| |
| FACE to face in my chamber, my silent chamber, I saw her: | |
| God and she and I only,… there, I sate down to draw her | |
| Soul through the clefts of confession…. Speak, I am holding thee fast, | |
| As the angels of resurrection shall do it at the last. | |
| ‘My cup is blood-red | 5 |
| With my sin,’ she said, | |
| ‘And I pour it out to the bitter lees, | |
| As if the angels of judgement stood over me strong at the last, | |
| Or as thou wert as these!’ | |
| |
| When God smote his hands together, and struck out thy soul as a spark | 10 |
| Into the organized glory of things, from deeps of the dark,— | |
| Say, didst them shine, didst thou burn, didst thou honour the power in the form, | |
| As the star does at night, or the fire-fly, or even the little ground-worm? | |
| ‘I have sinn’d,’ she said, | |
| ‘For my seed-light shed | 15 |
| Has smoulder’d away from his first decrees! | |
| The cypress praiseth the fire-fly, the ground-leaf praiseth the worm,— | |
| I am viler than these!’ | |
| |
| When God on that sin had pity, and did not trample thee straight | |
| With his wild rains beating and drenching thy light found inadequate; | 20 |
| When He only sent thee the north-winds, a little searching and chill, | |
| To quicken thy flame … didst thou kindle and flash to the heights of his will? | |
| ‘I have sinn’d,’ she said, | |
| ‘Unquicken’d, unspread | |
| My fire dropt down, and I wept on my knees! | 25 |
| I only said of his winds of the north as I shrank from their chill,… | |
| What delight is in these?’ | |
| |
| When God on that sin had pity, and did not meet it as such, | |
| But temper’d the wind to thy uses, and soften’d the world to thy touch, | |
| At least thou wast moved in thy soul, though unable to prove it afar, | 30 |
| Thou couldst carry thy light like a jewel, not giving it out like a star? | |
| ‘I have sinn’d,’ she said, | |
| ‘And not merited | |
| The gift He gives, by the grace He sees! | |
| The mine-cave praiseth the jewel, the hillside praiseth the star; | 35 |
| I am viler than these.’ | |
| |
| Then I cried aloud in my passion,… Unthankful and impotent creature, | |
| To throw up thy scorn unto God through the rents in thy beggarly nature! | |
| If He, the all-giving and loving, is served so unduly, what then | |
| Hast thou done to the weak and the false, and the changing,… thy fellows of men? | 40 |
| ‘I have loved,’ she said, | |
| (Words bowing her head | |
| As the wind the wet acacia-trees!) | |
| ‘I saw God sitting above me,—but I … I sate among men, | |
| And I have loved these.’ | 45 |
| |
| Again with a lifted voice, like a choral trumpet that takes | |
| The lowest note of a viol that trembles, and triumphing breaks | |
| On the air with it solemn and clear,—‘Behold! I have sinned not in this! | |
| Where I loved, I have loved much and well,—I have verily loved not amiss. | |
| Let the living,’ she said, | 50 |
| ‘Inquire of the Dead, | |
| In the house of the pale-fronted Images: | |
| My own true dead will answer for me, that I have not loved amiss | |
| In my love for all these. | |
| |
| ‘The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep it by day and by night; | 55 |
| Their least step on the stair, at the door, still throbs through me, if ever so light; | |
| Their least gift, which they left to my childhood, far off, in the long-ago years, | |
| Is now turned from a toy to a relic, and seen through the crystals of tears. | |
| Dig the snow,’ she said, | |
| ‘For my churchyard bed, | 60 |
| Yet I, as I sleep, shall not fear to freeze, | |
| If one only of these my belovèds, shall love me with heart-warm tears, | |
| As I have loved these! | |
| |
| ‘If I anger’d any among them, from thenceforth my own life was sore; | |
| If I fell by chance from their presence, I clung to their memory more. | 65 |
| Their tender I often felt holy, their bitter I sometimes call’d sweet; | |
| And whenever their heart has refused me, I fell down straight at their feet. | |
| I have loved,’ she said,— | |
| ‘Man is weak, God is dread, | |
| Yet the weak man dies with his spirit at ease, | 70 |
| Having pour’d such an unguent of love but once on the Saviour’s feet, | |
| As I lavish’d for these.’ | |
| |
| ‘Go,’ I cried, ‘thou hast chosen the Human, and left the Divine! | |
| Then, at least, have the Human shared with thee their wild berry-wine? | |
| Have they loved back thy love, and when strangers approach’d thee with blame, | 75 |
| Have they cover’d thy fault with their kisses, and loved thee the same?’ | |
| But she shrunk and said, | |
| ‘God, over my head, | |
| Must sweep in the wrath of His judgement-seas, | |
| If He shall deal with me sinning, but only indeed the same | 80 |
| And no gentler than these.’ | |
| |
