WHAT’S virtue, Bianca? Have we not | |
| Agreed the word should be forgot, | |
| That ours be every dear device | |
| And all the subtleties of vice, | |
| And, in diverse imaginings, | 5 |
| The savour of forbidden things, | |
| So only that the obvious be | |
| Too obvious for you and me, | |
| And the one vulgar final act | |
| Remain an unadmitted fact? | 10 |
| |
| And, surely, we were wise to waive | |
| A gift we do not lose, but save. | |
| What moment’s reeling blaze of sense | |
| Were rationally recompense | |
| For all the ecstasies and all | 15 |
| The ardours demi-virginal? | |
| Bianca, I tell you, no delights | |
| Of long, free, unforbidden nights, | |
| Have richlier filled and satisfied | |
| The eager moments as they died, | 20 |
| That your voluptuous pretence | |
| Of unacquainted innocence, | |
| Your clinging hands and closing lips | |
| And eyes slow sinking to eclipse | |
| And cool throat flushing to my kiss; | 25 |
| That sterile and mysterious bliss, | |
| Mysterious, and yet to me | |
| Deeper for that dubiety. | |
| |
| Once, but that time was long ago, | |
| I loved good women, and to know | 30 |
| That lips my lips dared never touch | |
| Could speak, in one warm smile, so much. | |
| And it seemed infinitely sweet | |
| To worship at a woman’s feet, | |
| And live on heavenly thoughts of her, | 35 |
| Till earth itself grew heavenlier. | |
| But that rapt mood, being fed on air, | |
| Turned at the last to a despair, | |
| And, for a body and soul like mine, | |
| I found the angel’s food too fine. | 40 |
| So the mood changed, and I began | |
| To find that man is merely man, | |
| Though women might be angels; so, | |
| I let the aspirations go, | |
| And for a space I held it wise | 45 |
| To follow after certainties. | |
| My heart forgot the ways of love, | |
| No longer now my fancy wove | |
| Into admitted ornament | |
| In spider’s web of sentiment. | 50 |
| What my hands seized, that my hands held, | |
| I followed as the blood compelled, | |
| And finding that my brain found rest | |
| On some unanalytic breast, | |
| I was contented to discover | 55 |
| How easy ’tis to be a lover. | |
| No sophistries to ravel out, | |
| No devious maytyrdoms of doubt, | |
| Only the good firm flesh to hold, | |
| The love well worth its weight in gold, | 60 |
| Love, sinking from the infinite, | |
| Now just enough to last one night. | |
| So the simplicity of flesh | |
| Held me a moment in its mesh, | |
| Till that too palled, and I began | 65 |
| To find that man is mostly man | |
| In that, his will being sated, he | |
| Wills ever new variety. | |
| And then I found you, Bianca! Then | |
| I found in you, I found again | 70 |
| That chance or will or fate had brought | |
| The curiosity I sought. | |
| Ambiguous child, whose life retires | |
| Into the pulse of those desires | |
| Of whose endured possession speaks | 75 |
| The passionate pallor of your cheeks; | |
| Child, in whom neither good nor ill | |
| Can sway your sick and swaying will, | |
| Only the aching sense of sex | |
| Wholly controls, and does perplex, | 80 |
| With dubious drifts scarce understood, | |
| The shaken currents of your blood; | |
| It is your ambiguity | |
| That speaks to me and conquers me, | |
| Your capturing heats of captive bliss, | 85 |
| Under my hands, under my kiss, | |
| And your strange reticences, strange | |
| Concessions, your elusive change, | |
| The strangeness of your smile, the faint | |
| Corruption of your gaze, a saint | 90 |
| Such as Luini loved to paint. | |
| |
| What’s virtue, Bianca? nay, indeed, | |
| What’s vice? for I at last am freed, | |
| With you, of virtue and of vice: | |
| I have discovered Paradise. | 95 |
| And Paradise is neither heaven, | |
| Where the spirits of God are seven, | |
| And the spirits of men burn pure, | |
| Nor is it hell, where souls endure | |
| An equal ecstasy of fire, | 100 |
| In like repletion of desire; | |
| Nay, but a subtlier intense | |
| Unsatisfied appeal of sense, | |
| Ever desiring, ever near | |
| The goal of all its hope and fear, | 105 |
| Ever a hair’s-breadth from the goal. | |
| |
| So Bianca satisfies my soul. | |
| |
