No More Learning

Yea, for through me the world becomes a den
Of insane greed. In helpless beauty I stand
Alone in the midst of dreadful adoration;
And, round me thronged, the fawning, fawning lusts
Open their throats upon me and whine and lick
My feet with dripping tongues, or gaze to pant
Hot hunger in my face. For I am made
To set their hearts grim to possess my life,
And with an anger of love devour my beauty;
And yet to seal up in their mastered hearts
The rage, and bring them in croucht worship down
Before me, bent with impotent desire.
A quiet place the world was ere I came
A strife, a dream of fire, into its sleep;
And with their senses ended men's delights.
But I struck through their senses burning news
Of impossible endless things, and mixt
Wild lightning into their room of darkness. --Then
Agony, and a craving for delight
Escaping sensual grasp, began in men;
And the agony was poison in the health
Of sweet desire. --The joy of me men tried
To compass with strange frenzy and desire
Made new with cunning. But still at my feet
The lusts they tarr on me crouch down and fawn
And snarl to be so fearful of their prey.
I see men's faces grin with helpless lust
About me; crooked hands reach out to please
Their hot nerves with the flower of my skin;
I see the eyes imagining enjoyment,
The arms twitching to seize me, and the minds
Inflamed like the glee-kindled hearts of fiends.
And through the world the fawning, fawning lusts
Hound me with worship of a ravenous yearning:
And I am weary of maddening men with beauty.

_The Second Vision: Sappho_.
Into how fair a fortune hath man's life
Fallen out of the darkness! --This bright earth
Maketh my heart to falter; yea, my spirit
Bends and bows down in the delight of vision,
Caught by the force of beauty, swayed about
Like seaweed moved by the deep winds of water:
For it is all the news of love to me.
Through paths pine-fragrant, where the shaded ground
Is strewn with fruits of scarlet husk, I come,
As if through maidenhood's uncertainty,
Its darkness coloured with strange untried thoughts;
Hither I come, here to the flowery peak
Of this white cliff, high up in golden air,
Where glowing earth and sea and divine light
Are in mine eyes like ardour, and like love
Are in my soul: love's glowing gentleness,
The sunny grass of meadows and the trees,
Towers of dark green flame, and that white town
Where from the hearths, a fragrance of burnt wood,
Blue-purple smoke creeps like a stain of wine
Along the paved blue sea: yea, all this kindness
Lies amid salt immeasurable flowing,
The power of the sea, passion of love.
I, Sappho, have made love the mastery
Most sacred over man; but I have made it
A safety of things gloriously known,
To house his spirit from the darkness blowing
Out of the vast unknown: from me he hath
The wilful mind to make his fortune fair.
Yea, here I stand for the whole earth to see
How life, breathing its fortune like sweet air,
Mixing it with the kindled heart of man,
May utter it proud against the double truth
Of darkness fronting him and following him,
In a prevailing, burning, marvellous lie!
And it is love kindles the burning of it,
The quivering flame of spoken-forth desire,
Which man hath made his place within the world,--
Love, learnt of Sappho! and not only bright
With gladness: I have devised an endless pain,
The fearful spiritual pain of love, to hold
In a firm fire, unalterably bright,
The shining forth of Spirit's imagination
Declared against the investing dark, a light
Of pain and joy, equal for man and woman.

_The Third Vision: Theresa_.
Come, golden bridegroom, break this mortal night,
Five times chained with darkness of my senses.
At last now visit my desire, and turn
Thy feet, and the flaming path of thy feet,
Unto these walls lockt round me like a death.
Death I would have them till thou comest; yea,
The earthly stone whereof man's fortune here
Is made, strongly into deliberate death
I have built about my soul, to fend its life
From gazes of the world. I am too proud
To endure the world's desire of my beauty;
I know myself too marvellous in love
To be the joy of aught that thou hast made:
I am to be bride of thee, of the world's maker.
O God, the heart I have from thee, the heart
Uttering itself in an endless word of love,
Is sealed up in the stone of worldly night:
Set hitherward the flaming way of thy feet,
Break my night, and enter in unto me.
Come, wed my spirit; and like as the sea,
Into the shining spousal ecstasy
Of sun and wind, riseth in cloudy gleam,
So let the knowing of my flesh be clouds
Of fire, mounting up the height of my spirit,
Fire clouding with flame the marriage hour
Wherein my spirit keeps thy dreadful light
Away from Heaven in a bridal kiss,--
Fire of bodily sense in spiritual glee
Held, as fire of water in sunlit air.
Ah God, beautiful God, my soul is wild
With love of thee. Hitherward turn thy feet,
Turn their golden journeying towards this night,--
This night of cavernous earth; and now let shine
These walls of stone, against thy nearing love,
Like pure glass smitten by the power of the sun;
And let them be, in thy descending love,
Like glass in a furnace, falling molten down,
Back from thy burning feet streaming and flowing,
Leaving me naked to thy bright desire. --
Enjoy me, God, enjoy thy bride to-night.

_Vashti_.
Too well I know the first, the scarlet clad;
And she, that was in shining white and gold,
Was as the sound of bees and waters, at last
Heard by one long closed in the dins of madness.
But what was she, the black-robed, with the eyes
So fearfully alight, the last who spoke?