| |
| SECRET was the garden; | |
| Set i’ the pathless awe | |
| Where no star its breath can draw. | |
| Life, that is its warden, | |
| Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw not, and I saw. | 5 |
| |
| It was a mazeful wonder; | |
| Thrice three times it was enwall’d | |
| With an emerald— | |
| Sealèd so asunder. | |
| All its birds in middle air hung a-dream, their music thrall’d. | 10 |
| |
| The Lady of fair weeping, | |
| At the garden’s core, | |
| Sang a song of sweet and sore | |
| And the after-sleeping; | |
| In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore. | 15 |
| |
| With sweet-pang’d singing | |
| Sang she through a dream-night’s day; | |
| That the bowers might stay, | |
| Birds bate their winging, | |
| Nor the wall of emerald float in wreathèd haze away. | 20 |
| |
| The lily kept its gleaming, | |
| In her tears (divine conservers!) | |
| Washèd with sad art; | |
| And the flowers of dreaming | |
| Palèd not their fervours, | 25 |
| For her blood flow’d through their nervures; | |
| And the roses were most red, for she dipt them in her heart. | |
| |
| There was never moon, | |
| Save the white sufficing woman: | |
| Light most heavenly-human— | 30 |
| Like the unseen form of sound, | |
| Sensed invisibly in tune,— | |
| With a sun-derivèd stole | |
| Did inaureole | |
| All her lovely body round; | 35 |
| Lovelily her lucid body with that light was interstrewn. | |
| |
| The sun which lit that garden wholly, | |
| Low and vibrant visible, | |
| Temper’d glory woke; | |
| And it seemèd solely | 40 |
| Like a silver thurible | |
| Solemnly swung, slowly, | |
| Fuming clouds of golden fire for a cloud of incense-smoke. | |
| |
| But woe ’s me, and woe ’s me, | |
| For the secrets of her eyes! | 45 |
| In my visions fearfully | |
| They are ever shown to be | |
| As fringèd pools, whereof each lies | |
| Pallid-dark beneath the skies | |
| Of a night that is | 50 |
| But one blear necropolis. | |
| And her eyes a little tremble, in the wind of her own sighs. | |
| |
| Many changes rise on | |
| Their phantasmal mysteries. | |
| They grow to an horizon | 55 |
| Where earth and heaven meet; | |
| And like a wing that dies on | |
| The vague twilight-verges, | |
| Many a sinking dream doth fleet | |
| Lessening down their secrecies. | 60 |
| And, as dusk with day converges, | |
| Their orbs are troublously | |
| Over-gloom’d and over-glow’d with hope and fear of things to be. | |
| |
| There is a peak on Himalay, | |
| And on the peak undeluged snow, | 65 |
| And on the snow not eagles stray; | |
| There if your strong feet could go,— | |
| Looking over tow’rd Cathay | |
| From the never-deluged snow— | |
| Farthest ken might not survey | 70 |
| Where the peoples underground dwell whom antique fables know. | |
| |
| East, ah, east of Himalay, | |
| Dwell the nations underground; | |
| Hiding from the shock of Day, | |
| For the sun’s uprising-sound: | 75 |
| Dare not issue from the ground | |
| At the tumults of the Day, | |
| So fearfully the sun doth sound | |
| Clanging up beyond Cathay; | |
| For the great earthquaking sunrise rolling up beyond Cathay. | 80 |
| |
| Lend me, O lend me | |
| The terrors of that sound, | |
| That its music may attend me, | |
| Wrap my chant in thunders round; | |
| While I tell the ancient secrets in that Lady’s singing found. | 85 |
| |
| On Ararat there grew a vine, | |
| When Asia from her bathing rose; | |
| Our first sailor made a twine | |
| Thereof for his prefiguring brows. | |
| Canst divine | 90 |
| Where, upon our dusty earth, of that vine a cluster grows? | |
| |
| On Golgotha there grew a thorn | |
| Round the long-prefigured Brows. | |
| Mourn, O mourn! | |
| For the vine have we the spine? Is this all the Heaven allows? | 95 |
| |
| On Calvary was shook a spear; | |
| Press the point into thy heart— | |
| Joy and fear! | |
| All the spines upon the thorn into curling tendrils start. | |
| |
| O dismay! | 100 |
| I, a wingless mortal, sporting | |
| With the tresses of the sun? | |
| I, that dare my hand to lay | |
| On the thunder in its snorting? | |
| Ere begun, | 105 |
| Falls my singed song down the sky, even the old Icarian way. | |
| |
| From the fall precipitant | |
| These dim snatches of her chant | |
| Only have remained mine;— | |
| That from spear and thorn alone | 110 |
| May be grown | |
| For the front of saint or singer any divinizing twine. | |
| |
| Her song said that no springing | |
| Paradise but evermore | |
| Hangeth on a singing | 115 |
| That has chords of weeping, | |
| And that sings the after-sleeping | |
| To souls which wake too sore. | |
| ‘But woe the singer, woe!’ she said; ‘beyond the dead his singing-lore, | |
| All its art of sweet and sore | 120 |
| He learns, in Elenore!’ | |
| |
| Where is the land of Luthany, | |
| Where is the tract of Elenore? | |
| I am bound therefor. | |
| |
| ‘Pierce thy heart to find the key; | 125 |
| With thee take | |
| Only what none else would keep; | |
| Learn to dream when thou dost wake, | |
| Learn to wake when thou dost sleep. | |
| Learn to water joy with tears, | 130 |
| Learn from fears to vanquish fears; | |
| To hope, for thou dar’st not despair, | |
| Exult, for that thou dar’st not grieve; | |
| Plough thou the rock until it bear; | |
| Know, for thou else couldst not believe; | 135 |
| Lose, that the lost thou may’st receive; | |
| Die, for none other way canst live. | |
| When earth and heaven lay down their veil, | |
| And that apocalypse turns thee pale; | |
| When thy seeing blindeth thee | 140 |
| To what thy fellow-mortals see; | |
| When their sight to thee is sightless; | |
| Their living, death; their light, most lightless; | |
| Search no more— | |
| Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’ | 145 |
| |
| Where is the land of Luthany, | |
| And where the region Elenore? | |
| I do faint therefor. | |
| |
| ‘When to the new eyes of thee | |
| All things by immortal power, | 150 |
| Near or far, | |
| Hiddenly | |
| To each other linkèd are, | |
| That thou canst not stir a flower | |
| Without troubling of a star; | 155 |
| When thy song is shield and mirror | |
| To the fair snake-curlèd Pain, | |
| Where thou dar’st affront her terror | |
| That on her thou may’st attain | |
| Perséan conquest; seek no more, | 160 |
| O seek no more! | |
| Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.’ | |
| |
| So sang she, so wept she, | |
| Through a dream-night’s day; | |
| And with her magic singing kept she— | 165 |
| Mystical in music— | |
| That garden of enchanting | |
| In visionary May; | |
| Swayless for my spirit’s haunting, | |
| Thrice-threefold wall’d with emerald from our mortal mornings grey. | 170 |
| |
| And as a necromancer | |
| Raises from the rose-ash | |
| The ghost of the rose; | |
| My heart so made answer | |
| To her voice’s silver plash,— | 175 |
| Stirr’d in reddening flash, | |
| And from out its mortal ruins the purpureal phantom blows. | |
| |
| Her tears made dulcet fretting, | |
| Her voice had no word, | |
| More than thunder or the bird. | 180 |
| Yet, unforgetting, | |
| The ravish’d soul her meanings knew. Mine ears heard not, and I heard. | |
| |
| When she shall unwind | |
| All those wiles she wound about me, | |
| Tears shall break from out me, | 185 |
| That I cannot find | |
| Music in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt me! | |
| |
