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(From Poems and Ballads, 1866)
KNEEL down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears, | |
| Girdle thyself with signing for a girth | |
| Upon the sides of mirth, | |
| Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears | |
| Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing; | 5 |
| Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs | |
| Upon the flesh to cleave, | |
| Set pains therein and many a grievous thing, | |
| And many sorrows after each his wise | |
| For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve. | 10 |
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| O Love’s lute heard about the lands of death, | |
| Left hanged upon the trees that were therein; | |
| O Love and Time and Sin, | |
| Three singing mouths that mourn now under breath, | |
| Three lovers, each one evil spoken of; | 15 |
| O smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine | |
| Came softer with her praise; | |
| Abide a little for our lady’s love. | |
| The kisses of her mouth were more than wine, | |
| And more than peace the passage of her days. | 20 |
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| O Love, thou knowest if she were good to see. | |
| O Time, thou shalt not find in any land | |
| Till, cast out of thine hand, | |
| The sunlight and the moonlight fail from thee, | |
| Another woman fashioned like as this. | 25 |
| O Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her | |
| Was made a goodly thing; | |
| Yea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss, | |
| With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier | |
| Than lips of amorous roses in late spring. | 30 |
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| By night there stood over against my bed | |
| Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black, | |
| Both sides drawn fully back | |
| From brows wherein the sad blood failed of red, | |
| And temples drained of purple and full of death. | 35 |
| Her curled hair had the wave of sea-water | |
| And the sea’s gold in it. | |
| Her eyes were as a dove’s that sickeneth. | |
| Strewn dust of gold she had shed over her, | |
| And pearl and purple and amber on her feet. | 40 |
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| Upon her raiment of dyed sendaline | |
| Were painted all the secret ways of love | |
| And covered things thereof, | |
| That hold delight as grape-flowers hold their wine; | |
| Red mouths of maidens and red feet of doves, | 45 |
| And brides that kept within the bride-chamber | |
| Their garment of soft shame, | |
| And weeping faces of the wearied loves | |
| That swoon in sleep and awake wearier, | |
| With heat of lips and hair shed out like flame. | 50 |
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| The tears that through her eyelids fell on me | |
| Made mine own bitter where they ran between | |
| As blood had fallen therein, | |
| She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see | |
| If any glad thing be or any good | 55 |
| Now the best thing is taken forth of us; | |
| Even she to whom all praise | |
| Was as one flower in a great multitude, | |
| One glorious flower of many and glorious, | |
| One day found gracious among many days: | 60 |
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| Even she whose handmaiden was Love—to whom | |
| At kissing times across her stateliest bed | |
| Kings bowed themselves and shed | |
| Pale wine, and honey with the honeycomb, | |
| And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering; | 65 |
| Even she between whose lips the kiss became | |
| As fire and frankincense; | |
| Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king, | |
| Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame, | |
| Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence. | 70 |
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| Then I beheld, and lo on the other side | |
| My lady’s likeness crowned and robed and dead. | |
| Sweet still, but now not red, | |
| Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died. | |
| And sweet, but emptied of the blood’s blue shade, | 75 |
| The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes. | |
| And sweet, but like spoilt gold, | |
| The weight of colour in her tresses weighed. | |
| And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes, | |
| The body that was clothed with love of old. | 80 |
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| Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair | |
| And all the hollow bosom of her gown— | |
| Ah! that my tears ran down | |
| Even to the place where many kisses were, | |
| Even where her parted breast-flowers have place, | 85 |
| Even where they are cloven apart—who knows not this? | |
| Ah! the flowers cleave apart | |
| And their sweet fills the tender interspace; | |
| Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss | |
| Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart. | 90 |
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| Ah! in the days when God did good to me, | |
| Each part about her was a righteous thing; | |
| Her mouth an almsgiving, | |
| The glory of her garments charity, | |
| The beauty of her bosom a good deed, | 95 |
| In the good days when God kept sight of us; | |
| Love lay upon her eyes, | |
| And on that hair whereof the world takes heed; | |
| And all her body was more virtuous | |
| Than souls of women fashioned otherwise. | 100 |
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| Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands | |
| And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves | |
| Rain-rotten in rank lands, | |
| Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves | |
| And grass that fades ere any of it be mown; | 105 |
| And when thy bosom is filled full thereof | |
| Seek out Death’s face ere the light altereth, | |
| And say “My master that was thrall to Love | |
| Is become thrall to Death.” | |
| Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan, | 110 |
| But make no sojourn in thy outgoing; | |
| For haply it may be | |
| That when thy feet return at evening | |
| Death shall come in with thee. | |
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