;
A dull, malodorous fog
O’er a once Sacred River’s wandering strand,
Its ancient tillage all gone back to bog;
A busy synod of blest cats and apes
Exposing the poor trick of earth and star
With worshipp’d snouts oracular;
Prophets to whose blind stare
The heavens the glory of God do not declare,
Skill’d in such question nice
As why one conjures toads who fails with lice,
And hatching snakes from sticks in such a swarm
As quite to surfeit Aaron’s bigger worm;
A nation which has got
A lie in her right hand,
And knows it not;
With Pharaohs to her mind, each drifting as a log
Which way the foul stream flows,
More harden’d the more plagued with fly and frog!
How should sad Exile sing in such a Land?
How should ye understand?
What could he win but jeers,
Or howls, such as sweet music draws from dog,
Who told of marriage-feasting to the man
That nothing knows of food but bread of bran?
Besides, if aught such ears
Might e’er unclog,
There lives but one, with tones for Sion meet.
Behoveful, zealous, beautiful, elect,
Mild, firm, judicious, loving, bold, discreet,
Without superfluousness, without defect,
Few are his words, and find but scant respect,
Nay, scorn from some, for God’s good cause agog.
Silence in such a Land is oftenest such men’s speech.
O, that I might his holy secret reach;
O, might I catch his mantle when he goes;
O, that I were so gentle and so sweet,
So I might deal fair Sion’s foolish foes
Such blows!
 

IX.  DELICIAE SAPIENTIAE DE AMORE

 
   Love, light for me
Thy ruddiest blazing torch,
That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch
Of the glad Palace of Virginity,
May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see;
For, crown’d with roses all,
’Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival!
But first warn off the beatific spot
Those wretched who have not
Even afar beheld the shining wall,
And those who, once beholding, have forgot,
And those, most vile, who dress
The charnel spectre drear
Of utterly dishallow’d nothingness
In that refulgent fame,
And cry, Lo, here!
And name
The Lady whose smiles inflame
The sphere.
Bring, Love, anear,
And bid be not afraid
Young Lover true, and love-foreboding Maid,
And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought;
For I will sing of nought
Less sweet to hear
Than seems
A music in their half-remember’d dreams.
   The magnet calls the steel:
Answers the iron to the magnet’s breath;
What do they feel
But death!
The clouds of summer kiss in flame and rain,
And are not found again;
But the heavens themselves eternal are with fire
Of unapproach’d desire,
By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest,
In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess’d.
O, spousals high;
O, doctrine blest,
Unutterable in even the happiest sigh;
This know ye all
Who can recall
With what a welling of indignant tears
Love’s simpleness first hears
The meaning of his mortal covenant,
And from what pride comes down
To wear the crown
Of which ’twas very heaven to feel the want.
How envies he the ways
Of yonder hopeless star,
And so would laugh and yearn
With trembling lids eterne,
Ineffably content from infinitely far
Only to gaze
On his bright Mistress’s responding rays,
That never know eclipse;
And, once in his long year,
With praeternuptial ecstasy and fear,
By the delicious law of that ellipse
Wherein all citizens of ether move,
With hastening pace to come
Nearer, though never near,
His Love
And always inaccessible sweet Home;
There on his path doubly to burn.
Kiss’d by her doubled light
That whispers of its source,
The ardent secret ever clothed with Night,
Then go forth in new force
Towards a new return,
Rejoicing as a Bridegroom on his course!
This know ye all;
Therefore gaze bold,
That so in you be joyful hope increas’d,
Thorough the Palace portals, and behold
The dainty and unsating Marriage-Feast.
O, hear
Them singing clear
‘Cor meum et caro mea’ round the ‘I am,’
The Husband of the Heavens, and the Lamb
Whom they for ever follow there that kept,
Or losing, never slept
Till they reconquer’d had in mortal fight
The standard white.
O, hear
From the harps they bore from Earth, five-strung, what music springs,
While the glad Spirits chide
The wondering strings!
And how the shining sacrificial Choirs,
Offering for aye their dearest hearts’ desires,
Which to their hearts come back beatified,
Hymn, the bright aisles along,
The nuptial song,
Song ever new to us and them, that saith,
‘Hail Virgin in Virginity a Spouse!’
Heard first below
Within the little house
At Nazareth;
Heard yet in many a cell where brides of Christ
Lie hid, emparadised,
And where, although
By the hour ’tis night,
There’s light,
The Day still lingering in the lap of snow.
Gaze and be not afraid
Ye wedded few that honour, in sweet thought
And glittering will,
So freshly from the garden gather still
The lily sacrificed;
For ye, though self-suspected here for nought,
Are highly styled
With the thousands twelve times twelve of undefiled.
Gaze and be not afraid
Young Lover true and love-foreboding Maid.
The full noon of deific vision bright
Abashes nor abates
No spark minute of Nature’s keen delight.
’Tis there your Hymen waits!
There where in courts afar, all unconfused, they crowd,
As fumes the starlight soft
In gulfs of cloud,
And each to the other, well-content,
Sighs oft,
‘’Twas this we meant!’
Gaze without blame
Ye in whom living Love yet blushes for dead shame.
There of pure Virgins none
Is fairer seen,
Save One,
Than Mary Magdalene.
Gaze without doubt or fear
Ye to whom generous Love, by any name, is dear.
Love makes the life to be
A fount perpetual of virginity;
For, lo, the Elect
Of generous Love, how named soe’er, affect
Nothing but God,
Or mediate or direct,
Nothing but God,
The Husband of the Heavens:
And who Him love, in potence great or small,
Are, one and all,
Heirs of the Palace glad,
And inly clad
With the bridal robes of ardour virginal.
 

X.  THE CRY AT MIDNIGHT

 
   The Midge’s wing beats to and fro
A thousand times ere one can utter ‘O!’
And Sirius’ ball
Does on his business run
As many times immenser than the Sun.
Why should things not be great as well as small,
Or move like light as well as move at all?
St. Michael fills his place, I mine, and, if you please,
We will respect each other’s provinces,
I marv’lling not at him, nor he at me.
But, if thou must go gaping, let it be
That One who could make Michael should make thee.
O, foolish Man, meting things low and high
By self, that accidental quantity!
With this conceit, Philosophy stalks frail
As peacock staggering underneath his tail.
Who judge of Plays from their own penny gaff,
At God’s great theatre will hiss and laugh;
For what’s a Saint to them
Brought up in modern virtues brummagem?
With garments grimed and lamps gone all to snuff,
And counting others for like Virgins queer,
To list those others cry, ‘Our Bridegroom’s near!’
Meaning their God, is surely quite enough
To make them rend their clothes and bawl out, ‘Blasphemy!’
 

XI.  AURAS OF DELIGHT

 
   Beautiful habitations, auras of delight!
Who shall bewail the crags and bitter foam
And angry sword-blades flashing left and right
Which guard your glittering height,
That none thereby may come!
The vision which we have
Revere we so,
That yet we crave
To foot those fields of ne’er-profaned snow?
   I, with heart-quake,
Dreaming or thinking of that realm of Love,
See, oft, a dove
Tangled in frightful nuptials with a snake;
The tortured knot,
Now, like a kite scant-weighted, flung bewitch’d
Sunwards, now pitch’d,
Tail over head, down, but with no taste got
Eternally
Of rest in either ruin or the sky,
But bird and vermin each incessant strives,
With vain dilaceration of both lives,
’Gainst its abhorred bond insoluble,
Coveting fiercer any separate hell
Than the most weary Soul in Purgatory
On God’s sweet breast to lie.
And, in this sign, I con
The guerdon of that golden Cup, fulfill’d
With fornications foul of Babylon,
The heart where good is well-perceiv’d and known,
Yet is not will’d;
And Him I thank, who can make live again,
The dust, but not the joy we once profane,
That I, of ye,
Beautiful habitations, auras of delight,
In childish years and since had sometime sense and sight,
But that ye vanish’d quite,
Even from memory,
Ere I could get my breath, and whisper ‘See!’
   But did for me
They altogether die,
Those trackless glories glimps’d in upper sky?
Were they of chance, or vain,
Nor good at all again
For curb of heart or fret?
Nay, though, by grace,
Lest, haply, I refuse God to His face,
Their likeness wholly I forget,
Ah, yet,
Often in straits which else for me were ill,
I mind me still
I did respire the lonely auras sweet,
I did the blest abodes behold, and, at the mountains’ feet,
Bathed in the holy Stream by Hermon’s thymy hill.
 

XII.  EROS AND PSYCHE

 
   ‘Love, I heard tell of thee so oft!
Yea, thrice my face and bosom flush’d with heat
Of sudden wings,
Through delicatest ether feathering soft
Their solitary beat.
Long did I muse what service or what charms
Might lure thee, blissful Bird, into mine arms;
And nets I made,
But not of the fit strings.
At last, of endless failure much afraid,
To-night I would do nothing but lie still,
And promise, wert thou once within my window-sill,
Thine unknown will.
In nets’ default,
Finch-like me seem’d thou might’st be ta’en with salt;
And here—and how thou mad’st me start!—
Thou art.’
   ‘O Mortal, by Immortals’ cunning led,
Who shew’d you how for Gods to bait your bed?
Ah, Psyche, guess’d you nought
I craved but to be caught?
Wanton, it was not you,
But I that did so passionately sue;
And for your beauty, not unscath’d, I fought
With Hades, ere I own’d in you a thought!’
   ‘O, heavenly Lover true,
Is this thy mouth upon my forehead press’d?
Are these thine arms about my bosom link’d?
Are these thy hands that tremble near my heart,
Where join two hearts, for juncture more distinct?
By thee and by my maiden zone caress’d,
What dim, waste tracts of life shine sudden, like moonbeams
On windless ocean shaken by sweet dreams!
Ah, stir not to depart!
Kiss me again, thy Wife and Virgin too!
O Love, that, like a rose,
Deckest my breast with beautiful repose,
Kiss me again, and clasp me round the heart,
Till fill’d with thee am I
As the cocoon is with the butterfly!
—Yet how ’scape quite
Nor pluck pure pleasure with profane delight?
How know I that my Love is what he seems!
Give me a sign
That, in the pitchy night,
Comes to my pillow an immortal Spouse,
And not a fiend, hiding with happy boughs
Of palm and asphodel
The pits of hell!’
   ‘’Tis this:
I make the childless to keep joyful house.
Below your bosom, mortal Mistress mine,
Immortal by my kiss,
Leaps what sweet pain?
A fiend, my Psyche, comes with barren bliss,
A God’s embraces never are in vain.’
   ‘I own
A life not mine within my golden zone.
Yea, how
’Tis easier grown
Thine arduous rule to don
Than for a Bride to put her bride-dress on!
Nay, rather, now
’Tis no more service to be borne serene,
Whither thou wilt, thy stormful wings between.
But, Oh,
Can I endure
This flame, yet live for what thou lov’st me, pure?’
   ‘Himself the God let blame
If all about him bursts to quenchless flame!
My Darling, know
Your spotless fairness is not match’d in snow,
But in the integrity of fire.
Whate’er you are, Sweet, I require.
A sorry God were he
That fewer claim’d than all Love’s mighty kingdoms three!’
   ‘Much marvel I
That thou, the greatest of the Powers above,
Me visitest with such exceeding love.
What thing is this?
A God to make me, nothing, needful to his bliss,
And humbly wait my favour for a kiss!
Yea, all thy legions of liege deity
To look into this mystery desire.’
   ‘Content you, Dear, with them, this marvel to admire,
And lay your foolish little head to rest
On my familiar breast.
Should a high King, leaving his arduous throne,
Sue from her hedge a little Gipsy Maid,
For far-off royal ancestry bewray’d
By some wild beauties, to herself unknown;
Some voidness of herself in her strange ways
Which to his bounteous fulness promised dainty praise;
Some power, by all but him unguess’d,
Of growing king-like were she king-caress’d;
And should he bid his dames of loftiest grade
Put off her rags and make her lowlihead
Pure for the soft midst of his perfumed bed,
So to forget, kind-couch’d with her alone,
His empire, in her winsome joyance free;
What would he do, if such a fool were she
As at his grandeur there to gape and quake,
Mindless of love’s supreme equality,
And of his heart, so simple for her sake
That all he ask’d, for making her all-blest,
Was that her nothingness alway
Should yield such easy fee as frank to play
Or sleep delighted in her Monarch’s breast,
Feeling her nothingness her giddiest boast,
As being the charm for which he loved her most?
What if this reed,
Through which the King thought love-tunes to have blown,
Should shriek, “Indeed,
I am too base to trill so blest a tone!”
Would not the King allege
Defaulted consummation of the marriage-pledge,
And hie the Gipsy to her native hedge?’
   ‘O, too much joy; O, touch of airy fire;
O, turmoil of content; O, unperturb’d desire,
From founts of spirit impell’d through brain and blood!
I’ll not call ill what, since ’tis thine, is good,
Nor best what is but second best or third;
Still my heart fails,
And, unaccustom’d and astonish’d, quails,
And blames me, though I think I have not err’d.
’Tis hard for fly, in such a honied flood,
To use her eyes, far more her wings or feet.
Bitter be thy behests!
Lie like a bunch of myrrh between my aching breasts.
Some greatly pangful penance would I brave.
Sharpness me save
From being slain by sweet!’
   ‘In your dell’d bosom’s double peace
Let all care cease!
Custom’s joy-killing breath
Shall bid you sigh full soon for custom-killing death.
So clasp your childish arms again around my heart:
’Tis but in such captivity
The unbounded Heav’ns know what they be!
And lie still there,
Till the dawn, threat’ning to declare
My beauty, which you cannot bear,
Bid me depart.
Suffer your soul’s delight,
Lest that which is to come wither you quite:
For these are only your espousals; yes,
More intimate and fruitfuller far
Than aptest mortal nuptials are;
But nuptials wait you such as now you dare not guess.’
   ‘In all I thee obey!  And thus I know
That all is well:
Should’st thou me tell
Out of thy warm caress to go
And roll my body in the biting snow,
My very body’s joy were but increased;
More pleasant ’tis to please thee than be pleased.
Thy love has conquer’d me; do with me as thou wilt,
And use me as a chattel that is thine!
Kiss, tread me under foot, cherish or beat,
Sheathe in my heart sharp pain up to the hilt,
Invent what else were most perversely sweet;
Nay, let the Fiend drag me through dens of guilt;
Let Earth, Heav’n, Hell
’Gainst my content combine;
What could make nought the touch that made thee mine!
Ah, say not yet, farewell!’
   ‘Nay, that’s the Blackbird’s note, the sweet Night’s knell.
Behold, Beloved, the penance you would brave!’
   ‘Curs’d when it comes, the bitter thing we crave!
Thou leav’st me now, like to the moon at dawn,
A little, vacuous world alone in air.
I will not care!
When dark comes back my dark shall be withdrawn!
Go free;
For ’tis with me
As when the cup the Child scoops in the sand
Fills, and is part and parcel of the Sea.
I’ll say it to myself and understand.
Farewell!
Go as thou wilt and come!  Lover divine,
Thou still art jealously and wholly mine;
And this thy kiss
A separate secret by none other scann’d;
Though well I wis
The whole of life is womanhood to thee,
Momently wedded with enormous bliss.
Rainbow, that hast my heaven sudden spann’d,
I am the apple of thy glorious gaze,
Each else life cent’ring to a different blaze;
And, nothing though I be
But now a no more void capacity for thee,
’Tis all to know there’s not in air or land
Another for thy Darling quite like me!
Mine arms no more thy restless plumes compel!
Farewell!
Whilst thou art gone, I’ll search the weary meads
To deck my bed with lilies of fair deeds!
And, if thou choose to come this eventide,
A touch, my Love, will set my casement wide.
Farewell, farewell!
Be my dull days
Music, at least, with thy remember’d praise!’
   ‘Bitter, sweet, few and veil’d let be
Your songs of me.
Preserving bitter, very sweet,
Few, that so all may be discreet,
And veil’d, that, seeing, none may see.’