The Unknown Eros

XII.  MAGNA EST VERITAS

   Here, in this little Bay,Full of tumultuous life and great repose,Where, twice a day,The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,I sit me down.For want of me the world’s course will not fail:When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;The truth is great, and shall prevail,When none cares whether it prevail or not.

XIII.  1867. 1

   In the year of the great crime,When the false English Nobles and their Jew,By God demented, slewThe Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong,One said, Take up thy Song,That breathes the mild and almost mythic timeOf England’s prime!But I, Ah, me,The freedom of the fewThat, in our free Land, were indeed the free,Can song renew?Ill singing ’tis with blotting prison-bars,How high soe’er, betwixt us and the stars;Ill singing ’tis when there are none to hear;And days are nearWhen England shall forgetThe fading glow which, for a little while,Illumes her yet,The lovely smileThat grows so faint and wan,Her people shouting in her dying ear,Are not two daws worth two of any swan!   Ye outlaw’d Best, who yet are brightWith the sunken light,Whose common styleIs Virtue at her gracious ease,The flower of olden sanctities,Ye haply trust, by love’s benignant guile,To lure the dark and selfish broodTo their own hated good;Ye haply dreamYour lives shall still their charmful sway sustain,Unstifled by the fever’d steamThat rises from the plain.Know, ’twas the force of function high,In corporate exercise, and public aweOf Nature’s, Heaven’s, and England’s LawThat Best, though mix’d with Bad, should reign,Which kept you in your sky!But, when the sordid Trader caughtThe loose-held sceptre from your hands distraught,And soon, to the Mechanic vain,Sold the proud toy for nought,Your charm was broke, your task was sped,Your beauty, with your honour, dead,And though you still are dreaming sweetOf being even now not lessThan Gods and Goddesses, ye shall not long so cheatYour hearts of their due heaviness.Go, get you for your evil watching shriven!Leave to your lawful Master’s itching handsYour unking’d lands,But keep, at least, the dignityOf deigning not, for his smooth use, to be,Voteless, the voted delegatesOf his strange interests, loves and hates.In sackcloth, or in private strifeWith private ill, ye may please Heaven,And soothe the coming pangs of sinking life;And prayer perchance may winA term to God’s indignant moodAnd the orgies of the multitude,Which now begin;But do not hope to wave the silken ragOf your unsanction’d flag,And so to guideThe great ship, helmless on the swelling tideOf that presumptuous Sea,Unlit by sun or moon, yet inly brightWith lights innumerable that give no light,Flames of corrupted will and scorn of right,Rejoicing to be free.   And, now, because the dark comes on apaceWhen none can work for fear,And Liberty in every Land lies slain,And the two Tyrannies unchallenged reign,And heavy prophecies, suspended longAt supplication of the righteous few,And so discredited, to fulfilment throng,Restrain’d no more by faithful prayer or tear,And the dread baptism of blood seems nearThat brings to the humbled Earth the Time of Grace,Breathless be song,And let Christ’s own look throughThe darkness, suddenly increased,To the gray secret lingering in the East.

XIV.  ‘IF I WERE DEAD.’

   ‘If I were dead, you’d sometimes say, Poor Child!’The dear lips quiver’d as they spake,And the tears brakeFrom eyes which, not to grieve me, brightly smiled.Poor Child, poor Child!I seem to hear your laugh, your talk, your song.It is not true that Love will do no wrong.Poor Child!And did you think, when you so cried and smiled,How I, in lonely nights, should lie awake,And of those words your full avengers make?Poor Child, poor Child!And now, unless it beThat sweet amends thrice told are come to thee,O God, have Thou no mercy upon me!Poor Child!

XV.  PEACE

   O England, how hast thou forgot,In dullard care for undisturb’d increaseOf gold, which profits not,The gain which once thou knew’st was for thy peace!Honour is peace, the peace which does accordAlone with God’s glad word:‘My peace I send you, and I send a sword.’O England, how hast thou forgot,How fear’st the things which make for joy, not fear,Confronted near.Hard days?  ’Tis what the pamper’d seek to buyWith their most willing gold in weary lands.Loss and pain risk’d?  What sport but understandsThese for incitements!  Suddenly to die,With conscience a blurr’d scroll?The sunshine dreaming upon Salmon’s heightIs not so sweet and whiteAs the most heretofore sin-spotted soulThat darts to its delightStraight from the absolution of a faithful fight.Myriads of homes unloosen’d of home’s bond,And fill’d with helpless babes and harmless women fond?Let those whose pleasant chanceTook them, like me, among the German towns,After the war that pluck’d the fangs from France,With me pronounceWhether the frequent black, which then array’dChild, wife, and maid,Did most to magnify the sombreness of grief,Or add the beauty of a staid reliefAnd freshening foilTo cheerful-hearted Honour’s ready smile!   Beneath the heroic sunIs there then noneWhose sinewy wings by choice do flyIn the fine mountain-air of public obloquy,To tell the sleepy mongers of false easeThat war’s the ordained way of all alive,And therein with goodwill to dare and thriveIs profit and heart’s peace?   But in his heart the fool now saith:‘The thoughts of Heaven were past all finding out,Indeed, if it should rainIntolerable woes upon our Land again,After so long a drought!’   ‘Will a kind Providence our vessel whelm,With such a pious Pilot at the helm?’   ‘Or let the throats be cut of pretty sheepThat care for nought but pasture rich and deep?’   ‘Were ’t Evangelical of God to deal so foul a blowAt people who hate Turks and Papists so?’   ‘What, make or keepA tax for ship and gun,When ’tis full three to oneYon bully but intendsTo beat our friends?’   ‘Let’s put asideOur costly pride.Our appetite’s not goneBecause we’ve learn’d to doffOur caps, where we were used to keep them on.’   ‘If times get worse,We’ve money in our purse,And Patriots that know how, let who will scoff,To buy our perils off.Yea, blessed in our midstArt thou who lately didst,So cheap,The old bargain of the Saxon with the Dane.’2   Thus in his heart the fool now saith;And, lo, our trusted leaders trust fool’s luck,Which, like the whale’s ’mazed chine,When they thereon were mulling of their wine,Will some day duck.   Remnant of Honour, brooding in the darkOver your bitter cark,Staring, as Rispah stared, astonied seven days,Upon the corpses of so many sons,Who loved her once,Dead in the dim and lion-haunted ways,Who could have dreamtThat times should come like these!Prophets, indeed, taught lies when we were young,And people loved to have it so;For they teach well who teach their scholars’ tongue!But that the foolish both should gaze,With feeble, fascinated face,Upon the wan crest of the coming woe,The billow of earthquake underneath the seas,And sit at ease,Or stand agape,Without so much as stepping back to ’scape,Mumbling, ‘Perchance we perish if we stay:’Tis certain wear of shoes to stir away!’Who could have dreamtThat times should come like these!Remnant of Honour, tongue-tied with contempt,Consider; you are strong yet, if you please.A hundred just men up, and arm’d but with a frown,May hoot a hundred thousand false loons down,Or drive them any way like geese.But to sit silent now is to subornThe common villainy you scorn.In the dark hourWhen phrases are in power,And nought’s to choose betweenThe thing which is not and which is not seen,One fool, with lusty lungs,Does what a hundred wise, who hate and hold their tongues,Shall ne’er undo.In such an hour,When eager hands are fetter’d and too few,And hearts alone have leave to bleed,Speak; for a good word then is a good deed.

XVI.  A FAREWELL

   With all my will, but much against my heart,We two now part.My Very Dear,Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear.It needs no art,With faint, averted feetAnd many a tear,In our opposed paths to persevere.Go thou to East, I West.We will not sayThere’s any hope, it is so far away.But, O, my Best,When the one darling of our widowhead,The nursling Grief,Is dead,And no dews blur our eyesTo see the peach-bloom come in evening skies,Perchance we may,Where now this night is day,And even through faith of still averted feet,Making full circle of our banishment,Amazed meet;The bitter journey to the bourne so sweetSeasoning the termless feast of our contentWith tears of recognition never dry.

XVII.  1880-85

   Stand by,Ye Wise, by whom Heav’n rules!Your kingly hands suit not the hangman’s tools.When God has doom’d a glorious Past to die,Are there no knaves and fools?For ages yet to come your kind shall count for nought.Smoke of the strife of other PowersThan ours,And tongues inscrutable with fury fraught‘Wilder the sky,Till the far good which none can guess be wrought.Stand by!Since tears are vain, here let us rest and laugh,But not too loudly; for the brave time’s come,When Best may not blaspheme the Bigger Half,And freedom for our sort means freedom to be dumb.   Lo, how the dross and draffJeer up at us, and shout,‘The Day is ours, the Night is theirs!’And urge their routWhere the wild dawn of rising Tartarus flares.Yon strives their Leader, lusting to be seen.His leprosy’s so perfect that men call him clean!Listen the long, sincere, and liberal brayOf the earnest Puller at another’s hay’Gainst aught that dares to tug the other way,Quite void of fearsWith all that noise of ruin round his ears!Yonder the people cast their caps o’erhead,And swear the threaten’d doom is ne’er to dreadThat’s come, though not yet past.All front the horror and are none aghast;Brag of their full-blown rights and liberties,Nor once surmiseWhen each man gets his due the Nation dies;Nay, still shout ‘Progress!’ as if seven plaguesShould take the laggard who would stretch his legs.Forward! glad rush of Gergesenian swine;You’ve gain’d the hill-top, but there’s yet the brine.Forward! to meet the welcome of the wavesThat mount to ’whelm the freedom which enslaves.Forward! bad corpses turn into good dung,To feed strange futures beautiful and young.Forward! God speed ye down the damn’d decline,And grant ye the Fool’s true good, in abject ruin’s gulfAs the Wise see him so to see himself!   Ah, Land once mine,That seem’d to me too sweetly wise,Too sternly fair for aught that dies,Past is thy proud and pleasant state,That recent dateWhen, strong and single, in thy sovereign heart,The thrones of thinking, hearing, sight,The cunning hand, the knotted thewOf lesser powers that heave and hew,And each the smallest beneficial part,And merest pore of breathing, beat,Full and complete,The great pulse of thy generous might,Equal in inequality,That soul of joy in low and high;When not a churl but felt the Giant’s heat,Albeit he simply call’d it his,Flush in his common labour with delight,And not a village-Maiden’s kissBut was for thisMore sweet,And not a sorrow but did lightlier sigh,And for its private self less greet,The whilst that other so majestic self stood by!Integrity so vast could well affordTo wear in working many a stain,To pillory the cobbler vainAnd license madness in a lord.On that were all men well agreed;And, if they did a thing,Their strength was with them in their deed,And from amongst them came the shout of a king!   But, once let traitor coward meet,Not Heaven itself can keep its feet.Come knave who said to dastard, ‘Lo,The Deluge!’ which but needed ‘No!’For all the Atlantic’s threatening roar,If men would bravely understand,Is softly check’d for evermoreBy a firm bar of sand.But, dastard listening knave, who said,‘’Twere juster were the Giant dead,That so yon bawlers may not missTo vote their own pot-belly’d bliss,’All that is past!We saw the slaying, and were not aghast.But ne’er a sun, on village Groom and Bride,Albeit they guess not how it is,At Easter or at Whitsuntide,But shines less gay for this!

XVIII.  THE TWO DESERTS

   Not greatly moved with awe am ITo learn that we may spyFive thousand firmaments beyond our own.The best that’s knownOf the heavenly bodies does them credit small.View’d close, the Moon’s fair ballIs of ill objects worst,A corpse in Night’s highway, naked, fire-scarr’d, accurst;And now they tellThat the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burstToo horribly for hell.So, judging from these two,As we must do,The Universe, outside our living Earth,Was all conceiv’d in the Creator’s mirth,Forecasting at the time Man’s spirit deep,To make dirt cheap.Put by the Telescope!Better without it man may see,Stretch’d awful in the hush’d midnight,The ghost of his eternity.Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eyeThe things which near us lie,Till Science rapturously hails,In the minutest water-drop,A torment of innumerable tails.These at the least do live.But rather giveA mind not much to pryBeyond our royal-fair estateBetwixt these deserts blank of small and great.Wonder and beauty our own courtiers are,Pressing to catch our gaze,And out of obvious waysNe’er wandering far.

XIX.  CREST AND GULF

   Much woe that man befallsWho does not run when sent, nor come when Heaven calls;But whether he serve God, or his own whim,Not matters, in the end, to any one but him;And he as soonShall map the other side of the Moon,As trace what his own deed,In the next chop of the chance gale, shall breed.This he may know:His good or evil seedIs like to grow,For its first harvest, quite to contraries:The father wiseHas still the hare-brain’d brood;’Gainst evil, ill example better works than good;The poet, fanning his mild flightAt a most keen and arduous height,Unveils the tender heavens to horny human eyesAmidst ingenious blasphemies.Wouldst raise the poor, in Capuan luxury sunk?The Nation lives but whilst its Lords are drunk!Or spread Heav’n’s partial gifts o’er all, like dew?The Many’s weedy growth withers the gracious Few!Strange opposites, from those, again, shall rise.Join, then, if thee it please, the bitter jestOf mankind’s progress; all its spectral raceMere impotence of rest,The heaving vain of life which cannot cease from self,Crest altering still to gulfAnd gulf to crestIn endless chace,That leaves the tossing water anchor’d in its place!Ah, well does he who does but stand aside,Sans hope or fear,And marks the crest and gulf in station sink and rear,And prophesies ’gainst trust in such a tide:For he sometimes is prophet, heavenly taught,Whose message is that he sees only nought.   Nathless, discern’d may be,By listeners at the doors of destiny,The fly-wheel swift and stillOf God’s incessant will,Mighty to keep in bound, tho’ powerless to quell,The amorous and vehement drift of man’s herd to hell.

XX.  ‘LET BE!’

   Ah, yes; we tell the good and evil treesBy fruits: But how tell these?Who does not knowThat good and illAre done in secret still,And that which shews is verily but show!How high of heart is one, and one how sweet of mood:But not all height is holiness,Nor every sweetness good;And grace will sometimes lurk where who could guess?The Critic of his kind,Dealing to each his share,With easy humour, hard to bear,May not impossibly have in him shrined,As in a gossamer globe or thickly padded pod,Some small seed dear to God.Haply yon wretch, so famous for his falls,Got them beneath the Devil-defended wallsOf some high Virtue he had vow’d to win;And that which you and ICall his besetting sinIs but the fume of his peculiar fireOf inmost contrary desire,And means wild willingness for her to die,Dash’d with despondence of her favour sweet;He fiercer fighting, in his worst defeat,Than I or you,That only courteous greetWhere he does hotly woo,Did ever fight, in our best victory.Another is mistookThrough his deceitful likeness to his look!Let be, let be:Why should I clear myself, why answer thou for me?That shaft of slander shotMiss’d only the right blot.I see the shameThey cannot see:’Tis very just they blameThe thing that’s not.

XXI.  ‘FAINT YET PURSUING.’

   Heroic Good, target for which the youngDream in their dreams that every bow is strung,And, missing, sighUnfruitful, or as disbelievers die,Thee having miss’d, I will not so revolt,But lowlier shoot my bolt,And lowlier still, if still I may not reach,And my proud stomach teachThat less than highest is good, and may be high.An even walk in life’s uneven way,Though to have dreamt of flight and not to flyBe strange and sad,Is not a boon that’s given to all who pray.If this I hadI’d envy none!Nay, trod I straight for oneYear, month or week,Should Heaven withdraw, and Satan me amerceOf power and joy, still would I seekAnother victory with a like reverse;Because the good of victory does not die,As dies the failure’s curse,And what we have to gainIs, not one battle, but a weary life’s campaign.Yet meaner lot being sentShould more than me content;Yea, if I lieAmong vile shards, though born for silver wings,In the strong flight and feathers goldOf whatsoever heavenward mounts and singsI must by admiration so complyThat there I should my own delight behold.Yea, though I sin each day times seven,And dare not lift the fearfullest eyes to Heaven,Thanks must I giveBecause that seven times are not eight or nine,And that my darkness is all mine,And that I liveWithin this oak-shade one more minute even,Hearing the winds their Maker magnify.

XXII.  VICTORY IN DEFEAT

   Ah, God, alas,How soon it came to passThe sweetness melted from thy barbed hookWhich I so simply took;And I lay bleeding on the bitter land,Afraid to stir against thy least command,But losing all my pleasant life-blood, whenceForce should have been heart’s frailty to withstand.Life is not life at all without delight,Nor has it any might;And better than the insentient heart and brainIs sharpest pain;And better for the moment seems it to rebel,If the great Master, from his lifted seat,Ne’er whispers to the wearied servant ‘Well!’Yet what returns of love did I endure,When to be pardon’d seem’d almost more sweetThan aye to have been pure!But day still faded to disastrous night,And thicker darkness changed to feebler light,Until forgiveness, without stint renew’d,Was now no more with loving tears imbued,Vowing no more offence.Not less to thine Unfaithful didst thou cry,‘Come back, poor Child; be all as ’twas before.’But I,‘No, no; I will not promise any more!Yet, when I feel my hour is come to die,And so I am secured of continence,Then may I say, though haply then in vain,“My only, only Love, O, take me back again!”‘   Thereafter didst thou smiteSo hard that, for a space,Uplifted seem’d Heav’n’s everlasting door,And I indeed the darling of thy grace.But, in some dozen changes of the moon,A bitter mockery seem’d thy bitter boon.The broken pinion was no longer sore.Again, indeed, I wokeUnder so dread a strokeThat all the strength it left within my heartWas just to ache and turn, and then to turn and ache,And some weak sign of war unceasingly to make.And here I lie,With no one near to mark,Thrusting Hell’s phantoms feebly in the dark,And still at point more utterly to die.O God, how long!Put forth indeed thy powerful right hand,While time is yet,Or never shall I see the blissful land!   Thus I: then God, in pleasant speech and strong,(Which soon I shall forget):‘The man who, though his fights be all defeats,Still fights,Enters at lastThe heavenly Jerusalem’s rejoicing streetsWith glory more, and more triumphant ritesThan always-conquering Joshua’s, when his blastThe frighted walls of Jericho down cast;And, lo, the glad surpriseOf peace beyond surmise,More than in common Saints, for ever in his eyes.’

XXIII.  REMEMBERED GRACE

   Since succour to the feeblest of the wiseIs charge of nobler weightThan the securityOf many and many a foolish soul’s estate,This I affirm,Though fools will fools more confidently be:Whom God does once with heart to heart befriend,He does so till the end:And having planted life’s miraculous germ,One sweet pulsation of responsive love,He sets him sheer above,Not sin and bitter shameAnd wreck of fame,But Hell’s insidious and more black attempt,The envy, malice, and pride,Which men who share so easily condoneThat few ev’n list such ills as these to hide.From these unalterably exempt,Through the remember’d graceOf that divine embrace,Of his sad errors none,Though gross to blame,Shall cast him lower than the cleansing flame,Nor make him quite departFrom the small flock named ‘after God’s own heart,’And to themselves unknown.Nor can he quailIn faith, nor flush nor paleWhen all the other idiot people spellHow this or that new Prophet’s word beliesTheir last high oracle;But constantly his soulPoints to its poleEv’n as the needle points, and knows not why;And, under the ever-changing clouds of doubt,When others cry,‘The stars, if stars there were,Are quench’d and out!’To him, uplooking t’ward the hills for aid,Appear, at need display’d,Gaps in the low-hung gloom, and, bright in air,Orion or the Bear.

XXIV.  VESICA PISCIS

   In strenuous hope I wrought,And hope seem’d still betray’d;Lastly I said,‘I have labour’d through the Night, nor yetHave taken aught;But at Thy word I will again cast forth the net!’And, lo, I caught(Oh, quite unlike and quite beyond my thought,)Not the quick, shining harvest of the Sea,For food, my wish,But Thee!Then, hiding even in me,As hid was Simon’s coin within the fish,Thou sigh’d’st, with joy, ‘Be dumb,Or speak but of forgotten things to far-off times to come.’

BOOK II

I.  TO THE UNKNOWN EROS

What rumour’d heavens are these   Which not a poet sings,O, Unknown Eros?  What this breezeOf sudden wingsSpeeding at far returns of time from interstellar spaceTo fan my very face,And gone as fleet,Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat,With ne’er a light plume dropp’d, nor any traceTo speak of whence they came, or whither they depart?And why this palpitating heart,This blind and unrelated joy,This meaningless desire,That moves me like the ChildWho in the flushing darkness troubled lies,Inventing lonely prophecies,Which even to his Mother mildHe dares not tell;To which himself is infidel;His heart not less on fireWith dreams impossible as wildest Arab Tale,(So thinks the boy,)With dreams that turn him red and pale,Yet less impossible and wildThan those which bashful Love, in his own way and hour,Shall duly bring to flower?O, Unknown Eros, sire of awful bliss,What portent and what Delphic word,Such as in form of snake forebodes the bird,Is this?In me life’s even floodWhat eddies thus?What in its ruddy orbit lifts the blood,Like a perturbed moon of Uranus,Reaching to some great world in ungauged darkness hid;And whenceThis rapture of the senseWhich, by thy whisper bid,Reveres with obscure rite and sacramental signA bond I know not of nor dimly can divine;This subject loyalty which longsFor chains and thongsWoven of gossamer and adamant,To bind me to my unguess’d want,And so to lie,Between those quivering plumes that thro’ fine ether pant,For hopeless, sweet eternity?What God unhonour’d hitherto in songs,Or which, that nowForgettest the disguiseThat Gods must wear who visit human eyes,Art Thou?Thou art not Amor; or, if so, yon pyre,That waits the willing victim, flames with vestal fire;Nor mooned Queen of maids; or, if thou’rt she,Ah, then, from TheeLet Bride and Bridegroom learn what kisses be!In what veil’d hymnOr mystic danceWould he that were thy Priest advanceThine earthly praise, thy glory limn?Say, should the feet that feel thy thoughtIn double-center’d circuit run,In that compulsive focus, Nought,In this a furnace like the sun;And might some note of thy renownAnd high behestThus in enigma be expressed:‘There lies the crownWhich all thy longing cures.Refuse it, Mortal, that it may be yours!It is a Spirit, though it seems red gold;And such may no man, but by shunning, hold.Refuse it, till refusing be despair;And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair.’

II.  THE CONTRACT

   Twice thirty centuries and more ago,All in a heavenly Abyssinian vale,Man first met woman; and the ruddy snowOn many-ridgëd Abora turn’d pale,And the song choked within the nightingale.A mild white furnace in the thorough blastOf purest spirit seem’d She as she pass’d;And of the Man enough that this be said,He look’d her Head.   Towards their bowerTogether as they went,With hearts conceiving torrents of content,And linger’d prologue fit for Paradise,He, gathering powerFrom dear persuasion of the dim-lit hour,And doubted sanction of her sparkling eyes,Thus supplicates her conjugal assent,And thus she makes replies:   ‘Lo, Eve, the Day burns on the snowy height,But here is mellow night!’   ‘Here let us rest.  The languor of the lightIs in my feet.It is thy strength, my Love, that makes me weak;Thy strength it is that makes my weakness sweet.What would thy kiss’d lips speak?’   ‘See, what a world of roses I have spreadTo make the bridal bed.Come, Beauty’s self and Love’s, thus to thy throne be led!’   ‘My Lord, my Wisdom, nay!Does not yon love-delighted Planet run,(Haply against her heart,)A space apartFor ever from her strong-persuading Sun!O say,Shall we no voluntary barsSet to our drift?  I, Sister of the Stars,And Thou, my glorious, course-compelling Day!’   ‘Yea, yea!Was it an echo of her coming wordWhich, ere she spake, I heard?Or through what strange distrust was I, her Head,Not first this thing to have said?AlwaySpeaks not within my breastThe uncompulsive, great and sweet behestOf something bright,Not named, not known, and yet more manifestThan is the morn,The sun being just at point then to be born?O Eve, take back thy “Nay.”Trust me, Beloved, ever in all to meanThy blissful service, sacrificial, keen;But bondless be that service, and let speak—’   ‘This other world of roses in my cheek,Which hide them in thy breast, and deepening seekThat thou decree if they mean Yea or Nay.’   ‘Did e’er so sweet a word such sweet gainsay!’   ‘And when I lean, Love, on you, thus, and smileSo that my Nay seems Yea,You must the whileThence be confirm’d that I deny you still.’   ‘I will, I will!’   ‘And when my arms are round your neck, like this,And I, as now,Melt like a golden ingot in your kiss,Then, more than ever, shall your splendid wordBe as Archangel Michael’s severing sword!Speak, speak!Your might, Love, makes me weak,Your might it is that makes my weakness sweet.’   ‘I vow, I vow!’   ‘And are you happy, O, my Hero and Lord;And is your joy complete?’   ‘Yea, with my joyful heart my body rocks,And joy comes down from Heaven in floods and shocks,As from Mount Abora comes the avalanche.’   ‘My Law, my Light!Then am I yours as your high mind may list.No wile shall lure you, none can I resist!’   Thus the first EveWith much enamour’d Adam did enactTheir mutual free contractOf virgin spousals, blissful beyond flightOf modern thought, with great intention staunch,Though unobliged until that binding pact.Whether She kept her word, or He the mindTo hold her, wavering, to his own restraint,Answer, ye pleasures faint,Ye fiery throes, and upturn’d eyeballs blindOf sick-at-heart Mankind,Whom nothing succour can,Until a heaven-caress’d and happier EveBe join’d with some glad SaintIn like espousals, blessed upon Earth,And she her Fruit forth bring;No numb, chill-hearted, shaken-witted thing,‘Plaining his little span,But of proud virgin joy the appropriate birth,The Son of God and Man.