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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Emblems Of Love, by Lascelles Abercrombie

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Title: Emblems Of Love

Author: Lascelles Abercrombie

Release Date: March 26, 2005 [EBook #15472]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMBLEMS OF LOVE ***




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EMBLEMS OF LOVE



BY THE SAME AUTHOR

INTERLUDES AND POEMS


EMBLEMS OF LOVE

DESIGNED IN SEVERAL DISCOURSES
BY LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

_"Wonder it is to see in diverse mindes
How diversly love doth his pageaunts play"


"Ego tamquam centrum, circuli, cui simili modo
se habent circumferentiæ partes"_




TO MY WIFE




TABLE

page
HYMN TO LOVE 3

PART I DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY
PRELUDE 7
VASHTI 16

PART II IMPERFECTION
THREE GIRLS IN LOVE:
MARY: A LEGEND OF THE '45 77
JEAN 94
KATRINA 109

PART III VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION
JUDITH 127
THE ETERNAL WEDDING 188

MARRIAGE SONG 200
EPILOGUE: DEDICATION 209




EMBLEMS OF LOVE




HYMN TO LOVE

We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,
As thóu, Lóve, were the déep thóught
And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,
Thy fires of thought out-spoken:

But burn'd not through us thy imagining
Like fiérce móod in a sóng cáught,
We were as clamour'd words a fool may fling,
Loose words, of meaning broken.

For what more like the brainless speech of a fool,--
The lives travelling dark fears,
And as a boy throws pebbles in a pool
Thrown down abysmal places?

Hazardous are the stars, yet is our birth
And our journeying time theirs;
As words of air, life makes of starry earth
Sweet soul-delighted faces;

As voices are we in the worldly wind;
The great wind of the world's fate
Is turned, as air to a shapen sound, to mind
And marvellous desires.

But not in the world as voices storm-shatter'd,
Not borne down by the wind's weight;
The rushing time rings with our splendid word
Like darkness filled with fires.

For Love doth use us for a sound of song,
And Love's meaning our life wields,
Making our souls like syllables to throng
His tunes of exultation.

Down the blind speed of a fatal world we fly,
As rain blown along earth's fields;
Yet are we god-desiring liturgy,
Sung joys of adoration;

Yea, made of chance and all a labouring strife,
We go charged with a strong flame;
For as a language Love hath seized on life
His burning heart to story.

Yea, Love, we are thine, the liturgy of thee.
Thy thought's golden and glad name,
The mortal conscience of immortal glee,
Love's zeal in Love's own glory.




PART I

DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY




PRELUDE


_Night on bleak downs; a high grass-grown trench runs
athwart the slope.
Thy thought's golden and glad name,
The mortal conscience of immortal glee,
Love's zeal in Love's own glory.




PART I

DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY




PRELUDE


_Night on bleak downs; a high grass-grown trench runs
athwart the slope. The earthwork is manned by
warriors clad in hides. Two warriors, BRYS and
GAST, talking_.

_Gast_.
This puts a tall heart in me, and a tune
Of great glad blood flowing brave in my flesh,
To see thee, after all these moons, returned,
My Brys. If there's no rust in thy shoulder-joints,
That battle-wrath of thine, and thy good throwing,
Will be more help for us than if the dyke
Were higher by a span. --Ha! there was howling
Down in the thicket; they come soon, for sure.

_Brys_.
Has there been hunger in the forest long?

_Gast_.
I think, not only hunger makes them fierce:
They broke not long since into a village yonder,
A huge throng of them; all through the night we heard
The feasting they kept up. And that has made
The wolves blood-thirsty, I believe.

_Brys_.
O fools
To keep so slack a waking on their dykes!