The Mistress of Vision
I
SECRET was the garden;Set i’ the pathless aweWhere no star its breath can draw.Life, that is its warden,Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw not, and I saw.
II
It was a mazeful wonder;Thrice three times it was enwalledWith an emerald—Sealèd so asunder.All its birds in middle air hung a-dream, their music thralled.
III
The Lady of fair weeping,At the garden’s core,Sang a song of sweet and soreAnd the after-sleeping;In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore.
IV
With sweet-panged singing,Sang she through a dream-night’s day;That the bowers might stay,Birds bate their winging,Nor the wall of emerald float in wreathèd haze away.
V
The lily kept its gleaming,In her tears (divine conservers!)Washèd with sad art;And the flowers of dreamingPalèd not their fervours,For her blood flowed through their nervures;And the roses were most red, for she dipt them in her heart.
VI
There was never moon,Save the white sufficing woman:Light most heavenly-human—Like the unseen form of sound,Sensed invisibly in tune,—With a sun-derivèd stoleDid inaureoleAll her lovely body round;Lovelily her lucid body with that light was interstrewn.
VII
The sun which lit that garden wholly,Low and vibrant visible,Tempered glory woke;And it seemèd solelyLike a silver thuribleSolemnly swung, slowly,Fuming clouds of golden fire, for a cloud of incense-smoke.
VIII
But woe’s me, and woe’s me,For the secrets of her eyes!In my visions fearfullyThey are ever shown to beAs fringèd pools, whereof each liesPallid-dark beneath the skiesOf a night that isBut one blear necropolis.And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her own sighs.
IX
Many changes rise onTheir phantasmal mysteries.They grow to an horizonWhere earth and heaven meet;And like a wing that dies onThe vague twilight-verges,Many a sinking dream doth fleetLessening down their secrecies.And, as dusk with day converges,Their orbs are troublouslyOver-gloomed and over-glowed with hope and fear of things to be.
X
There is a peak on Himalay,And on the peak undeluged snow,And on the snow not eagles stray;There if your strong feet could go,—Looking over tow’rd CathayFrom the never-deluged snow—Farthest ken might not surveyWhere the peoples underground dwell whom antique fables know.
XI
East, ah, east of Himalay,Dwell the nations underground;Hiding from the shock of Day,For the sun’s uprising-sound:Dare not issue from the groundAt the tumults of the Day,So fearfully the sun doth soundClanging up beyond Cathay;For the great earthquaking sunrise rolling up beyond Cathay.
XII
Lend me, O lend meThe terrors of that sound,That its music may attend me.Wrap my chant in thunders round;While I tell the ancient secrets in that Lady’s singing found.
XIII
On Ararat there grew a vine,When Asia from her bathing rose;Our first sailor made a twineThereof for his prefiguring brows.Canst divineWhere, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a cluster grows?
XIV
On Golgotha there grew a thornRound the long-prefigured Brows.Mourn, O mourn!For the vine have we the spine? Is this all the Heaven allows?
XV
On Calvary was shook a spear;Press the point into thy heart—Joy and fear!All the spines upon the thorn into curling tendrils start.
XVI
O, dismay!I, a wingless mortal, sportingWith the tresses of the sun?I, that dare my hand to layOn the thunder in its snorting?Ere begun,Falls my singed song down the sky, even the old Icarian way.
XVII
From the fall precipitantThese dim snatches of her chantOnly have remainèd mine;—That from spear and thorn aloneMay be grownFor the front of saint or singer any divinizing twine.
XVIII
Her song said that no springingParadise but evermoreHangeth on a singingThat has chords of weeping,And that sings the after-sleepingTo souls which wake too sore.‘But woe the singer, woe!’ she said; ‘beyond the dead hissinging-lore,All its art of sweet and sore,He learns, in Elenore!’
XIX
Where is the land of Luthany,Where is the tract of Elenore?I am bound therefor.
XX
‘Pierce thy heart to find the key;With thee takeOnly what none else would keep;Learn to dream when thou dost wake,Learn to wake when thou dost sleep.Learn to water joy with tears,Learn from fears to vanquish fears;To hope, for thou dar’st not despair,Exult, for that thou dar’st not grieve;Plough thou the rock until it bear;Know, for thou else couldst not believe;Lose, that the lost thou may’st receive;Die, for none other way canst live.When earth and heaven lay down their veil,And that apocalypse turns thee pale;When thy seeing blindeth theeTo what thy fellow-mortals see;When their sight to thee is sightless;Their living, death; their light, most lightless;Search no more—Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’
XXI
Where is the land of Luthany,And where the region Elenore?I do faint therefor.‘When to the new eyes of theeAll things by immortal power,Near or far,HiddenlyTo each other linkèd are,That thou canst not stir a flowerWithout troubling of a star;When thy song is shield and mirrorTo the fair snake-curlèd Pain,Where thou dar’st affront her terrorThat on her thou may’st attainPersean conquest; seek no more,O seek no more!Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’
XXII
So sang she, so wept she,Through a dream-night’s day;And with her magic singing kept she—Mystical in music—That garden of enchantingIn visionary May;Swayless for my spirit’s haunting,Thrice-threefold walled with emerald from our mortal mornings grey.
XXIII
And as a necromancerRaises from the rose-ashThe ghost of the rose;My heart so made answerTo her voice’s silver plash,—Stirred in reddening flash,And from out its mortal ruins the purpureal phantom blows.
XXIV
Her tears made dulcet fretting,Her voice had no word,More than thunder or the bird.Yet, unforgetting,The ravished soul her meanings knew. Mine ears heard not, and Iheard.
XXV
When she shall unwindAll those wiles she wound about me,Tears shall break from out me,That I cannot findMusic in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt me!