O thou that achest, pulse o’ the unwed vast,

now in the distant centre of my brain

dizzily narrow’d, now beyond the last

calm circle widening of the starry plain,

where, on the scatter’d edge of my surmise,

the twilit dreams fail off and rule is spent

vainly on vagrant bands the gulfs invite

to break away to the dark: they, backward sent,

tho’ dumb, with dire infection in their eyes,

startle the central seat: — O pulse of night,

passing the hard throb of sun-smitten blood

when the noon-world is fused in fire and blent

with my then unattained hero-mood;

what will with me the imperious instinct

that hounds the gulfs together on that place

vanishing utterly out of mortal trace,

the citadel where I would seem distinct —

if not thou ween’st a vanity, my deep

unlighted still, the which thy refluent sweep

intolerably dilates, a tide that draws

with lunatic desire, distraught and fond,

to some dark moon of vastness, hung beyond

our little limits of familiar cause,

as tho’ the tense and tortured voids should dash

ruining amorously together, a clash

portentous with some rose of thinnest flame,

secret, exhaled in the annull’d abyss,

that, with this soul, passes in that fell kiss

and to the soft-sprung flush all sanctity

surrenders, centring in the blossom’d Name,

as the dark wings of silence lovingly

hover above the adventurous song that fares

forth to the void and finds no lip that shares

its rapture, just the great wings spreading wide.
 

O mother thou or sister or my bride,

inevitable, whom this hour in me declares,

were thine of old such rhythmic pangs that bore

my shivering soul, wind-waif upon the shore

that is a wavering twilight, thence astray

beneath the empty plainness of the day?

me thy first want conceived to some dim end,

that my unwelcom’d love might henceward tend

to the dumb home that draws it in thy breast

and the veil’d couch of some divine incest,

where thou didst wait some hour of sharp delight

to wither up in splendour the stark night

and haggard shame that ceremented thy dearth,

with purest diamond-blaze, some overbirth

of the dark fire thy foresight did enmesh

within this hither and thither harried flesh?

Ay, yet obscurely stirs, a monstrous worm

in the rear cavern of my dazzled thought,

a memory that wavers, formless form

of superhuman nuptials, clasp’d and caught

unto the breast that is our loathed tomb:

then, issuing from the violated womb,

tremendous birth of dreadful prodigies

begotten on the apocalyptic skies:

one moment’s hope, one thrill alone was given

of pinions beating up the parting heaven;

but straight thereon the spectral mirk was riven

by shapes of snaky horror, grisly jaw,

cold fear, and scaly fold, and endless maw.

What terror clutch’d me, even as ecstasy

smote dire across transfigured mystery?

and whose the sin that doom’d thee to disgrace,

to haunt the shapeless dark, a burning face,

eyes that would cling to mine and lips that seek

some baffled kiss, some word they may not speak,

condemn’d to yearn where the worn foam is hoar

and vain against the unshaken nightly shore.

Nightly thy tempting comes, when the dark breeze

scatters my thought among the unquiet trees

and sweeps it, with dead leaves, o’er widow’d lands

and kingdoms conquer’d by no human hands;

nightly thou wouldst exalt me in the deep,

crown’d with the morn that shines beyond our sleep,

nightly renew those nuptials, and re-win

virginity, and shed the doubtful sin:

but I am born into dividual life

and I have ta’en the woman for my wife,

a flowery pasture fenced and soft with streams,

fill’d with slow ease and fresh with eastern beams

of coolest silver on the sliding wave:

such refuge the derisive morning gave,

shaped featly in thy similitude, to attract

earthward the gusty soul thy temptings rack’d.

I sicken with the long unsatisfied

waiting: the sombre gulfs of night divide:

no dawn is shown that keeps its grace nor soon

degraded not to brutal fires of noon;

and heavy on my soul the tyrant lays

his hand, and dazzles with his common blaze

eyes that are fain, when evening brings the dew,

to cool them in the grasses: few, how few

are now the hours that thou mayst claim as thine!

— And shall I not take heart? if no divine

revealment star me with the diadem

hermetic, magian, alchemic gem,

shall I not feel the earth with firmer tread

if abdicating to the viewless dead

the invaluable round of nothingness?

Kingdom awaits me, homage, swords, liesse,

battle, broad fame in fable, song: shall I

confide all hope to scanty shapes that fly

in dreams, whom even if they be all I know

not, or fore-runners of the One? I go,

shaking them from my spirit, to rule and mould

in mine own shape the gods that shall be old.

— Nay, not thus lightly, heart the winds have mock’d!

wings of fierce winds that o’er the star-strown height

sweep, and adown the wide world-ways unlock’d

feign for thy trouble a last conclusive fight:

O heart wherethro’ these insolent powers stray,

pass and repass, and thou dost foolish hold

aught else inspires them than their cynic play,

the aimless idle sport they plann’d of old

to while the waste hours of their tedious state

and shall pursue when thou art seal’d in dust,

thou latest toy, framed for this silly fate,

to watch their pastime turning, tremble and trust

some deathless gain for thee should issue of it

imblazed in stars on some thy kindred’s brow;

O thou, all laughable for thy short wit,

not lightly thus shalt thou put off their slight

and steady thee to build in their despite

secure, some seat, and hold thy being safe,

joying in this at last that thou art thou,

distinct, no longer in wilful tides a waif:

O heart the winds have emptied of all clear

and natural impulse, O wasted brain

and spirit expent with straining from thy sphere,

turn thee to earth, if that be not a cheat,

and, childlike, lay thee in her torpid lap,

there to reflush these flaccid veins with sap

from spilth of sleep, where herbs of drowsy bane

spring in slow shade and death is sprinkled sweet,

with promis’d coolness dark — perchance a lure..

Thou sleep, at least, receive and wrap me sure

in midmost of thy softness, that no flare,

disastrous, from some rending of the veil,

nor dawn from springs beyond thy precincts, rare

with revelation, risen, or dewy-pale

exhaled from fields of death, disturb that full

absorption of robustness, and I wake

in placid large content, replete and dull,

fast-grown to earth, whom winds no longer shake.