| |
| I FLED 1 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. | 5 |
| Up vistaed hopes I sped; | |
| And shot, precipitated | |
| Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, | |
| From those strong feet that followed, followed after | |
| But with unhurrying chase, | 10 |
| 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.” | 15 |
| |
| 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 | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| And troubled the gold gateways of the stars, | |
| Smiting for shelter on their changèd bars; | |
| Fretted to dulcet jars | |
| And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon. | |
| I said to dawn: Be sudden—to eve: Be soon; | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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, | 40 |
| 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. | 45 |
| Still with unhurrying chase, | |
| And unperturbèd pace, | |
| Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, | |
| Came on the following Feet, | |
| And a Voice above their beat— | 50 |
| “Nought 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, | 55 |
| 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. | 60 |
| “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 | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| 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. | 75 |
| 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 | 80 |
| 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 | 85 |
| 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; | 90 |
| 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 gray cheek, | 95 |
| 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 drought; | |
| Let her, if she would owe me, | 100 |
| 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, | 105 |
| 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.” | 110 |
| |
| 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, | 115 |
| 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; | 120 |
| 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; | 125 |
| 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 | 130 |
| 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? | 135 |
| 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. | 140 |
| Such is; what is it 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, | 145 |
| Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then | |
| Round the half-glimpsèd turrets slowly wash again; | |
| But not ere him who summoneth | |
| I first have seen, enwound | |
| With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned; | 150 |
| 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 | 155 |
| 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! | 160 |
| |
| “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— | 165 |
| 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? | 170 |
| 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: | 175 |
| 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, | 180 |
| I am He whom thou seekest! | |
| Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me!” | |
