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Title: The Progress Of Love (A Lyrical Symphony)
Author: Alfred Noyes [
More Titles by Noyes]
I
In other worlds I loved you, long ago:
Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
The woodbine whispers, low and sweet and low,
In other worlds I loved you, long ago;
The firwoods murmur and the sea-waves know
The message that the setting sun shall send.
In other worlds I loved you, long ago:
Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
II
And God sighed in the sunset; and the sea
Chanted the soft recessional of Time
Against the golden shores of mystery;
And ever as that long low change and chime
With one slow sob of molten music yearned
Westward, it seemed as if the Love sublime
Almost uttered itself, where the waves burned
In little flower-soft flames of rose and green
That woke to seaward, while the tides returned
Rising and falling, ruffled and serene,
With all the mirrored tints of heaven above
Shimmering through their mystic myriad sheen.
As a dove's burnished breast throbbing with love
Swells and subsides to call her soft-eyed mate
Home through the rosy gloom of glen or grove,
So when the greenwood noon was growing late
The sea called softly through the waste of years,
Called to the star that still can consecrate
The holy golden haze of human tears
Which tinges every sunset with our grief
Until the perfect Paraclete appears.
Ah, the long sigh that yields the world relief
Rose and relapsed across Eternity,
Making a joy of sorrows that are brief,
As, o'er the bright enchantment of the sea,
Facing the towers of that old City of Pain
Which stands upon the shores of mystery
And frowns across the immeasurable main,
Venus among her cloudy sunset flowers
Woke; and earth melted into heaven again.
For even the City's immemorial towers
Were tinted into secret tone and time,
Like old forgotten tombs that age embowers
With muffling roses and with mossy rime
Until they seem no monument of ours,
But one more note in earth's accordant chime.
O Love, Love, Love, all dreams, desires and powers,
Were but as chords of that ineffable psalm;
And all the long blue lapse of summer hours,
And all the breathing sunset's golden balm
By that aeonian sorrow were resolved
As dew into the music's infinite calm,
Through which the suns and moons and stars revolved
According to the song's divine decree,
Till Time was but a tide of intervolved
And interweaving worlds of melody;
_In other worlds I loved you, long ago_,--
The angelic citoles fainted o'er the sea;
And seraph citerns answered, sweet and low,
From where the sunset and the moonrise blend,--
_In other worlds I loved you, long ago_;
_Love that hath no beginning hath no end_;
O Love, Love, Love, the bitter City of Pain
Bidding the golden echoes westward wend,
Chimed in accordant undertone again:
Though every grey old tower rose like a tomb
To mock the glory of the shoreless main
They could but strike such discords as illume
The music with strange gleams of utter light
And hallow all the valley's rosy gloom.
And there, though greyly sinking out of sight
Before the wonders of the sky and sea,
Back through the valley, back into the night,
While mystery melted into mystery,
The City still rebuffed the far sweet West
That dimmed her sorrows with infinity;
Yet sometimes yearning o'er the sea's bright breast
To that remote Avilion would she gaze
Where all lost loves and weary warriors rest.
Then she remembered, through that golden haze,
(Oh faint as flowers the rose-white waves resound)
Her Arthur whom she loved in the dead days,
And how he sailed to heal him of his wound,
And how he lives and reigns eternally
Where now that unknown love is throned and crowned
Who laid his bleeding head against her knee
And loosed the bitter breast-plate and unbound
His casque and brought him strangely o'er the sea,
And how she reigns beside him on that shore
For ever (Yrma, queen, bend down to me)
And they twain have no sorrow any more.
III
They have forgotten all that vanished away
When life's dark night died into death's bright day
They have forgotten all except the gleam
Of light when once he kissed her in a dream
Once on the lips and once upon the brow
In the white orb of God's transcendent Now;
And even then he knew that, long before,
Their eyes had met upon some distant shore;
Yea; that most lonely and immortal face
Which dwells beyond the dreams of time and space
Bowed down to him from out the happy place
And whispered to him, low and sweet and low
_In other worlds I loved you, long ago_;
And then he knew his love could never die
Because his queen was throned beyond the sky
And called him to his own immortal sphere
Forgetting Launcelot and Guinevere.
So Yrma reigns with Arthur, and they know
They loved on earth a million years ago;
And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend;
And heard a voice whispering in their flow,
And calling through the silent sunset-glow,
_Love that hath no beginning hath no end._
IV
It was about the dawn of day
I heard Etain and Anwyl say
The waving ferns are a fairy forest,
It is time, it is time to wander away;
For the dew is bright on the heather bells,
And the breeze in the clover sways and swells,
As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander,
Over and under the braes and dells.
She was eight years old that day,
Full of laughter and play;
Eight years old and Anwyl nine,--
Two young lovers were they.
Two young lovers were they,
Born in the City of Pain;
There was never a song in the world so gay
As the song of the child, Etain;
There was never a laugh so sweet
With the ripple of fairy bells,
And never a fairy foot so fleet
Dancing down the woodland dells!
She was eight years old that day,
Two young lovers were they.
There was never a sea of mystical gleams
Glooming under enchanted skies
Deep as the dark miraculous dreams
In Anwyl's haunted eyes.
There was never a glory of light
Around the carolling lark
As Etain's eyes were brave and bright
To daunt the coming dark.
Two young lovers were they
Born in the City of Pain;
There was never a song in the world so gay
As the song of the child, Etain;
Blithe as the wind in the trees,
Blithe as the bird on the bough,
Blithe as the bees in the sweet Heart's-ease
Where Love lies bleeding now.
V
And God sighed in the sunset; and the sea
Forgot her sorrow, and all the breathless West
Grew quiet as the blue tranquillity
That clad the broken mountain's brilliant breast,
Over the City, with deep heather-bloom
Heaving from crag to crag in sweet unrest,
A sea of dim rich colour and warm perfume
Whose billows rocked the drowsy honey-bee
Among the golden isles of gorse and broom
Like some enchanted ancient argosy
Drunkenly blundering over seas of dream
Past unimagined isles of mystery,
Over whose yellow sands the soft waves cream,
And sunbeams float and toss across the bare
Rose-white arms and perilous breasts that gleam
Where sirens wind their glossy golden hair;
Oh, miles on miles, the honeyed heather-bloom
Heaving its purple through the high bright air
Rolled a silent glory of gleam and gloom
From mossy crag to crag and crest to crest
Untroubled by the valley's depth of doom.
The hawk dropped down into the pine-forest
And, far below, the lavrock ruffled her wings
Blossomwise over her winsome secret nest.
Then suddenly, softly, as when a fairy sings
Out of the heart of a rose in the heart of the fern,
Or in the floating starlight faintly rings
The frail blue hare-bells--turn again, and turn,
Under and over, the silvery crescents cry
To where the crimson fox-glove belfries burn
And with a deeper softer peal reply,
There came a ripple of music through the roses
That rustled on the dimmest rim of sky
Where many a frame of fretted leaves encloses
For lovers wandering in the fern-wet wood
An arch of summer sea that softly dozes
As if all mysteries were understood:
Yrma, my queen, what love could understand
That faint sweet music, _God saith all is good_,
As those two children, hand in sunburnt hand,
Over the blithe blue hills and far away
Wandered into their own green fairyland?
VI
For the song is lost that shook the dew
Where the wild musk-roses glisten,
When the sunset dreamed that a dream was true
And the birds were hushed to listen.
The song is lost that shook the night
With wings of richer fire,
Where the years had touched their eyes with light
And their souls with a new desire;
And the new delight of the strange old story
Burned in the flower-soft skies,
And nine more years with a darker glory
Had deepened the light of her eyes;
But lost, oh more than lost the song
That shook the rose to tears,
As hand in hand they danced along
Through childhood's everlasting years.
"Oh, Love has wings," the linnet sings;
But the dead return no more, no more;
And the sea is breaking its old grey heart
Against the golden shore.
She was eight years old that day,
Two young lovers were they.
If every song as they danced along
Paused on the springing spray;
Is there never a bird in the wide greenwood
Will hush its heart to-day?
There's never a leaf with dew impearled
To make their pathway sweet,
And never a blossom in all the world
That knows the kiss of their feet.
No light to-night declares the word
That thrilled the blossomed bough,
And stilled the happy singing bird
That none can silence now.
The weary nightingale may sob
With her bleeding breast against a thorn,
And the wild white rose with every throb
Grow red as the laugh of morn;
With wings outspread she sinks her head
But Love returns no more, no more;
And the sea is breaking its old grey heart
Against the golden shore.
Born in the City of Pain;
Ah, who knows, who knows
When Death shall turn to delight again
Or a wound to a red, red rose?
Eight years old that day,
Full of laughter and play;
Eight years old and Anwyl nine,--
Two young lovers were they.
VII
And down the scented heather-drowsy hills
The barefoot children wandered, hand in hand,
And paddled through the laughing silver rills
In quest of fairyland;
And in each little sunburnt hand a spray,
A purple fox-glove bell-branch lightly swung,
And Anwyl told Etain how, far away,
One day he wandered through the dreamland dells
And watched the moonlit fairies as they sung
And tolled the fox-glove bells;
And oh, how sweetly, sweetly to and fro
The fragrance of the music reeled and rung
Under the loaded boughs of starry May.
And God sighed in the sunset, and the sea
Grew quieter than the hills: the mystery
Of ocean, earth and sky was like a word
Uttered, but all unheard,
Uttered by every wave and cloud and leaf
With all the immortal glory of mortal grief;
And every wave that broke its heart of gold
In music on the rainbow-dazzled shore
Seemed telling, strangely telling, evermore
A story that must still remain untold.
Oh, _Once upon a time_, and o'er and o'er
As aye the _Happy ever after_ came
The enchanted waves lavished their faery lore
And tossed a foam-bow and a rosy flame
Around the whispers of the creaming foam,
Till the old rapture with the new sweet name
Through all the old romance began to roam,
And Anwyl, gazing out across the sea,
Dreamed that he heard the distance whisper "Come."
"Etain," he murmured softly and wistfully,
With the soul's wakening wonder in his eyes,
"Is it not strange to think that there can be
"No end for ever and ever to those skies,
No shore beyond, or if there be a shore
Still without end the world beyond it lies;
"Think; think, Etain;" and all his faery lore
Mixed with the faith that brought all gods to birth
And sees new heavens transcend for evermore
The poor impossibilities of earth;
But Etain only laughed: the world to her
Was one sweet smile of very present mirth;
Its flowers were only flowers, common or rare;
Her soul was like a little garden closed
By rose-clad walls, a place of southern air
Islanded from the Mystery that reposed
Its vast and brooding wings on that abyss
Through which like little clouds that dreamed and dozed
The thoughts of Anwyl wandered toward some bliss
Unknown, unfathomed, far, how far away,
Where God has gathered all the eternities
Into strange heavens, beyond the night and day.
VIII
And over the rolling golden bay,
In the funeral pomp of the dying day,
The bell of Time was wistfully tolling
A million million years away;
And over the heather-drowsy hill
Where the burdened bees were buzzing still,
The two little sun-bright barefoot children
Wandered down at the flowers' own will;
For still as the bell in the sunset tolled,
The meadow-sweet and the mary-gold
And the purple orchis kissed their ankles
And lured them over the listening wold.
And the feathery billows of blue-gold grass
Bowed and murmured and bade them pass,
Where a sigh of the sea-wind softly told them
_There is no Time--Time never was_.
And what if a sorrow were tolled to rest
Where the rich light mellowed away in the West,
As a glory of fruit in an autumn orchard
Heaped and asleep o'er the sea's ripe breast?
Why should they heed it, what should they know
Of the years that come or the years that go,
With the warm blue sky around and above them
And the wild thyme whispering to and fro?
For they heard in the dreamy dawn of day
A fairy harper faintly play,
Follow me, follow me, little children,
Over the hills and far away;
Where the dew is bright on the heather-bells,
And the breeze in the clover sways and swells,
As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander,
Over and under the braes and dells.
And the hare-bells tinkled and rang Ding dong
Bell in the dell as they danced along,
And their feet were stained on the hills with honey,
And crushing the clover till evensong.
And, oh the ripples that rolled in rhyme
Under the wild blue banks of thyme,
To the answering rhyme of the rolling ocean's
Golden glory of change and chime!
For they came to a stream and her fairy lover
Caught at her hand and swung her over,
And the broad wet buttercups laughed and gilded
Their golden knees in the deep sweet clover.
There was never a lavrock up in the skies
Blithe as the laugh of their lips and eyes,
As they glanced and glittered across the meadows
To waken the sleepy butterflies.
There was never a wave on the sea so gay
As the light that danced on their homeward way
Where the waving ferns were a fairy forest
And a thousand years as yesterday.
_She was eight years old that day,
Full of laughter and play;
Eight years old and Anwyl nine,--
Two young lovers were they._
And when the clouds like folded sheep
Were drowsing over the drowsy deep,
And like a rose in a golden cradle
Anwyl breathed on the breast of sleep,
Or ever the petals and leaves were furled
At the vesper-song of the sunset-world,
The sleepy young rose of nine sweet summers
Dreamed in his rose-bed cosily curled.
And what if the light of his nine bright years
Glistened with laughter or glimmered with tears,
Or gleamed like a mystic globe around him
White as the light of the sphere of spheres?
And what if a glory of angels there,
Starring an orb of ineffable air,
Came floating down from the Gates of jasper
That melt into flowers at a maiden's prayer?
And what if he dreamed of a fairy face
Wondering out of some happy place,
Quietly as a star at sunset
Shines in the rosy dreams of space?
For only as far as the west wind blows
The sweets of a swinging full-blown rose,
Eight years old and queen of the lilies
Little Etain slept--ah, how close!
At a flower-cry over the moonlit lane
In a cottage of roses dreamed Etain,
And their purple shadows kissed at her lattice
And dappled her sigh-soft counterpane;
And or ever Etain with her golden head
Had nestled to sleep in her lily-white bed,
She breathed a dream to her fairy lover,
_Please, God, bless Anwyl and me_, she said.
And a song arose in the rose-white West,
And a whisper of wings o'er the sea's bright breast,
And a cry where the moon's old miracle wakened
A glory of pearl o'er the pine-forest.
Why should they heed it? What should they know
Of the years to come or the years to go?
With the starry skies around and above them
And the roses whispering to and fro.
Ah, was it a song of the mystic morn
When into their beating hearts the thorn
Should pierce through the red wet crumpled roses
And all the sorrow of love be born?
Ah, was it a cry of the wild wayside
Whereby one day they must surely ride,
Out of the purple garden of passion
To Calvary, to be crucified?
Only the sound of the distant sea
Broke on the shores of Mystery,
And tolled as a bell might toll for sorrow
Till Time be tombed in Eternity;
And in their dreams they only heard
Far away, one secret bird
Sing, till the passionate purple twilight
Throbbed with the wonder of one sweet word:
One sweet word and the wonder awoke,
And the leaves and the flowers and the starlight spoke
In silent rapture the strange old secret
That none e'er knew till the death-dawn broke;
One sweet whisper, and hand in hand
They wandered in dreams through fairyland,
Rapt in the star-bright mystical music
Which only a child can understand.
But never a child in the world can tell
The wonderful tale he knows so well,
Though ever as old Time dies in the sunset
It tolls and tolls like a distant bell.
_Love, love, love_; and they hardly knew
The sense of the glory that round them grew;
But the world was a wide enchanted garden;
And the song, the song, the song rang true.
And they danced with the fairies in emerald rings
Arched by the light of their rainbow wings,
And they heard the wild green Harper striking
A starlight over the golden strings.
_Love, oh love_; and they roamed once more
Through a forest of flowers on a fairy shore,
And the sky was a wild bright laugh of wonder
And the West was a dream of the years of yore.
In other worlds I loved you, long ago:
Love that hath no beginning hath no end:
The heather whispers low and sweet and low,
In other worlds I loved you, long ago;
The meadows murmur and the firwoods know
The message that the kindling East shall send;
In other worlds I loved you, long ago:
Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
IX
Out of the deep, my dream, out of the deep,
Yrma, thy voice came to me in my sleep,
And through a rainbow woven of human tears
I saw two lovers wandering down the years;
Two children, first, that roamed a sunset land,
And then two lovers wandering hand in hand,
Forgetful of their childhood's Paradise,
For nine more years had darkened in their eyes,
And heaven itself could hardly find again
Anwyl, the star-child, or the flower, Etain.
For on a day in May, as through the wood
With earth's new passion beating in his blood
He went alone, an empty-hearted youth,
Seeking he knew not what white flower of truth
Or beauty, on all sides he seemed to see
Swift subtle hints of some new harmony,
Yet all unheard, ideal, and incomplete,
A silent song compact of hopes and fears,
A music such as lights the wandering feet
Of Yrma when on earth she reappears.
And he forgot that sad grey City of Pain,
For all earth's old romance returned again,
And as he went, his dreaming soul grew glad
To think that he might meet with Galahad
Or Parsifal in some green glade of fern,
Or see between the boughs a helmet burn
And hear a joyous laugh kindle the sky
As through the wood Sir Launcelot rode by
With face upturned to take the sun like wine.
Ah, was it love that made the whole world shine
Like some great angel's face, blinded with bliss,
While Anwyl dreamed of bold Sir Amadis
And Guinevere's white arms and Iseult's kiss,
And that glad island in a golden sea
Where Arthur lives and reigns eternally?
Surely the heavens were one wide rose-white flame
As down the path to meet him Yrma came;
Ah, was it Yrma, with those radiant eyes,
That came to greet and lead him through the skies,
The skies that gloomed and gleamed so far above
The little wandering prayers of human love?...
He had forgotten all except the gleam
Of light when once he kissed her in a dream, ...
For surely then he knew that long before
Their eyes had met upon some distant shore....
Ah, was it Yrma whose red lips he met
Between the branches, where the leaves were wet?
Etain or Yrma, for it seemed her face
Bent down upon him from some happy place
And whispered to him, low and sweet and low,
_In other worlds I loved you, long ago!_
And he, too, knew his love could never die,
Because his queen was throned beyond the sky.
Yet In sweet mortal eyes he met her now
And kissed Etain beneath the hawthorn bough,
And dared to dream his infinite dream was true
On earth and reign with Etain, dream he knew
Why leaves were green and sides were fresh and blue;
Yea, dream he knew, as children dream they know
They knew all this a million years ago,
And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend
And heard a voice whispering in their flow
And calling through the silent sunset-glow
_Love that hath no beginning hath no end._
Ah, could they see in the Valley of Gloom
That clove the cliffs behind the City;
Ah, could they hear in the forest of Doom
The peril that neared without pause or pity?
Behind the veils of ivy and vine,
Wild musk-roses and white woodbine,
In glens that were wan as with moonlit tears
And rosy with ghosts of eglantine
And pale as with lilies of long-past years,
Ah, could they see, could they hear, could they know
Behind that beautiful outward show,
Behind the pomp and glory of life
That seething old anarchic strife?
For there in many a dim blue glade
Where the rank red poppies burned,
And if perchance some dreamer strayed
He nevermore returned,
Cold incarnate memories
Of earth's retributory throes,
Deadly desires and agonies
Dark as the worm that never dies,
In the outer night arose,
And waited under those wonderful skies
With Hydra heads and mocking eyes
That winked upon the waning West
From out the gloom of the oak-forest,
Till all the wild profound of wood
That o'er the haunted valley slept
Glowed with eyes like pools of blood
As, lusting after a hideous food,
Through the haggard vistas crept
Without a cry, without a hiss,
The serpent broods of the abyss.
Ancestral folds in darkness furled
Since the beginnings of the world.
Ring upon awful ring uprose
That obscure heritage of foes,
The exceeding bitter heritage
Which still a jealous God bestows
From inappellable age to age,
The ghostly worms that softly move
Through every grey old corse of love
And creep across the coffined years
To batten on our blood and tears;
And there were hooded shapes of death
Gaunt and grey, cruel and blind,
Stealing softly as a breath
Through the woods that loured behind
The City; hooded shapes of fear
Slowly, slowly stealing near;
While all the gloom that round them rolled
With intertwisting coils grew cold.
And there with leer and gap-toothed grin
Many a gaunt ancestral Sin
With clutching fingers, white and thin,
Strove to put the boughs aside;
And still before them all would glide
Down the wavering moon-white track
One lissom figure, clad in black;
Who wept at mirth and mocked at pain
And murmured a song of the wind and the rain;
His laugh was wild with a secret grief;
His eyes were deep like woodland pools;
And, once and again, as his face drew near
In a rosy gloaming of eglantere,
All the ghosts that gathered there
Bowed together, naming his name:
Lead us, ah thou _Shadow of a Leaf_,
Child and master of all our shame,
Fool of Doubt and King of Fools.
Now the linnet had ended his evensong,
And the lark dropt down from his last wild ditty
And ruffled his wings and his speckled breast
Blossomwise over his June-sweet nest;
While winging wistfully into the West
As a fallen petal is wafted along
The last white sea-mew sought for rest;
And, over the gleaming heave and swell
Of the swinging seas,
Drowsily breathed the dreaming breeze.
Then, suddenly, out of the Valley of Gloom
That clove the cliffs behind the City,
Out of the silent forest of Doom
That clothed the valley with clouds of fear
Swelled the boom of a distant bell
Once, and the towers of the City of Pain
Echoed it, without hope or pity.
The tale of that tolling who can tell?
That dark old music who shall declare?
Who shall interpret the song of the bell?
_Is it nothing to you, all ye that hear_,
Sorrowed the bell, _Is it nothing to you?
Is it nothing to you?_ the shore-wind cried,
_Is it nothing to you?_ the cliffs replied.
But the low light laughed and the skies were blue,
And this was only the song of the bell.
X
ANWYL
A darkened easement in a darker room
Was all his home, whence weary and bowed and white
He watched across the slowly gathering gloom
The slowly westering light.
Bitterness in his heavy-clouded eyes,
Bitterness as of heaven's intestine wars
Brooded; he looked upon the unfathomed skies
And whispered--to the stars--
Some day, he said, she will forget all this
That she calls life, and looking far above
See throned among the great eternities
This dream of mine, this love;
Love that has given my soul these wings of fire
To beat in glory above the sapphire sea,
Until the wings of the infinite desire
Close in infinity;
Love that has taken the glory of hawthorn boughs,
And all the dreaming beauty of hazel skies,
As ministers to the radiance of her brows
And haunted April eyes;
Love that is hidden so deep beneath the dust
Of little daily duties and delights,
Till that reproachful face of hers grows just
And God at last requites
A soul whose dream was deeper than the skies,
A heart whose hope was wider than the sea,
Yet could not enter through his true love's eyes
Their grey infinity.
And so I know I wound her all day long
Because my heart must seem so far away;
And even my love completes the silent wrong
For all that it can say
Seems vast and meaningless to mortal sense;
Its vague desire can never reach its goal
Till knowledge vanishes in omniscience
And God surrounds her soul,
Breaking its barriers down and flooding in
Through all her wounds in one almighty tide,
Mingling her soul with that great Love wherein
My soul waits, glorified.
XI
ETAIN
My love is dying, dying in my heart;
There is no song in heaven for such as I
Who watch the days and years of youth depart,
The bloom decay and die;
The rose that withers in the hollow cheek,
The leaden rings that mark us old and wise;
And Time that writes what Pity dares not speak
Around the fading eyes.
He dreams he loves; but only loves his dream;
And in his dream he never can forget
Abana seems a so much mightier stream
And Pharpar wider yet;
The little deeds of love that light the shrine
Of common daily duties with such gleams
Of heaven, to me are scarcely less divine
Than those poor wandering dreams
Of deeds that never happen! I give him this,
This heart he cannot find in heaven above;
This heart, this heart of all the eternities,
This life of mine, this love;
Love that is lord of all the world at once
And never bade the encircled spirit roam
To the circle's bound, beyond the moons and suns,
But makes each heart its home,
And every home the heart of Space and Time,
And each and all a heaven if love could reign;
One infinite untranscended heaven sublime
With God's own joy and pain.
Why, that was what God meant, to set us here
In Eden, when he saw that all was good;
And we have made the sun black with despair,
And turned the moon to blood.
So has Love taught me that too learned tongue,
And in his poorer wisdom made me wise;
I grew so proud of the red drops we wrung
From all philosophies.
My heart is narrow, foolish, what you will;
But this I know God meant who set us here,
And gave each soul the Infinities to fulfil
From its own widening sphere.
To annex new regions to the soul's domain,
To expand the circle of the golden hours,
Till it enfolds again and yet again
New heavens, new fields, new flowers,
Oh, this is well; but still the central heart
Is here at home, not wandering like the wind
That gathers nothing, but must still depart
Leaving a waste behind.
Where is the song I sang that April morn,
When all the poet in his eyes awoke
My sleeping heart to heaven; and love was born?
For while the glad day broke
We met; and as the softly kindling skies
Thrilled through the scented vistas of the wood
I felt the sudden love-light in his eyes
Kindle my beating blood.
_Happy day, happy day,
Chasing the clouds of the night away
And bidding the dreams of the dawn depart
Over the freshening April blue,
Till the blossoms awake to welcome the May,
And the world is made anew;
And the blackbird sings on the dancing spray
With eyes of glistening dew;
"Happy, happy, happy day;"
For he knows that his love is true;
He knows that his love is true, my heart,
He knows that his love is true!_
I cannot sing it: these tears blind me: love,
O love, come back before it is too late,
Why, even Christ came down to us from above:
I think His love was great;
Yet he stood knocking, knocking at the door
Until his piteous hands were worn with scars;
He did not hide that crown of love he wore
Among the lonely stars.
This round of hours, the daily flowers I cull
Are more to me than all the rolling spheres,
A wounded bird at hand more pitiful
Than some great seraph's tears.
How should I join the great wise choir above
With my starved spirit's pale inhuman dearth,
Who never heard the cry of heavenly love
Rise from the sweet-souled earth?
Yet it is I he needs, and I for whom
His greed exceeds, his dreams fly wide of the mark!
Is it all self? I wander in the gloom;
The ways of God grow dark;
I watch the rose that withers in the cheek,
The leaden rings that mark us old and wise;
And Time that writes what Pity dares not speak
Around the fading eyes.
XII
And ever as Anwyl went the unknown end
Faded before him, back and back and back
He saw new empty heavens for ever bend
Over his endless track;
And memory, burning with new hopeless fire,
Showed him how every passing infinite hour
Made some new Crucifix for the World's Desire
Is some new wayside flower:
He saw what joy and beauty owed to death;
How all the world was one great sacrifice
Of Him, in whom all creatures that draw breath
Share God's eternal skies;
How Love is lord of all the world at once;
And never bids the encircled spirit roam
To the circle's bound, beyond the moons and suns,
But makes each heart its home,
And every home the heart of Space and Time,
And each and all a heaven if love could reign
One infinite untranscended heaven sublime
With God's own joy and pain.
XIII
Out of the deep, my dream, out of the deep,
A little child came to him in his sleep
And led him back to what was Paradise
Before the years had darkened in his eyes,
And showed him what he ne'er could lose again--
The light that once enshrined the child Etain.
Ah, was it Yrma with those radiant eyes
That came to greet and lead him through the skies;
Ay; all the world was one wide rose-white flame,
As down the path to meet him Yrma came
And caught the child up in her arms and cried,
This is my child that moved in Etain's side,
Thy child and Etain's: I the unknown ideal
And she the rich, the incarnate, breathing real
Are one; for me thou never canst attain
But by the love I yield thee for Etain;
Even as through Christ thy soul allays its dearth,
Love's heaven is only compassed upon earth;
And by that love, in thine own Etain's eyes
Thou shalt find all God's untranscended skies.
As of old, as of old, with Etain that day,
Over the hills, and far away,
He roamed thro' the fairy forests of fern:
Two young lovers were they.
And God sighed in the sunset, and the sea
Grew quieter than the hills: the mystery
Of ocean, earth and sky was like a word
Uttered, but all unheard,
Uttered by every wave and cloud and leaf
With all the immortal glory of mortal grief;
And every wave that broke its heart of gold
In music on the rainbow-dazzled shore
Seemed telling, strangely telling, evermore
A story that must still remain untold.
Oh, _Once upon a time_, and o'er and o'er
As aye the _Happy ever after_ came
The enchanted waves lavished their faery lore
And tossed a foam-bow and a rosy flame
Around the whispers of the creaming foam,
Till the old rapture with the new sweet name
Through all the old romance began to roam.
XIV
And those two lovers only heard
--Oh, love is a dream that knows no waking--
Far away, one secret bird,
Where all the roses breathed one word,
And every crispel on the beach--
Oh, love is a sea that is ever breaking!--
Lisped it in a sweeter speech;
As hand in hand, by the sunset sea
That breaks on the shores of mystery,
They stood in the gates of the City of Pain
To watch the wild waves flutter and beat
In roses of white soft light at their feet,
Roses of delicate music and light,
Music and moonlight under their feet.
Crumbling and flashing and softly crashing
In rainbow colours that dazzle and wane
And wither and waken and, wild with delight,
Dance and dance to a mystic tune
And scatter their leaves in a flower-soft rain
Over the shimmering golden shore
Between the West and the waking moon,
Between the sunset and the night;
And then they sigh for the years of yore
And gather their glory together again,
Petal by petal and gleam by gleam,
Till, all in one rushing rose-bright stream
They dazzle back to the deep once more,
For the dream of the sea is an endless dream,
And love is a sea that hath no shore,
And the roses dance as they danced before.
XV
In other worlds I loved you, long ago:
Love that hath no beginning hath no end:
Low to her heart he breathed it, sweet and low;
In other worlds I loved you, long ago;
This is a word that all the sea-waves know
And whisper as through the shoreless West they wend,
In other worlds I loved you, long ago:
Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
XVI
"Yet love can die!" she murmured once again;
For this was in that City by the Sea,
That old grey City of Pain,
Built on the shifting shores of Mystery
And mocked by all the immeasurable main.
"Love lives to die!"
Under the deep eternal sky
His deeper voice caught up that deep refrain;
"A year ago, and under yonder sun
Earth had no Heaven to hold our hearts in one!
For me there was no love, afar or nigh:
And, O, if love were thus in time begun,
Love, even our love, in time must surely die."
Then memory murmured, "No";
And he remembered, a million years ago,
He saw the sea-waves wistfully westward wend;
And heard her voice whispering in their flow
And calling through the silent sunset-glow.
_Love that hath no beginning hath no end._
"Love dies to live!" How wild, how deep the joy
That knows no death can e'er destroy
What cannot bear destruction! By these eyes
I know that, ere the fashioning of the skies,
Or ever the sun and moon and stars were made
I loved you. Sweet, I am no more afraid.
"Love lives to die!"
Under the deep eternal sky
Her wild sweet voice caught up that deep refrain:
There, in that silent City by the Sea,
Listening the wild-wave music of Infinity,
There, in that old grey City of mortal pain,
Their voices mingled in mystic unison
With that immortal harmony
Which holds the warring worlds in one.
Their Voice, one Voice, yet manifold,
Possessed the seas, the fields, the sky,
With utterance of the dream that cannot die;
Possessed the West's wild rose and dappled gold,
And that old secret of the setting sun
Which, to the glory of Eternity,
Time, tolling like a distant bell,
Evermore faints to tell,
And, ever telling, never yet has told.
One, and yet manifold
Arose their Voice, oh strangely one again
With murmurs of the immeasurable main;
As, far beyond earth's cloudy bars,
Their Soul surpassed the sunset and the stars,
And all the heights and depths of temporal pain,
Till seas of seraph music round them rolled.
And in that mystic plane
They felt their mortal years
Break away as a dream of pain
Breaks in a stream of tears.
Love, of whom life had birth,
See now, is death not sweet?
Love, is this heaven or earth?
Both are beneath thy feet.
Nay, both within thy heart!
O Love, the glory nears;
The Gates of Pearl are flung apart,
The Rose of Heaven appears.
Across the deeps of change,
Like pangs of visible song,
What angel-spirits, remote and strange,
Thrill through the starry throng?
And oh, what wind that blows
Over the mystic Tree,
What whisper of the sacred Rose,
What murmur of the sapphire Sea,
What dreams that faint and fail
From harps of burning gold,
But tell in heaven the sweet old tale
An earthly sunset told?
Hark! like a holy bell
Over that spirit Sea,
Time, in the world it loves so well,
Tolls for Eternity.
Earth calls us once again,
And, through the mystic Gleam,
The grey old City of mortal pain
Dawns on the heavenly dream.
Sweet as the voice of birds
At dawn, the years return,
With little songs and sacred words
Of human hearts that yearn.
The sweet same waves resound
Along our earthly shore;
But now this earth we lost and found
Is heaven for evermore.
Hark! how the cosmic choir,
In sea and flower and sun,
Recalls that triumph of desire
Which made all music one:
One universal soul,
Completing joy with pain,
And harmonising with the Whole
The temporal refrain,
Until from hill and plain,
From bud and blossom and tree,
From shadow and shining after rain,
From cloud and clovered bee,
From earth and sea and sky,
From laughter and from tears,
One molten golden harmony
Fulfils the yearning years.
_Love, of whom death had birth,
See now, is life not sweet?
Love, is this heaven or earth?
Both are beneath thy feet._
_In other worlds I loved you, long ago;
Love that hath no beginning hath no end;
The sea-waves whisper, low and sweet and low,
In other worlds I loved you, long ago;
The May-boughs murmur and the roses know
The message that the dawning moon shall send;
In other worlds I loved you, long ago;
Love that hath no beginning hath no end._
[The end]
Alfred Noyes's poem: Progress Of Love (a Lyrical Symphony)
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