The Unknown Eros

Coventry Patmore

The Unknown Eros

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION

To this edition of “The Unknown Eros” are added all the other poems I have written, in what I venture—because it has no other name—to call “catalectic verse.”  Nearly all English metres owe their existence as metres to “catalexis,” or pause, for the time of one or more feet, and, as a rule, the position and amount of catalexis are fixed.  But the verse in which this volume is written is catalectic par excellence, employing the pause (as it does the rhyme) with freedom only limited by the exigencies of poetic passion.  From the time of Drummond of Hawthornden to our own, some of the noblest flights of English poetry have been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive of its character.

Some persons, unlearned in the subject of metre, have objected to this kind of verse that it is “lawless.”  But it has its laws as truly as any other.  In its highest order, the lyric or “ode,” it is a tetrameter, the line having the time of eight iambics.  When it descends to narrative, or the expression of a less-exalted strain of thought, it becomes a trimeter, having the time of six iambics, or even a dimeter, with the time of four; and it is allowable to vary the tetrameter “ode” by the occasional introduction of passages in either or both of these inferior measures, but not, I think, by the use of any other.  The license to rhyme at indefinite intervals is counterbalanced, in the writing of all poets who have employed this metre successfully, by unusual frequency in the recurrence of the same rhyme.  For information on the generally overlooked but primarily important function of catalexis in English verse I refer such readers as may be curious about the subject to the Essay printed as an appendix to the later editions of my collected poems.

I do not pretend to have done more than very moderate justice to the exceeding grace and dignity and the inexhaustible expressiveness of which this kind of metre is capable; but I can say that I have never attempted to write in it in the absence of that one justification of and prime qualification for its use, namely, the impulse of some thought that “voluntary moved harmonious numbers.”

COVENTRY PATMORE.HASTINGS, 1890.

THE UNKNOWN EROS

“Deliciae meae esse cum filiis hominum.”

PROV. VIII. 31.

PROEM

   ‘Many speak wisely, some inerrably:Witness the beast who talk’d that should have bray’d,And Caiaphas that saidExpedient ’twas for all that One should die;But what availsWhen Love’s right accent from their wisdom fails,And the Truth-criers know not what they cry!Say, wherefore thou,As under bondage of some bitter vow,Warblest no word,When all the rest are shouting to be heard?Why leave the fervid running just when Fame’Gan whispering of thy nameAmongst the hard-pleased Judges of the Course?Parch’d is thy crystal-flowing source?Pierce, then, with thought’s steel probe, the trodden ground,Till passion’s buried floods be found;Intend thine eyeInto the dim and undiscover’d skyWhose lustres are the pulsings of the heart,And promptly, as thy trade is, watch to chartThe lonely suns, the mystic hazes and throng’d sparkles brightThat, named and number’d rightIn sweet, transpicuous words, shall glow alwayWith Love’s three-stranded ray,Red wrath, compassion golden, lazuline delight.’   Thus, in reproof of my despondency,My Mentor; and thus I:   O, season strange for song!And yet some timely power persuades my lips.Is’t England’s parting soul that nerves my tongue,As other Kingdoms, nearing their eclipse,Have, in their latest bards, uplifted strongThe voice that was their voice in earlier days?Is it her sudden, loud and piercing cry,The note which those that seem too weak to sighWill sometimes utter just before they die?   Lo, weary of the greatness of her ways,There lies my Land, with hasty pulse and hard,Her ancient beauty marr’d,And, in her cold and aimless roving sight,Horror of light;Sole vigour left in her last lethargy,Save when, at bidding of some dreadful breath,The rising deathRolls up with force;And then the furiously gibbering corseShakes, panglessly convuls’d, and sightless stares,Whilst one Physician pours in rousing wines,One anodynes,And one declaresThat nothing ails it but the pains of growth.   My last look lothIs taken; and I turn, with the reliefOf knowing that my life-long hope and griefAre surely vain,To that unshapen time to come, when She,A dim, heroic Nation long since dead,The foulness of her agony forgot,Shall all benignly shedThrough ages vastThe ghostly grace of her transfigured pastOver the present, harass’d and forlorn,Of nations yet unborn;And this shall be the lotOf those who, in the bird-voice and the blastOf her omniloquent tongue,Have truly sungOr greatly said,To shew as oneWith those who have best done,And be as rays,Thro’ the still altering world, around her changeless head.   Therefore no ’plaint be mineOf listeners none,No hope of render’d use or proud reward,In hasty times and hard;But chants as of a lonely thrush’s throatAt latest eve,That does in each calm noteBoth joy and grieve;Notes few and strong and fine,Gilt with sweet day’s decline,And sad with promise of a different sun.   ’Mid the loud concert harshOf this fog-folded marsh,To me, else dumb,Uranian Clearness, come!Give me to breathe in peace and in surpriseThe light-thrill’d ether of your rarest skies,Till inmost absolution startThe welling in the grateful eyes,The heaving in the heart.Winnow with sighsAnd wash awayWith tears the dust and stain of clay,Till all the Song be Thine, as beautiful as Morn,Bedeck’d with shining clouds of scorn;And Thou, Inspirer, deign to broodO’er the delighted words, and call them Very Good.This grant, Clear Spirit; and grant that I remainContent to ask unlikely gifts in vain.

BOOK I

I. SAINT VALENTINE’S DAY

Well dost thou, Love, thy solemn Feast to holdIn vestal February;Not rather choosing out some rosy dayFrom the rich coronet of the coming May,When all things meet to marry!   O, quick, praevernal PowerThat signall’st punctual through the sleepy mouldThe Snowdrop’s time to flower,Fair as the rash oath of virginityWhich is first-love’s first cry;O, Baby Spring,That flutter’st sudden ’neath the breast of EarthA month before the birth;Whence is the peaceful poignancy,The joy contrite,Sadder than sorrow, sweeter than delight,That burthens now the breath of everything,Though each one sighs as if to each aloneThe cherish’d pang were known?At dusk of dawn, on his dark spray apart,With it the Blackbird breaks the young Day’s heart;In evening’s hushAbout it talks the heavenly-minded Thrush;The hill with like remorseSmiles to the Sun’s smile in his westering course;The fisher’s drooping skiffIn yonder sheltering bay;The choughs that call about the shining cliff;The children, noisy in the setting ray;Own the sweet season, each thing as it may;Thoughts of strange kindness and forgotten peaceIn me increase;And tears ariseWithin my happy, happy Mistress’ eyes,And, lo, her lips, averted from my kiss,Ask from Love’s bounty, ah, much more than bliss!   Is’t the sequester’d and exceeding sweetOf dear Desire electing his defeat?Is’t the waked Earth now to yon purpling copeUttering first-love’s first cry,Vainly renouncing, with a Seraph’s sigh,Love’s natural hope?Fair-meaning Earth, foredoom’d to perjury!Behold, all-amorous May,With roses heap’d upon her laughing brows,Avoids thee of thy vows!Were it for thee, with her warm bosom near,To abide the sharpness of the Seraph’s sphere?Forget thy foolish words;Go to her summons gay,Thy heart with dead, wing’d Innocencies fill’d,Ev’n as a nest with birdsAfter the old ones by the hawk are kill’d.   Well dost thou, Love, to celebrateThe noon of thy soft ecstasy,Or e’er it be too late,Or e’er the Snowdrop die!

II.  WIND AND WAVE

   The wedded light and heat,Winnowing the witless space,Without a let,What are they till they beatAgainst the sleepy sod, and there begetPerchance the violet!Is the One found,Amongst a wilderness of as happy grace,To make Heaven’s bound;So that in HerAll which it hath of sensitively goodIs sought and understoodAfter the narrow mode the mighty Heavens prefer?She, as a little breezeFollowing still Night,Ripples the spirit’s cold, deep seasInto delight;But, in a while,The immeasurable smileIs broke by fresher airs to flashes blentWith darkling discontent;And all the subtle zephyr hurries gay,And all the heaving ocean heaves one way,’Tward the void sky-line and an unguess’d weal;Until the vanward billows feelThe agitating shallows, and divine the goal,And to foam roll,And spread and strayAnd traverse wildly, like delighted hands,The fair and feckless sands;And so the wholeUnfathomable and immenseTriumphing tide comes at the last to reachAnd burst in wind-kiss’d splendours on the deaf’ning beach,Where forms of children in first innocenceLaugh and fling pebbles on the rainbow’d crestOf its untired unrest.

III.  WINTER

   I, singularly movedTo love the lovely that are not beloved,Of all the Seasons, mostLove Winter, and to traceThe sense of the Trophonian pallor on her face.It is not death, but plenitude of peace;And the dim cloud that does the world enfoldHath less the characters of dark and coldThan warmth and light asleep,And correspondent breathing seems to keepWith the infant harvest, breathing soft belowIts eider coverlet of snow.Nor is in field or garden anythingBut, duly look’d into, contains sereneThe substance of things hoped for, in the Spring,And evidence of Summer not yet seen.On every chance-mild dayThat visits the moist shaw,The honeysuckle, ’sdaining to be crostIn urgence of sweet life by sleet or frost,’Voids the time’s lawWith still increaseOf leaflet new, and little, wandering spray;Often, in sheltering brakes,As one from rest disturb’d in the first hour,Primrose or violet bewilder’d wakes,And deems ’tis time to flower;Though not a whisper of her voice he hear,The buried bulb does knowThe signals of the year,And hails far Summer with his lifted spear.The gorse-field dark, by sudden, gold caprice,Turns, here and there, into a Jason’s fleece;Lilies, that soon in Autumn slipp’d their gowns of green,And vanish’d into earth,And came again, ere Autumn died, to birth,Stand full-array’d, amidst the wavering shower,And perfect for the Summer, less the flower;In nook of pale or crevice of crude bark,Thou canst not miss,If close thou spy, to markThe ghostly chrysalis,That, if thou touch it, stirs in its dream dark;And the flush’d Robin, in the evenings hoar,Does of Love’s Day, as if he saw it, sing;But sweeter yet than dream or song of Summer or SpringAre Winter’s sometime smiles, that seem to wellFrom infancy ineffable;Her wandering, languorous gaze,So unfamiliar, so without amaze,On the elemental, chill adversity,The uncomprehended rudeness; and her sighAnd solemn, gathering tear,And look of exile from some great repose, the sphereOf ether, moved by ether only, orBy something still more tranquil.

IV.  BEATA

   Of infinite Heaven the rays,Piercing some eyelet in our cavern black,Ended their viewless trackOn thee to smiteSolely, as on a diamond stalactite,And in mid-darkness lit a rainbow’s blaze,Wherein the absolute Reason, Power, and Love,That erst could moveMainly in me but toil and weariness,Renounced their deadening might,Renounced their undistinguishable stressOf withering white,And did with gladdest hues my spirit caress,Nothing of Heaven in thee showing infinite,Save the delight.

V.  THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW

   Perchance she droops within the hollow gulfWhich the great wave of coming pleasure draws,Not guessing the glad cause!Ye Clouds that on your endless journey go,Ye Winds that westward flow,Thou heaving SeaThat heav’st ’twixt her and me,Tell her I come;Then only sigh your pleasure, and be dumb;For the sweet secret of our either selfWe know.Tell her I come,And let her heart be still’d.One day’s controlled hope, and then one more,And on the third our lives shall be fulfill’d!Yet all has been before:Palm placed in palm, twin smiles, and words astray.What other should we say?But shall I not, with ne’er a sign, perceive,Whilst her sweet hands I hold,The myriad threads and meshes manifoldWhich Love shall round her weave:The pulse in that vein making alien pauseAnd varying beats from this;Down each long finger felt, a differing strandOf silvery welcome bland;And in her breezy palmAnd silken wrist,Beneath the touch of my like numerous blissComplexly kiss’d,A diverse and distinguishable calm?What should we say!It all has been before;And yet our lives shall now be first fulfill’d,And into their summ’d sweetness fall distill’dOne sweet drop more;One sweet drop more, in absolute increaseOf unrelapsing peace.   O, heaving Sea,That heav’st as if for bliss of her and me,And separatest not dear heart from heart,Though each ’gainst other beats too far apart,For yet awhileLet it not seem that I behold her smile.O, weary Love, O, folded to her breast,Love in each moment years and years of rest,Be calm, as being not.Ye oceans of intolerable delight,The blazing photosphere of central Night,Be ye forgot.Terror, thou swarthy Groom of Bride-bliss coy,Let me not see thee toy.O, Death, too tardy with thy hope intenseOf kisses close beyond conceit of sense;O, Life, too liberal, while to take her handIs more of hope than heart can understand;Perturb my golden patience not with joy,Nor, through a wish, profaneThe peace that should pertainTo him who does by her attraction move.Has all not been before?One day’s controlled hope, and one again,And then the third, and ye shall have the rein,O Life, Death, Terror, Love!But soon let your unrestful rapture cease,Ye flaming Ethers thin,Condensing till the abiding sweetness winOne sweet drop more;One sweet drop more in the measureless increaseOf honied peace.

VI.  TRISTITIA

   Darling, with hearts conjoin’d in such a peaceThat Hope, so not to cease,Must still gaze back,And count, along our love’s most happy track,The landmarks of like inconceiv’d increase,Promise me this:If thou alone should’st winGod’s perfect bliss,And I, beguiled by gracious-seeming sin,Say, loving too much thee,Love’s last goal miss,And any vows may then have memory,Never, by grief for what I bear or lack,To mar thy joyance of heav’n’s jubilee.Promise me this;For else I should be hurl’d,Beyond just doomAnd by thy deed, to Death’s interior gloom,From the mild borders of the banish’d worldWherein they dwellWho builded not unalterable fateOn pride, fraud, envy, cruel lust, or hate;Yet loved too laxly sweetness and heart’s ease,And strove the creature more than God to please.   For such as theseLoss without measure, sadness without end!Yet not for this do thou disheaven’d beWith thinking upon me.Though black, when scann’d from heaven’s surpassing bright,This might mean light,Foil’d with the dim days of mortality.For God is everywhere.Go down to deepest Hell, and He is there,And, as a true but quite estranged Friend,He works, ’gainst gnashing teeth of devilish ire,With love deep hidden lest it be blasphemed,If possible, to blendEase with the pangs of its inveterate fire;Yea, in the worstAnd from His Face most wilfully accurstOf souls in vain redeem’d,He does with potions of oblivion killRemorse of the lost Love that helps them still.   Apart from these,Near the sky-borders of that banish’d world,Wander pale spirits among willow’d leas,Lost beyond measure, sadden’d without end,But since, while erring most, retaining yetSome ineffectual fervour of regret,Retaining still such wealAs spurned Lovers feel,Preferring far to all the world’s delightTheir loss so infinite,Or Poets, when they markIn the clouds dunA loitering flush of the long sunken sun,And turn away with tears into the dark.   Know, Dear, these are not mineBut Wisdom’s words, confirmed by divineDoctors and Saints, though fitly seldom heardSave in their own prepense-occulted word,Lest fools be fool’d the further by false hope,And wrest sweet knowledge to their own decline;And (to approve I speak within my scope)The Mistress of that dateless exile grayIs named in surpliced Schools Tristitia.   But, O, my Darling, look in thy heart and seeHow unto me,Secured of my prime care, thy happy state,In the most unclean cellOf sordid Hell,And worried by the most ingenious hate,It never could be anything but well,Nor from my soul, full of thy sanctity,Such pleasure dieAs the poor harlot’s, in whose body stirsThe innocent life that is and is not hers:Unless, alas, this fount of my reliefBy thy unheavenly griefWere closed.So, with a consecrating kissAnd hearts made one in past all previous peace,And on one hope reposed,Promise me this!

VII.  THE AZALEA

   There, where the sun shines firstAgainst our room,She train’d the gold Azalea, whose perfumeShe, Spring-like, from her breathing grace dispersed.Last night the delicate crests of saffron bloom,For this their dainty likeness watch’d and nurst,Were just at point to burst.At dawn I dream’d, O God, that she was dead,And groan’d aloud upon my wretched bed,And waked, ah, God, and did not waken her,But lay, with eyes still closed,Perfectly bless’d in the delicious sphereBy which I knew so well that she was near,My heart to speechless thankfulness composed.Till ’gan to stirA dizzy somewhat in my troubled head—It was the azalea’s breath, and she was dead!The warm night had the lingering buds disclosed,And I had fall’n asleep with to my breastA chance-found letter press’dIn which she said,‘So, till to-morrow eve, my Own, adieu!Parting’s well-paid with soon again to meet,Soon in your arms to feel so small and sweet,Sweet to myself that am so sweet to you!’

VIII.  DEPARTURE

   It was not like your great and gracious ways!Do you, that have nought other to lament,Never, my Love, repentOf how, that July afternoon,You went,With sudden, unintelligible phrase,And frighten’d eye,Upon your journey of so many days,Without a single kiss, or a good-bye?I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon;And so we sate, within the low sun’s rays,You whispering to me, for your voice was weak,Your harrowing praise.Well, it was well,To hear you such things speak,And I could tellWhat made your eyes a growing gloom of love,As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove.And it was like your great and gracious waysTo turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,Lifting the luminous, pathetic lashTo let the laughter flash,Whilst I drew near,Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.But all at once to leave me at the last,More at the wonder than the loss aghast,With huddled, unintelligible phrase,And frighten’d eye,And go your journey of all daysWith not one kiss, or a good-bye,And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d:’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.

IX.  EURYDICE

   Is this the portent of the day nigh past,And of a restless graveO’er which the eternal sadness gathers fast;Or but the heaped waveOf some chance, wandering tide,Such as that world of aweWhose circuit, listening to a foreign law,Conjunctures ours at unguess’d dates and wide,Does in the Spirit’s tremulous ocean draw,To pass unfateful on, and so subside?Thee, whom ev’n more than Heaven loved I have,And yet have not been trueEven to thee,I, dreaming, night by night, seek now to see,And, in a mortal sorrow, still pursueThro’ sordid streets and lanesAnd houses brown and bareAnd many a haggard stairOchrous with ancient stains,And infamous doors, opening on hapless rooms,In whose unhaunted gloomsDead pauper generations, witless of the sun,Their course have run;And ofttimes my pursuitIs check’d of its dear fruitBy things brimful of hate, my kith and kin,Furious that I should keepTheir forfeit power to weep,And mock, with living fear, their mournful malice thin.But ever, at the last, my way I winTo where, with perfectly sad patience, nurstBy sorry comfort of assured worst,Ingrain’d in fretted cheek and lips that pine,On pallet poorThou lyest, stricken sick,Beyond love’s cure,By all the world’s neglect, but chiefly mine.Then sweetness, sweeter than my tongue can tell,Does in my bosom well,And tears come free and quickAnd more and more aboundFor piteous passion keen at having found,After exceeding ill, a little good;A little goodWhich, for the while,Fleets with the current sorrow of the blood,Though no good here has heart enough to smile.

X.  THE TOYS

   My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyesAnd moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,Having my law the seventh time disobey’d,I struck him, and dismiss’dWith hard words and unkiss’d,His Mother, who was patient, being dead.Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,I visited his bed,But found him slumbering deep,With darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yetFrom his late sobbing wet.And I, with moan,Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;For, on a table drawn beside his head,He had put, within his reach,A box of counters and a red-vein’d stone,A piece of glass abraded by the beachAnd six or seven shells,A bottle with bluebellsAnd two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,To comfort his sad heart.So when that night I pray’dTo God, I wept, and said:Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,Not vexing Thee in death,And Thou rememberest of what toysWe made our joys,How weakly understood,Thy great commanded good,Then, fatherly not lessThan I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,Thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,‘I will be sorry for their childishness.’

XI.  TIRED MEMORY

   The stony rock of death’s insensibilityWell’d yet awhile with honey of thy loveAnd then was dry;Nor could thy picture, nor thine empty glove,Nor all thy kind, long letters, nor the bandWhich really spann’dThy body chaste and warm,Thenceforward moveUpon the stony rock their wearied charm.At last, then, thou wast dead.Yet would I not despair,But wrought my daily task, and daily saidMany and many a fond, unfeeling prayer,To keep my vows of faith to thee from harm.In vain.‘For ’tis,’ I said, ‘all one,The wilful faith, which has no joy or pain,As if ’twere none.’Then look’d I miserably roundIf aught of duteous love were left undone,And nothing found.But, kneeling in a Church, one Easter-Day,It came to me to say:‘Though there is no intelligible rest,In Earth or Heaven,For me, but on her breast,I yield her up, again to have her given,Or not, as, Lord, Thou wilt, and that for aye.’And the same night, in slumber lying,I, who had dream’d of thee as sad and sick and dying,And only so, nightly for all one year,Did thee, my own most Dear,Possess,In gay, celestial beauty nothing coy,And felt thy soft caressWith heretofore unknown reality of joy.But, in our mortal air,None thrives for long upon the happiest dream,And fresh despairBade me seek round afresh for some extremeOf unconceiv’d, interior sacrificeWhereof the smoke might riseTo God, and ’mind him that one pray’d below.And so,In agony, I cried:‘My Lord, if thy strange will be this,That I should crucify my heart,Because my love has also been my pride,I do submit, if I saw how, to blissWherein She has no part.’And I was heard,And taken at my own remorseless word.O, my most Dear,Was’t treason, as I fear?’Twere that, and worse, to plead thy veiled mind,Kissing thy babes, and murmuring in mine ear,‘Thou canst not beFaithful to God, and faithless unto me!’Ah, prophet kind!I heard, all dumb and blindWith tears of protest; and I cannot seeBut faith was broken.  Yet, as I have said,My heart was dead,Dead of devotion and tired memory,When a strange grace of theeIn a fair stranger, as I take it, bredTo her some tender heed,Most innocentOf purpose therewith blent,And pure of faith, I think, to thee; yet suchThat the pale reflex of an alien love,So vaguely, sadly shown,Did her heart touchAboveAll that, till then, had woo’d her for its own.And so the fear, which is love’s chilly dawn,Flush’d faintly upon lids that droop’d like thine,And made me weak,By thy delusive likeness doubly drawn,And Nature’s long suspended breath of flamePersuading soft, and whispering Duty’s name,Awhile to smile and speakWith this thy Sister sweet, and therefore mine;Thy Sister sweet,Who bade the wheels to stirOf sensitive delight in the poor brain,Dead of devotion and tired memory,So that I lived again,And, strange to aver,With no relapse into the void inane,For thee;But (treason was’t?) for thee and also her.