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- I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
- I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
- I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
- Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
- I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
- Up vistaed hopes I sped;
- And shot, precipitated,
- Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
- From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
- But with unhurrying chase,
- And unperturbèd pace,
- Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
- They beat – and a voice beat
- More instant than the Feet –
- "All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
- I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
- By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
- Trellised with intertwining charities;
- (For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
- Yet was I sore adread
- Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
- But, if one little casement parted wide,
- The gust of his approach would clash it to:
- Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
- Across the margent of the world I fled,
- And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
- Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;
- Fretted to dulcet jars
- And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
- I said to Dawn: Be sudden – to Eve: Be soon;
- With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
- From this tremendous Lover –
- Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
- I tempted all His servitors, but to find
- My own betrayal in their constancy,
- In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
- Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
- To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
- Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
- But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
- The long savannahs of the blue;
- Or whether, Thunder-driven,
- They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,
- Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet: –
- Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
- Still with unhurrying chase,
- And unperturbèd pace,
- Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
- Came on the following Feet,
- And a Voice above their beat –
- "Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."
- I sought no more that after which I strayed,
- In face of man or maid;
- But still within the little children's eyes
- Seems something, something that replies,
- They at least are for me, surely for me!
- I turned me to them very wistfully;
- But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
- With dawning answers there,
- Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
- "Come then, ye other children, Nature's – share
- With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship;
- Let me greet you lip to lip,
- Let me twine with you caresses,
- Wantoning
- With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
- Banqueting
- With her in her wind-walled palace,
- Underneath her azured daïs,
- Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
- From a chalice
- Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring."
- So it was done:
- I in their delicate fellowship was one –
- Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
- I knew all the swift importings
- On the wilful face of skies;
- I knew how the clouds arise
- Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;
- All that's born or dies
- Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
- Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;
- With them joyed and was bereaven.
- I was heavy with the even,
- When she lit her glimmering tapers
- Round the day's dead sanctities.
- I laughed in the morning's eyes.
- I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
- Heaven and I wept together,
- And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
- Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
- I laid my own to beat,
- And share commingling heat;
- But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
- In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
- For ah! we know not what each other says,
- These things and I; in sound I speak –
- Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
- Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
- Let her, if she would owe me,
- Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
- The breasts o' her tenderness;
- Never did any milk of hers once bless
- My thirsting mouth.
- Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
- With unperturbèd pace,
- Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
- And past those noisèd Feet
- A Voice comes yet more fleet –
- "Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."
- Naked I wait thy Love's uplifted stroke!
- My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
- And smitten me to my knee;
- I am defenceless utterly.
- I slept, methinks, and woke,
- And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
- In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
- I shook the pillaring hours
- And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
- I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years –
- My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
- My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
- Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
- Yea, faileth now even dream
- The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
- Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
- I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
- Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
- For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
- Ah! is Thy love indeed
- A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
- Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
- Ah! must –
- Designer infinite! –
- Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
- My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;
- And now my heart is as a broken fount,
- Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
- From the dank thoughts that shiver
- Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
- Such is; what is to be?
- The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
- I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
- Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
- From the hid battlements of Eternity;
- Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
- Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.
- But not ere him who summoneth
- I first have seen, enwound
- With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
- His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
- Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
- Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
- Be dunged with rotten death?
- Now of that long pursuit
- Comes on at hand the bruit;
- That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
- "And is thy earth so marred,
- Shattered in shard on shard?
- Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me!
- "Strange, piteous, futile thing!
- Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
- Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said),
- "And human love needs human meriting:
- How hast thou merited –
- Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
- Alack, thou knowest not
- How little worthy of any love thou art!
- Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
- Save Me, save only Me?
- All which I took from thee I did but take,
- Not for thy harms,
- But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
- All which thy child's mistake
- Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
- Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"
- Halts by me that footfall:
- Is my gloom, after all,
- Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
- "Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
- I am He Whom thou seekest!
- Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me."
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