Orient Ode
LO, in the sanctuaried East,Day, a dedicated priestIn all his robes pontifical exprest,Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly,From out its Orient tabernacle drawn,Yon orbèd sacrament confestWhich sprinkles benediction through the dawn;And when the grave procession’s ceased,The earth with due illustrious riteBlessed,—ere the frail fingers featlyOf twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte,His sacerdotal stoles unvest—Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast,The sun in august exposition meetlyWithin the flaming monstrance of the West.O salutaris hostia,Quæ coeli pandis ostium!Through breachèd darkness’ rampart, aDivine assaulter, art thou come!God whom none may live and mark!Borne within thy radiant ark,While the Earth, a joyous David,Dances before thee from the dawn to dark.The moon, O leave, pale ruined Eve;Behold her fair and greater daughter 27Offers to thee her fruitful water,Which at thy first white Ave shall conceive!Thy gazes do on simple herDesirable allures confer;What happy comelinesses riseBeneath thy beautifying eyes!Who was, indeed, at first a maidSuch as, with sighs, misgives she is not fair,And secret views herself afraid,Till flatteries sweet provoke the charms they swear:Yea, thy gazes, blissful lover,Make the beauties they discover!What dainty guiles and treacheries caughtFrom artful prompting of love’s artless thoughtHer lowly loveliness teach her to adorn,When thy plumes shiver against the conscious gates of morn!
And so the love which is thy dower,Earth, though her first-frightened breastAgainst the exigent boon protest,(For she, poor maid, of her own powerHas nothing in herself, not even love,But an unwitting void thereof),Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower;And holy odours do her bosom invest,That sweeter grows for being prest:Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy,From thine embrace still startles coy,Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour,The laughing captive from the wishing West.
Nor the majestic heavens lessThy formidable sweets approve,Thy dreads and thy delights confess,That do draw, and that remove.Thou as a lion roar’st, O Sun,Upon thy satellites’ vexèd heels;Before thy terrible hunt thy planets run;Each in his frighted orbit wheels,Each flies through inassuageable chase,Since the hunt o’ the world begun,The puissant approaches of thy face,And yet thy radiant leash he feels.Since the hunt o’ the world begun,Lashed with terror, leashed with longing,The mighty course is ever run;Pricked with terror, leashed with longing,Thy rein they love, and thy rebuke they shun.Since the hunt o’ the world began,With love that trembleth, fear that loveth,Thou join’st the woman to the man;And Life with DeathIn obscure nuptials moveth,Commingling alien, yet affinèd breath.
Thou art the incarnated LightWhose Sire is aboriginal, and beyondDeath and resurgence of our day and night;From him is thy vicegerent wandWith double potence of the black and white.Giver of Love, and Beauty, and Desire,The terror, and the loveliness, and purging,The deathfulness and lifefulness of fire!Samson’s riddling meanings mergingIn thy twofold sceptre meet:Out of thy minatory might,Burning Lion, burning Lion,Comes the honey of all sweet,And out of thee, the eater, comes forth meat.And though, by thine alternate breath,Every kiss thou dost inspireEchoethBack from the windy vaultages of death;Yet thy clear warranty aboveAugurs the wings of death too mustOccult reverberations stir of loveCrescent and life incredible;That even the kisses of the justGo down not unresurgent to the dust.Yea, not a kiss which I have given,But shall triúmph upon my lips in heaven,Or cling a shameful fungus there in hell.Know’st thou me not, O Sun? Yea, wellThou know’st the ancient miracle,The children know’st of Zeus and May;And still thou teachest them, O splendent Brother,To incarnate, the antique way,The truth which is their heritage from their SireIn sweet disguise of flesh from their sweet Mother.My fingers thou hast taught to conThy flame-chorded psalterion,Till I can translate into mortal wire—Till I can translate passing well—The heavenly harping harmony,Melodious, sealed, inaudible,Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world’s desire.Thou whisperest in the Moon’s white ear,And she does whisper into mine,—By night together, I and she—With her virgin voice divine,The things I cannot half so sweetly tellAs she can sweetly speak, I sweetly hear.
By her, the Woman, does Earth live, O Lord,Yet she for Earth, and both in thee.Light out of Light!Resplendent and prevailing WordOf the Unheard!Not unto thee, great Image, not to theeDid the wise heathen bend an idle knee;And in an age of faith grown froreIf I too shall adore,Be it accounted unto meA bright sciential idolatry!God has given thee visible thundersTo utter thine apocalypse of wonders;And what want I of prophecy,That at the sounding from thy stationOf thy flagrant trumpet, seeThe seals that melt, the open revelation?Or who a God-persuading angel needs,That only heedsThe rhetoric of thy burning deeds?Which but to sing, if it may be,In worship-warranting moiety,So I would winIn such a song as hath withinA smouldering core of mystery,Brimmèd with nimbler meanings upThan hasty Gideons in their hands may sup;—Lo, my suit pleadsThat thou, Isaian coal of fire,Touch from yon altar my poor mouth’s desire,And the relucent song take for thy sacred meeds.
To thine own shapeThou round’st the chrysolite of the grape,Bind’st thy gold lightnings in his veins;Thou storest the white garners of the rains.Destroyer and preserver, thouWho medicinest sickness, and to healthArt the unthankèd marrow of its wealth;To those apparent sovereignties we bowAnd bright appurtenances of thy brow!Thy proper blood dost thou not give,That Earth, the gusty Mænad, drink and dance?Art thou not life of them that live?Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwellWithin our body as a tabernacle!Thou bittest with thine ordinanceThe jaws of Time, and thou dost meteThe unsustainable treading of his feet.Thou to thy spousal universeArt Husband, she thy Wife and Church;Who in most dusk and vidual curch,Her Lord being hence,Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hearse.The heavens renew their innocenceAnd morning stateBut by thy sacrament communicate:Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers,Our darkened search,And sinful vigil desolate.Yea, biune in imploring dumb,Essential Heavens and corporal Earth await,The Spirit and the Bride say: Come!Lo, of thy Magians I the leastHaste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs,To thy desired epiphany, from the spicedRegions and odorous of Song’s traded East.Thou, for the life of all that liveThe victim daily born and sacrificed;To whom the pinion of this longing verseBeats but with fire which first thyself did give,To thee, O Sun—or is’t perchance, to Christ?
Ay, if men say that on all high heaven’s faceThe saintly signs I traceWhich round my stolèd altars hold their solemn place,Amen, amen! For oh, how could it be,—When I with wingèd feet had runThrough all the windy earth about,Quested its secret of the sun,And heard what thing the stars together shout,—I should not heed thereoutConsenting counsel won:—‘By this, O Singer, know we if thou see.When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is here,When men shall say to thee: Lo! Christ is there,Believe them: yea, and this—then art thou seer,When all thy crying clearIs but: Lo here! lo there!—ah me, lo everywhere!’