My Lady the Tyranness
ME since your fair ambition bowsFeodary to those gracious brows,Is nothing mine will not confessYour sovran sweet rapaciousness?Though use to the white yoke inures,Half-petulant isYour loving rebel for somewhat his,Not yours, my love, not yours!
Behold my skies, which make with meOne passionate tranquillity!Wrap thyself in them as a robe,She shares them not; their azures probe,No countering wings thy flight endures.Nay, they do stoleMe like an aura of her soul.I yield them, love, for yours!
But mine these hills and fields, which putNot on the sanctity of her foot.Far off, my dear, far off the sweetGrave pianissimo of your feet!My earth, perchance, your sway abjures?—Your absence broodsO’er all, a subtler presence. Woods,Fields, hills, all yours, all yours!
Nay then, I said, I have my thought,Which never woman’s reaching raught;Being strong beyond a woman’s might,And high beyond a woman’s height,Shaped to my shape in all contours.—I looked, and knewNo thought but you were garden to.All yours, my love, all yours!
Meseemeth still, I have my life;All-clement Her its resolute strifeEvades; contained, relinquishingHer mitigating eyes; a thingWhich the whole girth of God secures.Ah, fool, pause! pause!I had no life, until it wasAll yours, my love, all yours!
Yet, stern possession! I have my death,Sole yielding up of my sole breath;Which all within myself I die,All in myself must cry the cryWhich the deaf body’s wall immures.—Thought fashionethMy death without her.—Ah, even deathAll yours, my love, all yours!
Death, then, he hers. I have my heaven,For which no arm of hers has striven;Which solitary I must choose,And solitary win or lose.—Ah, but not heaven my own endures!I must perforceTaste you, my stream, in God your source,—So steep my heaven in yours.
At last I said—I have my God,Who doth desire me, though a clod,And from His liberal Heaven shall HeBar in mine arms His privacy.Himself for mine Himself assures.—None shall denyGod to be mine, but He and IAll yours, my love, all yours!
I have no fear at all lest IWithout her draw felicity.God for His Heaven will not foregoHer whom I found such heaven below,And she will train Him to her lures.Nought, lady, I loveIn you but more is loved above;What made me, makes Him yours.
‘I, thy sought own, am I forgot?’Ha, thou?—thou liest, I seek thee not.Why what, thou painted parrot, Fame,What have I taught thee but her name?Hear, thou slave Fame, while Time endures,I give her thee;Page her triumphal name!—Lady,Take her, the thrall is yours.