THE BODY
Call in the dancers.
THE SOUL
All is vain.
We live, and living is the pain
We die of while we live. The earth
Was made in some celestial mirth.
Not for our pleasure. I, who seem
To have some memory of a dream,
I know not when, I know not where,
Dream not, remember, and despair.
THE BODY
Dream always, and remember not.
I, if I dreamed, have yet forgot
Even the sleep. This hour I hold
A sand-glass dropping sands of gold.
Call in the dancers, for they give
Bonds to the moment fugitive,
Wings to the moment slow to pass;
I shake the hours in the hour-glass,
Bid the hours dance with you to-night,
My dancers, spirits of delight I
LUST
I give to man, who is the dust,
Life, and his breath: he calls me lust
I am Love's elder; Love was born
To be the world's delight and scorn,
That man might veil, his sight being dim,
My own infinity in him.
Yet without me, that swiftly move,
In all things, the indwelling love
Were as a song without a voice;
By me the inmost heavens rejoice
At the achievement, in pure fire,
Of their own uttermost desire.
I am in man that flame of flames
He names by God's most sacred names,
Being creation, and from thence
A sleepless, vast omnipotence,
And an eternal fatherhood.
Without me nothing is seen good,
Nothing seen great, nor is there gained
The hope of aught to be attained,
Nor that fine, fiery speed of thought
By which the ends of the world are brought
Together in a wish, I give
More than life holds to all who live
Being that desire which grants men Strength
To endure with joy the utmost length
Of an intolerable way.
Night follows night, day follows day.
And, if I lead, hope flies with me
Across the white hills of the sea,
Across the wavering green lands.
I hold within my subtle hands
The promise of all worlds; there come
To conquest and to martyrdom
At my indifferent, swift feet
All lovers, who astonished meet:
The pale saint, famishing for God,
The pallid virgin who has trod
The way not of virginity
Unto some alien ecstasy;
A shepherd with his shepherdess;
Kings, who have loved the purple less
Than some grey rags about the hem
Of a beggar-maid that passed by them;
Tortured and torturer, the smile
Still gasping in their lips the while
Their fingers quiver; and the proud
Lover whom love's hard bond allowed
Not even the release of speech.
I, to all these, am all in each,
Though most deny me, few receive
The half of all I have to give.
Aspire unto my Calvary;
Few are there that have come thereby.
These are my saints, my own, my sons,
Chosen among my chosen ones
To be my priests serving the fire
Which on mine altars is desire
Of the impossible, the breath
Of a seven times renascent death
Of those delights ineffable,
Which, beyond utmost heaven, are hell
Come neat: these things are mysteries:
Come near, who with the spirit's eyes
Dare to behold, and can refine
Your senses to that crystalline
Ardour of the pure fire of love,
Where, beyond hell enjoyed, above
Heaven's ample, utmost lack forgiven,
Heaven over heaven, there is yet heaven.
It was the lust of God, fulfilled
With joys enjoyed, that bade him build
The wanton palace of the earth.
And of that memorable mirth
Which shook the Stars upon that day
Some broken echoes drift our way
In any laughter of the grape.
How can infinity escape
The horror of infinity,
If not by lust that there shall be
Some new, untried, most finite thing
Enjoyed without remembering
That all things else, being enjoyed,
Have perfectly filled full that void
Which is infinity possessed?
So, for those seven days, God had rest,
In that seven times delightful toil,
Creation, from the serpent's coil
Of his own wisdom binding him.
Have I not been God's seraphim?
SLOTH
These garlands tire me: I am Sloth.
See, in my hair these roses, both
The bracelets heavy on my wrists,
The languor of these amethysts
Chained to my ears with chains of gold,
The Tyrian webs whose downy fold
Droops on my bosom like dull sleep.
Let me but slumber: for I keep
The keys of that unwavering realm
Whose gates not Time shall overwhelm,
Whose shadowy temples no God may,
Though younger born, behold decay.
Come near, O sons of men, come near,
Come without hope, come without fear,
I am that happiness you dread;
Within the curtains of my bed
A twilight moves with happy sighs,
And dreams shall cover your closed eyes
Softer than darkness; plumy wings
Swifter than thoughts of hapless things,
And fragrant with the breath of peace.
Come, let these subtle hands release
Your foreheads tightened with the cords
Of wrinkled wisdom; O grey lords
Of Time's inherited disgrace,
Come, make this heart your dwelling-place,
My lips are warm, because I drowse
All day within a pleasant house;
Wandering odours come and go,
They are the souls of flowers that grow
Too faint with ecstasy to live;
And sounds more frail and fugitive
Than rose-leaf dropping rainy tears
On rose-leaf, fill with delicate fears
The silence listening found my feet.
To me this moment is more sweet
Than any moment I have tired
My soul with having once desired,
Or any moment yet to be,
Delight being infinity.
I have no will to be more wise,
To be more comely in men's eyes,
To be more loved of one who may
Love more than he who loves to-day,
Or to love more than now I love.
I cross my folded arms above
A heart that in remembering
Remembers no unquiet thing;
A heart fulfilled with the intense
Acceptance of that indolence
Which God the seventh day understood,
Proclaiming all things very good,
Love me, and I am satisfied
To be the soul's delighted bride,
To all love's ardours virginal.
Love me, or love me not at all,
And I am well content at heart
To sleep in some soft place apart,
Lonely as in a garden-close
Slumbers the solitary rose.
I am the wine within the cup,
Body and soul have I drained up,
Unbounded, unconsumed, and void,
Myself within myself enjoyed,
Being myself that loneliness
Which is the pain of beauty, less
Than beauty's vast, presumptuous mirth
Shaken like a flag above the earth.
AVARICE
I hoard the moments love lets slip,
The dregs that any fearer's lip
Rejects within the cup of life,
The shadows of the fleeting Strife
Of colours, and the echoing
Of every half-muttered thing;
The faint dust shaken from the feet
Of Joy's forerunners in the street,
The knowledge dropt, some heedless day,
By Wisdom passing on her way,
The vows that lovers in a kiss
Have perjured: I am Avarice.
Always I walk with downcast eyes,
Lest, looking at the empty skies,
Wherein no treasure may be found,
I pass some poor thing on the ground.
My robes are ample, fold on fold,
That I may gather in, and hold,
And let not one escape from me,
All treasures of earth's treasury.
Also I walk with lingering pace,
Since, when mine eyes behold the grace
And glory whereof earth is full,
And how the world is beautiful,
Infinitely, and everywhere.
Then my desire is as the air
Embracing all things that exist.
All kisses that all lips have kissed
My lips are covetous that none
Escape them; fondly, one by one,
My heart remembers every word
Of love that ever lover heard,
And hearkening I shall hoard away
All words that lovers shall yet say,
Saying to myself: All these are mine.
Gold too I love: two things divine
Among all delicate things I hold,
Gold even as love, love even as gold,
Neither of them the fairer thing.
But always, in my bargaining,
I would fain buy, and never sell.
It irks me, howsoever well
I bargain, to make bargain of
A pale and timid word of love
For any jewel of pure gold;
The little timid word may hold
(Who knows?) in its infinity
The small dust that may haply be
dust of imperishable earth.
I think, within the whole world's girth,
There is no beauty I can pass,
For anything that ever was
May yet be mine: but for that thought
All beauty were to me as nought.
I love to follow, Stride for Stride,
The footsteps of my sister Pride,
For Pride with both hands flings away
Unhandled treasures. On her way
I follow Anger also: she
With one hand scatters heedlessly
The gifts that all her lovers give,
But spoilt and broken. I shall live
To old age, for my both hands cling
To Life for all her hurrying.
Only one thing on earth I dread,
The grave; for in that narrow bed
But little treasure-room afford
The gaps 'twixt board and coffin-board.
I shall go down into that pit
Despoiled, for at the door of it,
Life, Standing up against the sun,
Shall take my treasures one by one,
Leaving me only, for my part,
A little love within my heart,
A little wisdom in my brain:
The worms of these shall have their gain;
When these have had their gain of me
Where then shall all my treasures be?
GLUTTONY
My robes were coloured in the lees
Of those first Roman vintages
That crushed the whole world's glory up
Into one imperial cup,
The later heavens with dew empearled,
I drink the glory of the world.
As an ox drains a small pool dry:
So passes the world's glory by.
And as an ox makes haste to eat
The meadow-grass beneath his feet,
I eat the glory that may pass
With the world's life and death of grass.
All flesh is grass: shall I assuage
My hunger with the pasturage
Of all earth's valleys, or my thirst
With every rock-born Stream that burst
Each cloud-barred, Starry mountain-gate?
Surely the valleys shall not sate
My hunger, nor the rainy hills
The thirst that like the salt sea fills
My longing to its hollow shore.
I thirst immortally for more
Than mortal fruits; if I could take
The world as a ripe fruit, and slake
All thirsts at once, have I not dreamed
Of other, unknown fruits that seemed
More delicate than this gross fruit
Whereof the graveyards know the root?
O fruit of dreams, my teeth have met,
Only in dreams, in your red, wet,
Martyred, and ever bleeding heart!
When shall I find you, and what part
Of your bewildering ecstasy
Possess? and what, possessing me.
Shall wholly from my sight remove
The intolerable fruit of love?
This is the fruit that God, in wrath,
Planted upon a garden-path
Where man and woman walked in peace;
And of this fruit the sad increase
Shall end not till the whole world end;
For with the apple did God send
The hot desire of it, and then
The cold rejection, and again
Search, and entreaty, and despair;
This apple hovers in the air
Before the lips of all that live;
I have desired it, and would give
Desire of every earthly wine
That has, in any hour, been mine,
For this that has and has not been.
Often the apple will be green,
Often it will be yellowing
Unto a late, sad, rotten thing;
And always, as it was before,
It will be bitter at the core,
And bitter in the skin. Yet, taste
This fruit of Eden in the waste
Of a spoilt world that but for It
Would have been wholly exquisite,
O priceless and forbidden joy,
That is the loved and loathed alloy
In every cup of earth; can those
Enchanted fruits of dream compose
A subtler flavour even in dreams?
Grapes of an ecstasy which seems
The ecstasy that souls may have
In some wild heaven beyond the grave,
Is yours a subtler wine than this
Of earth's poor vineyard, wine that is
So sweet to taste, so good to give
The intoxicating lust to live,
And, its so brief desire being had,
Leaves the delighted flesh so sad?
ANGER
My robes are red with blood; my name
Is Anger. The delicious flame
Which burns within me shall not die
Till the last lover has put by
The last kiss; for it is the fire
Of love, which with extreme desire
Burns out the heart that love has lit
With the extreme desire of it.
I love so ardently, I know
Not love from hate, not joy from woe.
ly when I love, am wroth awhile
With love's delight, if that can smile,
With love's desire, that can abate,
With this most pure and passionate
Moment of moments, if that last
Less than to measure all the past
And all the future. I am sad
Only for this, that I have had
No other hatred so intense
In justice and magnificence
As that self-hatred which I press
Against my own unworthiness.
Could I so dear a hatred prove,
That rapture would out-rapture love.
I walk on many a steep path,
Yet without weariness; my wrath,
That strives against all mortal strife,
Is as a well-spring of new life.
I sharpen in the lover's heart
Desire, and when the pointed dart
Has flown, and quivers, turn afresh
The barb in the delighted flesh:
The flesh cries out and thanks me. I
In hearts am also jealousy,
Which is love's anger against love
For love's sake. It is I who move
The hearts of men that they refuse
Sought gifts, and women, that they choose
What they desire not. Love becomes
Without me, as a rich man's crumbs
Unto a poor man; Love with me
Is the rich man's satiety
Of his spread feast. I am in these
Mother of madness, the disease
That proud men die of; and in those
Mother of wisdom. There arose
Many, by me, that have gone far,
And, for a perilous pilgrim Star,
Have left their hamlets in the vale,
And have found kingdoms. Mine the tale
Of those who, having overturned
Kingdoms, and unto ruins burned
Strong cities, have sat down thereon,
Forgetting to lay Stone on tone
That they might build, and wall about,
Mightier cities. I cry out,
In glory, on the topmost towers
Of the world, exulting that the hours
Of the world are numbered; and my voice
Is louder than the confluent noise
Of the four winds that, hurry forth
From South and East and West and North.
Come hither, all that are the slaves
Of any bondage: of the graves
Wherein the dead bury their dead,
Or of youth's bubbling fountain-head;
Come hither, bondslaves of content,
You, bondslaves of that indolent
Languor of love too satisfied;
Drink of the spirit of my pride.
And I will free you of your chains,
Yea, I will light within your veins
An inextinguishable fire
Which shall consume even that desire
Of bondage. Who shall set me free,
Lastly, of mine own slavery?
PRIDE
I wear the purple: I am Pride,
By me Love sits at God's right side,
Equal with God; by me Love comes
Unto the many martyrdoms
Of fierce and unforgiven desire.
My spirit in Satan was that fire
Which lit the flaming brand he hurled
Into the darkness of the world,
Where men groped dimly after God;
By me the beggar in the road,
Loving and being loved again,
Laughs in his rags against the rain,
Crying: is it a little thing
To be the equal of a king;
Can I have more than all I want?
I teach the little reed to vaunt
Its rippling, twilit, secret voice,
The wind's breath and the water's noise,
Against the oak's great voice that forms
The eternal battle-cry of Storms.
I teach the oak, being great and old,
To scorn, and as a moth's flight hold,
The wandering kingdoms of the clouds.
I hide from kings' eyes their own shrouds,
Whispering: Though the beggar die,
Kings have their immortality I
I teach the dreamer to despise
Thrones for their brief mortalities.
I am that voice which is the faint,
first, far-off sin within the saint,
When of his humbleness he first
Takes thought; and I become that thirst
Which makes him drunken with his own
Humbleness, and so casts him down
From the last painful Stair that waits
His triumphing feet at heaven's gates.
I am the only tempter heard
By Chastity; I speak the word
Which in her confident heart she hears,
A whisper in her guarded ears:
For others let temptation be
Temptation, not for Chastity!
By me all lovers make their boast,
Contemning the eternal host
Of glories that have filled the earth
Since the first conqueror had birth,
And that eternity of peace
Which the assembled heavens release
To angels that have conquered it.
Beside the one brief infinite
Moment of earth and heaven's eclipse
When in that silence they join lips,
Closing their eyes. I too have sought,
In other's eyes, some grace unthought,
Only to see, as in a glass,
Mine own unchanging image pass;
I have seen no one yet more fair,
Greater or subtler anywhere,
Than I am. When I love, being Pride,
I raise my lover to my side,
And I have never loved in vain.
Who loves me never loves again,
Nor have I, being Pride, forgot
A lover. Praise delights me not,
Nor mine own mirror: I am I.
To know me is to satisfy
Knowledge; to love me is to know
Wisdom. Far off, dreams come and go;
But I, that seek upon the earth
Nothing that had not mortal birth,
That bow not, on the ways of sin,
To aught I have not found within,
Dream never: we must kneel to dreams.
These are, if that be true which seems
To have been written on their wings,
The messengers of foreign kings.
LYING
I speak all tongues; also I speak
The learning all the ages seek,
Some capture, and all leave behind;
But I have cast out of my mind
Wisdom, and out of my heart love.
I lust not, nor sloth-heavy move,
Not covetous, no wine-bibber,
Nor is my tongue hasty to Stir,
Nor mine eyes proud; but I am wise
As the snake's tongue, the woman's eyes.
All men believe me; me alone
All men believe; to each his own
Desire I speak, in his own way.
To him who loves but love, I say:
I love you; to the vain: in truth,
I find you beautiful, O youth;
And to the timid: You are strong.
Behold these jewels, how the long
Slow silken raiment folds and drifts:
These gems, this raiment, are the gifts
Of all my lovers and my friends.
When at God's feet the sinner bends,
Saying, I repent; I am his thought,
His speech, although he knows it not.
And when at the beloved's feet
The lover sighs: I love you, sweet,
I never loved, not ever may,
Love any one but you; I say,
Word before word, each word for both.
When lust says: I am life; when Sloth:
I am content; when Avarice:
I seek where any beauty is;
When Gluttony: My mortal thirst
Upon immortal fruit was nursed;
When Anger: I refine like fire;
When Pride: No Praise do I desire;
'Tis I who speak in each, 'tis I
Through whom these lordly voices lie,
Since (lest men know me and condemn)
I speak my will to him through them.
Who is there that shall say for me
That all things are but vanity?
THE BODY
I am the bondslave of these slaves.
THE SINS
O tyrant of the many graves,
It is to you that we are bound!
For you, for you, all we have found
New service, bondage ever new;
We have brought all our gifts to you,
We have made pleasure of our pains,
And you have made these many chains
Upon our hands, our feet, our souls.
But for this bondage that controls
Our will with that omnipotence
Which not our spirits, though intense
In their own ardour, can revoke,
We had been free; and as sweet smoke
Had not our liberal glories gone
Up to the borders of God's throne,
Pure as the savour of his breath,
But for you, Body of our death?
THE SOUL
Why do you crucify me afresh?
THE SINS
O tyrant, sorer than the flesh,
Whose tyranny outlives the morn
Of resurrection, we have borne
From you a heavier slavery,
From you, by whom we might be free!
You gave us spiritual eyes
That we might sin, and be more wise
In sinning; thought, that we might find
A subtler draft -within the mind;
Wings, that we might be Strong to bear
Our burdens through the accomplice air,
Not tiring of them; sense of good,
That virtue, being understood,
Might be our yoke-fellow; the sight
Of beauty, that at last we might,
For you, O Soul, bring both within
Your domination, to be sin!
THE BODY
Dancers, I tire of you. I tire
Of all desire save one desire:
That I were free of you. My brows
Are weary of this golden house,
My brain is weary of your feet,
That loiter where they once were fleet,
Yet cease not. Cease! for I behold
No beauty, as I did of old,
In any of your posturing:
You are as some forgotten thing.
And yet I saw you long ago
As those brave joys that come and go
In youth's rebellion of delight
Against old custom; in my sight
You were the spirits made perfect of
Virtues that sinned from love of love
Immortal was each countenance
Your dance was as the Starry dance
Of the seven planets. Now I see
A wheel turned on an axle-tree,
A beggar's cloak that the wind shook;
Your painted faces are a book
Scrawled by the fingers of a child;
How is it I was so beguiled,
What was it that I loved you for,
false ones, whom I now abhor
Even as I did adore you once?
I would I could put back the sun's
Dark hand upon the dial I Alas,
It is too late, and I must pass
The interval, until all ends,
With you, whom I have chosen for friends,
Chosen for my friends I know not how.
Would that the dance were over now!
THE SOUL
Dancers, I tire of you. I tire
Of all desire save one desire:
That I were free of you. Mine eyes
Are heavy with the mockeries
Of your eternal vanity;
Your motions know not melody,
As your souls know not. You advance
As waves do, and your tangled dance
Scatters as leaves blown down the wind.
I find no grace in you, I find
Vanity, your illusions vain;
And though I have thus long been fain
To endure you for the Body's sake,
And seeking from myself to make
Some moment's folly of escape,
Yet Have I seen each soft-veiled shape
In its ungirded nakedness,
Each painted face a white distress
Under the smile; astray, the beat
Of hurrying and unanswering feet,
And that you know not why you go
Your wandering ways: but who shall know
Save one that silent in the wings
Stands, and beholds your wanderings,
Who set the measure that you mar?
Have I not seen you as you are
Always, and have I once admired
Your beauty? I am very tired,
Dancers, I am more tired than you.
When shall the dance be all danced through?
I see the lights grow dimmer; one
By one the lights go out; the sun
Will meet the darkness on its way.
Is it near morning?
THE STAGE-MANAGER
It is day.
THE SOUL
Would it were that last day of days!
THE STAGE-MANAGER
It is. Each morning that decays
To midnight ends the world as well,
For the world's day, as that farewell
When, at the ultimate judgment-Stroke,
Heaven too shall vanish in pale smoke.
