No More Learning

I will not make it thy chief wonder, King,
That thou hast tied the world upon a rack;
Or that thy armies be so huge, the earth
Sways like a bridge of planks beneath their march,
And leagues about their way out of the ground
Like thunder comes the rumour of thy vengeance.
These be but shows of kingship; but one thing
Exclaims, inevitably as a word
Announced by God, thee first of the world's souls,--
That thou mayst have in thy arms Vashti the Queen. --
Princes, what looks are these?
Why are your minds astonisht so unwisely?
What, think you war the thing, or pompous fame?
See if I speak not truth of love and woman.
You will have heard how lightning's struck a man,
Shepherd or wayfarer, and when they found
The branded corpse, the rayment was torn off,
Blown into tatters and strewn wide by that
Withering death, and he birth-naked stretcht:
Bethink you, is not that now very like
How woman smites your souls? Whatever dress
Of thought you take to royalize your nature,--
Gorgeous shawls of kingship, a world's fear,
Or ample weavings of imagination,
Or the spun light of wisdom,--like a gust
Of flame, that weather of impersonal thought
You strut beneath, that hanging storm of Love,
Strikes down a terrible swift dazzling finger,
Sight of some woman, on your clothèd hearts,
And plucks the winding folly off, and leaves
Bare nature there. And hear another likeness.
Look, if the priests have made an altar-fire,
They can have any flame they list, as gums
Sprinkle the fluel, or salts, or curious earths,--
Tawny or purple, green, scarlet, or blue,
Or moted with an upward rain of sparks;
But first there must be air, or else no fire:
Man's being is a fire lit unto God,
And many thoughts colour the sacred flame;
But the air for him, the draught wherein he glows,
The breathing spirit that has turned mere life
Into the hot vehement being of man
Lambent upon the altar of the world,
Is woman and desire of her, nought else.
Behold, we know not what we do at all
When we love women: is it we who love,
Or Destiny rather visiting our souls
In passion? --How shall I name thee what thou art,
Woman, thou dream of man's desire that God
Caught out of man's first sleep and fashioned real?
Deliverance art thou from his own strait thought,
Wind come from beyond the stars
To blow away like mist all the disgrace
Of reasonable bars,
The forgery of time and place,
Whereinto soul was narrowly brought
When it was gridded close behind
The workings of man's mind.
But Woman comes to bless
With an immoderateness,
With a divine excess,
Lust of life and yearn of flesh,
Till there seems naught hindering our souls:
Else we should crawl along the years
Labour'd with measurable joys
No greater than our life,
Things carefully devised against tears;
And as snails harden their sweat
To brittle safety, a carried shell,
So we might build out of our woe of toil
Serious delight.
But to see and hear and touch Woman
Breaks our shell of this accursed world,
And turns our measured days to measureless gleam.
Up in a sudden burning flares
The dark tent of nature pitched about our souls;
And light, like a stound of golden din,
A shadowless light like weather of infinite plains,
Light not narrowed into place,
Amazes the naked nerves of the soul;
And like the pouring of immortal airs
Out of a flowery season,
Over us blows the inordinate desire. --
Ah, who from Hell did the wisdom bring
That would make life a formal thing?
Who has invented all the manner and wont,
The customary ways,
That harness into evil scales
Of malady our living?
But how they shrivel and craze
If love but glance on them!
And as a bowl of glass to shattering
Shivers at a sounding string,
The brittle glittering self of man
At beauty of Woman throbs apieces,
And seems into Eternity spilled
The being it contained.
Let it touch Woman and flesh becomes
Finer and more thrilled
Than air contrived in tune,
Lighter round the soul
Than flame is round burning.
She is God's bribery to man
That he the world endure,
His wage for carrying the weight of being.
Nay, she is rather the eternal lure
Out of form and things that end,
Out of all the starry snares,
Out of the trap of years,
Into measureless desire;
Lest man be satisfied with mind,--
Be never stung into self-hate
At crouching always in the crate
Of prudent knowledge round him wrought,
And so grow small as his own thought.
Kings, think of the woman's body you love best
How the beloved lines twin and merge,
Go into rhyme and differ, swerve and kiss,
Relent to hollows or like yearning pout,--
Curves that come to wondrous doubt
Or smooth into simplicities;
Like a skill of married tunes
Curdled out of the air;
How it is all sung delivering magic
To your pent hamper'd souls!
I tell you, kings, yours are but stammer'd songs
To that enchantment fashion'd for him,
That ceremony of life's powers,
The loveliness of Vashti;
That unbelievable worship made
For King Ahasuerus.
He to whom the loveliest she is given,
Least is bound to ended things,
Belongeth most on earth to Heaven;
Hath the whitest wind of flame
To burn his soul clean of the world,
Clean of mortal imaginings,
And back to the Beauty whence he came.
Now you hear the glory of the king of kings,
That he knows Vashti, that he lives
In this pleasure always.
Ah, could you see her! But perhaps she is
Too fearful in her beauty for most men.
I think she would dismay you, and unhitch
The sinews from their purchase on your bones,
And have you spelled as a wizard spells his ghosts.
Yet 'twould be mercy so to harm your sense.