(NOTRE-DAME DES SEPT DOULEURS)
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel | |
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; | |
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel | |
Red mouth like a venomous flower; | |
When these are gone by with their glories, | |
What shall rest of thee then, what remain, | |
O mystic and sombre Dolores, | |
Our Lady of Pain? | |
Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin; | |
10 | But thy sins, which are seventy times seven, |
Seven ages would fail thee to purge in, | |
And then they would haunt thee in heaven: | |
Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, | |
And the loves that complete and control | |
All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows | |
That wear out the soul. | |
O garment not golden but gilded, | |
O garden where all men may dwell, | |
O tower not of ivory, but builded | |
20 | By hands that reach heaven from hell; |
O mystical rose of the mire, | |
O house not of gold but of gain, | |
O house of unquenchable fire, | |
Our Lady of Pain! | |
O lips full of lust and of laughter, | |
Curled snakes that are fed from my breast, | |
Bite hard, lest remembrance come after | |
And press with new lips where you pressed. | |
For my heart too springs up at the pressure, | |
30 | Mine eyelids too moisten and burn; |
Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure, | |
Ere pain come in turn. | |
In yesterday’s reach and to-morrow’s, | |
Out of sight though they lie of to-day, | |
There have been and there yet shall be sorrows | |
That smite not and bite not in play. | |
The life and the love thou despisest, | |
These hurt us indeed, and in vain, | |
O wise among women, and wisest, | |
40 | Our Lady of Pain. |
Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories | |
That stung thee, what visions that smote? | |
Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores, | |
When desire took thee first by the throat? | |
What bud was the shell of a blossom | |
That all men may smell to and pluck? | |
What milk fed thee first at what bosom? | |
What sins gave thee suck? | |
We shift and bedeck and bedrape us, | |
50 | Thou art noble and nude and antique; |
Libitina thy mother, Priapus | |
Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek. | |
We play with light loves in the portal, | |
And wince and relent and refrain; | |
Loves die, and we know thee immortal, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges; | |
Thou art fed with perpetual breath, | |
And alive after infinite changes, | |
60 | And fresh from the kisses of death; |
Of languors rekindled and rallied, | |
Of barren delights and unclean, | |
Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid | |
And poisonous queen. | |
Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you? | |
Men touch them, and change in a trice | |
The lilies and languors of virtue | |
For the raptures and roses of vice; | |
Those lie where thy foot on the floor is, | |
70 | These crown and caress thee and chain, |
O splendid and sterile Dolores, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
There are sins it may be to discover, | |
There are deeds it may be to delight. | |
What new work wilt thou find for thy lover, | |
What new passions for daytime or night? | |
What spells that they know not a word of | |
Whose lives are as leaves overblown? | |
What tortures undreamt of, unheard of, | |
80 | Unwritten, unknown? |
Ah beautiful passionate body | |
That never has ached with a heart! | |
On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody, | |
Though they sting till it shudder and smart, | |
More kind than the love we adore is, | |
They hurt not the heart or the brain, | |
O bitter and tender Dolores, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
As our kisses relax and redouble, | |
90 | From the lips and the foam and the fangs |
Shall no new sin be born for men’s trouble, | |
No dream of impossible pangs? | |
With the sweet of the sins of old ages | |
Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore? | |
Too sweet is the rind, say the sages, | |
Too bitter the core. | |
Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time, | |
And bared all thy beauties to one? | |
Ah, where shall we go then for pastime, | |
100 | If the worst that can be has been done? |
But sweet as the rind was the core is; | |
We are fain of thee still, we are fain, | |
O sanguine and subtle Dolores, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
By the hunger of change and emotion, | |
By the thirst of unbearable things, | |
By despair, the twin-born of devotion, | |
By the pleasure that winces and stings, | |
The delight that consumes the desire, | |
110 | The desire that outruns the delight, |
By the cruelty deaf as a fire | |
And blind as the night, | |
By the ravenous teeth that have smitten | |
Through the kisses that blossom and bud, | |
By the lips intertwisted and bitten | |
Till the foam has a savour of blood, | |
By the pulse as it rises and falters, | |
By the hands as they slacken and strain, | |
I adjure thee, respond from thine altars, | |
120 | Our Lady of Pain. |
Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining | |
The light fire in the veins of a boy? | |
But he comes to thee sad, without feigning, | |
Who has wearied of sorrow and joy; | |
Less careful of labour and glory | |
Than the elders whose hair has uncurled; | |
And young, but with fancies as hoary | |
And grey as the world. | |
I have passed from the outermost portal | |
130 | To the shrine where a sin is a prayer; |
What care though the service be mortal? | |
O our Lady of Torture, what care? | |
All thine the last wine that I pour is, | |
The last in the chalice we drain, | |
O fierce and luxurious Dolores, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
All thine the new wine of desire, | |
The fruit of four lips as they clung | |
Till the hair and the eyelids took fire, | |
140 | The foam of a serpentine tongue, |
The froth of the serpents of pleasure, | |
More salt than the foam of the sea, | |
Now felt as a flame, now at leisure | |
As wine shed for me. | |
Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen, | |
Marked cross from the womb and perverse! | |
They have found out the secret to cozen | |
The gods that constrain us and curse; | |
They alone, they are wise, and none other; | |
150 | Give me place, even me, in their train, |
O my sister, my spouse, and my mother, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
For the crown of our life as it closes | |
Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; | |
No thorns go as deep as a rose’s, | |
And love is more cruel than lust. | |
Time turns the old days to derision, | |
Our loves into corpses or wives; | |
And marriage and death and division | |
160 | Make barren our lives. |
And pale from the past we draw nigh thee, | |
And satiate with comfortless hours; | |
And we know thee, how all men belie thee, | |
And we gather the fruit of thy flowers; | |
The passion that slays and recovers, | |
The pangs and the kisses that rain | |
On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
The desire of thy furious embraces | |
170 | Is more than the wisdom of years, |
On the blossom though blood lie in traces, | |
Though the foliage be sodden with tears. | |
For the lords in whose keeping the door is | |
That opens on all who draw breath | |
Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores, | |
The myrtle to death. | |
And they laughed, changing hands in the measure, | |
And they mixed and made peace after strife; | |
Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure; | |
180 | Death tingled with blood, and was life. |
Like lovers they melted and tingled, | |
In the dusk of thine innermost fane; | |
In the darkness they murmured and mingled, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
In a twilight where virtues are vices, | |
In thy chapels, unknown of the sun, | |
To a tune that enthralls and entices, | |
They were wed, and the twain were as one. | |
For the tune from thine altar hath sounded | |
190 | Since God bade the world’s work begin, |
And the fume of thine incense abounded, | |
To sweeten the sin. | |
Love listens, and paler than ashes, | |
Through his curls as the crown on them slips, | |
Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes, | |
And laughs with insatiable lips. | |
Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses, | |
With music that scares the profane; | |
Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses, | |
200 | Our Lady of Pain. |
Thou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle, | |
Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive; | |
In his lips all thy serpents shall nestle, | |
In his hands all thy cruelties thrive. | |
In the daytime thy voice shall go through him, | |
In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache; | |
Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him | |
Asleep and awake. | |
Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses | |
210 | With juice not of fruit nor of bud; |
When the sense in the spirit reposes, | |
Thou shalt quicken the soul through the blood. | |
Thine, thine the one grace we implore is, | |
Who would live and not languish or feign, | |
O sleepless and deadly Dolores, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber, | |
In a lull of the fires of thy life, | |
Of the days without name, without number, | |
220 | When thy will stung the world into strife; |
When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion | |
Smote kings as they revelled in Rome; | |
And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian, | |
Foam-white, from the foam? | |
When thy lips had such lovers to flatter; | |
When the city lay red from thy rods, | |
And thine hands were as arrows to scatter | |
The children of change and their gods; | |
When the blood of thy foemen made fervent | |
230 | A sand never moist from the main, |
As one smote them, their lord and thy servant, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
On sands by the storm never shaken, | |
Nor wet from the washing of tides; | |
Nor by foam of the waves overtaken, | |
Nor winds that the thunder bestrides; | |
But red from the print of thy paces, | |
Made smooth for the world and its lords, | |
Ringed round with a flame of fair faces, | |
240 | And splendid with swords. |
There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure, | |
Drew bitter and perilous breath; | |
There torments laid hold on the treasure | |
Of limbs too delicious for death; | |
When thy gardens were lit with live torches; | |
When the world was a steed for thy rein; | |
When the nations lay prone in thy porches, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
When, with flame all around him aspirant, | |
250 | Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands, |
The implacable beautiful tyrant, | |
Rose-crowned, having death in his hands; | |
And a sound as the sound of loud water | |
Smote far through the flight of the fires, | |
And mixed with the lightning of slaughter | |
A thunder of lyres. | |
Dost thou dream of what was and no more is, | |
The old kingdoms of earth and the kings? | |
Dost thou hunger for these things, Dolores, | |
260 | For these, in a world of new things? |
But thy bosom no fasts could emaciate, | |
No hunger compel to complain | |
Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
As of old when the world’s heart was lighter, | |
Through thy garments the grace of thee glows, | |
The white wealth of thy body made whiter | |
By the blushes of amorous blows, | |
And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers, | |
270 | And branded by kisses that bruise; |
When all shall be gone that now lingers, | |
Ah, what shall we lose? | |
Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion, | |
And thy limbs are as melodies yet, | |
And move to the music of passion | |
With lithe and lascivious regret. | |
What ailed us, O gods, to desert you | |
For creeds that refuse and restrain? | |
Come down and redeem us from virtue, | |
280 | Our Lady of Pain. |
All shrines that were Vestal are flameless, | |
But the flame has not fallen from this; | |
Though obscure be the god, and though nameless | |
The eyes and the hair that we kiss; | |
Low fires that love sits by and forges | |
Fresh heads for his arrows and thine; | |
Hair loosened and soiled in mid orgies | |
With kisses and wine. | |
Thy skin changes country and colour, | |
290 | And shrivels or swells to a snake’s. |
Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller, | |
We know it, the flames and the flakes, | |
Red brands on it smitten and bitten, | |
Round skies where a star is a stain, | |
And the leaves with thy litanies written, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
On thy bosom though many a kiss be, | |
There are none such as knew it of old. | |
Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe, | |
300 | Male ringlets or feminine gold, |
That thy lips met with under the statue, | |
Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves | |
From the eyes of the garden-god at you | |
Across the fig-leaves? | |
Then still, through dry seasons and moister, | |
One god had a wreath to his shrine; | |
Then love was the pearl of his oyster,1 | |
And Venus rose red out of wine. | |
We have all done amiss, choosing rather | |
310 | Such loves as the wise gods disdain; |
Intercede for us thou with thy father, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
In spring he had crowns of his garden, | |
Red corn in the heat of the year, | |
Then hoary green olives that harden | |
When the grape-blossom freezes with fear; | |
And milk-budded myrtles with Venus | |
And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod; | |
And ye said, ‘We have seen, he hath seen us, | |
320 | A visible God.’ |
What broke off the garlands that girt you? | |
What sundered you spirit and clay? | |
Weak sins yet alive are as virtue | |
To the strength of the sins of that day. | |
For dried is the blood of thy lover, | |
Ipsithilla, contracted the vein; | |
Cry aloud, ‘Will he rise and recover, | |
Our Lady of Pain?’ | |
Cry aloud; for the old world is broken: | |
330 | Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest, |
And rears not the bountiful token | |
And spreads not the fatherly feast. | |
From the midmost of Ida, from shady | |
Recesses that murmur at morn, | |
They have brought and baptized her, Our Lady, | |
A goddess new-born. | |
And the chaplets of old are above us, | |
And the oyster-bed teems out of reach; | |
Old poets outsing and outlove us, | |
340 | And Catullus makes mouths at our speech. |
Who shall kiss, in thy father’s own city, | |
With such lips as he sang with, again? | |
Intercede for us all of thy pity, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
Out of Dindymus heavily laden | |
Her lions draw bound and unfed | |
A mother, a mortal, a maiden, | |
A queen over death and the dead. | |
She is cold, and her habit is lowly, | |
350 | Her temple of branches and sods; |
Most fruitful and virginal, holy, | |
A mother of gods. | |
She hath wasted with fire thine high places, | |
She hath hidden and marred and made sad | |
The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces | |
Of gods that were goodly and glad. | |
She slays, and her hands are not bloody; | |
She moves as a moon in the wane, | |
White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy, | |
360 | Our Lady of Pain. |
They shall pass and their places be taken, | |
The gods and the priests that are pure. | |
They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken? | |
They shall perish, and shalt thou endure? | |
Death laughs, breathing close and relentless | |
In the nostrils and eyelids of lust, | |
With a pinch in his fingers of scentless | |
And delicate dust. | |
But the worm shall revive thee with kisses; | |
370 | Thou shalt change and transmute as a god, |
As the rod to a serpent that hisses, | |
As the serpent again to a rod. | |
Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it; | |
Thou shalt live until evil be slain, | |
And good shall die first, said thy prophet, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it, | |
Now he lies out of reach, out of breath, | |
Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet, | |
380 | Sin’s child by incestuous Death? |
Did he find out in fire at his waking, | |
Or discern as his eyelids lost light, | |
When the bands of the body were breaking | |
And all came in sight? | |
Who has known all the evil before us, | |
Or the tyrannous secrets of time? | |
Though we match not the dead men that bore us | |
At a song, at a kiss, at a crime – | |
Though the heathen outface and outlive us, | |
390 | And our lives and our longings are twain – |
Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
Who are we that embalm and embrace thee | |
With spices and savours of song? | |
What is time, that his children should face thee? | |
What am I, that my lips do thee wrong? | |
I could hurt thee – but pain would delight thee; | |
Or caress thee – but love would repel; | |
And the lovers whose lips would excite thee | |
400 | Are serpents in hell. |
Who now shall content thee as they did, | |
Thy lovers, when temples were built | |
And the hair of the sacrifice braided | |
And the blood of the sacrifice spilt, | |
In Lampsacus fervent with faces, | |
In Aphaca red from thy reign, | |
Who embraced thee with awful embraces, | |
Our Lady of Pain? | |
Where are they, Cotytto or Venus, | |
410 | Astarte or Ashtaroth, where? |
Do their hands as we touch come between us? | |
Is the breath of them hot in thy hair? | |
From their lips have thy lips taken fever, | |
With the blood of their bodies grown red? | |
Hast thou left upon earth a believer | |
If these men are dead? | |
They were purple of raiment and golden, | |
Filled full of thee, fiery with wine, | |
Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden, | |
420 | In marvellous chambers of thine. |
They are fled, and their footprints escape us, | |
Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain, | |
O daughter of Death and Priapus, | |
Our Lady of Pain. | |
What ails us to fear overmeasure, | |
To praise thee with timorous breath, | |
O mistress and mother of pleasure, | |
The one thing as certain as death? | |
We shall change as the things that we cherish, | |
430 | Shall fade as they faded before, |
As foam upon water shall perish, | |
As sand upon shore. | |
We shall know what the darkness discovers, | |
If the grave-pit be shallow or deep; | |
And our fathers of old, and our lovers, | |
We shall know if they sleep not or sleep. | |
We shall see whether hell be not heaven, | |
Find out whether tares be not grain, | |
And the joys of thee seventy times seven, | |
440 | Our Lady of Pain. |