THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 /^--^e^u-^c v*/v
 
 EMBLEMS OF LOVE
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 INTERLUDES AND POEMS 
 
 Crown 8vo. 55. net.
 
 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 DESIGNED IN SEVERAL DISCOURSES 
 BY LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE 
 
 " Wonder it is to see in diverse mindes 
 How diver sly love doth his pageaunts play " 
 
 ' Ego tamquam centrum circuit, cut simili modo 
 se habent circumferenti<z partes" 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
 NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXII
 
 WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH
 
 TO 
 MY WIFE
 
 TABLE 
 
 PACK 
 
 HYMN TO LOVE ..... 3 
 PART I 
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 
 
 PRELUDE ...... 7 
 
 VASHTI . . . . . .16 
 
 PAKT 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
 
 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 HYMN TO LOVE 
 
 We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee, 
 
 As thdu, Love, were the deep thought 
 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 fierce mood in a song caught, 
 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 ;
 
 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 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. The earthwork is manned by 
 warriors clad in hides. Two warriors, BRYS and 
 CAST, 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. 
 
 7
 
 8 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Brys. 
 
 O fools 
 
 To keep so slack a waking on their dykes ! 
 Now have they made a sleepless winter for us. 
 Every night we must look, lest the down-slope 
 Between us and the woods turn suddenly 
 To a grey onrush full of small green candles, 
 The charging pack with eyes flaming for flesh. 
 And well for us then if there's no more mist 
 Than the white panting of the wolfish hunger. 
 
 Gast. 
 
 They'll come to-night. Three of us hunting went 
 Among the trees below : not long we stayed. 
 All the wolves of the world are in the forest, 
 And man's the meat they're after. 
 
 Brys. 
 
 Ay, it must be 
 
 Blood-thirst is in them, if they come to-night, 
 Such clear and starry weather. What dost thou make, 
 Gast, of the stars ? 
 
 Gast. 
 
 Brother, they're horrible. 
 I always keep my head as much as I may 
 Bent so they cannot look me in the eyes. 
 
 Brys. 
 
 I never had this awe. The fear I have 
 Is not a load I crouch beneath, but something 
 Proud and wonderful, that lifteth my heart.
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 9 
 
 Yea, I look on a night of stars with fear 
 That comes close against glee. 'Tis like the fear 
 I have for the wolves, that maketh me joy-mad 
 To drive the yellow flint-edge through their shags. 
 So when I gaze on stars, they speak high fear 
 Into my soul ; and strangely I think they mean 
 The fear must prompt me to some unknown war. 
 
 Gast. 
 
 Be thou well ware of this. I have not told thee 
 How the stars, with their perilous overlooking, 
 Have raught away from all his manhood Gwat, 
 Our fiercest strength. For when the conquering wolves 
 Into that village won, we in our huts 
 Lay hearkening to their rejoicing hunger ; 
 But Gwat stayed out in the stars all night long. 
 I peered at him as much as that whipt dog, 
 My heart, had daring for ; and he stood stiff, 
 With all his senses aiming at the noise. 
 Some strong bad eagerness kept tightly rigged 
 The cordage of his body, till his nerves 
 Loosed on a sudden. He yelled, " What do we here, 
 High up among bleak winds, always afraid 
 Of murder from the wolves ? I will be man 
 No more ; the grey four-footed fellows have 
 The good meats of the world, and the best lodging, 
 Forest and weald." And then he wolfish howled, 
 And hurled off towards the snarling and the baying. 
 And now his soul wears the strength and fury 
 Of a huge dun-pelted wolf ; he's the wolves' king ; 
 And the fiends have learnt from him to laugh at our flints. 
 Now always in the assaults there's one great beast,
 
 10 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 With yellow eyes and hackles like a mane, 
 
 That plays the captain, first to reach the dyke ; 
 
 And I have heard that when he stands upright 
 
 To ramp against the bulwarks, in his throat 
 
 Are chattering yelps half tongued to grisly words. 
 
 Doubtless to-night thou'lt see him, leading his pack, 
 
 And with his jaws savagely tampering 
 
 With our earth-builded safety. But now, Brys, 
 
 Is it not certain that the stars have done 
 
 This evil to Gwat's heart, and curdled all 
 
 The manhood in him ? 
 
 Brys. 
 
 When I was wanderer, 
 I came upon a lake, set in a land 
 Which has no fear of wolves. A fisher folk 
 Live there in houses stilted over the water, 
 And the stars walk like spectres of white fire 
 Upon the misty waters of the mere. 
 Ay, if they have no wolves, they have the fear 
 All as thou hast ; the sedges in the night 
 Shudder, and out of the reeds there comes a cry 
 Half chuckling, half bewailing ; but, as I think, 
 It is the mallard calling. Now among 
 This haunted folk, I markt a man who went 
 With shining eyes, and a joy in his face, about 
 His needs of living. Clear it was to me 
 He knew of some sweet race in his daily wont 
 Which blest him wonderly. I lived with him, 
 And from him learnt marvels. Yea, for he gave me 
 A wit to see in our earth more than fear. 
 Brother, how shall I tell thee, who hast still
 
 Fear-poisoned nerves, that like a priest he brewed 
 
 My heart keen drink from out the look of earth ? 
 
 Gast, is it nothing to thee that all in green 
 
 The wolds go heaping up against the blue ? 
 
 And is it only fear to thee that night 
 
 Is thatched with stars ? Ah, but I took his wit 
 
 Further than he e'er did ; in women I found 
 
 The same amazement for my wakened eyes 
 
 As in the hills and waters. Ay, gape at me, 
 
 And think me bitten by some evil tooth ; 
 
 But as a quiet stream at the cliff's edge 
 
 Breaks its smooth habit into a loud white force, 
 
 So this delight the earth pours over me 
 
 Leaps out of women with such excellence, 
 
 It seems as I must brace my sinews to it, 
 
 The comely fashion of their limbs, their eyes, 
 
 Their gait, and the way they use their arms. And now 
 
 My eyes have a message to my heart from them 
 
 Such as thou only through a blind skin hast. 
 
 Therefore I came back here ; I scarce know why, 
 
 But now that women are to me not only 
 
 The sacred friends of hidden Awe, not only 
 
 Mistresses of the world's unseen foison, 
 
 Ay, and not only ease for throbbing groins, 
 
 But things mine eyes enjoy as mine ears take songs, 
 
 Vision that beats a timbrel in my blood, 
 
 Dreams for my sleeping sight, that move aired round 
 
 With wonder, as trembling covers a hearth, 
 
 It seems I must be fighting for them, must 
 
 Run through some danger to them now before 
 
 Delighting in them. I am here to fight 
 
 Wolves for the joy of the world, marvellous women !
 
 12 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Gast. 
 
 Star-madden'd ! What is this in earth and women 
 That pricks thee into wrath against the wolves ? 
 Do I not fight for women too ? But I 
 For what is certain in them, not for madness. 
 
 Brys. 
 
 I make my fierceness of a mind to set 
 My spirit high up in the winds of joy, 
 Before I tumble down into the darkness. 
 Not thus thy women send thee to thy fighting : 
 All fear thy battle-courage is, fear-bred 
 Thine anger. Thou heavily drudgest women, 
 But yet thou art afraid of them. 
 
 Gast. 
 
 Ay, truly ; 
 
 For look how from their wondrous bodies comes 
 Increase : who knoweth where such power ends ? 
 They are in league with the great Motherhood 
 Who brings the seasons forth in the open world ; 
 And if to them She hands, unseen by us, 
 Their marvellous bringing forth of children, what 
 Spirit of Her great dreadful mountain-spell, 
 Wherein the rocks have purpose against us, 
 Sealed up in watchful quiet stone, may not 
 Pass on to their dark minds, that seem so mild, 
 Yet are so strange ; or what charm'd word from out 
 Her forests whispering endless dangerous things, 
 Wherefrom our hunters often have run crazed 
 To hear the trees devising for their souls ;
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 13 
 
 What secret share of Her earth's monstrous power 
 
 May She not also grant to women's lives ? 
 
 Yea, wise is our fear of women ; but we fight 
 
 For more than fear ; we give them liking too. 
 
 Who but the women can deliver us 
 
 From this continual siege of the wolves' hunger ? 
 
 High above comfort, on the shrugging backs 
 
 Of downland, where the winds parch our skins, and frost 
 
 Kneads through our flesh until his fingers clamp 
 
 The aching bones, our scanty families 
 
 Hold out against the ravin of the wolves, 
 
 Fended by earthwork, fighting them with flint. 
 
 But if we keep the favour of our women, 
 
 They will breed sons to us so many and strong 
 
 We shall have numbers that will make us dare 
 
 Invade the weather-shelter'd woods, and build 
 
 Villages where now only wolves are denn'd ; 
 
 Yea, to the beasts shall the man-folk become 
 
 Malice that haunts their ways, even as now 
 
 Our leaguer'd tribes must lurk and crouch afraid 
 
 Of wolfish malice always baying near. 
 
 And fires, stackt hugely high with timber, shall 
 
 With nightlong blaze make friendly the dark and cold, 
 
 Cheer our bodies, and roast great feasts of flesh, 
 
 Ah, to burn trunks of trees, not bracken and ling ! 
 
 This is what women are to me, a fear 
 
 Lest the earth-hidden Awe, who unseen gives 
 
 The childing to their flesh, should make their minds 
 
 As darkly able as their wombs, with power 
 
 To think sorceries over us ; and hope 
 
 That with their breeding they will dispossess 
 
 The beasts of the good lowlands, until man,
 
 14 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 No longer fled to the hills, inhabit all 
 The comfort of the earth. 
 
 Brys. 
 
 These are mine too, 
 
 But as great rivers own the brook's young speed. 
 For in my soul, the women do not dwell 
 A torch going through darkness, with a troop 
 Of shadows gesturing after ; but as the sun 
 Upon his height of golden blaze at noon, 
 With all the size of the blue air about him. 
 Fear that in women the unseen is seen 
 And the unknown power sits beside us known, 
 This fear is good, but better is than this 
 Their beauty, and the wells of joy in women. 
 I speak dumb words to thee ; but know thou, Cast, 
 My soul is looking at the time to come, 
 And seeing it not as a cavern lit 
 With smoky burning brandons of thy fear, 
 But as a day shining with my new joy. 
 Thou canst not fight with me for the coming heart 
 Of man, fear cannot fight with joy. And I 
 Am setting such a war of joy against thee, 
 It shall be as man's heart became a god 
 Murdering thy mind of weakling darkness. 
 All the hot happiness of being wroth 
 And seeing a stroke leave behind it wound, 
 The pleasures of wily hunting, and a feast 
 After long famine, and the dancing stored 
 Within the must of berries, these, and all 
 Gladdenings that make thrill the being of man 
 Shall pour, mixt with an unknown rage of glee,
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 15 
 
 Into the meaning men shall find in women. 
 And if we have at all a fear of them, 
 It shall not be the old ignorant dismay, 
 But of their very potency to delight, 
 The way their looks make Will an enemy 
 Hating itself, shall men become afraid. 
 Women shall cause men know for why they have 
 Being in the earth ; not to be quailing slack 
 As if the whole world were a threat, but tuned 
 Ready for joy as harp-strings for the player. 
 And great desire of beauty and to be glad 
 Shall prompt our courages. Ha, what are those 
 Breaking from out the thickets ? 
 
 Gast. 
 
 Wolves ! They come ! 
 
 Brothers, the fiends are on us : have good hearts ! 
 Ho for the women and their sacred wombs ! 
 
 Brys. 
 Ho for the women, their beauty and my pleasure !
 
 VASHTI 
 
 I 
 
 AHASUERUS AND VASHTI 
 
 Fashti. 
 My lord requires me here. 
 
 Ahasuerus. 
 
 Does Heaven see this ? 
 Dare I have this one humble unto me ? 
 Was it not enough, Stars, to have given me 
 This marriage ? but you must persuade your God 
 To have me as well the greatest king beneath you ! 
 Look you now if men grow not insolent 
 Because of me, a man so throned, so wived. 
 Yea, and in me insolent groweth my love ; 
 For if the wheels of the careering world 
 Brake, felley and spoke, that, pitching on the road, 
 It spilt the driving godhead from his seat, 
 And the unreined team of hours riskily dragg'd 
 Their crippled duty, if in that lurching world 
 Like jarred glass my power shattered about me, 
 And I were a head unking'd, 'twere but a game, 
 So I were left possessing thee, and that 
 
 16
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 17 
 
 Escape from Heaven, the beauty that goes with thee. 
 
 Here is an insolence ! Hast thou not wonder'd, 
 
 Vashti, what gave thee into such a love, 
 
 That in the brain of me, the chosen king, 
 
 It is so loud, so insolent, thy love ? 
 
 O this shrill sweet heart-mastering love ! 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Alas, 
 
 Do I deserve that love ? But yes, I wonder ; 
 For what am I that the king loveth me ? 
 Lo, I am woman, thou art man, the lord ; 
 Out of mere bounty are we loved of you, 
 And not for our deserving. We are to sit 
 In a high calm, and not go down and help 
 Among the toil, and choosing, chosen, find 
 Companionship therein. For thou, for man 
 Has such a treasure in his heart of love, 
 It must be squandered out in charity, 
 Not used as a gentle money to repay 
 Worth (as a woman spends her love). A trick 
 Of posture in a girl, and see the alms 
 Of generous love man will enrich her with ! 
 Might there not be sometimes too much of alms 
 About his love ? But we will blink at that. 
 Yet sometimes we are liked ashamed, to be 
 Taking so much love from you, all for naught. 
 Now therefore tell me, Man, my king, my master : 
 Lovest thou me, or dost thou rather love 
 The pleasure thou hast in me ? This is not nice, 
 Believe me. They're more sundered, these two loves, 
 Than if all the braving seas marcht between them.
 
 18 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Ahasuerus. 
 
 What, shrinking from thine own delightsomeness ? 
 Hear then. Nature, so ordered from the God, 
 Has given strength to man and work to do, 
 But to woman gave that she should be delight 
 For man, else like an overdriven ox 
 
 Heart-broke. The world was made for man, but made 
 Wisely a steep difficulty to be climbed, 
 That he, so labouring the stubborn slant, 
 May step from off the world with a well-used courage, 
 All slouch disgrace fought out of him, a man 
 Well worthy of a Heaven. And this great part 
 Has woman in the work ; that man, fordone 
 And wearied, may find lodging out of the noise 
 Upon her breast, and looking in her eyes 
 May wash in pools of kindness, fresh as Heaven, 
 The soil of sweat and trouble from his limbs ; 
 And turning aside into this pleasant inn 
 Called woman, there is entertainment kept 
 For man, such that for cheating craftily 
 The stabled palter'd heart that it can pass 
 Through the world's grillage and be large as fate, 
 The sweet anxiety of reeded pipes 
 Is a mere thing to it. Like Heaven street 
 When the steel of God's army surges through it, 
 Bright anger burning on an errand of swords, 
 So is the sense of man when woman- joy 
 Pours through his flesh a throng of deity, 
 White clamorous flame ; yea, desire of woman 
 Maketh the mind of more room for amazement 
 Than that blue loft hath for the light, more charged
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 19 
 
 With spiritual joy that goes in stress 
 
 As far as tears, with this more throbbingly charged 
 
 Than the starr'd night wept full of silver fires, 
 
 Dangerously endured, labours of joy ! 
 
 Is it not virtuous, not powerful, this ? 
 
 Wouldst thou have more ? Man knows he can possess 
 
 Than woman's beauty nought more treasurable. 
 
 And high above our loud activities 
 
 We keep, pure as the dawn, the house of love, 
 
 Woman, wherein we entering leave outside 
 
 Our rank sweat-drenched weeds of toil, and there 
 
 Enjoy ourselves, out of the world, awhile. 
 
 Vashti (aside). 
 O yes, I know. Filthiness ! Filthiness ! 
 
 Ahasuerus. 
 
 Now here have I been toiling under press 
 Of glory. Should I not stumble in my gait, 
 Were there no Vashti, and with her a welcome 
 I do not need to buy, since all she wants 
 Is that I love her ? Going in unto her 
 I may unstrap my burdenous pack of kingship, 
 Shift me of reign, and escape my splendour. 
 Yea, and strange largeness in this power of love 
 For men too much limited ! Now I am sick 
 Of knowing my greatness, now I want to be 
 Placed where my soul can feel vast room about me, 
 To be contained. Outside, among the men, 
 I am the room of the world ; I and my rule 
 Contain the world ; and I am sick thereof. 
 Vashti can remedy this ; for here thy beauty
 
 20 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 More spacious is for my senses to be in, 
 Than his own golden kingdom for the sun. 
 
 Vashti. 
 Thine eyes are glad with me ? I please the King ? 
 
 Ahasuerus. 
 
 Eyes ? But there is no nerve thou takest not, 
 No way of my life thronging not with thee, 
 And my blood sounds at the story of thy beauty. 
 What thing shall be held up to woman's beauty ? 
 Where are the bounds of it ? Yea, what is all 
 The world, but an awning scaffolded amid 
 The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge 
 This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty ? 
 The East and West kneel down to thee, the North 
 And South, and all for thee their shoulders bear 
 The load of fourfold place. As yellow morn 
 Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea, 
 Thy feet are on the griefs and joys of men 
 That sheen to be thy causey. Out of tears, 
 Indeed, and blitheness, murder and lust and love, 
 Whatever has been passionate in clay, 
 Thy fiesh was tempered. Behold in thy body 
 The yearnings of all men measured and told, 
 Insatiate endless agonies of desire 
 Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape ! 
 What beauty is there, but thou makest it ? 
 How is earth good to look on, woods and fields 
 The seasons' garden, and the courageous hills, 
 All this green raft of earth moored in the seas ?
 
 The manner of the sun to ride the air, 
 
 The stars God has imagined for the night ? 
 
 What's this behind them, that we cannot near, 
 
 Secret still on the point of being blabbed, 
 
 The ghost in the world that flies from being named ? 
 
 Where do they get their beauty from, all these ? 
 
 They do but glaze a lantern lit for man, 
 
 And woman's beauty is the flame therein 
 
 Feeding on sacred oil, man's desire, 
 
 A golden flame possessing all the earth. 
 
 Or as a queen upon an cmbassage 
 
 From out some mountain-guarded far renown, 
 
 Brings caravans stockt from her slavish mines, 
 
 Her looms and forges, with a precious friendship ; 
 
 So comest thou from the chambers of the stars 
 
 On thy famed visit unto man the king ; 
 
 So bringing from the mints and shops of Heaven, 
 
 Where thou didst own labours of all the fates, 
 
 A shining traffic, all that man calls beauty : 
 
 There is no holding out for the heart of man 
 
 Against thee and such custom. O hard to be borne, 
 
 Often hard to be borne is woman's beauty ! 
 
 And well I guess it does but cover up 
 
 Enmity, hanging falseness between our souls, 
 
 And buy at a dishonest price the mouth 
 
 True nature hath for thee, to speak thee fair. 
 
 Were not man's thought so gilded with thy beauty, 
 
 Woman, and caught in the desire of thee, 
 
 O, there'ld be hatred in his use of thee. 
 
 You should be thankful for your pleasantness !
 
 22 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Yes, I am thankful. For I hope, my lord, 
 We women know our style. Ay, we are fooled 
 Sometimes with heady tampering thoughts, that come 
 To bother our submission, I confess. 
 We to ourselves have said, that when God took 
 The fierce beginning of the unwrought world 
 From out his fiery passion, and, breathing cool, 
 Tamed the wild molten being, with his hands 
 Fashion'd and workt the hot clay into world, 
 Then with green mercy quieted the land 
 And claspt it with the summer of blue seas, 
 With brooches of white spray along the shores, 
 It was to be an equal dwelling-place 
 For humans that he did it, into sex 
 Unknowably dividing human kind. 
 But wickedly we say this. God made man 
 For his delight and praise, and then made woman 
 For man's delight and praise, submiss to man. 
 Else wherefore sex ? And it is better thus, 
 To be man's pleasure. What noble work is ours, 
 To have our bodies proper for your love, 
 The means of your delight ! Ay, and minds too, 
 Sometimes ; we think, we women think we know 
 What shape of mind pleases our masters best, 
 And that we build up in us. A tender shyness, 
 A coy reluctancy, we use these well. 
 Man is our master ; it is best for us 
 Persuading him line our captivity 
 With wool-soft love, lest it be bitter iron.
 
 DISCOVERY AND PKOPHECY 23 
 
 Ahasuerus. 
 
 This is the marvel's head, that thou, so fair, 
 And loved by me, should keep so good a mind. 
 
 They shall not see thee, when I display at large 
 
 The riches and the honour ; I've enough 
 
 Possession, without thee, to stupify 
 
 The assembly of my men, my herd of kings. 
 
 I mean there shall not be a hint of doubt 
 
 About whose world this is. So I have bid, 
 
 From all the utter regions of my land, 
 
 The kings whom I allow to rule, who breathe 
 
 My air, to feast with me and for a while 
 
 Flatter their trivial lives with a brief relish 
 
 Of being king of the world's kings in Shushan. 
 
 Yea, and I will dismay their wits with splendour ; 
 
 No noise shall be against me in the world. 
 
 I am more open, kinder than Lord God, 
 
 Who never shows how much he has of thunder ; 
 
 Wherefore against him men presume, and go 
 
 Often out of his ways extravagant. 
 
 But all the fear I keep obedient by me 
 
 Now to the gather'd world I openly shew. 
 
 So God is spoken against, I am never, 
 
 And I have a better terror in the world ; 
 
 And chiefly for the happiness built round me 
 
 Divinely firm. O all the kings, my men, 
 
 Shall fear this terrible happiness of mine ! 
 
 But thee I will not shew ; I'll have some wealth 
 
 Not public. I'll have no adulteries, 
 
 No eyes but mine enjoying thee. To me 
 
 The sight of thee, all as the touch of thee,
 
 24 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Belongeth, only my pleasure thou art : 
 None but my senses shall come unto thee, 
 And I will keep my pleasure pure as Heaven. 
 Happy art thou, Vashti, to have wedded 
 One who so dearly rates possession of thee. 
 Better it is to spend my heart on thee 
 Than on any of the women that I have. 
 
 II 
 
 THE FEAST OF KINGS : MIDNIGHT 
 
 Ahasuerus. 
 
 You kings, you thrones that burn about the world, 
 Whom yet I king, lifted higher above you 
 Than you are lifted up above your folks : 
 This is my day. I have agreed with Heaven, 
 My fellow in the fear of the world, to have 
 This day unshar'd ; and it is all mine, 
 All that the Gods from baseless fires and steams 
 Have harden'd into the place and kind of the world : 
 The great high quiet journey of the stars, 
 And all the golden hours which the sun 
 Utters aloft in heaven ; the whole is mine 
 To fill with ceremonies of my throne. 
 This one day, I am where Heaven and I 
 Commonly stand together ; you shall not have 
 Shelter from me in a w r orshipt God to-day, 
 Kings ; look yonder at many-power'd night, 
 Telling her beauty to the sea and taking 
 The prone adoring waters into her blue
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 25 
 
 Desire, setting them as herself on flame 
 With perils of joy, lending them her achieved 
 Raptures, her white experiences of stars. 
 So shall your souls lie under me these hours ; 
 As they were waters shall they be beneath 
 My burning, set alight with me, and none 
 Escape from utterly understanding me 
 And why I am so kindled in my soul. 
 
 Who has been like to me ? My name travels 
 A hundred seven and twenty languages, 
 My name a ship upon them, trading fear. 
 My unseen power weighs upon the heads 
 Of nations, like the blown abasement given 
 By sedges when they are wretched to the wind. 
 Ay, and the farthest goings of the air 
 Can reach no land my taxes do not labour. 
 The fear of me is the conscience of the world. 
 Ahasuerus is a region large 
 As there is light upon the earth ; when dawn 
 With golden duties celebrates the sun, 
 It does but serve to fetch the lives I own 
 Out of shadow flinching into the light, 
 Out of sleep's mercy the sore lives that know 
 Only a penal sun, that are so chapt 
 In winds of my sent spirit : I care not, I. 
 For as my flesh out of my father's joy 
 Came, fraught from him with hunger for like joy, 
 As, when roused ages of desire within me 
 Play with my blood as storms play with the sea, 
 And all my senses tug one way like sails, 
 My flesh obeys, and into that perilous dream, 
 Woman, exults ; so, but much more, my soul,
 
 26 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 That had its faculties from far beyond 
 The tingling loam of flesh, obeys a need : 
 Conquest, and nations to enjoy with war. 
 For 'tis a need that rode down out of God 
 Upon my journeying soul into this world's 
 Affairs, like smouldering fire besiegers throw 
 Among a city's roofs, which cannot choose 
 But take blaze from the whole town's timber ; so 
 My soul's desire for flame hath charred the world. 
 Till now, as the night full of perfect fires, 
 I, full of conquests, am large over you. 
 And you must be like waters underneath me, 
 Full of my burning ; there's no more for me 
 Now, but to dwell alone in my still soul's 
 Hoarding of ecstasies, a great place of lusts 
 Achieved and shining fixt ; for every man 
 Is mine, and every soil is mine, from here 
 Round to the furthest cliffs that steadfast are 
 To keep the hoofs of the sea from murdering 
 The tilled leagues of the land. And by the coasts 
 I am not kept. Far into the room of waters, 
 Into the blue middle of ocean's summer, 
 The white gait of my sea-going war invades. 
 
 I have a man here, one who makes with words, 
 And he shall be my messenger to your hearts. 
 Not to make much of me ; but he's the speech 
 Of Spirit, I the dangerous exultation, 
 The Spirit's sacred joy in wrath against 
 The heaps of its own spent kinds, melting anew 
 To found in another image of itself. 
 He is the man to shew you, withinside 
 The flashing and exclaim of my great moving
 
 DISCOVERY AND PEOPHECY 27 
 
 About the places of the world ; within 
 
 The heat of my pleasure that has molten down, 
 
 Like ingots in a furnace, all your nations 
 
 Into my likeness treading on the earth ; 
 
 Within the smokes that make your eyes pour grief, 
 
 This gleam of infinite purpose quietly nested, 
 
 That I am given the world, and that my pleasure 
 
 Is plain the latest word spoken by God. 
 
 So while our senses go among these wines, 
 
 Wander in green deliciousness and crimson, 
 
 And fragrance searches the else-unsearchable brain, 
 
 Poet, tell out the glory of the king. 
 
 The Poet. 
 
 The glory of the king of all the kings. 
 You with the golden power on your brows, 
 You kings, I think you know not what you are. 
 First you shall learn yourselves : for neither light 
 Understandeth itself, nor darkness light. 
 You see your glory ; but you cannot see 
 That which your glory conquers ; and the peoples 
 Know nought but that the glooming of their night 
 Maketh a shining scope for crowns, as he, 
 Even as he, your king, Ahasuerus, 
 Maketh your splendour a darkness for his light. 
 But I, neither belonging to the kings 
 Nor to the people, only I may know 
 The golden fortune of light anointing kings. 
 Come with me now, and take my vision awhile. 
 
 The people of this world are misery. 
 What doth Man here ? How thinketh God on him ? 
 Surely he was sent here as if thereby
 
 28 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 God might forget him. Like infamous desire 
 A wise heart puts aside, which yet remains 
 A secret hated memory, man was 
 In God, and is vainly discarded here. 
 I see him coming here ; I see man's life 
 Falling into this base and desert ground, 
 This world that seems an evil riddance thrown 
 Down by the winds of God's swift purposes ; 
 Some shame of grossness, that would cling upon 
 The errand of their holy speed, and here 
 Heapt up and strewn into the place wherein 
 The mind and being of man wander darkly. 
 Behold him coming here ! Against my sight, 
 Warning aback the gleam of sacred heaven, 
 Is vast forbiddance raised ; creatures like hills, 
 Or darkness surging at the coasts of light, 
 Stand, a great barricade behind our lives, 
 Rankt as Eternity had put on stature. 
 The sharp sides of the peaks are finger'd white 
 With flame, lit by the fires of God beyond ; 
 The rest is night ; the whole people of dark hills 
 A front of high impenetrable doom. 
 But lo ! 
 
 Black in the blackness, is a yawn in the doom, 
 And out of it flows the kind of man. Behold, 
 It is a river, through the permission sent 
 As through a snarling breakage in a cliff; 
 Turned like a hated thing away from God ; 
 Spat out, the water of man's life, to spill 
 Down bleak gullies, and thrid the gangways dark 
 Through the reluctant hills, pouring as if 
 It knew God were ashamed of it. And thence,
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 29 
 
 Rejected down the abhorring steeps, man's life 
 
 Is wasted in this country, set to run 
 
 A blind, ignorant, unremembered course, 
 
 Treading with hopeless feet of griev'd waters 
 
 Unending unblest spaces, the shameful road 
 
 Of dirt thickening into slime its flow, 
 
 An insane weather driving. For at the issue, 
 
 Hovering mightily fledge to beat it on, 
 
 A climate of demon's wings o'erarches man, 
 
 The hatred God has sent pursuing him. 
 
 Fierce hawking spirits wrong him, hungry Cold, 
 
 Crazes of Fear and sickening Want, and huge 
 
 Injurious Darkness, lord of the bad wings 
 
 That pester all the places beyond God, 
 
 These at the door, with lust to embody themselves, 
 
 Wait for the naked journey of man's life 
 
 To seize it into ache, ravenously. 
 
 They never leave, down all its patient way, 
 
 To meddle with its waters, till they be sour 
 
 As venom, salt as weeping, foully ailing 
 
 \Vith foreign evil, all the sort of desires 
 
 Whoring the shuddering life unto their lust. 
 
 Behold man's river now ; it has travelled far 
 
 From that divine loathing, and it is made 
 
 One with the two main fiends, the Dark and Cold, 
 
 The faithful lovers of mankind. Behold, 
 
 Broad it is now become, a plenteous water, 
 
 A roomy tide. And lo, what oars are these ? 
 
 To sweet sung measure rows what happy fleet, 
 
 With at the lifted prows banners of flame, 
 
 Bravely scaring the darkness to betray 
 
 The black embarasst flood sheared by the stems ?
 
 30 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Behold, at last God for man's misery 
 
 Hath found excuse ! Behold his wretchedness 
 
 Gilded at last with beauty pleasant to God ! 
 
 No longer a useless grief is man's life now ; 
 
 For floating on it, for enjoying it, 
 
 A state of barges goes, the state of kings. 
 
 They bring a day with them of many lamps, 
 
 And as they move, on the black slabbed waters 
 
 Red wounds, and green, and golden, do they shoot 
 
 About them, beautiful cruelty of light ; 
 
 And they throw music over the sounding river. 
 
 I too am walking on the sea of man ; 
 
 I watch your singing and your lamps row past ; 
 
 And under me I hear the river speaking, 
 
 The great blind water moaning to itself 
 
 For sorrow it was made. But in your blithe ships 
 
 Silverly chained with luxury of tune 
 
 Your senses lie, in a delicious gaol 
 
 Of harmony, hours of string'd enchantment. 
 
 Or if you wake your ears for the river's voice, 
 
 You hear the chime of fawning lipping water, 
 
 Trodden to chattering falsehood by the keels 
 
 Of kings' happiness. And what is it to you, 
 
 When strangely shudders the fabric of your navy 
 
 To feel the thrilling tide beneath it grieving ; 
 
 Or when its timber drinks the river's mood, 
 
 The mighty mood of man's Despair, which runs 
 
 Like subtle electric blood through all the hulls, 
 
 And tips each masthead with a glimmering candle 
 
 Blue pale and flickering like a ghost ? For you 
 
 Are too much lit to mark a corposant. 
 
 Nor yours the stale smell of the unhealthful stream,
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 31 
 
 Clotted with mud and sullen with its weeds, 
 
 Who carry your own air with you, blest sweet 
 
 And drencht with many scattered fragrances. 
 
 You, sailing in golden ignorance, know not 
 
 The anxious flow of life under your way : 
 
 Do you not miss half the wonder of you ? 
 
 That so your happiness in the thought of God 
 
 Stands, that he open'd man's expense of grief 
 
 To give your oars unscrupulous room, to be 
 
 The buoyancy of your delighted barges, 
 
 Sliding with fortunate lanterns and with tunes 
 
 And odorous holiday, O kings, O you 
 
 The pleasure of God, richly, joyously launcht 
 
 On this kind sea, the tame sorrow of Man ? 
 
 You need poets to reckon your marvellousness 
 
 Ahasuerus. 
 
 Where is he driving ? I set thee not to this ; 
 It was to tell what I, not what they, be. 
 
 Poet. 
 
 How can they know what thou art, if not first 
 I tell them what they are themselves, my king ? 
 
 Ahasuerus. 
 
 Thou hast a night, man, not a week to tell them. 
 You men of words, dealers in breath, conceit 
 Too bravely of yourselves ; O I know why 
 You love to make man's life a villainous thing, 
 And pose his happiness with heavy words. 
 You mean to puff your craft into a likeness
 
 32 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Of what hath been in the great days of the Gods. 
 
 When Tiamat, the old foul worm from hell, 
 
 Lay coiled and nested in the unmade world, 
 
 All the loose stuff dragg'd with her rummaging tail 
 
 And packt about her belly in a form, 
 
 Where she could hutch herself and bark at Heaven,- 
 
 The god's bright soldier, Bel, fashioned a wind ; 
 
 And when her jaws began her whining rage 
 
 Against him, into her guts he shot the wind 
 
 And rent the membranes of her life. So you 
 
 Wordmongers would be Bel to the life of man. 
 
 You like not that his will should heap the world 
 
 About him in a fumbled den of toil ; 
 
 And set the strength of his spirit, not to joy, 
 
 But to laborious money ; so you stand forth 
 
 And think with spoken wind to make such stir 
 
 And rumble in the inwards of man's life, 
 
 That he in a noble colic will leap up 
 
 Out of his cave of work and breathe sweet air. 
 
 You will not do it : man prefers his den. 
 
 Now leave mankind alone and sing of me. 
 
 Poet. 
 
 So ; I will tell thy glory now aright. 
 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
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 33 
 
 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 clothed 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, 
 D
 
 34 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 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
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 35 
 
 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,
 
 36 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 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,
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 37 
 
 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. 
 
 The truth does not more wonderfully walk, 
 
 Whose gestures are the stars, than in her ways 
 
 This queen's body sways. 
 
 And there is such language in her hair 
 
 As the sun's self doth talk. 
 
 King, let them see her ! lest they return unwise 
 
 Of thy true kingship, and among themselves 
 
 Imagine that they are even as thou, 
 
 Save in the height of throne. Let them perceive 
 
 That, having Vashti, there is none like thee : 
 
 Others are men ; but thou art he whose spirit 
 
 Is station'd in the beauty of the queen, 
 
 Whose flesh knows such amazement as before 
 
 Never beneath the lintels of man's sense 
 
 Came, an especial messenger from Heaven. 
 
 Ahasuerus. 
 
 Bring her ! let the Queen come crowned before us ! 
 Slaves, fetch here all your light to shine upon 
 My Vashti's beauty ; let there be clear floor ; 
 Make the air worthy her with camphire lit
 
 38 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 And frankincense ; and fill the hall with flames. 
 Then gaze, kings, and stare, hunger with your eyes 
 Upon her face ; but within brakes of fear 
 Fasten your wills, and move not from your seats. 
 Exult, you thron'd nations, that to your sight 
 She shall be lent, the pleasure of the king, 
 She whom to visit so inflames my soul, 
 That I can judge how God burns to enjoy 
 The beauty of the Wisdom that he made 
 And separated from himself to be 
 Wife to the divine act, mother of heavens. 
 Let Vashti come and stand before the kings ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 VASHTI AND THE KING'S WOMEN AT THEIR FEAST 
 
 1st Woman. 
 Queen, is it well to be so sorrowful ? 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 And when the King our lord spendeth on us 
 This festival out of his rich heart, to shoot 
 Thy looks upon us as thou wouldst rebuke us ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 Your pardon : do I trouble your greed ? 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 Our greed ? 
 Rather our gratitude
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 39 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 That we have share 
 
 In these devices of the King's own cooks, 
 These costly breads, 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 And these delicious meats, 
 These sauces mixt of spicy treacle and balm. 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 
 And wines, purple and blue and like gold fire, 
 Made of the colours of the morning sea 
 And fragrance wild as woman's need of love. 
 
 Vashti. 
 Enjoy them then : who lets you ? 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 
 Thou dost, Queen. 
 
 Thou sittest with hands folded in thy robe, 
 And in the midst of delicacies wilt fast. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 We see thine eyes upon them as they were 
 Wickedness. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 'Tis rare bounty that we women 
 Halve with the King his festival. 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 
 And thou, 
 It seems, scarce findest it thankworthy.
 
 40 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Again, 
 
 Your pardon : but ye need not gaze on me. 
 And yet, why am I sorrowful ? In truth, 
 Is it a sorrow that so leans upon me ? 
 I know not. But my soul knoweth right well 
 That I am watched. 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 
 Then in thy conscience, Queen, 
 Thou feelest the King requiring thanks of thee. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Be careful of thy tongue, and of the wine. 
 Who watches me ? Eyes are fixt on my soul, 
 Eyes of desire. I think some great event 
 Hath pusht its spirit forward of its time, 
 To stand here quietly waiting, into my mind 
 Inflicting its strange want of me, and ready 
 To fetch my heart, and ready to take my hand 
 And lead me away shrinking : is it Death ? 
 It is some marvellous thing : for I know surely 
 Behind it crowd out of their discipline 
 The coming hours to watch me seized, and stare 
 With questioning brows on me, and lift lean hands 
 From under gowns of shadow to point me out 
 One to another, saying : " This is she : 
 How will she bear it, think ye ? " Is it not cold ? 
 Was there not wind just then ? The flames are steady. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 No wind at all : the air's like one closed room.
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 41 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 There is no talk like this at the King's feast, 
 I warrant. Were we not best be merry, 
 And thank the King so for these wines and sweets ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Yes, let us not forget our thankfulness ; 
 For is not, sisters, everything we have 
 Mere gift ? 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 My beauty pays for what I get. 
 
 Vashti. 
 I would, 'twere not so. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 Queen, I doubt thee not. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Pert little fool, where lies thy beauty, then ? 
 Thou hast it not : its place is not thy flesh, 
 But the delighting loins of men, there only. 
 Thy beauty ! And thou knowest not that man 
 Hath forged in his furnace of desire our beauty 
 Into that chain of law which binds our lives 
 Man, please thyself, and woman, please thou man. 
 But thou wilt have thy beauty pence, thou sayest ? 
 And what's thy purchase ? Listen, I will tell thee : 
 Just that thou art not whipt and drudged : the rest, 
 All that thou hast beyond, is gift.
 
 42 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 Why not ? 
 Vashti. 
 
 Truly, for thee, why not ? 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 Wouldst thou, 'twere yours ? 
 
 1st Woman. 
 Thou shudderest again ; what ails thee, Queen ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 I would have lived in beauty once. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 In whose ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 I know the King finds relish in thy looks, 
 Wench, and I have no care to grudge thy pride ; 
 But when thy face is named throughout the world 
 For wonder, I will bear thy impudence. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 But tell us, Queen, thy thought ; for we have made 
 An end almost of eating ; and it seems 
 It will be somewhat strange, pleasing our mood. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Strange you will find it doubtless ; but scarce pleasing, 
 Unless 'tis pleasing to have news of danger.
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 43 
 
 Listen ! your lives are propt like a rotten house. 
 Your souls, that should have noble lodging here, 
 Have crept like peasants into huts that have 
 No force within their walls, but must be shored 
 With borrowed firmness. Yea, man's stubborn lust 
 To feed his heart upon your beauty, is all 
 The strength your lives have, all that holdeth you 
 Safe in the world, propt like a rotten house. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 Shall woman then not love to have man's love ? 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 
 To feed his heart on us, thou sayest ? O yea ! 
 And how can a woman know such might of living 
 As when upon her breast she feels the man, 
 The man of her desire, like sacrament 
 Feeding his heart, yea and his soul, on her ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 Are we for nought but so to nourish him ? 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 
 Thou art too proud, O Queen, too proud and lonely, 
 And goest apart to have thy thought too much. 
 'Tis known, too much thought dazes oft a mind, 
 Till it can learn nought of the signed evil 
 God hath put in the faces of evil notions, 
 That spiritual sight may ken them coming 
 Sly and demure, and safely shut the brain 
 Ere they be in and swell themselves to lordship.
 
 44 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Hence is it that an evil thought in thee 
 Hath dared so far, and played its wickedness 
 Strangely within thee, braving even into speech. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 Strangely indeed thy brain's inhabited. 
 What, is there aught prosperity for woman 
 But to be shining in the thought of man ? 
 
 . Vashti. 
 
 I wisht to prosper in the life I had, 
 That the Gods might approve the flourishing 
 Their heavenly graft of soul took from my flesh. 
 Therefore I wisht to love. And I did love. 
 There came Ahasuerus conquering 
 Into my father's land. My fancying hate 
 Had made a man-beast of him, a thing, like man, 
 Tall in his walk, but in the mood of his eyes 
 A beast, and in the noise of his mouth a beast. 
 He came, and lookt at me ; and, in a while, 
 I saw that he was speaking to me there. 
 And all the maiden went in me before him, 
 Swifter than in a moon which looks against 
 The morning, all the silver courage fails. 
 How cam'st thou to the King ? 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 Sold to him, I. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 Bought by him, I : for he had heard of me.
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 45 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 I also, sold or bought ; nay, rather paid : 
 Paid like cash to him, that as servant king 
 My father might have life, and a throne in life. 
 It mattered nothing then. [The QUEEN pauses. 
 
 Often in early summer, as I walkt 
 A girl singing her happiness, beside 
 The high green corn, holding all earth my own, 
 I saw, as my feet and my voice past by, 
 How in its hiding some croucht little beast 
 Startled, and filled a space of the gentle corn 
 With plunging quivering fear. And always then 
 My heart answer'd the fear that shook the corn, 
 With a sudden doubt in its beating ; for I knew 
 Within my life such rousing of dismay 
 I myself should watch, with seizing wonder. 
 It was so : in the midst of my new love, 
 That promist such a plenty in my soul, 
 At last some sleeping terror leapt awake, 
 And made the young growth shiver and wry about 
 Inwardly tormented. Yea, and my heart 
 It was, my heart in its hiding of green love, 
 That took so wildly the approaching sound 
 Of something strangely fearful walking near. 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 A queer tale, this. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 A spectre visited you ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 Indeed, a spectre.
 
 46 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 That have I never seen. 
 
 Was it the kind with nose and mouth grown sharp 
 To an eagle's bill, and claws upon its fingers, 
 The curve of them pasted with a bloody glue ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 The spectre was my beauty. 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 
 It is as I said. 
 
 O Queen, send for a wise man in the morning ; 
 And let him leech thy spirit. 
 
 4th Woman. 
 
 I've heard, the best 
 Riddance for evil notions in the mind, 
 Is for a toad to sit upon the tongue ; 
 While, breathed against the scalp, some power of spells 
 Loosens the clasp the notion hath digg'd deep 
 Into the soul ; so that it passeth down, 
 Shaken and mastered, and creeps into the toad, 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 Which gives a foolish kick or start to feel it, 
 
 4>th Woman. 
 Then the trapt notion may be easily burnt. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Yea ? I think mine would not burn easily. 
 With fire, with such indignant fire as pride
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 47 
 
 Yields, when it must destroy itself to feel 
 
 The power of the world touch it with humbling flame, 
 
 With such a fire, whose heat you know not of, 
 
 Have I assayed this notion, didst thou say ? 
 
 And it stood upright, with its shape unquencht, 
 
 And lived within the fire. 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 
 Thou hast it wrong. 
 
 4th Woman. 
 Thou hast not understood the cure we meant. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 Stop brabbling, fools ; I would hear the Queen's mind. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 I too ; I hate a thing I cannot skill ; 
 And thee and all that lives in thee, O Queen, 
 I would keep friendly to my spirit ; yet 
 I do suspect something amazing in thee. 
 
 Vasliii. 
 
 And if thou seest not how slippery 
 Is women's place in the world of men, 'tis like 
 Thou wilt amazedly the vision take, 
 When I have led thee up my tower of thought. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 How are we dangerous ? Are we not women, 
 Man's endless need ?
 
 48 
 
 Vasliti. 
 
 Ay, and therein the danger ! 
 Is it not possible he hate the need ? 
 For not as he were a beast it urges him : 
 He is aware of it, he knows its force. 
 The kind of beasts is in their blood alone, 
 But man is blood and spirit. And in him, 
 As in all creature, is the word from God, 
 " Utter thyself in joy." 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 And we his joy. 
 
 Fashti. 
 
 But such an one that may become, perhaps, 
 Something not utterance, but strict commanding, 
 Yea, mastery, like the dancing in the blood 
 Of one bitten by spiders. And it is Spirit, 
 Spirit enjoying woman, that hath sent 
 A beating poison in the blood of man, 
 The poison which is lust. Spirit was given 
 To use life as a sense for ecstasy ; 
 Life mixt with Spirit must exult beyond 
 Sex-madden'd men and sex-serving women, 
 Into some rapture where sweet fleshly love 
 Is as the air wherein a music rings. 
 But blood hath captured Spirit ; Spirit hath given 
 The strength of its desire of joy to make 
 What ecstasy it may of woman's beauty, 
 And of this only, doing no more than train 
 The joys of blood to be more keen and cunning ;
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 49 
 
 As men have trained and tamed wild lives of the forests, 
 Breeding them to more excellent shape and size 
 And tireless speed, and to know the words of men. 
 So the wise masterful Spirit rules the joys 
 That come all fierce from roaming the dark blood ; 
 They are broken to his desire, they are wily for him, 
 A pack of lusts wherewith the Spirit hunts 
 Pleasure ; and the chief prey the pleasure hid 
 In woman. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 What joys are these ? 
 
 Fashti. 
 
 What joys ? 
 
 The joys of rutting beasts, tamed to endure, 
 Tamed to be always swift to answer Spirit, 
 Yet fiercer for their taming, wilder hungers ; 
 So that the Spirit, if he hunt them not, 
 Fears to be torn by them in mutiny. 
 Now know you woman's beauty ! 'Tis these joys, 
 The heat of the blood's desires, changed and mastered 
 By the desire of spirit, trained to serve 
 Spirit with lust, spirit with woman enjoy'd. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 Queen, I am beautiful, and cannot boast 
 Thy subtle thinking ; and to one like me, 
 What matters whence come beauty, so I have it ? 
 Let it be but the witless mating of beasts, 
 Tamed and curiously knowing itself 
 And cunning in its own delight : What then ? 
 The nightingale desires his little lass,
 
 50 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 And that brings out of his heart a radiant song ; 
 
 A man desires a woman, and for song 
 
 Out of his heart comes beauty, that like flame 
 
 Reaches towards her, and covers her limbs with light. 
 
 If it so please thee, say that neither loves 
 
 Aught but his life's desire, fashioning it 
 
 Adorably to marvellous song and beauty. 
 
 What then ? Enough that the wonder lights on me, 
 
 To me is paid the worship of the wonder. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 O well I know how strong we are in man ; 
 His senses have our beauty for their god, 
 And his delight is built about us like 
 Towering adoration, housing worship. 
 The spirit of man may dwell in God : the world, 
 From the soft delicate floor of grass to those 
 Rafters of light and hanging cloths of stars, 
 Is but the honour in God's mind for man, 
 Wrought into glorious imagination. 
 But women dwell in man ; our temple is 
 The honour of man's sensual ecstasy, 
 Our safety the imagined sacredness 
 Fashion'd about us, fashion'd of his pleasure. 
 Beauty hath done this for us, and so made 
 Woman a kind within the kind of man. 
 Yea, there is more than this : a mighty need 
 Hath man made of his woman in the world. 
 Now man walks through his fate in fellowship 
 Of two companion spirits ; ay, and these 
 With double mastery go on with him. 
 The one in black disgraceful weeds is Toil ;
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 51 
 
 She sows with never-ending gesture all 
 
 The path before his feet, cursing the way 
 
 She drags him on with growth of flouting crops, 
 
 Urchin thistles, and rank flourishing nettles. 
 
 But the other has a wear of woven gleam, 
 
 And with soft hand beseeches him his face 
 
 Away from the hardships of his hurt stung feet, 
 
 That with his eyes he may desire her looks : 
 
 And she is Beauty of Woman, man's dear blessing. 
 
 And if you would be wise, be well afraid 
 
 To think you have more office than to be 
 
 A sweet delicious while amid man's hours 
 
 Of worldly labour : we are too precious, so. 
 
 Yet see you not how this that Spirit hath done 
 
 Is also dangerous ? For there are mightier needs ! 
 
 There's no content for Spirit in the world 
 
 Till he has striven out of bounded fate, 
 
 And sent an infinite desire forth 
 
 Into the whole eternity of things. 
 
 Yea, spirit ails with loathing secretly 
 
 The irremediable force of being; 
 
 Unless, with free expatiate desire, 
 
 He shape into the endless burning flux 
 
 Of starry world blindly adventuring 
 
 Some steady righteous destiny for Spirit : 
 
 Even as dreaming brain fashions the fume 
 
 Of life asleep to marshall'd imagery. 
 
 But we are in the way of this : and man, 
 
 The more he needs to announce upon the world, 
 
 Over him going like a storming air, 
 
 That fashioning word which utters the divine 
 
 Imagination working in him like anger;
 
 52 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 The more he finds his virtue caught and clogged 
 In the fierce luxury he hath made of woman. 
 Thence are we sin, thence deliciously 
 Persuading man refuse his highest ardour. 
 Too easily kindled was the ecstasy 
 Of fleshly passion, with a joyous flame 
 Too readily answering the Spirit's fire ! 
 He burns with us alone, so fragrantly 
 His noblest vigour swoons delighted. Yea, 
 Women, I tell you, not far now is man 
 From hating us, so passionate the joy 
 Of loving us, so mightily drawing down 
 Into the service of his pleasure here 
 All forces of his being. The pleasure soon 
 Becomes a shame, scarce to be spoken aloud ; 
 And in best minds, either detested doting 
 Man's joy in woman's beauty will become ; 
 Or a strict binding fire, holding him down 
 In lust of beauty where no beauty is. 
 
 [The KING'S MESSENGER comes in. 
 
 Messenger. 
 
 To Vashti, to the Queen of the world, to her 
 In whom the striving beauty of the world 
 Hath made perfection, from the King I come. 
 And the King bids me say, Rise from thy feast ; 
 For thou must be to-night thyself a feast : 
 The vision of thy loveliness must now 
 Feed with astonishment my vassals' hearts. 
 Therefore thou art to come.
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 53 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 And tell the King 
 I will not come. 
 
 Messenger. 
 
 What was there in my words 
 Thou dost not understand ? I say, the King 
 Would show thy beauty to his under-kings, 
 That with this also they may be amazed 
 And utterly fear his fortune. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 So. Go back, 
 
 Tell the King I have hearkened to his message, 
 And tell him I will not come. 
 
 Messenger. 
 
 What sickness shall I say has lighted on thee, 
 So that thou canst not come ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Thou weariest me. 
 
 Say this to the King, Vashti will not come. 
 Are they not plain, my words ? Canst thou not learn 
 them? 
 
 Messenger. 
 
 Give me some softer speech. Must I not fear 
 I shall earn whipping if I take these words ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 I pray thee, go. Thou art a trouble here ; 
 Seest thou not how all these feasting women
 
 54 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Pause, and the pleasure is distrest in them ? 
 Thou hast thy message : say, She will not come. 
 Back to the King, now ! 
 
 Messenger. 
 
 I am whipt for this. 
 
 [He goes. 
 
 Vasliti. 
 
 It seems, my sisters, we have changed our moods. 
 But now, my mind was heavy, you were blithe ; 
 And in a moment, you, behold, are fixt 
 Gazing like desperate things, while I rejoice. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 Rejoice ! thou dost rejoice ? then madness does. 
 
 Vashii. 
 
 I know not that : but certainly I know 
 A mind, that has been feeling for long time 
 The greatness of some hovering event 
 Poised over life, will rejoice marvellously 
 When the event falls, suddenly seizing life : 
 Like faintness when a thunderstorm comes down, 
 That turns to exulting when the lightning flares, 
 Shattering houses, making men afraid. 
 And this is my event : I am its choice. 
 Yea, not as a storm, but as an eagle now 
 It stoops on me ; and, though I am its prey, 
 I am lifted by majestic wings, my soul 
 Is clothed in swiftness of a mighty soaring.
 
 3rd Woman. 
 What glory can her wondrous eyes behold ? 
 
 4th Woman. 
 
 Seemeth her flesh to glow ! and her throat pants 
 As one who feels a god within her, come 
 Out of his heaven to enjoy her. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 Ay, 
 
 Now it is true, the Queen is beautiful ; 
 She could, so looking, enrage love in one 
 Whose blood a hundred years had frozen dry. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 Ah, but I fear thee, Queen : this dreadful mood 
 Will break the pleasantness of friendship thou 
 Hast kept for me, as a ship in a gale is broken. 
 
 Fashti. 
 
 Ay, very like : and the event will rouse 
 Such work in the water where your comfort sails, 
 More than my fortune will to pieces blow ; 
 You too I think will get some perilous tossing 
 From what proves my destruction. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 And, so knowing, 
 
 For mere insane delight in violent things, 
 Wilt thou awake in the fickle mood of men
 
 56 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Again that ancient ignominy which once, 
 
 Till beauty freed them, loaded the souls of women ? 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 Truly, long time will work what now thou doest. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 I know not rightly what I here begin ; 
 No more than one, who stands in midst of wind 
 On a tall mountain, knows what breaking down 
 The earth must have ere the wind's speed is done, 
 And it hath drawn out of the drenched soil 
 The clinging vapours, and made bright the air. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 But we'll not have thee disobedient. 
 The King's mind is a summer over us ; 
 Thou with a storm wilt fill him, and the hail 
 That shatters thee will leave us bruised and weeping. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Be sulky in his arms : the weather soon 
 Will pleasantly favour thee again. 
 
 4th Woman. 
 
 No, no ; 
 
 Not because from our heaven of man's mind 
 Thou wilt bring down on us a rain of scorn, 
 But because thou art wicked, thou must go 
 And tell the King the wine was rash in thee.
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 57 
 
 Vashti. 
 I must ! 
 
 3rd Woman. 
 
 Thou must indeed : words such as thine 
 Never were impudent in men's ears before. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 We will not have thce disobedient. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 
 Here comes another : gentle words, my Queen, 
 Let him take from thee now, and swiftly follow 
 Contrite, and let the beauty of thy grief 
 Bend pleading against the King's furious eyes. 
 
 [The POET comes in, and kneels. 
 
 Poet. 
 
 I will not ask thee what strange anger sent 
 That blaze of proud contempt in the King's face : 
 But ere the voice of the King seals up thy life 
 In an unalterable judgment, I 
 Am granted now to come as his last message : 
 And, as I will, to speak. Here then I am 
 Not as commanding, but on my knees beseeching, 
 And for myself beseeching. 
 
 Fashti. 
 
 What hast thou 
 To do with this ? and wherefore wert thou chosen ?
 
 58 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Poet. 
 
 I was to praise the splendour of the King ; 
 And I made thee his splendour ; and the King, 
 Knowing my truth, would have thee brought, to break 
 All the pride of his under-kings, already 
 Desperate with his riches, and now seeing 
 What marvellous fortune also hath his love, 
 How marvellously delighted. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Get thee back : 
 And tell the King 'tis time his judgment fell. 
 
 Poet. 
 Not till thou hearest me. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 I will not hear thee. 
 
 Wouldst thou go on before me, and say, Look, 
 This is the woman which I told you of, 
 You kings ; does she not, as I said, stir up 
 Quaking desire through all your muscles ? Look, 
 And thank the King for showing you his lust ! 
 I will not hear thee. 
 
 Poet. 
 
 Dost thou not know, my Queen, 
 That, when I taught thee songs, thou taughtest me 
 The divine secret, Beauty ? My small tunes 
 Were games to thee ; but now I am he who knows 
 How man may walk upon Eternity
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 59 
 
 Wearing the world as a god wears his power, 
 
 The world upon him as a burning garment ; 
 
 For I am he whose spirit knoweth beauty, 
 
 And thou art the knowledge, Queen ! Therefore thou 
 
 must 
 
 Come with me to the kings of all the nations ; 
 For the whole earth must know of thee. These kings, 
 Though it be but a lightning-moment struck 
 Upon the darkness of their ignorant hearts, 
 Must know what I know ; that there is a beauty, 
 Only in thee shown forth in bodily sign, 
 Which can of life make such triumphant glee, 
 The force of the world seems but man's spirit utter'd. 
 
 Vasliti. 
 
 And what am I to know ? This must, no doubt, 
 Content me, that we are as wine, and men 
 By us have senses drunk against his toil 
 Of knowing himself, for all his boasting mind, 
 Caught by the quiet purpose of the world, 
 Burnt up by it at last, like something fallen 
 In molten iron streaming. But I know 
 Not drunken may man's soul master his world ; 
 And I now make for woman a new mood, 
 Wherein she will not bear to know herself 
 A heady drug for man. I will not come. 
 
 Poet. 
 
 I, who have brought thy insult on the King, 
 Will scarce escape his judgment. But not this 
 My pleading. Sccst thou not how wonderfully 
 The mean affairs of living fill with gleam,
 
 60 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Like pools of water lying in the sun, 
 
 Because above men's minds renown of thee, 
 
 The certain knowledge of beauty, now presides ? 
 
 It must not be that thou, for a whim of scorn, 
 
 Wilt let thyself be made unseen, unheard of. 
 
 Beauty is known in thee ; but, without thee, 
 
 It is a rumour buzzing hardly heard. 
 
 And without beauty men are scurrying ants, 
 
 Rapid in endless purpose uncn joyed ; 
 
 Or newts in holes under the banks of ponds, 
 
 Feeding and breeding without sound or light. 
 
 For the one thing that is the god in man 
 
 Is a delight that admirably knows 
 
 Itself delighted ; and it is but beauty. 
 
 And thou art beauty known. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Truly, I say, 
 
 I know not how to bear it ; that for you 
 To feel yourselves, though in the depth of the world, 
 Dizzy, and thence as if elate on high, 
 We women are devised like drunkenness. 
 And what are we to make of ourselves here, 
 When in the joy of us you think the world 
 No more than your spirits crying out for joy ? 
 Is this your love, to dream a god of man, 
 And women to keep as wine to make you dream ? 
 Now, back ! or the eunuchs handle thee. 
 
 [He goes. 
 Vashti. 
 
 You will not hear of me after this night, 
 And thus I say farewell. It may be, far
 
 DISCO VEEY AND PROPHECY 61 
 
 In time not yet appointed, our life's spirit 
 Will know its fate, through all the thickets of grief, 
 As simply and as gladly as one's eyes 
 Greet the blue weather shining behind trees. 
 Yea, and I think there will be more than this : 
 Is not the world a terrible thing, a vision 
 Of fierce divinity that cares not for us ? 
 Do we not seem immortal good desire, 
 Mortally wronged by capture in swift being- 
 Made of a world that holds us firm for ever ? 
 And yet is it not beautiful, the world ? 
 How read you that ? How is our wrong delightful ? 
 Thus it is : Spirit finding the world fair, 
 Is spirit in dim perception of its own 
 Radiant desire piercing the worldly shadow. 
 But what is dim will become glorious clear : 
 All in a splendour will the Spirit at last 
 Stand in the world, for all will be naught else 
 But Spirit's own perfect knowledge of itself; 
 Yea, this dark mighty seeming of the world 
 Is but the Spirit's own power unsubdued ; 
 And as the unruled vigours of thought in sleep 
 Crowd on the brain, and become dream therein ; 
 So the strange outer forces of man's spirit 
 Are the appearing world. But all at last, 
 Subdued, becomes self-knowing ecstasy, 
 The whole world brightens into Spirit's desire. 
 This is for Spirit to be lord of life ; 
 And man, with foolish hope looking for this, 
 Takes the ravishing drunkenness he hath 
 From us, for knowledge of the Spirit's power. 
 But it will come by love. It will be twain
 
 62 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Who go together to this height of mastery 
 Over the world, governing it as song 
 Is govern'd by the heart of him who sings ; 
 But never one by means of one shall reach it : 
 Not man alone, nor woman alone, but each 
 Enabling each, together, twain in one. 
 
 [ The KING'S MESSENGER comes in. 
 
 Messenger. 
 
 I speak to the rebellious woman Vashti. 
 Thou art no more a Queen ; thou hast no place 
 In the King's house, nor in the life of men : 
 Thus art thou judged. Go forth now ; let the night 
 Befriend thee, for no other friend thou hast, 
 For the day shall reveal thee to men's eyes, 
 And they, obedient to the King, will hate thee. 
 Therefore be gone : and as the beasts have homes 
 In the wild ground, have thy home from henceforth. 
 
 Vashti. 
 Gives the King reason for this judgment ? 
 
 Messenger. 
 
 Yea; 
 
 Because thou art a danger to all marriage, 
 Because men are dishonoured in their rule 
 Of women by thy insult, thou art judged. 
 
 2nd Woman. 
 
 But if the King had heard her crazy words 
 He would have put her where they tame with thongs 
 Maniacs.
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 63 
 
 4th Woman. 
 
 When the King hath slept, we will 
 To-morrow crave his presence, and will stand 
 In humble troop before him, thanking him 
 For that his virtue hath this wicked woman 
 Purged from among us, saved us from infection. 
 
 1st Woman. 
 Alas, my Queen ! where lies thy journey now ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Ay, where to go ? What shelter for me now 
 Will any of the dwelt earth dare to give ? 
 My beauty as a branding now will mark me ; 
 And shame will run before me, and await 
 My coming, wheresoever I would lodge. 
 For out of Shushan to the ends of the earth 
 Great news runs, with a hidden soundless speed 
 Through secret channels in the folks' dim mind, 
 As water races through smooth sloping gutters. 
 Swifter than any feet could bear the tale, 
 Going unheard, already posts abroad 
 A buried river, and will soon burst up 
 In towns and markets, far as the width of day, 
 A bubbling clamour, wonderful wild news : 
 "Vashti the Queen is judged and forced to go 
 Roaming the earth, outcast and infamous ; 
 Look out for her ! Be ready, if she comes, 
 With stones and hooting voices ! " Fare you well, 
 Women whom once I knew. You are quit of me : 
 Pardon me if I add, And I of you.
 
 64 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 IV 
 
 Into the darkness fared the outcast Queen ; 
 Fearless her face, and searching with proud gaze 
 The impenetrable hour. Behind her burned 
 The sky, held by the open kiln of the town 
 In a great breath of fire, yellow and red, 
 From out the festival streets, and myriad links. 
 Still might she taste, and still must choke to taste, 
 The fragrance of sweet oils and gums aflame 
 Capturing the cool night with spicy riches ; 
 Still after her through the hollow moveless air 
 The sounded ceremonies came, the cry 
 Of dainty lust in winding tune of fifes, 
 The silver fury of cymbals clamouring 
 Like frenzy in a woman-madden'd brain ; 
 And drumming underneath the whole wild noise, 
 Like monstrous hatred underneath desire, 
 The thunder of the beaten serpent-skins. 
 Yea, in the town behind her, flaring Shushan, 
 She heard Man, meaning to adore himself, 
 Throned on the wealth of earth as God in heaven, 
 And making music of his glorying thought, 
 Merely betray the mastery of his blood, 
 His sexual heart, his main idolatry, 
 Woman, and his lust to devour her beauty, 
 Himself devoured ceaselessly by her beauty. 
 And, well she knew, to herself bitterly smiling, 
 How the King seated amid his fellow-kings 
 Devised his grievous rage, feeling himself 
 Insulted in his dearest mind, his rule
 
 DISCOVERY AND PEOPHECY 65 
 
 Over the precious pleasure of his women 
 
 Wounded : how the man's wrath would hiss and swell 
 
 Like gross spittle spat into red-hot coals. 
 
 But as the Queen fared through the blinded hour, 
 Sudden against the darkness of her eyes 
 There came a wind of light. Crimson it was, 
 With smoky lightnings braided, in its first 
 Swift surge into the gloom before her face ; 
 But it began to golden, and became 
 Astonishingly white. And as she stood 
 With rigour in her nerves, a mighty shudder 
 Ravisht the light, and in the midst appeared 
 Vision, a goddess, terrible and kind ; 
 And to the Queen the goddess spoke, in voice 
 That healed her anger with its quietness. 
 
 Ishtar. 
 
 I am the goddess Ishtar, and thou art 
 My servant. Wilt thou any help of me ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Am I then one whom gods may help ? I am 
 By men judged hateful : surely I am thereby 
 Made over to the demons, and not thine. 
 
 Ishtar. 
 
 Yet art thou mine, because thou knowest well 
 Thou disobeyest me. 
 
 Vashti. 
 How do I so ?
 
 66 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Ishtar. 
 
 I am the goddess of the power of women, 
 And passion in the hearts of men is my 
 Divinity. 
 
 Vasliti. 
 
 Yea, then I disobey thee. 
 
 Ishtar. 
 
 And yet thou shalt not fear me wronging thee : 
 Tell me, O thou Despair, whither thou goest ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 Thy taunt goes past me ; I am not despair. 
 
 Ishtar. 
 
 Verily, but thou art. Is not thy mind 
 A hot revolter from the service due 
 To my divinity, passion in men's hearts ? 
 Is there aught else that thou mayst serve ? Thou 
 
 knowest 
 There is naught else : therefore thou art Despair. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 That I am infamous, I know. But even now, 
 Now when I learn I am to gods no more 
 Than to the lust of men, I will not be 
 Despair. 
 
 Ishtar. 
 
 Who means so greatly to serve pride, 
 That the service of the world is a thing loath'd,
 
 DISCOVERY AND PEOPHECY 67 
 
 Is desperate, avoided by mankind, 
 
 Unpleasing to the gods. We, who look down, 
 
 Know that the world and pride may both be served. 
 
 Yet also that it was too hard for thee 
 
 We know, and pardon. Thou shalt tell me now 
 
 Why thou refusest the life given thee. 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 Because I will not woman should be sin 
 Amid man's life. You gods have given man 
 Desire that too much knows itself ; and thence 
 He is all confounded by the pleasure of us. 
 How sweetly doth the heart of man begin 
 Desiring us, how like music and the green 
 First happiness of the year ! But this can grow 
 To uncontrollably crowding lust, beyond 
 All power of delight to utter, thence 
 Inwardly turned to anger and detesting ! 
 Till, looking on us with strange eyes, man finds 
 We are not his desire : it was but sex 
 Inflamed, so that it roused the breaking forth 
 Of secret fury in him, consuming life, 
 Yea, even the life that would reach up to know 
 The heaven of gods above it. 
 
 Ishtar. 
 
 And what, for this, 
 Dost thou refuse ? 
 
 Vashti. 
 
 I refuse woman's beauty ! 
 Not merely to be feasting with delight 
 Man's senses, I refuse ; but even his heart
 
 68 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 I will not serve. Are we to be for ever 
 Love's passion in man, and never love itself ? 
 Always the instrument, never the music ? 
 
 Ishtar. 
 
 I have not done with man. Thou sayest true, 
 Women are as a sin in life : for that 
 The gods have made mankind in double sex. 
 Sin of desiring woman is to be 
 The knowledgeable light within man's soul, 
 Whereby he kills the darken 'd ache of being. 
 But shall I leave him there ? or shall I leave 
 Woman amid these hungers ? Nay : I hold 
 The rages of these fires as a soft clay 
 Obedient to my handling ; there shall be 
 Of man desiring, and of woman desired, 
 A single ecstasy divinely formed, 
 Two souls knowing themselves as one amazement. 
 All that thou hatest to arouse in man 
 Prepareth him for this ; and thou thyself 
 Art by thy very hate prepared : wherefore 
 The gods forgive thee, seeing what comes of thee. 
 Behold now ! of my godhead I will make 
 Thy senses burn with vision, storying 
 The spirit of woman growing from loved to love. 
 
 The First Vision : Helen. 
 
 Helen am I, a name astonishing 
 The world, a fame that rings against the sky, 
 Like an alarm of brass smitten to sound 
 The news of war against the stone of mountains.
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 69 
 
 I move in power through the minds of men, 
 
 And have no power to hold my power back. 
 
 Men's passions fawn upon my feet, as waves 
 
 That fiercely fawn after the going wind ; 
 
 But not as the wind, shaking off the foam 
 
 Of the pursuing lust of the moaning waves, 
 
 And over the clamour of the evil seas' 
 
 Monstrous word running lightly, unhurt. 
 
 They fawn upon me, all the lusts of the world, 
 
 Bewildering my steps with straining close, 
 
 And breathe their horrible spittle against me. 
 
 Passions cry round me with the yelling cry 
 
 Of dogs chained and starving and smelling blood. 
 
 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
 
 70 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 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
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 71 
 
 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.
 
 72 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 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
 
 DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY 73 
 
 With love of thec. 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. 
 
 Fashti. 
 
 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 ? 
 
 Ishtar. 
 
 Take none of these for perfect : they are moods 
 Purifying my women to become 
 My unexpressive, uttermost intent. 
 As music binds into a strict delight 
 The manifold random sounds that shake the air, 
 Even so fashioned must I have the being 
 That fills with rushing power the boundless spirit : 
 Amidst it, musically firm, a joy 
 That is a fiery knowledge of itself, 
 Thereby self-continent, a globed fire. 
 And she who gave thee wonder, is the sign 
 Of those who firmest, brightest hold their being
 
 74 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Fastened and seized in one enjoyed desire. 
 
 Yet even they are but a making ready 
 
 For what I perfectly intend : in them 
 
 Joy of self-bound desire hath burnt itself 
 
 To extreme purity ; I am free thereby 
 
 To work my meaning through them, my divinity. 
 
 Yea, such clean fire in man and such in woman 
 
 To mingle wonderfully, that the twain 
 
 Become a moment of one blazing flame 
 
 Infinitely upward towering, far beyond 
 
 The boundless fate of spirit in the world. 
 
 But in the way to this are maladies 
 
 And anguish ; and as a perilous bridge 
 
 Over the uncontrolled demanding world, 
 
 Virginity, passionate self-possessing, 
 
 Must build itself supreme, unbreakable. 
 
 1 leave thee : as thou mayst, be comforted 
 
 By prophecy of what I mean in life. 
 
 Against thee is not Heaven ; and thou must 
 
 Endure the hatred men will throw upon thee. 
 
 The shining place w r here Ishtar looked at her 
 Empty the Queen beheld ; and into mist 
 The glory fainted, and the stars came through 
 Untroubled. Into the night the Queen went on.
 
 PART II 
 
 IMPERFECTION
 
 MARY 
 
 [A LEGEND OF THE FORTY-FIVE] 
 
 A street in Carlisle leading to the Scottish Gate. Three 
 girls, MARY, KATRINA, and JEAN. 
 
 Katrina. 
 What a year this has been ! 
 
 Mary. 
 
 There's many a lass 
 
 Will blench to hear the date of it Forty-five, 
 Poor souls ! Why will the men be fighting so, 
 Running away to find out death, as if 
 It were some tavern full of light and fiddling ? 
 And when the doors are shut, what of the girls 
 Who gave themselves away, and still must live ? 
 Are not men thoughtless ? 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Leaving only kisses 
 To be remembered by. 
 
 77
 
 78 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Jean. 
 
 That's not so bad 
 As when the dead lads went beyond kissing. 
 
 Mary. 
 
 Poor souls ! Well, Carlisle has at least three hearts 
 That are not crying for a lad who's gone 
 Listening to the lean old Crowder, Death. 
 We needn't mope : and yet it's sad. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Come on, 
 
 Why are we dawdling ? All the heads are up, 
 Steepled on spikes above the Scottish Gate, 
 Some of the rebels rarely handsome too. 
 
 Mary. 
 Won't it be rather horrible ? 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 A row 
 Of chopt-off heads sitting on spikes ugh ! 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Yes, 
 And I daresay blood dribbling here and there. 
 
 Mary. 
 
 Don't, Jean ! I am going back. I was 
 Forbid the gate.
 
 IMPERFECTION 79 
 
 Katrina. 
 And so was I. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 And I. 
 
 Katrina. 
 But a mere peep at them ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Yes, come on, Mary. 
 
 Mary. 
 We might just see how horrible they are. 
 
 Jean. 
 Sure, they will make us shudder ; 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Or else cry. 
 
 [A MAN meets them. 
 
 Man. 
 Are you for the show, my girls ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 We aren't your girls. 
 
 Katrina. 
 Do you mean the heads upon the Scottish Gate ? 
 
 Man. 
 Ay, that's the show, a pretty one.
 
 80 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Are all 
 The rebels' heads set up ? 
 
 Man. 
 
 All, all ; their cause 
 Is fallen flat ; but go you on and see 
 How wonderly their proud heads are elate. 
 
 Katrina. 
 Do any look as if they died afeared ? 
 
 Man. 
 
 Go and learn that yourselves. And when you mark 
 How grimly addled all the daring is 
 Now in those brains, do as your hearts shall bid you, 
 And that is weep, I hope. 
 
 Mary. 
 
 O let's go back. 
 
 Jean. 
 We have no friends spiked on the Scottish Gate. 
 
 Man. 
 
 No ? Well, there's quite a quire of voices there, 
 Blessing the King's just wisdom for his stern 
 Strong policy with the rebels. 
 
 Mary. 
 
 Who are those ? 
 I think it's fiendish to have killed so many.
 
 IMPERFECTION 81 
 
 Man. 
 
 The chattering birds, my lass, and droning flies : 
 They're proper Whigs, are birds and flies, or else 
 The Whigs are proper crows and carrion-bugs. 
 
 [He goes on past them. 
 
 Katrina. 
 A Jacobite ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 That's it, I warrant you. 
 One of the stay-at-homes. 
 
 Mary. 
 
 Now promise me, 
 We'll only take a glimpse, girls, a short glimpse. 
 
 Jean (laughing). 
 Yes, just to see how horrible they are. 
 
 [They go on towards the gate. 
 
 II 
 
 The Scottish Gate, Carlisle. Among the crowd. 
 
 Mary. 
 O why did we come here ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 One, two, three, four 
 A devil's dozen of them at the least. 
 G
 
 82 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Poor lads ! They did not need to set them up 
 So high, surely. Which is the one you'ld call 
 Prettiest, Jean ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 That fellow with the sneer ; 
 The axe's weight could not ruffle his brow, 
 How signed it is with scorn ! 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Ah yes, he's dark 
 
 And you are red : Mary and I will choose 
 Some golden fellow. Which do you think, Mary ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 O, but mine is the one ! Look do you see ? 
 He must have put his curls away from the axe ; 
 Or did they part themselves when he knelt down, 
 And let the stroke have his nape white and bare ? 
 O could a girl not nestle snug and happy 
 Against a neck, with such hair covering her ! 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Now, Mary, we must make our yellow choice ; 
 You've got good eyes ; which do you fancy ? Jean ! 
 What ails her ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 How she stares ! which is the one 
 She singles out ? That topmost boy it is, 
 Pretty enough for a flaxen poll indeed. 
 Is that your lad, Mary ?
 
 IMPEEFECTION 83 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 She's ill or fey ; 
 
 They are too much for her ; and I truly 
 Am nearly weeping for them and their wives and lasses. 
 Her eyes don't budge ! She's fastened on his face 
 With just the look that one would have to greet 
 The ghost of one's own self. See, all her blood 
 Is trapt in her heart, pale she is as he. 
 
 A Man in the Crowd. 
 
 Can't you see she's fainting ? 'Tis no sight 
 For halfling girls. 
 
 Jean. 
 Halfling yourself. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Mary ! 
 Mary. 
 Let us go home now : help me there, Katrina. 
 
 Katrina. 
 Yes, dear, but are you ill ? 
 
 Mary. 
 
 No : let us go home. 
 
 Katrina (to Jean). 
 
 Come, Jean. Did you not hear her gasp ? We must 
 Be with her on her way home. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 You go then. 
 
 I've not lookt half enough at these. Besides 
 
 [MARY and KATRINA go. 
 
 Well, sir, how dare you speak to girls like that, 
 When they're alone ?
 
 84 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 The Man. 
 
 You needn't be so short ; 
 I guess you're one to take fine care of yourself. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Yes, and Fid choose a better-looking man 
 Than you, my chap, if I wanted company. 
 
 The Man. 
 Come this way, you'll see better. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Impudence ! 
 Who said your arm might be there ? 
 
 The Man. 
 
 O, it's all right. 
 Jean. 
 
 And what do you think of the rebels now they're dead ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 Mary lying awake in bed. 
 
 O let me reason it out calmly ! Have I 
 No stars to take me through this terror, poured 
 Suddenly, dreadfully, on to my heart and spirit ? 
 Why is it I, of all the world I only 
 Who must so love against nature ? I knew 
 Always, that not like harbour for a boat,
 
 IMPERFECTION 85 
 
 Not a smooth safety, Love would take my soul ; 
 But like going naked and empty-handed 
 Into the glitter and hiss of a wild sword-play, 
 I should fall in love, and in fear and danger : 
 But a danger of white light, a fear of sharpness 
 Keen and close to my heart, not as it proves, 
 My heart hit by a great dull mace of terror ! 
 
 So it has come to me, my hope, my wonder ! 
 Now I perceive that I was one of those 
 Who, till love comes, have breath and beating blood 
 In one continual question. All the beauty 
 My happy senses took till now has been 
 Drugg'd with a fiery Avant and discontent, 
 That settled in my soul and lay there burning. 
 The hills, wearing their green ample dresses 
 Right in the sky's blue courts, with swerving folds 
 Along the rigour of their stony sinews 
 (Often they garr'd my breath catch and stumble), 
 The moon that through white ghost of water went, 
 Till she was ring'd about with an amber window, 
 The summer stars seen winking through dusk leaves ; 
 All the earth's manners and most loveliness, 
 All made my asking spirit stir within me, 
 And throb with a question, whose answer is, 
 (As now I know, but then I did not know) 
 There is a Man somewhere meant for me. 
 And I have seen the face of him for whom 
 My soul was made ! 
 
 Ah, somewhere ? Where is that ? 
 Have I not dreamt that he is gone away,
 
 86 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Gone ere he loved me ? Now I lose myself. 
 I only have seen my boy's murdcr'd head. 
 
 Yes, again light breaks through and quells my thought. 
 The whole earth seemed as it belonged to me, 
 A message spoken out in green and blue 
 Specially to my heart ; and it would say 
 That some time, out of the human multitude 
 A face would look into my soul, and sign 
 All my nature, easily as it were wax, 
 With its dear image ; but after that impress 
 I would all harden, so that nought could raze 
 The minting of that seal from off my being. 
 And yesterday it fell. An idle whim 
 To see the rebels on the Scottish Gate, 
 And there was the face of him I was made to love, 
 There, ah God, on the gate, my murder'd lad ! 
 Did any girl have first-sight love like this ? 
 Not to have ever seen him, only seen 
 Such piteous token that he has been born, 
 Lived and grown up to beauty, the man who was meant 
 To sleep upon my breast, and dead before 
 The sweet custom of love could be between us ! 
 To have but seen his face ? Is that enough 
 To make me clear he is my man indeed ? 
 Why, sure there are tales bordering on my lot 
 In misery ? Of hearts who have been stabbed 
 By knowledge that their mates were in the earth, 
 Yet never could come near enough to be healed ; 
 Of those who have gone longing all a life, 
 Because a voice heard singing or a gesture
 
 IMPERFECTION 87 
 
 Seen from afar gospell'd them of love ; 
 And no more than the mere announcement had. 
 Ah, but all these to mine were kindly dealing ; 
 For not till they'd trepann'd him out of life 
 Did he, poor laggard, come to claim my soul. 
 O my love, but your ears played you falsely 
 When they were taken by Death's wily tunes ! 
 
 Am I so hardly done to, who have seen 
 My lover's face, been near enough to worship 
 The very writing of his spirit in flesh ? 
 For having that in my ken, I am not far 
 From loving with my eyes all his body. 
 What a set would his shoulders have, and neck, 
 To bear his goodly-purposed head ; what gait 
 And usage of his limbs ! Ah, do you smile ? 
 W T hy, even so I knew your smile would be, 
 Just such an over-brimming of your soul. 
 O love, love, love, then you have come to me ! 
 How I have stayed aching for you ! Come close, 
 Here's where you should have been long time, long time. 
 It is your rightful place. And I had left 
 Thinking you'ld come and kiss me over my heart ! 
 Ah lad, my lad, they told me you were dead.
 
 88 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 IV 
 
 At Dawn. The Scottish Gate. 
 
 Mary (on her way to the gate, singing to herself). 
 As a wind that has run all day 
 
 Among the fragrant clover, 
 
 At evening to a valley comes ; 
 
 So comes to me my lover. 
 
 And as all night a honcy'd warmth 
 
 Stays where the wind did lie, 
 So when my lover leaves my arms 
 
 My heart's all honey. 
 
 But what have I to do with this ? And when 
 Was that song put in hiding 'mid my thought ? 
 I might be on my way to meet and give 
 Good morrow to my Ah ! last night, last night ! 
 
 fie ! I must not dream so. 
 
 [At the Gate. 
 It was 1 1 
 
 1 am the girl whose lover they have killed, 
 Who never saw him until out of death 
 
 He lookt into my soul. I was to meet 
 Somewhere in life my lover, and behold, 
 He has turned into an inn I dare not enter, 
 And gazes through a window at my soul 
 Going on labour'd with this loving body. 
 Did I not sleep last night with you in my arms ? 
 I could have sworn it. Why should body have
 
 IMPERFECTION 89 
 
 So large a part in love ? For if 'twere only 
 
 Spirit knew how to love, an easy road 
 
 My feet had down to death. But I must want 
 
 Lips against mine, and arms marrying me, 
 
 And breast to kiss with its dear warmth my breast, 
 
 Body must love ! O me, how it must ache 
 
 Before it is as numb as thine, dear boy ! 
 
 Poor darling, didst thou forget that I was made 
 
 To wed thee, body and soul ? For surely else 
 
 Thou hadst not gone from life. 
 
 Ah, folk already, 
 Coming to curse the lie-lit with all their stares. 
 
 V 
 
 KATRINA and JEAN. 
 
 Katrina. 
 Where are you off to, Jean, in such a tear ? 
 
 Jean. 
 I'm busy. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 O you light-skirts ! who is it now ? 
 You think I can't guess what your business is ? 
 Is it aught fresh, or only old stuff warmed ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Does not the smartness in your wits, Katrina, 
 Make your food smack sourly ? Well, this time, 
 It's serious with me. I believe I'm caught.
 
 90 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 O but you've had such practice in being caught, 
 You'll break away quite easily when you want. 
 Tell me now who it is. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 The man who spoke 
 
 When we were at the Scottish Gate that day. 
 O, he's a dapper boy ! Did you mark his eyes ? 
 
 Katrina. 
 Nay, I saw nought but he was under-grown. 
 
 Jean. 
 Pooh ! He can carry me. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Jean, have you heard 
 Of Mary lately ? I vow she's in love. 
 
 Jean. 
 Never ! with whom ? 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 The thing's a wonder, Jean. 
 She'll speak to no one now, and every day, 
 Morning and evening, she's at the gate 
 Gazing like a fey creature on that head 
 She was so stricken to behold you mind it ? 
 I tell you she's in love with it. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 O don't be silly. 
 
 How can you fall in love with a dead man ? 
 And what good could he do you, if you did ? 
 One loves for kisses and for hugs and the rest ; 
 A spunky fellow, that's the thing to love. 
 But a dead man, pah, what a foolery !
 
 IMPERFECTION 91 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 O yes, to you ; for Love's a game for you. 
 'Twill turn out dangerous maybe, but still, a game. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Yes, the best kind of game a girl can play, 
 And all the better for the risk, Katrina. 
 But where the fun would be in Love if he 
 You played with had not heart to jump, nor blood 
 To tingle, nothing in him to go wild 
 At seeing you betray your love for him, 
 Beats me to understand. You'ld be as wise 
 Blowing the bellows at a pile of stone 
 As loving one that never lived for you. 
 It isn't just to make a wind you blow, 
 But to turn red fire into white quivering heat. 
 Whatever she's after, 'tis not love, my girl : 
 I know what love is. But perhaps she saw 
 The poor lad living ? Even had speech with him ? 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Not she ; Mary has never known a lad 
 I did not know as well. We've shared our lives 
 As if we had been sisters, and I'm sure 
 She's never been in love before. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Before ? 
 Don't talk such sentimental nonsense 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Why, 
 
 If Love-at-first-sight can mean anything, 
 Surely 'tis this : there's some one in the world
 
 92 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Whom, if you come across him, you must love, 
 And you could no more pass his face unmoved 
 Than the year could go backwards. Well, suppose 
 He dies just ere you meet him ; and he dead, 
 Ay, or his head alone, is given your eyes, 
 It is enough : he is the man for you, 
 All as if he were quick and signalling 
 His heart to you in smiles. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Believe me, dear, 
 
 You've no more notion of the thing called Love 
 Than a grig has of talking. But I have, 
 And I'm off now to practise with my notions. 
 
 Katrina. 
 Now which is the real love, hers or Mary's ? 
 
 VI 
 
 Before Dawn. At the Scottish Gate. 
 
 Mary. 
 
 Beloved, beloved ! O forgive me 
 That all these days questioning I have been, 
 Struggled with doubts. Your power over me, 
 That here slipt through the nets death caught you in, 
 Lighted on me so greatly that my heart 
 Could scarcely carry the amazement. Now 
 I am awake and seeing ; and I come 
 To save you from this post of ignominy.
 
 IMPERFECTION 93 
 
 A ladder I have filched and thro' the streets 
 
 Borne it, on shoulders little used to weight. 
 
 You'll say that I should not have bruised myself ? 
 
 But it is good, and an case for me, to have 
 
 Some ache of body. Now if there's any chink 
 
 In death, surely my love will reach to thee, 
 
 Surely thou wilt be ware of how I go 
 
 Henceforth through life utterly thine. And yet 
 
 Pardon what now I say, for I must say it. 
 
 I cannot thank thee, my dear murder'd lad, 
 
 For mastering me so. What other girls 
 
 Might say in blessing on their sweethearts' heads, 
 
 How can I say ? They are well done to, when 
 
 Love of a man their beings like a loom 
 
 Seizes, and the loose ends of purposes 
 
 Into one beautiful desire weaves. 
 
 But love has not so done to me : I was 
 
 A nature clean as water from the hills, 
 
 One that had pleased the lips of God ; and now 
 
 Brackish I am, as if some vagrom malice 
 
 Had trampled up the springs and made them run 
 
 Channelling ancient secrecies of salt. 
 
 O me, what, has my tongue these bitter words 
 In front of my love's death ? Look down, sweetheart, 
 From the height of thy sacred ignominy 
 And see my shame. Nay, I will come up to thee 
 And have my pardon from thy lips, and do 
 The only good I can to thee, sweetheart. 
 
 I have done it : but how have I done it ? 
 And what's this horrible thing to do with me ?
 
 94 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 How came it on the ground, here at my feet ? 
 
 O I had better have shirkt it altogether ! 
 
 What do I love ? Not this ; this is only 
 
 A message that he left on earth for me, 
 
 Signed by his spirit, that he had to go 
 
 Upon affairs more worthy than my love. 
 
 We women must give place in our men's thoughts 
 
 To matters such as those. 
 
 God, God, why must I love him ? Why 
 
 Must life be all one scope for the hawking wings 
 
 Of Love, that none the mischief can escape ? 
 
 Well, I am thine for always now, my love, 
 
 For this has been our wedding. No one else, 
 
 Since thee I have had claspt unto my breast, 
 
 May touch me lovingly. 
 
 Light, it is light ! 
 
 What shall I do with it, now I have got it ? 
 O merciful God, must I handle it 
 Again ? I dare not ; what is it to me ? 
 Let me off this ! Who is it clutches me 
 By the neck behind ? Who has hold of me 
 Forcing me stoop down ? Love, is it thou ? 
 Spare me this service, thou who hast all else 
 Of my maimed life : why wilt thou be cruel ? 
 
 grip me not so fiercely, Love ! Ah no, 
 
 1 will not : 'tis abominable
 
 JEAN 
 
 The Parlour of a Public House. Two young men, MORRIS 
 and HAMISH. 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 Come, why so moody, Morris ? Either talk, 
 Or drink, at least. 
 
 Morris. 
 I'm wondering about Love. 
 
 Hamish. 
 Ho, are you there, my boy ? Who may it be ? 
 
 Morris. 
 
 I'm not in love ; but altogether posed 
 I am by lovers. 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 They're a simple folk : 
 I'm one. 
 
 Morris. 
 It's you I'm mainly thinking of. 
 
 Hamish. 
 Why, that's an honour, surely. 
 
 95
 
 96 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Morris. 
 
 Now if I loved 
 
 The girl you love, your Jean, (look where she goes 
 Waiting on drinkers, hearing their loose tongues ; 
 And yet her clean thought takes no more of soil 
 Than white-hot steel laid among dust can take !) 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 You not in love, and talking this fine stuff ? 
 
 Morris. 
 
 I say, if I loved Jean, I'ld do without 
 All these vile pleasures of the flesh, your mind 
 Seems running on for ever : I would think 
 A thought that was always tasting them would make 
 The fire a foul thing in me, as the flame 
 Of burning wood, which has a rare sweet smell, 
 Is turned to bitter stink when it scorches flesh. 
 
 Hamish. 
 Why specially Jean ? 
 
 Morris. 
 Why Jean ? The girl's all spirit ! 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 She's a lithe burd, it's true ; that, I suppose, 
 Is why you think her made of spirit, unless 
 You've seen her angry : she has a blazing temper. 
 But what's a girl's beauty meant for, but to rouse 
 Lust in a man ? And where's the harm in that, 
 In loving her because she's beautiful, 
 And in the way that drives me ? I dare say 
 My spirit loves her too. But if it does 
 I don't know what it loves.
 
 IMPERFECTION 97 
 
 Morris. 
 
 Why, man, her beauty 
 Is but the visible manners of her spirit ; 
 And this you go to love by the filthy road 
 Which all the paws and hoofs in the world tread too ! 
 God ! And it's Jean whose lover runs with the herd 
 Of grunting, howling, barking lovers, Jean ! 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 O spirit, spirit, spirit ! What is spirit ? 
 I know I've got a body, and it loves : 
 But who can tell me what my spirit's doing, 
 Or even if I have one ? 
 
 Morris. 
 
 Well, it's strange, 
 
 My God, it's strange. A girl goes through the world 
 Like a white sail over the sea, a being 
 Woven so fine and lissom that her life 
 Is but the urging spirit on its journey, 
 And held by her in shape and attitude. 
 And all she's here for is that you may clutch 
 Her spirit in the love of a mating beast ! 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 Why, she has fifty lovers if she has one, 
 And fifty's few for her. 
 
 Morris. 
 
 I'm going out. 
 
 If the night does me good, I'll come back here 
 Maybe, and walk home with you.
 
 98 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 O don't bother. 
 If I want spirit, it will be for drinking. 
 
 [MORRIS goes out. 
 
 Spirit or no, drinking's better than talking. 
 Who was the sickly fellow to invent 
 That crazy notion spirit, now, I wonder ? 
 But who'd have thought a burly lout like Morris 
 Would join the brabble ? Sure he'll have in him 
 A pint more blood than I have ; and he's all 
 For loving girls with words, three yards away ! 
 
 JEAN comes in. 
 
 Jean. 
 Alone, my boy ? Who was your handsome friend ? 
 
 Hamish. 
 Whoever he was he's gone. But I'm still here. 
 
 Jean. 
 O yes, you're here ; you're always here. 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 Of course, 
 And you know why. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Do I ? I've forgotten. 
 
 Hamish. 
 Jean, how can you say that ? O how can you ?
 
 IMPEEFECTION 99 
 
 Jean. 
 Now don't begin to pity yourself, please. 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 Ah, I am learning now ; it's truth they talk. 
 You would undo the skill of a spider's web 
 And take the inches of it in one line, 
 More easily than know a woman's thought. 
 I'm ugly on a sudden ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 The queer thing 
 
 About you men is that you will have women 
 Love in the way you do. But now learn this ; 
 We don't love fellows for their skins ; we want 
 Something to wonder at in the way they love. 
 A chap may be as rough as brick, if you like, 
 Yes, or a mannikin and grow a tail, 
 If he's the spunk in him to love a girl 
 Mainly and heartily, he's the man for her. 
 My soul, I've done with all you pretty men ; 
 I want to stand in a thing as big as a wind ; 
 And I can only get your paper fans ! 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 You've done with me ? You wicked Jean ! You'll dare 
 To throw me off like this ? After you've made, 
 O, made my whole heart love you ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 You are no good. 
 
 Your friend, now, seems a likely man ; but you ? 
 I thought you were a torch ; and you're a squib.
 
 100 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Hamish. 
 Not love you enough ? Death, I'll show you then. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Hands off, Hamish. There's smoke in you, I know, 
 And splutter too. Hands off, I say. 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 By God 
 Tell me to-morrow there's no force in me ! 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Leave go, you little beast, you're hurting me : 
 I never thought you'ld be so strong as this. 
 Let go, or I'll bite ; I mean it. You young fool, 
 I'm not for you. Take off your hands. O help ! 
 
 [MORRIS has come in unseen and rushes forward. 
 
 Morris. 
 
 You beast ! You filthy villainous fellow ! Now, 
 I hope I've hurt the hellish brain in you. 
 Take yourself off. You'll need a nurse to-night. 
 
 [HAMISH slinks out. 
 Poor girl ! And are you sprained at all ? That ruffian 
 
 Jean. 
 
 O sir, how can I thank you ? You don't know 
 What we poor serving girls must put up with. 
 We don't hear many voices like yours, sir. 
 They think, because we serve, we've no more right 
 To feelings than their cattle. O forgive me 
 Talking to you. You don't come often here.
 
 IMPERFECTION 101 
 
 Morris. 
 
 No, but I will : after to-night I'll see 
 You take no harm. And as for him, I'll smash him. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Yes, break the devil's ribs, I mean, O leave me ; 
 I'm all distraught. 
 
 Morris. 
 Good night, Jean. My name's Morris. 
 
 Jean. 
 Good night, Morris dear. O I must thank you. 
 
 [She suddenly kisses him. 
 Perhaps, perhaps, you'll think that wicked of me ? 
 
 Morris. 
 You wicked ? O how silly ! But good night. 
 
 [He goes. 
 Jean. 
 The man, the man ! What luck ! My soul, what luck ! 
 
 II 
 
 JEAN by herself, undressing. 
 
 Yes, he's the man. Jean, my girl, you're done for, 
 At last you're done for, the good God be thankt. 
 That was a wonderful look he had in his eyes : 
 'Tis a heart, I believe, that will burn marvellously ! 
 Now what a thing it is to be a girl !
 
 102 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Who'ld be a man ? Who'ld be fuel for fire 
 
 And not the quickening touch that sets it flaming ?- 
 
 'Tis true that when we've set him well alight 
 
 (As I, please God, have set this Morris burning) 
 
 We must be serving him like something worshipt ; 
 
 But is it to a man we kneel ? No, no ; 
 
 But to our own work, to the blaze we kindled ! 
 
 O, he caught bravely. Now there's nothing at all 
 
 So rare, such a wild adventure of glee, 
 
 As watching love for you in a man beginning ; 
 
 To see the sight of you pour into his senses 
 
 Like brandy gulpt down by a frozen man, 
 
 A thing that runs scalding about his blood ; 
 
 To see him holding himself firm against 
 
 The sudden strength of wildness beating in him ! 
 
 O what my life is waiting for, at last 
 
 Is started, I believe : I've turned a man 
 
 To a power not to be reckoned ; I shall be 
 
 Held by his love like a light thing in a river ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 MORRIS by himself. 
 
 It is a wonder ! Here's this poor thing, Life, 
 Troubled with labours of the endless war 
 The lusty flesh keeps up against the spirit ; 
 And down amid the anger who knows whence ?- 
 Comes Love, and at once the struggling mutiny 
 Falls quiet, unendurably rebuked : 
 And the whole strength of life is free to serve
 
 IMPERFECTION 103 
 
 Spirit, under the regency of Love. 
 
 The quiet that is in me ! The bright peace ! 
 
 Instead of smoke and dust, the peace of Love ! 
 
 Truly I knew not what a turmoil life 
 
 Has been, and how rebellious, till this peace 
 
 Came shining down ! And yet I have seen things, 
 
 And heard things, that were strangely meaning this, 
 
 Telling me strangely that life can be all 
 
 One power undisturbed, one perfect honour, 
 
 Waters at noonday sounding among hills, 
 
 Or moonlight lost among vast curds of cloud ; 
 
 But never knew I it is only Love 
 
 Can rule the noise of life to heavenly quiet. 
 
 Ah, Jean, if thou wilt love me, thou shalt have 
 
 Never from me upon thy purity 
 
 The least touch of that eager baseness, known, 
 
 For shame's disguising, by the name of Love 
 
 Most wickedly ; thou shalt not need to fear 
 
 Aught from my love, for surely thou shalt know 
 
 It is a love that almost fears to love thee. 
 
 IV 
 
 The Public House. MORRIS and JEAN. 
 
 Jean. 
 O, you are come again ! 
 
 Morris. 
 
 Has he been here, 
 That blackguard, with some insolence to you ?
 
 104 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Jean. 
 Who? 
 
 Morris. 
 Why, that Hamish. 
 
 Jean. 
 Hamish ? No, not he. 
 
 Morris. 
 I thought you seemed so breathless 
 
 Jean. 
 
 But you've come 
 
 Again ! May I not be glad of your coming ? 
 Yes, and a little breathless ? Did you come 
 Only because you thought I might be bullied ? 
 
 Morris. 
 O, no, no, no, Only for you I came. 
 
 Jean. 
 And that's what I was hoping. 
 
 Morris. 
 
 If you could know 
 How it has been with me, since I saw you ! 
 
 Jean. 
 
 What can I know of your mind ? For my own 
 Is hard enough to know, save that I'm glad 
 You've come again, and that I should have cried 
 If you'd not kept your word.
 
 IMPERFECTION 105 
 
 Morris. 
 
 My word ? to see 
 Hamish does nothing to you ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 The fiend take Hamish ! 
 
 Do you think I'ld be afraid of him ? It's you 
 I ought to be afraid of, were I wise. 
 
 Morris. 
 Good God, she's crying ! 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Cannot you understand ? 
 
 Morris. 
 
 O darling, is it so ? I prayed for this 
 All night, and yet it's unbelievable. 
 
 Jean. 
 You too, Morris ? 
 
 Morris. 
 
 There's nothing living in me 
 But love for you, my sweetheart. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 And you are mine, 
 
 My sweetheart ! And now, Morris, now you know 
 Why you are the man that ought to frighten me ! 
 Morris, I love you so !
 
 106 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Morris. 
 
 O, but better than this, 
 
 Jean, you must love me. You must never think 
 I'm like the heartless men you wait on here, 
 Whose love is all a hunger that cares naught 
 How hatefully endured its feasting must be 
 By her who fills it, so it be well glutted ! 
 
 Jean. 
 
 I did not say I was afraid of you ; 
 But only that, perhaps, I ought to be. 
 
 Morris. 
 
 No, no, you never ought. My love is one 
 That will not have its passion venturous ; 
 It knows itself too fine a ceremony 
 To risk its whole perfection even by one 
 Unruly thought of the luxury in love. 
 Nay, rather it is the quietness of power, 
 That knows there is no turbulence in life 
 Dare the least questioning hindrance set against 
 The onward of its going, therefore quiet, 
 All gentle. But strong, Jean, wondrously strong ! 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Yes, love is strong. I have well thought of that. 
 It drops as fiercely down on us as if 
 We were to be its prey. I've seen a gull 
 That hovered with beak pointing and eyes fixt 
 Where, underneath its swaying flight, some fish 
 Was trifling, fooling in the waves : then, souse ! 
 And the gull has fed. And love on us has fed.
 
 IMPERFECTION 107 
 
 Morris. 
 
 Indeed 't is a sudden coming ; but I grieve 
 To hear you make of love a cruelty. 
 Sweetheart, it shall be nothing cruel to you ! 
 You shall not fear, in doing what love bids, 
 Ever to know yourself unmaidenly. 
 For see ! here's my first kiss ; and all my love 
 Is signed in it ; and it is on your hand. 
 Is that a thing to fear ? But it were best 
 I go now. This should be a privacy, 
 Not even your lover near, this hour of first 
 Strange knowledge that you have accepted love. 
 I think you would feel me prying, if I stayed 
 While your heart falters into full perceiving 
 That you are plighted now forever mine. 
 God bless you, Jean, my sweetheart. Not a word ? 
 But you will thank me soon for leaving you : 
 'Tis the best courtesy I can do. 
 
 [He goes. 
 Jean. 
 
 O, and I thought it was my love at last ! 
 I thought, from the look he had last night, I'd found 
 That great, brave, irresistible love ! But this ! 
 It's like a man deformed, with half his limbs. 
 Am I never to have the love I dream and need, 
 Pouring over me, into me, winds of fire ? 
 
 HAMISH comes in. 
 
 Hamish. 
 Well ? What's the mood to-night ? The girl's been 
 
 crying ! 
 This should be something queer.
 
 108 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Jean. 
 
 It's you are to blame : 
 You brought him here ! 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 It's Morris this time, is it ? 
 And what has he done ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 He's insulted me. 
 And you must never let me see him again. 
 
 Hamish. 
 
 Sure I don't want him seeing you. But still, 
 If I'm to keep you safe from meeting him 
 
 Jean. 
 To look in his eyes would mortify my heart ! 
 
 Hamish. 
 Then you'ld do right to pay me. 
 
 Jean. 
 
 What you please. 
 Hamish. 
 A kiss ? 
 
 Jean. 
 
 Of course ; as many as you like 
 And of any sort you like.
 
 KATRINA 
 
 On the sea-coast. Three young men, SYLVAN, VALENTINE, 
 and FRANCIS. 
 
 Valentine. 
 
 Well, I suppose you're out of your fear at last, 
 Sylvan. This land's empty enough ; naught here 
 Feminine but the hens, bitches, and cows. 
 Now we are safe ! 
 
 Francis. 
 
 Horribly safe ; for here, 
 If there are wives at all, they are salted so 
 They have no meaning for the blood, bent things 
 Philosophy allows not to be women. 
 
 Valentine. 
 
 But think of the husbands that must spend their nights 
 Alongside skin like bark. It is the men 
 That have the tragedy in these weather'd lands. 
 
 Francis. 
 
 No thought of that ! We are monks now. And, indeed, 
 This is a cloister that a man could like, 
 This blue-aired space of grassy land, that here, 
 
 109
 
 110 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Just as it touches the sea's bitter mood, 
 Is troubled into dunes, as it were thrilled, 
 Like a calm woman trembling against love. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Woman again ! How, knowing you, I failed 
 So long to know the truth, I cannot think. 
 
 Francis. 
 And what's the truth ? 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Woman and love of her 
 Is as a dragging ivy on the growth 
 Of that strong tree, man's nature ! 
 
 Valentine. 
 
 Yes. But now 
 Tell us a simpler sort of truth. Was she 
 
 Sylvan. 
 She? Who? 
 
 Valentine. 
 
 Katrina, of course : who else, when one 
 Speaks of a she to you ? 
 
 Sylvan. 
 And what about her ? 
 
 Valentine. 
 Was she too cruel to you, or too kind ? 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Ah, there's no hope for men like you ; you're sunk 
 Above your consciences in smothering ponds 
 Of sweet imagination, drowned in woman !
 
 IMPEEFECTION 111 
 
 Francis. 
 
 Ay ? Clarence and the Malmesey over again ; 
 'Twas a delightful death. 
 
 Valentine. 
 
 But you forget, 
 Sylvan, we've come as your disciples here. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Yes, to a land where not the least desire 
 Need prey upon your mettle. There are hours 
 A god might gladly take in these basking dunes, 
 Nothing but summer and piping larks, and air 
 All a warm breath of honey, and a grass 
 All flowers sweet thyme and golden heart's-ease here ! 
 And under scent and song of flowers and birds, 
 Far inland out of the golden bays the air 
 Is charged with briny savour, and whispered news 
 Gentle as whitening oats the breezes stroke. 
 What good is all this health to you ? You bring 
 Your own thoughts with you ; and they are vinegar, 
 Endlessly rusting what should be clear steel. 
 
 Francis. 
 
 I do begin to doubt our enterprise, 
 The grand Escape from Woman. It lookt brave 
 And nobly hazardous afar off, to cease 
 All wenching, whether in deed or word or thought. 
 And yet I fear pride egged us. We had done 
 Better to be more humble, and bring here 
 A girl apiece.
 
 112 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Valentine. 
 
 Yes, Sylvan ; you must think 
 The cloister were a thing more comfortable 
 With your Katrina in it ? 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 My Katrina ! 
 
 And do you think, supposing I would love, 
 I'ld bank in such a crazy safe as that 
 Katrina ? One of those soft shy-spoken maids, 
 Who are only maids through fear ? Whose life is all 
 A simpering pretence of modesty ? 
 If it was love I wanted, 'twould not be 
 A dish of sweet stewed pears, laced with brandy. 
 But I can do without a woman's kisses. 
 
 Valentine. 
 
 Can you ? You know full well, in the truth of your 
 
 heart, 
 
 That there's no man in all the world of men 
 Whose will woman's beauty cannot divide 
 Easily as a sword cuts jetting water. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Have you not heard, that even jetting water 
 May have such spouting force, that it becomes 
 A rod of glittering white iron, and swords 
 Will beat rebounding on its speed in vain ? 
 Of such a force I mean to have my will. 
 
 [He sits and stares moodily out to sea. His com- 
 panions whisper each other.
 
 IMPERFECTION 113 
 
 Valentine. 
 
 Here, Francis ! Look you yonder. O but this, 
 This is the joke of the world ! 
 
 Francis. 
 
 Hallo ! a girl ! 
 And, by the Lord, Katrina ! But why here ? 
 
 Valentine. 
 
 She's followed him, of course ; she's heard of this 
 Mad escapade and followed after him. 
 
 Francis. 
 She has not seen us yet. Now what to do ? 
 
 Valentine. 
 
 Quick ! Where's your handkerchief ? Truss his 
 
 wrists and ankles, 
 
 And pull his coat up over his head and leave him ! 
 He won't get free of her again ; she'll lead 
 His wildness home and keep him tame for ever. 
 Now ! 
 
 [They fall on him, bind him, and blindfold him. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 What are you doing ? Whatever are you doing ? 
 Hell burn you, let me go ! 
 
 Valentine. 
 
 There's worse to come. 
 [They make off, and leave SYLVAN shouting. 
 KATRINA runs in.
 
 114 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Dear Heaven ! Were they robbers ? Have they hurt 
 you ? 
 
 [She releases him. He stands up. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 Katrina ! 
 
 Katrina. 
 Sylvan ! 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 How did you plot this ? 
 I thought I'd put leagues between you and me. 
 
 Katrina. 
 Why have you come here ? 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 To find you, it seems. 
 But what you're doing here, that I'ld like to know. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 I came to see my grandmother : she lives 
 All by herself, poor grannam, and it's time 
 She had some help about the house, and care. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 Let's have a better tale. You followed me. 
 
 Katrina. 
 Sylvan, how dare you make me out so vile ?
 
 IMPERFECTION 115 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 How dare you mean to make this body of mine 
 A thing with no thought in it but your beauty ? 
 
 Katrlna. 
 
 You shall not speak so wickedly. You've had 
 The half of my truth only : here's the whole. 
 It was from you I fled ! I hoped to make 
 My grannam's lonely cottage something safe 
 From you and what I hated in you. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Love ? 
 Ah, so it's all useless. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 I feared to know 
 
 You wanted me, horribly I feared it. 
 And now you've found me out. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Is this the truth ? 
 No help for it, then. 
 
 Katrina. 
 O, I'm a liar to you ! 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Strange how we grudge to be ruled ! rather than be 
 Divinely driven to happiness, we push back 
 And fiercely try for wilful misery.
 
 116 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Dearest, forgive me being cruel to you, 
 You who are in life like a heavenly dream 
 In the evil sleep of a sinner. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 No, you hate me. 
 
 Sylvan (kissing her). 
 Is this like hatred ? 
 
 Katrina (in his arms). 
 
 Sylvan, I have been 
 
 So wrencht and fearfully used. It was as if 
 This being that I live in had become' 
 A savage endless water, wild with purpose 
 To tire me out and drown me. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Yes, I know : 
 
 Like swimming against a mighty will, that wears 
 The cruelty, the race and scolding spray 
 Of monstrous passionate water. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Hold me, Sylvan 
 I'm bruised with my sore wrestling. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Ah, but now 
 
 We are not swimmers in this dangerous life. 
 It cannot beat upon our limbs with surf 
 Of water clencht against us, nor can waves
 
 IMPERFECTION 117 
 
 Now wrangle with our breath. Out of it we 
 Are lifted ; and henceforward now we are 
 Sailors travelling in a lovely ship, 
 The shining sails of it holding a wind 
 Immortally pleasant, and the malicious sea 
 Smoothed by a keel that cannot come to wreck. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Alas, we must not stay together here. 
 Grannam will come upon us. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Where is she ? 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Yonder, gathering driftwood for her fire. 
 There is a little bay not far from here, 
 The shingle of it a thronging city of flies, 
 Feeding on the dead weed that mounds the beach ; 
 And the sea hoards there its vain avarice, 
 Old flotsam, and decaying trash of ships. 
 An arm of reef half locks it in, and holds 
 The bottom of the bay deep strewn with seaweed, 
 A barn full of the harvesting of storms ; 
 And at full tide, the little hampered waves 
 Lift up the litter, so that, against the light, 
 The yellow kelp and bracken of the sea, 
 Held up in ridges of green water, show 
 Like moss in agates. And there is no place 
 In all the coast for wreckage like this bay ; 
 There often will my grannam be, a sack 
 Over her shoulders, turning up the crust 
 Of sun-dried weed to find her winter's warmth.
 
 118 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Is that she coming ? 
 
 Katrina. 
 O Sylvan, has she seen us ? 
 
 Sylvan. 
 What matter if she has ? 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 But it would matter ! 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Katrina, come with me now ! We'll go together 
 Back to my house. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 No, no, not now ! I must 
 Carry my grannam's load for her : 'tis heavy. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 We must not part again. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 No, not for long ; 
 
 For if we do, there will be storms again, 
 I know ; and a fierce reluctance O, a mad 
 Tormenting thing ! will shake me. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Then come now !
 
 IMPERFECTION 119 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 Not now, not now ! Look how my poor grannam 
 Shuffles under the weight ; she's old for burdens. 
 I must carry her sack for her. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Well, to-night ! 
 
 Katrina. 
 To-night ? O Sylvan ! dare I ? 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Yes, you dare ! 
 
 You will be knowing I'm outside in the darkness, 
 And you will come down here and give me yourself 
 Wholly and forever. 
 
 Katrina. 
 O not to-night ! 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 I shall be here, Katrina, waiting for you. 
 
 [He goes. 
 The old woman comes in burdened with Iwr sack. 
 
 Grandmother. 
 Katrina, that was a young man with you. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 O grannam, you've had luck to-day ; but now 
 It's I must be the porter.
 
 120 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Grandmother (giving up the sack). 
 
 Ay, you take it. 
 
 It's sore upon my back. You should have care 
 Of these young fellows ; there's a devil in them. 
 Never you talk with a man on the seashore 
 Or on hill-tops or in woods and suchlike places, 
 Especially if he's one you think of marrying. 
 
 Katrina. 
 Marrying ? I shall never be married ! 
 
 Grandmother. 
 
 Pooh! 
 That's nonsense. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 I should think 'twas horrible 
 Even to be in love and wanting to give 
 Yourself to another ; but to be married too, 
 A man holding the very heart of you, 
 
 Grandmother. 
 
 He never does, honey, he never does. 
 We're late ; come along home. 
 
 II 
 
 In SYLVAN'S house. SYLVAN and KATRINA talking to 
 each other and betweenwhiles thinking to themselves. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 How pleasant and beautiful it is to be 
 At last obedient to love ! (To know 
 Also, I've sold myself, is that so pleasant ?)
 
 IMPERFECTION 121 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 I cannot think, why such a glorious wealth 
 As this of love on our hearts should be spent. 
 What have we done, that all this gain be ours ? 
 (Nor can I think why my life should be mixt, 
 Even its dearest secrecy, with another.) 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Ay, there's the marvel ! If to enter life 
 Needed some courage, 'twere a kind of wages, 
 As they let sacking soldiers take home loot : 
 But we are shuffled into life like puppets 
 Emptied out of a showman's bag ; and then 
 Made spenders of the joys current in heaven ! 
 (Not such a marvel neither, if this love 
 Be but the price Tm paid for my free soul. 
 Who's the old trader that has lent this girl 
 The glittering cash of pleasure to pay me with ? 
 Who is it, the world, or the devil, or God that wants 
 To buy me from myself?) 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 And then how vain 
 
 To think we can hold back from being enricht ! 
 It is not only offered 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 No, 'tis a need 
 
 As irresistible within our hearts 
 As body's need of breathing. (That I should be 
 So avaricious of his gleaming price !)
 
 122 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 And the instant force it has upon us, when 
 We think to use love as a privilege ! 
 We are like bees that, having fed all day 
 On mountain-heather, go to a tumbling stream 
 To please their little honey-heated thirsts ; 
 And soon as they have toucht the singing relief, 
 The swiftness of the water seizes them. 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 And onward, sprawling and spinning, they are carried 
 Down to a drowning pool. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 O Sylvan, drowning ? 
 
 (Deeper than drowning I Why should it not be 
 Our hearts need wish only what they delight in ?) 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Well, altogether gript by the being of love. 
 (Yes, now the bargain's done ; and I may wear, 
 Like a cheated savage, scarlet dyes and strings 
 Of beaded glass, all the pleasure of love !) 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 It is a wonderful tyranny, that life 
 Has no choice but to be delighted love ! 
 (/ know what I must do : I am to abase 
 My heart utterly, and have nothing in me 
 That dare take pleasure beyond serving love. 
 Thus only shall I bear it ; and perhaps 
 Might I even of my abasement make 
 A passion, fearfully enjoying it ?)
 
 IMPERFECTION 123 
 
 Sylvan. 
 You are full of thoughts, sweetheart ? 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 And so are you : 
 A long while since you kist me ! (What have I said ? 
 
 fool so to remind him ! I shall scarce 
 Help crying out or shuddering this time ! 
 Ah no ; I am again a fool ! Not thus 
 
 1 am to do, but in my heart to break 
 All the reluctance ; it must have on me 
 No pleasure ; else 1 am endlessly tortured.} 
 Then I must kiss you, Sylvan ! 
 
 [She kisses him. 
 Sylvan. 
 
 Ah, my darling ! 
 
 (God ! it went through my flesh as thrilling sound 
 Must shake a fiddle when the strings are snatcht ! 
 Will she make the life in me all a slave 
 Of my kist body, a trembling, eager slave ? 
 It ran like a terror to my heart, the sense, 
 The shivering delight upon my skin, 
 Of her lips touching me.) My beloved, 
 It may be it were wise, that we took care 
 Our pleasant love come never in the risk 
 Of being too much known. 
 
 Katrina. 
 
 O what a risk 
 
 To think of here ! Love is not common life, 
 But always fresh and sweet. Can this grow stale ? 
 
 [She kisses him again.
 
 124 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Sylvan. 
 
 never ! I meant not so. Yes, always sweet ! 
 (She must not kiss me I Ah, it leaves my heart 
 Aghast, and stopt with pain of the joy of her ; 
 And her loved body is like an agony 
 
 Clinging upon me. she must not kiss me ! 
 
 1 will not be a thing excruciated 
 
 To please her passion, an anguish of delight /)
 
 PART III 
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION
 
 JUDITH 
 I 
 
 THE BESIEGED CITY OF BETHULIA 
 
 JUDITH (at the window of an upper room of her house). 
 
 This pitiable city ! But, O God, 
 Strengthen me that I bend not into scorn 
 Of all this desperate folk ; for I am weak 
 With pitying their lamentable souls. 
 Ah, when I hear the grief wail'd in the streets, 
 And the same breath their tears nigh strangle, used 
 To brag the God in them inviolate 
 And fighting off the hands of the heathen, Lord, 
 Pardon me that I come so near to scorn ; 
 Pardon me, soul of mine, that I have loosed 
 The rigour of my mind and leant towards scorn ! 
 
 Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead 
 Of plague, famine, and arrows : and the houses 
 Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone 
 Hurled in by the Assyrians : the town-walls 
 Crumbling out of their masonry into mounds 
 Of foolish earth, so smitten by the rams : 
 The hunger-pangs, the thirst like swallowed lime 
 Forcing them gulp green water maggot-quick 
 
 127
 
 128 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 That lurks in corners of dried cisterns : yea, 
 
 Murders done for a drink of blood, and flesh 
 
 Sodden of infants : and no hope alive 
 
 Of rescue from this heat of prisoning anguish 
 
 Until Assyrian swords drown it in death ; 
 
 These, and abandoned words like these, I hear 
 
 Daylong shrill'd and groan'd in the lanes beneath. 
 
 What needeth Holofernes more ? The Jews, 
 
 The People of God, the Jews, lament their fortune ; 
 
 Their souls are violated by the world ; 
 
 Jewry is conquered ; and the crop of men 
 
 Sown for the barns of God, is withered down, 
 
 Like feeblest grass flat-trodden by the sun, 
 
 In one short season of fear. Yea, swords and fire 
 
 Can do no more destruction on this folk : 
 
 A fierce untimely mowing now befits 
 
 This corn incapable of sacred bread, 
 
 This field unprofitable but to flame ! 
 
 What should the choice of God do for a people, 
 But give them souls of temper to withstand 
 The trying of the furnace of the world ? 
 And they are molten, and from God's device 
 Unfashion'd, crazed in dismay ; yea, God's skill 
 Fails in them, as the skill a founder put 
 In brass fails when the coals seize on his work. 
 For this fierce Holofernes and his power, 
 This torture poured on the city, is no more 
 Than a wild gust of wicked heat breathed out 
 Against our God-wrought souls by the world's furnace. 
 No new thing, this camp about the city : 
 Nebuchadnezzar and his hosted men 
 But fearfully image, like a madman's dream,
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 129 
 
 The fierce infection of the world, that waits 
 To soil the clean health of the soul and mix 
 Stooping decay into its upward nature. 
 Soul in the world is all besieged : for first 
 The dangerous body doth desire it ; 
 And many subtle captains of the mind 
 Secretly wish against its fortune ; next, 
 Circle on circle of lascivious world 
 Lust round the foreign purity of soul 
 For chance or violence to ravish it. 
 
 But the pure in the world are mastery. 
 Divinely do I know, when life is clean, 
 How like a noble shape of golden glass 
 The passions of the body, powers of the mind, 
 Chalice the sweet immortal wine of soul, 
 That, as a purple fragrance dwells in air 
 From vintage poured, fills the corrupting world 
 With its own savour. And here I am alone 
 Sound in my sweetness, incorrupt ; the rest 
 (They noise it unashamed) are stuff gone sour ; 
 The world has meddled with them. They have broacht 
 The wine that had pleas'd God to flocking thirst 
 Of flies and wasps, to fears and worldly sorrows. 
 Nay, they are poured out into the dung of the world, 
 And drench, pollute, the fortune of their state, 
 When they should have no fortune but themselves 
 And the God in them, and be sealed therein. 
 
 Ah, my sweet soul, that knoweth its own sweetness, 
 Where only love may drink, and only alas ! 
 The ghost of love. But I am sweet for him, 
 For him and God, and for my sacred self ! 
 
 But hark, a troop of new woe comes this way, 
 K
 
 130 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Making the street to ring and the stones wet 
 With cried despair and brackish agony. 
 
 CITIZENS lamenting in the street below. 
 
 They have crawled back like beasts dying of thirst, 
 The life all clotted in them. They went out 
 Soldiers, and back like beaten dogs they came 
 Breathing in whines, slow maimed four-footed things 
 On hands and knees degraded, groaning steps. 
 Their brains were full of battle, they were made 
 Of virtue, brave men ; now in their brains shudder 
 Minds that cringe like children burnt with fever. 
 Often they stood to face the enemies' ranks 
 All upright as a flame in windless air, 
 Wearing their arm and the bright skill of swords 
 Like spirits clad in flashing fire of heaven ; 
 And now in darken'd rooms they lie afraid 
 And whimper if the nurse moves suddenly. 
 Ah God, that such an irresistible fiend, 
 Pain, in the beautiful housing of man's flesh 
 Should sleep, light as a leopard in its hunger, 
 Beside the heavenly soul ; and at a wound 
 Leap up to mangle her, the senses' guest ! 
 That in God's country heathen men should do 
 This worse than murder on men full of God ! 
 
 Judith. 
 
 What matter of new wailing do your tongues 
 Wear in this shivering misery of sound ? 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 The captains which were chosen to go out 
 And treat with Holofernes have come back.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 131 
 
 Judith. 
 And did the Ninevite demon treat with them ? 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 The words they had from him were flaying knives, 
 And burning splinters fixt in their skinless flesh, 
 And stones thrown till their breasts were broken in. 
 
 Judith. 
 What, torture our embassage ? 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 Yea, for he means 
 Nothing but death to all the Jews he takes. 
 
 Another. 
 
 There was a jeering word tied round the neck 
 Of each tormented man : " Behold, ye Jews, 
 These chiefs of yours have learnt to crawl in prayer 
 Before the god Nebuchadnezzar ; come, 
 Leave your city of thirst and your weak god, 
 And learn good worship even as these have learnt." 
 
 Another. 
 
 I saw them coming in : O horrible ! 
 With broken limbs creeping along the ground 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Were I a man among you, I would not stay 
 Behind the walls to weep this insolence ; 
 Fid take a sword in my hand and God in my mind,
 
 132 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 And seek under the friendship of the night 
 That tent where Holofernes' crimes and hate 
 Sleep in his devilish brain. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 There is no night 
 
 Where Holofernes sleeps, as thou couldst tell, 
 Didst thou not shut thyself up in thine ease 
 Away from the noise and tears of common woe. 
 Come to the walls this evening, and I'll show thee 
 The golden place of light, the little world 
 Of triumphing glory framed in midst of the dark, 
 Pillar'd on four great bonfires fed with spice, 
 Enclosing in a globe of flame the tent 
 Wherein the sleepless lusts of Holofernes 
 Madden themselves all night, a revel-rout 
 Of naked girls luring him as he lies 
 Filling his blood with wine, the scented air 
 Injur'd marvellously with piping shrills 
 Of lechery made music, and small drums 
 That with a dancing throb drive his swell'd heart 
 Into desires beyond the strength of man. 
 
 Judith. 
 And this beast is thine enemy, God ! 
 
 Another Citizen. 
 
 Nor beast, 
 
 Nor man, but one of those lascivious gods 
 Our lonely God detests, Chemosh or Baal 
 Or Pcor who goes whoring among women.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 133 
 
 Another. 
 
 And now come down braving in God's own land, 
 Pitching the glory of his fearful heaven 
 All night among God's hills. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 You fools, he is 
 
 A life our God could snap as a woman snaps 
 Thread of her sewing. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 Who shall break him off, 
 Who on the earth, from his huge twisted power ? 
 
 Another. 
 
 For in his brain, as in a burning-glass 
 Wide glow of sun drawn to a pin of fire, 
 Are gathered into incredible fierceness all 
 The rays of the dark heat of heathen strength. 
 
 Another. 
 His eyes, they say, can kill a man. 
 
 Another. 
 
 And sure 
 No murder could approach his flaming nights. 
 
 Another. 
 
 Unless it came as a woman at whose beauty 
 His lust hath never sipt ; for into his flesh 
 To drink unknown desirable limbs as wine 
 Torments him still, like a thirst when fever pours 
 A man's life out in drenching sweats.
 
 134 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Peace, peace ; 
 
 The siege hath given you shameless tongues, and minds 
 No more your own : yea, the foul Ninevite 
 Hath mastered you already, for your thoughts 
 Dwell in his wickedness and marvel at it. 
 Hate not a thing too much, lest you be drawn 
 Wry from yourselves and close to the thing ye hate. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 We know thy wisdom, Judith ; but our lives 
 Belong to death ; and wisdom to a man 
 Dying, is water in a broken jar. 
 
 Judith. 
 Yea, if thou wilt die of a parching mouth. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 Thou art rich, and thou hast much cool store of wine. 
 But the town thirsts, and every beat of our blood 
 Hastens us on to maniac agony. 
 The Assyrians have our wells, and half the tanks 
 Are dry, and the pools shoal with baking mud : 
 The water left to us is pestilent. 
 And therefore have we asked the governors 
 For death : and it is granted us. 
 
 Another. 
 
 Five days 
 Hath Prince Ozias bidden us endure.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 135 
 
 Another. 
 
 For there are still fools among us who dare trust 
 God has not made a bargain of our lives. 
 
 Another. 
 
 We are a small people, and our war is weak : 
 Who knows whether our God doth not desire 
 Armies and great plains full of spears and horses, 
 And cities made of bronze and hewn white stone 
 And scarlet awnings, throng'd with sworded men, 
 To shout his name up from the earth and kill 
 All crying at the gates of other heavens ; 
 And hath grown tired of peaceable praise and folk 
 That in a warren of dry mountains dwell, 
 Whose few throats can make little noise in heaven. 
 
 A Young Man. 
 
 For sure God's love hath wandered to strange nations ; 
 His pleasure in the breasts of Jerusalem 
 Is a delight grown old. Yea, he would change 
 That shepherd-woman of the earthly cities, 
 Whose mind is as the clear light of her hills, 
 Full of the sound of a hundred waters falling ; 
 And poureth his desire out, belike, 
 Upon that queen the wealth of the world hath clad, 
 Babylon, for whose golden bed the gods 
 Wrangle like young men with great gifts and boasts ; 
 Whose mind is as a carbuncle of fire, 
 Full of the sound of amazing flames of music. 
 
 Another. 
 
 Yea, what can Israel offer against her, 
 Whom the rich earth out of her mines hath shod,
 
 136 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 And crowned with emeralds grown in secret rocks, 
 Who on her shoulders wears the gleam of the sea's 
 Purple and pearls, and the flax of Indian ground 
 Is linen on her limbs cool as moonlight, 
 And fells of golden beasts cover her throne ; 
 Whose passion moves in her thought as in the air 
 Melody moves of flutes and silver horns : 
 What can Jerusalem the hill-city 
 Offer to keep God's love from Babylon ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 What but the beauty of holiness, and sound 
 Of music made by hearts adoring God ? 
 You that speak lewdly of God, you yet shall see 
 Jerusalem treading upon her foes. 
 But what was that of five days one of you spoke ? 
 
 A Citizen. 
 Ozias sware an oath : hast thou not heard ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 No, for I keep my mind away from your tongues 
 Wisely. Who walks in wind-blown dust of streets, 
 That hath a garden where the roses breathe ? 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 I have no garden where the roses breathe ; 
 I have a city full of women crying 
 And babies starving and men weak with thirst 
 Who fight each other for a dole of water.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 137 
 
 Another. 
 
 Not only thou hast pleasant garden-hours, 
 Judith, here in Bethulia ; the Lord Death 
 Has bought the city for his garden-close, 
 And saunters in it watching the souls bloom 
 Out of their buds of flesh, and with delight 
 Smelling their agony. 
 
 Another. 
 
 But in five days 
 
 Either our God will turn his mind to us, 
 Or, if he careth not for us nor his honour, 
 Ozias will let open the main gate 
 And let the Assyrians end our dreadful lives. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 O I belong to a nation utterly lost ! 
 God ! thou hast no tribe on the earth ; thy folk 
 Are helpless in the living places like 
 The ghosts that grieve in the winds under the earth. 
 Remember now thy glory among the living, 
 And let the beauty of thy renown endure 
 In a firm people knitted like the stone 
 Of hills, no mischief harms of frost or fire ; 
 But now dust in a gale of fear they are. 
 They have blasphemed thee ; but forgive them, God ; 
 And let my life inhabit to its end 
 The spirit of a people built to God. 
 So you have given God five days to come 
 And help you ? You would make your souls as wares 
 Merchants hold up to bidders, and say, " God,
 
 138 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Pay us our price of comfort, or we sell 
 
 To death for the same coin " ? Five days God hath 
 
 To find the cost of Jewry, or death buys you ? 
 
 A Citizen. 
 Here conies Ozias : ask him. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Hold him there. 
 [JUDITH comes down into the street. 
 
 Ozias. 
 Judith, I came to speak with thee. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 And I 
 
 Would speak with thee. What tale is this they tell 
 That thou hast sworn to give this people death ? 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 In five days those among us who still live 
 Will have no souls but the fierce anguish of thirst. 
 If God ere then relieves us, well. If not, 
 We give ourselves away from God to death. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Barest thou do this wickedness, and set 
 Conditions to the mercy of our God ? 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 Death hath a mercy equal unto God's. 
 Look at the air above thee ; is there sign
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 139 
 
 Of mercy in that naked splendour of fire ? 
 
 Too Godlike ! We are his : he covers us 
 
 With golden flame of air and firmament 
 
 Of white-hot gold, marvellous to see. 
 
 But whom, what heathen land hated of God, 
 
 Do his grey clouds shadow with comfort of rain ? 
 
 Over our chosen heads his glory glows : 
 
 And in five days the torment in his city 
 
 Will be beyond imagining. We will go 
 
 Through swords into the quiet and cloud of death. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Ozias, wilt thou be an infamy ? 
 Bethulia fallen, all Judea lies 
 Open to the feet and hoofs of Assyria. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 Yea, and what doth Judea but cower down 
 Behind us ? There's no rescue comes from there. 
 We are alone with Holofernes' power. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 But if we hold him off, will he not grant 
 The meed of a brave fight, captivity ? 
 Or we may treat with him, make terms for yielding. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 We know his mind : he hath written it plain 
 In the torn flesh of our ambassadors. 
 His mind to us is death ; we can but choose 
 Between sharp swords and the slow slaying of thirst.
 
 140 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Judith. 
 He may torment us if we yield. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 He may. 
 But not to yield is grisly and sure torment. 
 
 Judith. 
 There must be hope, if we could reckon right ! 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 Well, thou and God have five days more to build 
 A bridge of hope over our broken world. 
 And, for the town even now fearfully aches 
 In scalding thirst, not five days had I granted, 
 Had it not been for somewhat I must say 
 Secretly to thee. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Secretly ? Then here ; 
 
 Send off these men to labour at their groans 
 Elsewhere ; for not within my house thou comest ; 
 I'll have no thoughts against God in my house. 
 
 [OziAS disperses the citizens. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 Judith, we are two upright minds in this 
 Herd of grovelling cowardice. We should, 
 To spiritual vision which can see 
 Stature of spirit, seem to stand in our folk 
 Like two unaltered stanchions in the heap 
 Of a house pulled down by fire. I know thy soul
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 141 
 
 Tempered by trust in God against this ruin ; 
 
 But not in God, but in mortality 
 
 Thy soul stands founded ; and death even now 
 
 Is digging at thy station in the world ; 
 
 And as a man with ropes and windlasses 
 
 Pulls for new building columns of wreckt halls 
 
 Down with a breaking fall, so death has rigged 
 
 His skill about us, so he will break us down, 
 
 Ruin our height and courage ; and as stone, 
 
 Carved with the beautiful pride of kings, hath made, 
 
 Hammer'd to rubble and ground for mortar, walls 
 
 Of farms and byres, our kill'd and broken natures, 
 
 With all their beauty of passion, yea, and delight 
 
 In God, death will shape and grind up to new 
 
 Housing for souls not royal as we are, 
 
 New flesh and mind for mean souls and dull hearts : 
 
 For death is only life destroying life 
 
 To roof the coming swarms in mortal shelter 
 
 Of flesh and mind experienced in joy. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Thy specious prologue means no good, I trow. 
 Thou wert to tell me wherefore for five days 
 We may pretend to be God's people still ; 
 Why thou didst not make us over to death 
 Soon as the folk began to wail despair. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 This reasoning will tell thee why. No need, 
 I think, to bring up into speech the years 
 Since in the barley-field Manasses lay 
 Shot by the sun. I tried (nor failed, I think),
 
 142 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 To hold thy soul up from its hurt, and be 
 Somewhat of sight to thee, until thy long 
 Blind season of disaster should be changed. 
 Always I have found friendship in thine eyes ; 
 And pleasant words, and silences more pleasant, 
 Have made us moments wherein all the world 
 Left our sequester'd minds ; so that I dared 
 Often believe our friendliness might be 
 The brink of love. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Stop ! for thou hast enough 
 Disgraced mine ears. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 I pray thee hear me out. 
 The dream of loving thee and being loved 
 Hath been my life ; yea, with it I have kept 
 My heart drugg'd in a long delicious night 
 Colour'd with candles of imagined sense, 
 And musical with dreamt desire. I said, 
 The day will surely come upon the world, 
 To scatter this sweet night of fantasy 
 With morning, pour'd on my dream-feasted heart 
 Out of thine eyes, Judith. And yet I still 
 Feared for my dream, even as a maiden fears 
 The body of her lover. But, in the midst 
 Of all this charm'd delaying, behold Death 
 Leapt into our world, lording it, standing huge 
 In front of the future, looking at us ! 
 Thou seest now why, when the people came 
 Crying wildly to be given up to death,
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 143 
 
 I bade them wait five days ? That I at last 
 
 Might stamp the image of my glorious dream 
 
 Upon the world, even though it be wax 
 
 And the fires are kindling that must melt it out. 
 
 Judith, thou hast now five days more to live 
 
 This life of beautiful passion and sweet sense : 
 
 And now my love comes to thee like an angel 
 
 To call thee out of thy visionary love 
 
 For lost Manasses, out of ghostly desire 
 
 And shadows of dreams housing thy soul, that are 
 
 Vainer than mine were, dreams of dear things which death 
 
 Hath for ever broken ; and lead thy life 
 
 To a brief shadowless place, into an hour 
 
 Made splendid to affront the coming night 
 
 By passion over sense more grandly burning 
 
 Than purple lightning over golden corn, 
 
 When all the distance of the night resounds 
 
 With the approach of wind and terrible rain, 
 
 That march to torment it down to the ground. 
 
 Judith, shall we not thus together make 
 
 Death admirable, yea, and triumph through 
 
 The gates of anguish with a prouder song 
 
 Than ever lifted a king's heart, who rode 
 
 Back from his war, with nations whipt before him, 
 
 Into trumpeting Nineveh ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Thou fool, 
 
 Death is nothing to me, and life is all. 
 But what foul wrong have I done to thee, Ozias, 
 That thou shouldst go about to put such wrong 
 Into my life as these defiling words ?
 
 144 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Ozias. 
 Is it defilement to hear love spoken ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Yes ! thou hast soiled me : to know my beauty, 
 Wherewith I loved Manasses, and still love, 
 Has all these years dwelt in thy heart a dream 
 Of favourite lust, O this is foul in my mind. 
 
 Ozias. 
 I meant not what thou callest lust, but love. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 What matters that ? Thou hast desired me. 
 And knowing that, I feel my beauty clutch 
 About my soul with a more wicked shame 
 Than if I lived corrupt with leprosy. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 Wilt thou still let the dead have claim on thee ? 
 Judith, wilt thou be married to a grave ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 I am married to my love ; and it is vile, 
 Yea, it is burning in me like a sin, 
 That when my love was absent, thy desire 
 Shouldst trespass where my love is single lord. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 This is but superstition. Love belongs 
 To living souls. It is a light that kills
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 145 
 
 Shadows and ghosts haunting about the mind. 
 
 Yea, even now when death glooms so immense 
 
 Over the heaven of our being, Love 
 
 Would keep us white with day amid the dark 
 
 Down-coming of the storm, till the end took us. 
 
 And joy is never wasted. If we love, 
 
 Then although death shall break and bray our flesh, 
 
 The joy of love that thrilled in it shall fly 
 
 Past his destruction, subtle as fragrance, strong 
 
 And uncontrollable as fire, to dwell 
 
 In the careering onward of man's life, 
 
 Increasing it with passion and with sweetness. 
 
 Duty is on us therefore that we love 
 
 And be loved. Wert thou made to set alight 
 
 Such splendour of desire in man, and yet, 
 
 For a grave's sake, keep all thy beauty null, 
 
 And nothing be of good nor help to thy kind ? 
 
 Judith. 
 Help? What help in me ? 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 To let go forth 
 
 The joy whereof thy beauty is the sign 
 Into the mind of man, and be therein 
 Courage of golden music and loud light 
 Against his enemies, the eternal dark 
 And silence. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Ah, not thus. Yet could I not help ? 
 Why talk we ? What thing should I say to thee
 
 146 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 To pierce the pride of lust wrapping thy heart ? 
 
 How show thee that, as in maidens unloved 
 
 There is virginity to make their sex 
 
 Shrink like a wound from eyes of love untimely, 
 
 So in a woman who hath learnt herself 
 
 By her own beauty sacred in the clasp 
 
 Of him whom her desire hath sacred made, 
 
 There is a fiercer and more virgin wrath 
 
 Against all eyes that come desiring her ? 
 
 [A Psalm of many voices strikes their ears, and through 
 the street pass old men chanting, followed and 
 answered by a troop of young men. 
 
 Chorus : Old Men. 
 
 Wilt thou not examine our hearts, O Lord God of our 
 
 strength ? 
 Wilt thou still be blindly trying us ? Wilt thou not at 
 
 length 
 Believe the crying of our words, that never our knees 
 
 have bent 
 
 To foreign gods, nor any Jewish mouth or brain hath sent 
 Prayers to beseech the favour of abominable thrones 
 Worshipt by the heathen men with furnaces, wounds, 
 
 and groans ? 
 
 Young Men. 
 
 And what good in our lives, strength or delighted glee, 
 Hath God paid to purchase our purity ? 
 
 Though lust starve in our flesh, still he devises fire 
 To prove our lives pure as his fierce desire. 
 
 With huge heathenish tribes roaring exultant here, 
 Jewry fights as maid with a ravisher :
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 147 
 
 Tribes who better than we deal with the gods their lords, 
 For they pleasantly sin, yet the gods sharpen and drive 
 their swords. 
 
 Old Men. 
 
 Hast thou not tried us enough, Jehovah ? Hast thou 
 
 found any fire 
 Will draw from our hearts a smoke of burn'd idolatrous 
 
 desire ? 
 
 There is none in us, Lord : no other God in us but thee ; 
 Only thy fires make our clean souls glitter with agony. 
 Pure we are, pure in our prayers, pure our souls look to 
 
 thee, Lord ; 
 And to be shewn to the world devoured by evil is our 
 
 reward. 
 
 Young Men. 
 
 We whose hearts were alone giving our God renown, 
 
 Under the wheels of hell we are fallen down ! 
 False the heaven we built, fashion'd of purity ; 
 
 'Tis heathen heavens, made out of sin, stand high. 
 Come, make much of our God ! Comfort his ears with 
 
 song, 
 
 Lest his pride the gods with their laughter wrong, 
 Seeing, huddled as beasts held by a fearful night 
 Full of lions and hunger, his folk crouch to the heathen 
 might. 
 
 Old Men. 
 
 Jehovah, still we refrain from crying to the infamous 
 gates
 
 148 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 That open easily into the heavens thy mind of jealousy 
 
 hates. 
 Power is in them : hast thou no power ? Wilt thou not 
 
 beware 
 Lest thy mood now press our minds to venturous despair ? 
 
 Young Men. 
 
 Fool'd, fool'd, fool'd are our lives, held by the world in 
 
 jeer; 
 
 With crazed eyes we behold veils of enormous fear 
 Hiding dreadfully those marvellous gates and stairs 
 Where the heathen delighted with sin throng with their 
 prosperous prayers. 
 
 Old Men. 
 
 Yea, hung like the front of pestilent winds, thunderous 
 
 dark before 
 
 The way into the heathen heavens, terrible curtains pour, 
 Webs of black imagination and woven frenzy of sin ; 
 And yet we know power on earth belongs to those within. 
 
 Young Men. 
 
 Yea, through Jehovah's jealousy, 
 
 Burning dimly at last we see 
 
 The great brass made like rigid flame, 
 
 The gates of the heavens we dare not name. 
 
 Take hold of wickedness ! Yea, have heart 
 
 To tear the darkness of sin apart ; 
 
 And find, beyond, our comforted sight 
 
 Flash full of a glee of fiery light, 
 
 The gods the heathen know through sin, 
 
 The gods who give them the world to win !
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 149 
 
 Judith. 
 
 This may I not escape. My world hath need 
 Of me who still hold God firm in my mind. 
 It is no matter if I fail : I must 
 Send the God in me forth, and yield to him 
 The shaping of whatever chance befall. 
 Ozias ! hateful thou hast made thyself 
 To me ; for thou hast hatefully soiled my beauty, 
 My preciousest, given me to attire my soul 
 For her long marriage festival of life. 
 Yet I must make request to thee, and thou 
 Must grant it. When the sun is down to-night, 
 Quietly set the main gate open : I 
 Will pass therethrough and treat with Holofernes. 
 
 Ozias. 
 What, wilt thou go to be murdered by these fiends ? 
 
 Judith. 
 Ask nothing, but do simply my request. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 I will : so thou shalt know the reverent heart 
 I have for thee, although its worship thou 
 So bitterly despisest ; but thy will 
 Shall be a sacred thing for me to serve. 
 Thou hast thy dangerous demand, because 
 It is thou who askest, it is I who may 
 Grant it to thee, this only ! Yea, I will send 
 Thy heedless body among risks that thou,
 
 150 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Looking alone at the great shining God 
 
 Within thy mind, seest not ; but I see 
 
 And sicken at them. Yet do I not require 
 
 Thy purpose ; whether thy proud heart must have 
 
 The wound of death from steel that has not toucht 
 
 The peevish misery these Jews call blood ; 
 
 Whether thy mind is for velvet slavery 
 
 In the desires of some Assyrian lord 
 
 Forgive me, Judith ! there my love spoke, made 
 
 Foolish with injury ; and I should be 
 
 Unwise to stay here, lest it break the hold 
 
 I have it in. I go, and I am humbled. 
 
 But thou shalt have thy asking : the gate is thine. 
 
 [He goes. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 How can it harm me more, to feel my beauty 
 Read by man's eyes to mean his lust set forth ? 
 Yea, Holofernes now can bring no shame 
 Upon me that Ozias hath not brought. 
 But this is chief : what balance can there be 
 In my own hurt against a nation's pining ? 
 God hath given me beauty, and I may 
 Snare with it him whose trap now bites my folk. 
 There is naught else to think of. Let me go 
 And set those robes in order which best pleased 
 Manasses' living eyes ; and let me fill 
 My gown with jewels, such as kindle sight, 
 And have some stinging sweetness in my hair. 
 Manasses, my Manasses, lost to me, 
 Gone where my love can nothing search, and hidden 
 Behind the vapours of these worldly years,
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 151 
 
 The many years between me and thy death ; 
 
 Thine ears are sealed with immortal blessedness 
 
 Against our miserable din of living ; 
 
 Through thy pure sense goeth no soil of grief. 
 
 Forgive me ! for thou hast left me here to be hurt 
 
 And moved to pity by the dolour of men. 
 
 The garment of my soul is splasht with sorrow, 
 
 Sorrowful noise and sight ; and like to fires 
 
 Of venom spat on me, the sorrow eats 
 
 Through the thin robe of sense into my soul. 
 
 And it is cried against me, this keen anguish, 
 
 By my own people and my God's ; and thou 
 
 Didst love them. Therefore thou must needs forgive me, 
 
 That I devise how this my beauty, this 
 
 Sacred to thy long-dead joy of desire, 
 
 May turn to weapon in the hand of God ; 
 
 Such weapon as he hath taken aforetime 
 
 To sword whole nations at a stroke to their knees, 
 
 Storms of the air and hilted fire from heaven, 
 
 And sightless edge of pestilence hugely swung 
 
 Down on the bulk of armies in the night. 
 
 Such weapon in God's hand, and wielded so, 
 
 A woman's beauty may be now, I pray ; 
 
 A pestilence suddenly in this foreign blood, 
 
 A blight on the vast growth of Assyrian weed, 
 
 A knife to the stem of its main root, the heart 
 
 Of Holofernes. God ! Let me hew him down, 
 
 And out of the ground of Israel wither our plague !
 
 152 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 II 
 
 BEFORE THE TENT OF HOLOFERNES 
 
 Holofernes. 
 
 Night and her admirable stars again ! 
 And I again envying her and questioning ! 
 What hast thou, Night, achieved, denied to me, 
 That maketh thee so full of quiet stars ? 
 What beauty has been mingled into thee 
 So that thy depth burns with the peace of stars ? 
 I now with fires of uproarious heat, 
 Exclaiming yellow flames and towering splendour 
 And a huge fragrant smoke of precious woods, 
 Must build against thy overlooking, Stars, 
 And against thy terrible eternal news 
 Of Beauty that burns quietly and pure, 
 A lodge of wild extravagant earthly fire ; 
 Even as under passions of fleshly pleasure 
 I hide myself from my desiring soul. 
 
 [Enter Guards with JUDITH. 
 
 Guard 1. 
 
 We found this woman wandering in the trenches, 
 And calling out, " Take me to Holofernes, 
 Assyrians, I am come for Holofernes." 
 
 Guard 2. 
 
 She would not, for no words of ours, unveil, 
 And something held us back from handling her.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 153 
 
 Guard 1. 
 
 We think she must be beautiful, although 
 She is so stubborn with that veil of hers. 
 
 Guard 2. 
 
 We minded my lord's word, that he be shewn 
 All the seized women which are strangely fair. 
 
 Holofernes. 
 Take off thy veil. 
 
 Judith. 
 I will not. 
 
 Holofernes. 
 
 Take thy veil 
 
 From off thy face, Jewess, or thou straight goest 
 To entertain my soldiers. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 I will not. 
 
 Holofernes. 
 Am I to tear it, then ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 My lord, thou durst not. 
 
 Holofernes. 
 
 Ha, there is spirit here. I have the whim, 
 Jewess, almost to believe thee : I dare not ! 
 But tell me who thou art.
 
 154 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Judith. 
 
 That shalt thou know 
 Before the night has end. 
 
 Holofernes. 
 
 Take off thy veil. 
 
 Judith. 
 Alone for Holofernes am I come. 
 
 Holofernes. 
 
 And there is only Holofernes here. 
 These fellows are but thoughts of mine ; my whole 
 Army, that treads down all the earth and breaks 
 The banks of fending rivers into marsh, 
 Is nought but my forth-going imagination. 
 Where I am, there is no man else : if I 
 Appeared before thee in a throng of spears, 
 I'ld stand alone before thee, girt about 
 By powers of my mind made visible. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 For captured peasants or for captured kings 
 Such words would have the right big sound. But I 
 Am woman, and I hear them not : I say 
 I will not, before any man but thee, 
 Make known my face ; I am only for thee. 
 When I have thee alone and in thy tent 
 I will unveil. 
 
 Holofernes (to the Guards). 
 What ! Staring ? Hence, you dogs !
 
 III 
 
 IN THE TENT OF HOLOFERNES 
 
 Holofernes (alone with Judith). 
 
 Thou art the woman ! Thou hast come to me !- 
 
 not as I thought ! not with senses blazing 
 Far into my deep soul abiding calm 
 Within their glory of knowledge, as the vast 
 Of night behind her outward sense of stars. 
 Now am I but the place thy beauty brightens, 
 And of myself I have no light of sense 
 
 Nor certainty of being : I am made 
 Empty of all my wont of life before thee, 
 A vessel where thy splendour may be poured, 
 After the way the great vessel of air 
 Accepts the morning power of the sun. 
 Now nothing I have known of me remains, 
 Save that within me, far as the world is high 
 Beneath this dawn that gilds my spirit's air, 
 Some depth, more inward even than my soul, 
 Troubles and flashes like the shining sea. 
 
 O Jewish woman, if thou knewest all 
 The hunger and the tears the punisht world 
 Suffers by cause of thee, and of my dream 
 That thou wert somewhere hidden in mankind ! 
 
 1 could not but obey my dream, and toil 
 To break the nations and to sift them fine, 
 Pounding them with my warfare into dust, 
 And searching with my many iron hands
 
 156 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Through their destruction as through crumbs of marl, 
 
 Until my palms should know the jewel-stone 
 
 Betwixt them, the Woman who is Beauty, 
 
 Nature so long hath like a miser kept 
 
 Buried away from me in this heap of Jews ! 
 
 Now that we twain might meet, women and men 
 
 In every land where I have felt for thee 
 
 Have taken desolation for their home, 
 
 Crying against me, and against thee unknowing. 
 
 Ah, but I had given over to despair 
 The mind in me. I ground the stubborn tribes, 
 I quarried them like rocks and broke them small 
 And ground them down to flinders and to sands ; 
 But never gleamed the jewel-stone therein, 
 Naught but the common flint of earth I found. 
 And in a dreary anger I kept on 
 Assailing the whole kind of man, because 
 Some manner of war my soul must needs inhabit. 
 Like a man making himself in drunken sleep 
 A king, my soul, drunk with its earthly war, 
 Kept idle all its terrible want of thee, 
 Believed itself managing arms with God ; 
 Yea, when my trampling hurry through the earth 
 Made cloudy wind of the light human dust, 
 I thought myself to move in the dark danger 
 Of blinding God's own face with blasts of war ! 
 Until my rage forgot his crime against me, 
 His hiding thee, the beauty I had dreamt. 
 Yea and I filled my flesh with furious pleasure, 
 That in the noise of it my soul should hear 
 No whispering thought of desperate desire. 
 
 Nevertheless, I knew well that my heart's
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 157 
 
 Sightless imagination lifted his face 
 
 Continually awake for news of thee. 
 
 But 'twas infirm and crazy waking, like 
 
 As when a starving sentry, put to guard 
 
 The sleep of a broken soldiery that flees 
 
 Through winter of wild hills from hounding foes, 
 
 Hath but the pain of frozen wounds, and fear 
 
 Feeding on his dark spirit, to watch withal. 
 
 And lo, 
 
 As suddenly, as blessedly thou comest 
 
 Now to my heart's unseeing watch for thee, 
 
 As out of the night behind him into the heart, 
 
 Drugg'd senseless with its ache, of that lost soldier 
 
 An arrow leaps, and ere the stab can hurt, 
 
 His frozen waking is the ease of death. 
 
 So I am killed by thee ; all the loud pain 
 
 Of pleasure that had lockt my heart in life, 
 
 Wherein with blinded and unhearing face 
 
 My hope of thee yet stood and strained to look 
 
 And listen for thy coming, all this life 
 
 Is killed before thee ; yea, like marvellous death, 
 
 Spiritual sense invests my heart's desire ; 
 
 And round the quiet and content thereof, 
 
 The striving hunger of my fleshly sense 
 
 Fails like a web of hanging cloth in fire. 
 
 Tell me now, if thou knowest, why thou hast come ! 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Sufficeth not for us that I have come ? 
 Let not unseemly things live in my mouth ; 
 Yet I would praise thee as thou praisest me, 
 But in a manner that my people use,
 
 158 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Things to approach in song they list not speak. 
 
 And song, thou knowest, inwrought with chiming strings, 
 
 Sweetens with sweet delay loving desire : 
 
 Also thine eyes will feed, and thy heart wonder. 
 
 Balkis was in her marble town, 
 
 And shadow over the world came down. 
 
 Whiteness of walls, towers and piers, 
 
 That all day dazzled eyes to tears, 
 
 Turned from being white-golden flame, 
 
 And like the deep-sea blue became. 
 
 Balkis into her garden went ; 
 
 Her spirit was in discontent 
 
 Like a torch in restless air. 
 
 Joylessly she wandered there, 
 
 And saw her city's azure white 
 
 Lying under the great night, 
 
 Beautiful as the memory 
 
 Of a worshipping world would be 
 
 In the mind of a god, in the hour 
 
 When he must kill his outward power ; 
 
 And, coming to a pool where trees 
 
 Grew in double greeneries, 
 
 Saw herself, as she went by 
 
 The water, walking beautifully, 
 
 And saw the stars shine in the glance 
 
 Of her eyes, and her own fair countenance 
 
 Passing, pale and wonderful, 
 
 Across the night that filled the pool. 
 
 And cruel was the grief that played 
 
 With the queen's spirit ; and she said : 
 
 " What do I hear, reigning alone ? 
 
 For to be unloved is to be alone.
 
 There is no man in all my land 
 
 Dare my longing understand ; 
 
 The whole folk like a peasant bows 
 
 Lest its look should meet my brows 
 
 And be harmed by this beauty of mine. 
 
 I burn their brains as I were sign 
 
 Of God's beautiful anger sent 
 
 To master them with punishment 
 
 Of beauty that must pour distress 
 
 On hearts grown dark with ugliness. 
 
 But it is I am the punisht one. 
 
 Is there no man, is there none, 
 
 In whom my beauty will but move 
 
 The lust of a delighted love ; 
 
 In whom some spirit of God so thrives 
 
 That we may wed our lonely lives ? 
 
 Is there no man, is there none ? " 
 
 She said, " I will go to Solomon." 
 
 Holofernes. 
 
 I shall not bear it : dreamed, it hath made my life 
 Fail almost, like a storm broken in heaven 
 By its internal fire ; and now I feel 
 Love like a dreadful god coming to do 
 His pleasure on me, to tear me with his joy 
 And shred my flesh- wove strength with merciless 
 Utterance through me of inhuman bliss. 
 I must have more divinity within me. 
 Come to me, slave ! [Calling out to his attendants. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Thou callest someone ? Alas ! 
 O, where's my veil ? Cry him to stay awhile !
 
 160 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Holofernes. 
 
 Thou troubled with such whimsy ! But 'tis no one, 
 A mere sexless thing of mine. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 He is coming ! 
 
 I threw my veil where ? I must bow my face 
 Close to the ground, or his eyes will find me out ; 
 And O my lord, hold him back with thy voice ! 
 
 [She has knelt down. 
 
 Hold him in doubt to enter a moment, while 
 I loosen my hair into some manner of safety 
 Against his prying. 
 
 Holofernes. 
 
 Slave, dost thou hear me ? Come ! 
 I marvel, room for such a paltering mood 
 Should be within thy mind, now so nearly 
 Deified with the first sense of my love. 
 
 [A Eunuch comes in. 
 
 Holofernes. 
 
 Wine ! The mightiest wine my sutlers have ; 
 Wine with the sun's own grandeur in it, and all 
 The wildness of the earth conceiving Spring 
 From the sun's golden lust : wine for us twain ! 
 And when thou hast brought it, burn anear my bed 
 Storax and cassia ; and let wealth be found 
 To cover my bed with such strife of colour, 
 Crimson and tawny and purple-inspired gold, 
 That eyes beholding it may take therefrom 
 Splendid imagination of the strife 
 Of love with love's implacable desire.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 161 
 
 Judith (still kneeling). 
 
 I must lean on thee now, my God ! A weight 
 Of pitiable weakness thou must bear 
 And move as it were thine own strength ; tell my heart 
 How not to sicken in abomination, 
 Show me the way to loathe this vile man's rage, 
 Now close to seize me into the use of his pleasure, 
 With the loathing that is terrible delight. 
 So that not fainting, but refresht and astonisht 
 And strangely spirited and divinely angry 
 My body may arise out of its passion, 
 Out of being enjoyed by this fiend's flesh. 
 Then man my arm ; then let mine own revenge 
 Utter thy vengeance, Lord, as speech doth meaning ; 
 Yea, with hate empower me to say bravely 
 The glittering word that even now thy mind 
 Purposes, God, the swift stroke of a falchion ! 
 
 Holofernes. 
 
 Woman, beloved, why art thou fixt so long 
 Kneeling and downward crookt, and in thy hair 
 Darkened ? Ah, thy shoulders urging shape 
 Of loveliness into thy hair's pouring gleam ! 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Needs must I pray my Jewish God for help 
 Against my bridal joys. For I do fear them. 
 
 Holofernes. 
 I also : these are the joys that fear doth own.
 
 162 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 IV 
 
 At the Gate of Bethulia. On the walls, on either side of 
 the Gate, are citizens watching the Assyrian camp ; 
 OZIAS also, standing by himself. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 When wilt thou cure thyself, spirit of the earth, 
 When wilt thou cure thyself of thy long fever, 
 That so insanely doth ferment in thee ? 
 'Tis not man only : the whole blood of life 
 Is fever'd with desire. But as the brain, 
 Being lord of the body, is served by blood 
 So well that a hidden canker in the flesh 
 May send, continuous as a usury, 
 Its breeding venom upward, till in the brain 
 It vapour into enormity of dreaming : 
 So man is lord of life upon the earth ; 
 And like a hastening blood his nature wells 
 Up out of the beasts below him, they the flesh 
 And he the brain, they serving him with blood ; 
 And blood so loaden with brute lust of being 
 It steams the conscious leisure of man's thought 
 With an immense phantasma of desire, 
 An unsubduable dream of unknown pleasure ; 
 Which he sends hungering forth into the world, 
 But never satisfied returns to him. 
 Who hath found beauty ? Who hath not desired it ? 
 'Tis but the feverish spirit of earthly life 
 Working deliriously in man, a dream
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 163 
 
 Questing the world that throngs upon man's mind 
 
 To find therein an image of herself ; 
 
 And there is nothing answers her entreaty. 
 
 I climb towards death : it is not falling down 
 For me to die, but up the event of the world 
 As up a mighty ridge I climb, and look 
 With lifted vision backward down on life. 
 So high towards death I am gone, listless I gaze 
 Where on the earth beneath me, into the fires 
 Of that Assyrian strength, our siege of fate, 
 Judith, the dream of my desire of beauty, 
 Goes daring forth, to shape herself therein, 
 Seeking to fashion in its turbulence 
 Some deed that will be likeness of herself. 
 For now I know her purpose : and I know 
 She will be murdered there. Against the world 
 The beauty I have lived in, my loved dream, 
 Goes, wild to master the world ; and she will 
 Therefore be murdered. It is nothing now ; 
 Wind from the heights of death is on my brow. 
 
 Talk among Hie oilier watchers. 
 
 It must be, God is for us. Such a mind 
 As this of Judith's could not be, unless 
 God had spoken it into her. She is 
 His special voice, to tell the Assyrians 
 Terrible matters. 
 
 Is she God's ? I think 
 'Tis Holofernes hath her now. 
 
 If not, 
 Upon his soldiers he hath lavisht her.
 
 164 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Not he. Now they have known her, his filled senses 
 Never will leave go our wonderful Judith. 
 
 Ay, wonderful in Jewry. But there are 
 In Babylon women so beautiful, 
 They make men's spirits desperate, to know 
 Flesh cannot ever minister enough 
 Delight to ease the craving they are taskt with. 
 
 Who talks of Babylon when God even now 
 Is training her fierce champion, Holofernes, 
 Into the death a woman holds before him ? 
 
 A woman killing Holofernes ! 
 
 Ay; 
 
 Be she abused by him or not, I know 
 God means to give her marvellous hands to-night. 
 I know it by my heart so strangely sick 
 With looking out for the first drowsy stir 
 In that huge flaming quiet of the camp. 
 Now fearfuller qualm than famine eagerly 
 Handles my life and pulls at it, my faith's 
 Hunger for being fed with sounds and visions : 
 The firelight mixt with a trooping bustle of shadows, 
 The silence suddenly shouting with surprise, 
 That tells of men astounded out of sleep 
 To find that God hath dreadfully been among them. 
 
 We have mistaken Judith.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 165 
 
 Even as now 
 God is mistaken by your doubting hearts. 
 
 She that has dealt with such a pride of spirit 
 In all her ways of life, so that she seemed 
 To feel like shadow, falling on the light 
 Her own mind made, the common thoughts of men ; 
 Ay, she that to-day came down into our woe 
 And stood among the griefs that buzz upon us, 
 Like one who is forced aside from a bright journey 
 To stoop in a small-room'd cottage, where loud flies 
 Pester the inmates and the windows darken ; 
 This she, this Judith, out of her quiet pride, 
 And out of her guarded purity, to walk 
 Where God himself from violent whoredom could 
 Scarcely preserve her shuddering flesh ! and all 
 For our sake, for the lives she hath in scorn, 
 This horrible Assyrian risk she ventures. 
 
 There should be prayer for that. Let us ask God 
 To bind the men, whose greed now glares upon her, 
 In some strange feebleness ; surely he will ; 
 Surely not with woman's worst injury 
 Her noble obedience he will reward ! 
 Let us ask God to bind these men before her. 
 
 They are not his to bind : else, were they here ? 
 They are the glorying of Nebuchadnezzar's 
 Heart of fury against our God, sent here 
 Like insolent shouting into his holy quiet. 
 God could not bind these bragging noises up
 
 166 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 In Nebuchadnezzar's heart ; it is not his, 
 
 But made by Babylonian gods or owned 
 
 By thrones that hold the heavens over Nineveh. 
 
 For all these outland greatnesses, these kings 
 
 Whose war goes pealing through the world, these 
 
 towns 
 
 Infidel and triumphant, reaching forth 
 Armies to hug the world close to their lust, 
 What are they but the gods making a scorn 
 Of our God on the earth ? Then how can he 
 Alter these men from wicked delight ? or how 
 Keep Judith all untoucht among their hands, 
 When his own quietness he could not keep 
 Unbroken by the god's Assyrian insult ? 
 
 But with a thunder he can shatter this 
 Intruding noise, and make his quiet again. 
 
 And in their lust he can entangle them, 
 Deceiving them far into Judith's beauty, 
 Which is his power, and lop them from their gods. 
 
 Their outrage will be ornament upon her ! 
 
 Out of the hands of the goblins she will come 
 Not markt with shame, but wearing their vile usage 
 Like one whom earthly reign covers with splendour. 
 
 The ignominy they thought of shall be turned 
 To shining, yea, to announcing through the world 
 How God hath used her to beguile the heathen.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 167 
 
 It begins ! Now it begins ! Lo, how dismay 
 Is fallen on the camp in a strange wind : 
 The ground, that seemed as spread with yellow embers, 
 Leaps into blazing, and like cinders whirled 
 And scattered up among the flames, are black 
 Bands of frantic men flickering about ! 
 
 Ozias ! seest thou how our enemies 
 Are labouring in amazement ? How they run 
 Flinging fuel to light them against fear ? 
 
 Now they begin to roar their terror : now 
 They wave and beckon wordless desperate things 
 One to another. 
 
 Hear the iron and brass 
 Ringing above their voices, as they snatch 
 The arms that seem to fight among themselves, 
 Seized by their masters' anguish ; dost thou hear 
 The clumsy terror in the camp, the men 
 Hasting to arm themselves against our God, 
 Ozias ? 
 
 Ozias. 
 Lions have taken a sentinel. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 Judith hath taken Holofernes. 
 
 Judith's voice outside, under the gate. 
 
 Yea, 
 And brought him back with her. Open the gates
 
 168 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 The Citizens. 
 
 Open the gates. Bring torches. Wake, ye Jews ! 
 Hail, Judith, marvellously chosen woman ! 
 How bringst thou Holofernes ? Show him to us. 
 
 Judith. 
 Dare you indeed behold him ? 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 Is he bound ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Drugged rather, with a medicine that God 
 Prepared for him and gave into my hands. 
 Open the gates ! It is a harmless thing, 
 The Holofernes I have made your show ; 
 You may gaze blithely upon him. I have tamed 
 The man's pernicious brain. Open the gates ! 
 What, are your hands still nerveless ? But my hands, 
 The hands of a woman, have done notable work. 
 
 The Gates open. JUDITH appears, standing against 
 the night and the Assyrian fires. Torches and 
 shouting in the town. 
 
 Citizens. 
 
 Judith ! Judith alone ! Where is thy boast 
 Of Holofernes captured ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 I am alone, 
 
 Indeed ; and you are many ; yet with me 
 Comes Holofernes, certainly a captive.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 169 
 
 Ozias. 
 What trifle is this ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Trifle ? It is the word. 
 
 A trifle, a thing of mere weight, I have brought you 
 From the Assyrian camp. My apron here 
 Is loaded now more heavily, but as meanly 
 As an old witch's skirt, when she comes home 
 From seeking camel's-dung for kindling ; yet 
 My burden was, an hour ago, the world 
 Where you were ground to tortures ; it was the brain 
 Inventing your destruction. Look you now ! 
 
 [Holding up the head O/HOLOFERNES. 
 This is the mouth through which commandment came 
 Of massacre and damnation to the JCAVS ; 
 Here was the mind the gods that hate our God 
 Used to empower the agonies they devised 
 Against us ; here your dangers were all made, 
 Your horrible starvation ; and the thirst 
 Those wicked gods supposed would murder you, 
 Here a creature became, a ravenous creature ; 
 Yea, here those mighty vigours lived which took, 
 Like ocean water taking frost, the hate 
 Those gods have for Jehovah, shaping it 
 Atrociously into the war that clcncht 
 Their fury about you, frozen into iron. 
 Jews, here is the head of Holofernes : take it 
 And let it grin upon our highest wall 
 Over against the camp of the Assyrians. 
 
 [She throws them the head
 
 170 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Ay, you may worry it ; now is the jackals' time ; 
 Snarl on your enemy, now he is dead. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 Judith, be not too scornful of their noise. 
 There are no words may turn this deed to song : 
 Praise cannot reach it. Only with such din, 
 Unmeasured yelling exultation, can 
 Astonishment speak of it. In me, just now, 
 Thought was the figure of a god, firm standing, 
 A dignity like carved Egyptian stone ; 
 Thou like a blow of fire hast splinter'd it ; 
 It is abroad like powder in a wind, 
 Or like heapt shingle in a furious tide, 
 Thou having roused the ungovernable waters 
 My mind is built amidst, a dangerous tower. 
 My spirit therein dwelling, so overwhelmed 
 In joy or fear, disturbance without name, 
 Out of the rivers it is fallen in 
 Can snatch no substance it may shape to words 
 Answerable to thy prowess and thy praise. 
 We are all abasht by thee, and only know 
 To worship thec with shouts and astounded passion. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Yes, now the world has got a voice against me : 
 At last now it may howl a triumph about me. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 This, nevertheless, my thought can seize from out 
 The wildness that goes pouring past it. God,
 
 VIKGINITY AND PERFECTION 171 
 
 Wondrously having moved thee to this deed, 
 
 Hath shown the Jews a wondrous favouring love. 
 
 Thee it becomes not, standing though thou art 
 
 On this high action, to think scorn of men 
 
 Whom God thinks worthy of having thee for saviour. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 This is a subtle flattery. What know I 
 Of whom God loves, of whom God hates ? I know 
 This only : in my home, in my soul's chamber, 
 A filthy verminous beast hath made his lair. 
 I let him in ; I let this grim lust in ; 
 Not only did not bolt my doors against 
 His forcing, but even put them wide and watcht 
 Him coming in, to make my house his stable. 
 What though I killed him afterward ? All my place, 
 And all the air I live in, is foul with him. 
 I killed him ? Truly, I am mixt with him ; 
 Death must have me before it hath all him. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 In thee, too, are the floods, the wild rivers, 
 Overrunning thy thought, the nameless mind ? 
 How else, indeed ? Nay, we are dull with joy : 
 Of thee we thought not, out of the hands of outrage 
 Coming back, although with victory coming. 
 But this makes surety once more of my thought, 
 And gives again my reason its lost station ; 
 For it may come now in my privilege 
 (A thing that could cure madness in my brain) 
 That thou from me persuasion hast to endure 
 What well I know thy soul, thy upright soul,
 
 172 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Feels as abominable harness on it 
 Fastening thee unwillingly to crime, 
 The wickedness that hath delighted in thee. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Ay ? Art thou there already ? Tasting, art thou, 
 What the Assyrians may have forced on me, 
 Ere thou hast well swallowed thy new freedom ? 
 Indeed, I know this is the wine of the feast 
 Which I have set for thee and thy Bethulia ; 
 And 'tis the wine makes delicate the banquet. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 Wait : listen to me. 'Tis I now must be wise 
 And thou the hearkener. Not without wound 
 (So I make out, at least, thy hurrying words) 
 Comest thou back to us from conquering. 
 And such a wound, I easily believe, 
 As eats into thy soul and rages there ; 
 Yea, I that know thee, Judith, know thy soul 
 Worse rankling hath in it from heathen insult 
 Than flesh could take from steel bathed in a venom 
 Art magic brewed over a charcoal fire, 
 Blown into flame by hissing of whipt lizards. 
 Yet is it likely, by too much regarding, 
 Thy hurt is pamper'd in its poisonous sting. 
 Wounds in the spirit need no surgery 
 But a mind strong not to insist on them. 
 See, then, thou hast not too much horror of this ; 
 Who that fights well in battle comes home sound ? 
 Much less couldst thou, who must, with seeming weakness, 
 Invite the power of Holoferncs forth
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 173 
 
 Ere striking it, thy womanhood the ambush. 
 
 For thou didst plan, I guess, to duel him 
 
 In snares, weaving his greed about his limbs, 
 
 Drawn out and twisted winding round his strength 
 
 By ministry of thy enticing beauty ; 
 
 That when he thought himself spending on thee 
 
 Malicious violence, and thou hadst made him 
 
 Languish, stupid with boasting and delight, 
 
 Thy hands might find him a tied quiet victim 
 
 Under their anger, maiming him of life. 
 
 Now, thy device accomplisht, wilt thou grudge 
 
 Its means ? Wilt thou scruple to understand 
 
 Thy abus'd sex will show upon thy fame 
 
 A nobler colour of glory than a soldier's 
 
 Wounded bravery rusting his habergeon ? 
 
 Nay, will not the world rejoice, thou being found 
 
 Among its women, ready such insolence 
 
 To bear as is unbearable to think on, 
 
 Thereby to serve and save God and his people ? 
 
 Judith. 
 The world rejoice over me ? Yea, I am certain. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 Then art thou too fastidious. It is weak 
 To make thyself a shame of being injured ; 
 And is it injury indeed ? Nay, is it 
 Anything but a mere opinion hurt ? 
 Not thou, but customary thought is here 
 Molested and annoyed ; the only nerve 
 Can carry anguish from this to thy soul, 
 Is that credulity which ties the mind
 
 174 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Firmly to notional creature as to real. 
 Advise thee, then ; dark in thyself keep hid 
 This grief ; and thou wilt shortly find it dying. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 Judith, 
 
 Pardon our ecstasy. Tis time thou hadst 
 Our honour. But first tell us all the event, 
 That in thy proper height thou with thy deed 
 May stand against our worship. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Why do you stop 
 
 Your shouts, and glare upon me ? Have you need 
 Truly to hear my tale ? I think, not so. 
 Ozias here, as he hath whiled at ease 
 Upon the walls my stay in the camp yonder, 
 Hath fairly fancied all that I have done, 
 And more exactly, and with a relishing gust, 
 All that was done to me. Ask him, therefore ; 
 If he hath not already entertained 
 Your tedious leisure with my story told 
 Pat to your liking, enjoyed, and glosst with praise.- 
 And yet, why ask him ? Why go even so far 
 To hear it ? Ask but the clever libidinousness 
 Dwelling in each of your hearts, and it will surely 
 Imagine for you how I trained to my arms 
 Lewd Holofernes, and kept him plied with lust, 
 Until his wild blood in the end paused fainting, 
 And he lay twitching, drained of all his wits ; 
 But there was wine as well working in him, 
 Feebling his sinews ; 'twas not all my doing,
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 175 
 
 The snoring fit that came before his death, 
 The routing beastly slumber that was my time. 
 You know it all ! Why ask me for the tale ? 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 Comfort her : praise her. She is strangely ashamed 
 Of Holofernes having evilly used her. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 We will contrive the triumph of our joy 
 Into some tune of words, and bring thee on, 
 Accompanied by singing, to thy house. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 I pray you, rather let me go alone. 
 You will do better to be searching out 
 All sharpen'd steel that may take weapon-use. 
 The Assyrians are afraid : it is your time. 
 
 [They surround JUDITH and go with her. 
 
 CHORUS of Citizens praising JUDITH and 
 leading her to her house. 
 
 Over us and past us go the years ; 
 Like wind that taketh sound from jubilee 
 And aloud flieth ringing, 
 Over us goeth the speed of the years, 
 Like loud noise eternally bringing 
 The greatness women have done. 
 
 Deborah was great ; with her singing 
 She hearten'd the men that the horses had dismayed ; 
 Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, alone
 
 176 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Stood singing where the men were horribly afraid, 
 
 Singing of God in the midst of fear ; 
 
 When archers out of Hazor were 
 
 Eating the land like grasshoppers, 
 
 And darkness at noon was plundering the air 
 
 Of the light of the sun's insulted fires, 
 
 Red darkness covering Sisera's host 
 
 As Jewry was covered by the Canaanite's boast : 
 
 For the earth was broken into dust beneath 
 
 The force of his chariots' thundering tyres, 
 
 Nine hundred chariots of iron. 
 
 Deborah was great in her prophesying ; 
 But, though her anger moved through the Israelites, 
 And the loose tribes her indignant crying 
 Bound into song, fashion'd to an army ; 
 And before the measure of her song went flying, 
 Like leaves and breakage of the woods 
 Fallen into pouring floods, 
 The iron and the men of Sisera and Jabin ; 
 Not by her alone 
 God's punishment was done 
 On Canaan intending a monstrous crime, 
 On the foaming and poison of the serpent in Hazor ; 
 Two women were the power of God that time. 
 
 Yea, and sullenly down 
 Into its hiding town, 
 
 Even though the lightning were still in its heart, 
 The broken dragon, drawing in its fury, 
 Had croucht to mend its shatter'd malice, 
 Had lifted its head again and spat against God. 
 But God its endlessly devising brain, 
 Its braving spirit, its captain Sisera,
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 177 
 
 Into the hands of another woman brought : 
 
 In nets of her persuasion 
 
 She that wild spirit caught, 
 
 She fasten'd up that uncontrollable thought. 
 
 Sisera spake, and the crops were flames ; 
 
 Sisera lookt, and blood ran down the door-sills. 
 
 But weary, trusting his entertainment, 
 
 He came to Jael, the Kenite woman ; 
 
 A woman who gave him death for a bed, 
 
 And with base tools nailed down his murderous head 
 
 Fast to the earth his rage had fed 
 
 With men unreckonably slain. 
 
 But than these wonderfully greater, 
 Judith, art thou ; 
 
 The praise of both shall follow like a shadow 
 After thy glory now, 
 Who alone the measureless striding, 
 The high ungovern'd brow, 
 Of Assur upon the hills of the world 
 Hast tript and sent him hugely sliding, 
 Like a shot beast, down from his towering, 
 By his own lamed 
 Mightiness hurl'd 
 To lie a filth in disaster. 
 Deborah and Jael, famously named, 
 Like rich lands enriching the city their master, 
 Bring thee now their most golden honour. 
 For the beauty of thy limbs was found 
 By a dreadfuller enemy dreadful as the sound 
 Of Deborah's singing, though hers was a song 
 That had for its words thousands of men. 
 But thou thyself, looking upon them,
 
 178 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Didst weaken the Assyrians mortally. 
 
 They thought it terrible to see thee coming ; 
 
 They f alter 'd in their impiousness, 
 
 Their hearts gave in to thee ; they went 
 
 Backward before thee and shewed thee the tent 
 
 Where Holofernes would have thee in to him, 
 
 Yea, for his slayer waiting, 
 
 Waiting thee to entertain, 
 
 Desiring thee, his death, to enjoy, as Jael 
 
 Waited for Sisera her slain. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Have done ! Do you think I know not why your souls 
 
 Are so delighted round me ? Do you think 
 
 I see not what it is you praise ? not me, 
 
 But you yourselves triumphing in me and over me. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 Did we kill Holofernes ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 No : nor I. 
 
 That corpse was not his death. He is alive, 
 And will be till there is no more a world 
 Filled with his hidden hunger, waiting for souls 
 That ford the monstrous waters of the world. 
 Alive in you is Holofernes now, 
 But fed and rejoicing ; I have filled your hunger. 
 Yea, and alive in me : my spirit hath been 
 Enjoyed by the lust of the world, and I am changed 
 Vilely by the vile thing that clutcht on me, 
 Like sulphurous smoke eating into silver.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 179 
 
 Your song is all of this, this your rejoicing ; 
 You have good right to circle me with song ! 
 You are the world, and you have fed on me. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 We are the world ; yes, but the world for ever 
 Honouring thee. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 How am I honoured so, 
 
 If I no honour have for the world, but rather 
 Hold it an odious and traitorous thing, 
 That means no honour but to those whose spirits 
 Have yielded to its ancient lechery ? 
 Defiled, defiled ! 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 Thou wert moved by our grief : 
 Was that a vile thing ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 That was the cunning world. 
 It moved me by your grief to give myself 
 Into the pleasure of its ravenous love. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 Judith, if thy hot spirit beareth still 
 Indignant suffering of villainy, 
 
 Think, that thou hast no wrong from it. Such things 
 Are in themselves dead, and have only life 
 From what lives round them. And around thee glory 
 Lives and will force its splendour on the harm
 
 180 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Thy purity endured, making it shine 
 Like diamond in sunlight, as before 
 Unviolated it could not. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Ay, to you 
 
 I doubt not I seem admirable now, 
 Worthy of being sung in loudest praise ; 
 But to myself how seem I ? 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 Surely as one 
 
 Whose charity went down the stairs of hell, 
 And barter'd with the fiends thy sacredest 
 For our deliverance. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 And that you praise ! 
 I was a virgin spirit. Whence I come 
 I know not, and I care not whither I go. 
 One fearful knowledge holds me : that I am 
 A spirit walking dangerously here. 
 For the world covets me. I am alone, 
 And made of something which the world has not, 
 Unless its substance can devour my spirit. 
 And it hath devoured me ! In Holofernes 
 It seized me, fed on me ; and then gibed on me, 
 With show of his death scoffing at my rage, 
 His death ! He lay there, drunken, glutted with me, 
 And his bare falchion hung beside the bed, 
 Look on it, and look on the blood I made 
 Go pouring thunder of pleasure through his brain ! 
 And like a mad thing hitting at the madness
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 181 
 
 Thronging upon it in a grinning rout, 
 
 I my defilement smote, that Holofernes. 
 
 But does a maniac kill the frenzy in him, 
 
 When with his fists he beats the clambering fiends 
 
 That swarm against his limbs ? No more did I 
 
 Kill my defilement ; it was fast within me ; 
 
 And like a frenzy can go out of me 
 
 And dress its hideous motions in my world. 
 
 For when I come back here, behold the thing 
 
 I murdered in the camp leaps up and yells ! 
 
 The carrion Holofernes, my defilement, 
 
 Dances a triumph round me, roars and rejoices, 
 
 Quickened to hundreds of exulting lives. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 God help thee in this wildness ! Are we then 
 As Holofernes to thee ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 You are naught 
 
 But the defilement that is in me now, 
 Rejoicing to be lodged safely within me. 
 You are the lust I entertained, rejoicing 
 To wreak itself upon my purity. 
 The stratagems of my ravishment you arc, 
 Rejoicing that the will you serve has dealt 
 Its power on me. O, I hate you not. 
 You and your crying grief should have blown past 
 My heart like wind shaking a fasten'd casement. 
 But I must have you in. Myself I loathe 
 For opening to you, and thereby opening 
 To the demon which had set you on to whine
 
 182 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Pitiably in the porches of my spirit. 
 You are but noise ; but he is the lust of the world, 
 The infinite wrong the spirit, the virgin spirit, 
 Must fasten against, or be for ever vile. 
 
 A Citizen. 
 
 But is it naught that we, the folk of God, 
 Are safe by thee ? 
 
 Judith. 
 
 God hath his own devices. 
 But I would be God's helper ! I would be 
 Known as the woman whom his strength had chosen 
 To ruin the Assyrians ! O my God, 
 How dreadfully thou punishest small sins ! 
 If it is thou who punishest ; but rather 
 It is that, when we slacken in perceiving 
 The world's intent towards us, and fatally, 
 Enticed out of suspicion by fair signs, 
 Go from ignoring its proposals, down 
 To parley, thou our weakness dost permit. 
 In all my days I from the greed of the world 
 Virginal have kept my spirit's dwelling, 
 Till now ; yea, all my being I have maintained 
 Sacredly my own possession ; for love 
 But made more beautiful and more divine 
 My spirit's ownership. And yet no warning, 
 When I infatuate went down to be 
 Procuress of myself to the world's desire, 
 Did God blaze on my blindness, no rebuke. 
 Therefore I am no more my virgin own, 
 But hatefully, unspeakably, the world's.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 183 
 
 To these now I belong ; they took me and used me. 
 
 I have no pride to live for ; and why else 
 
 Should one stay living, if not joyfully proud ? 
 
 For I have yielded now ; mercilessly 
 
 What is makes foolish nothing of what was. 
 
 To know the world, for all its grasping hands, 
 
 For all its heat to utter its pent nature 
 
 Into the souls that must go faring through it, 
 
 Availing nothing against purity, 
 
 Made always like rebellion trodden under, 
 
 By this was life a noble labour. Now 
 
 I have been persuaded into the world's pleasure : 
 
 And now at last I will all certainly 
 
 Contrive for myself the death of Holofernes. 
 
 [OziAS comes behind her and catches the lifted falchion. 
 
 Judith. 
 It was well done, Ozias. 
 
 Ozias. 
 
 I have watcht 
 Thy anguish growing, and I lookt for this. 
 
 Judith. 
 
 Thou knowest me better than I know myself. 
 What moves in me is strange and uncontrolled, 
 That once I thought was ruled : thou knew'st me 
 
 better. 
 
 Indeed thou must forgive me ; what was I 
 To take so bitterly thy suit ? What right 
 Had I to give thee anger, when thou wouldst
 
 184 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Brighten thy hopeless death with me enjoyed, 
 
 I, even from that anger, going to be 
 
 Holofernes' pleasure ? Thou knewest me better, 
 
 And therefore shalt forgive me. Ay, no doubt 
 
 My spirit answered thee so fiercely then 
 
 Because it felt thee reading me aright, 
 
 How a mere bragging was my purity. 
 
 But now to pardon askt, I must add thanks. 
 
 I had forgot Manasses ! Even love 
 
 Was driven forth of me by these loud mouths ! 
 
 Whether in death he waits for me, I know not ; 
 
 But it had been an unforgivable thing 
 
 To have made this the end ; not to have gone 
 
 To death as unto spousals, leaving life 
 
 As one sets down a work faithfully done, 
 
 And knows oneself by service justified, 
 
 Worthy of love, whether love be or not. 
 
 But, soiled with detestation, to have thrown 
 
 Fiercely aside the garment of this light ; 
 
 Proved at the last impatient, death desiring 
 
 Like a mere doffing of foul drenched clothes ; 
 
 Release from the wicked hindering mire of sorrow ; 
 
 A comfortable darkness hiding me 
 
 Out of the glowing world myself have made 
 
 An insult, domineering me with splendour ; 
 
 O such a death had turned, past all forgiving, 
 
 My insult to Manasses, and searcht him out, 
 
 Even where he is quiet, with the blaze, 
 
 Ranging like din, of this contempt, this triumph. 
 
 Not crying out such hateful news should I 
 
 Flee hunted into death, unto my love. 
 
 From this, Ozias, thou hast saved me. Now
 
 VIEGINITY AND PERFECTION 185 
 
 I am to learn my shame, that not amazed, 
 But practised in my burden, I at last, 
 When my time comes, may all in gladness fare 
 The road made sacred by Manasses' feet. 
 
 [JUDITH goes into her house. 
 
 Ozias (addressing the citizens). 
 
 You do well to be stricken silent here. 
 Terrible Holofernes slain by a woman 
 Was something wonderful, to be noised aloud ; 
 But this is a wonder past applauding thought, 
 This grief darkening Judith, in the midst 
 Of the new shining glory she herself 
 Has brought to conquer in our skies the storm. 
 You do well to be dumb : for you have seen 
 Virginity. That spirit you have seen, 
 Seen made wrathfully plain that secret spirit, 
 Whereby is man's frail scabbard filled with steel. 
 This, cumbered in the earthen kind of man, 
 Which ceaseless waters would be wearing down, 
 Alone giveth him stubborn substance, holds him 
 Upright and hard against impious fate. 
 All things within it would the world possess, 
 And have them in the tide of its desire : 
 Man hath his nature of the vehement world ; 
 He is a torrent like the stars and beasts 
 Flowing to answer the fierce world's desire. 
 But like a giant wading in the sea 
 Stands in the rapture, and refusing it, 
 And looking upward out of it to find 
 Who knows what sign ? spirit, virginity ; 
 A power caught by the power of the world ;
 
 186 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 The spirit in whose unknown hope doth man 
 Deny the mastery of his fortune here ; 
 Virginity, whose pride, impassion'd only 
 To be as she herself would be, nor thence 
 To loosen for the world's endeavouring, 
 And, though all give the rash obedience, stand 
 Her own possession, this virginity, 
 This pride of the spirit, asking no reward 
 But to be pride unthrown, this is the force 
 Whereby man hath his courage in the strange 
 Fearful turmoil of being conscious man. 
 Yea, worshipping this spirit, he will at last 
 Grow into high divine imagination, 
 Wherein the envious wildness of the world 
 Yieldeth its striving up to him, and takes 
 His mind, building the endless stars like stone 
 
 To house his towering joy of self -possessing. 
 
 This made you dumb ; ignorant knowledge of this, 
 
 Blind vision of virginity's mightiness, 
 
 Did chide the exclamation in your hearts. 
 
 And think not you have seen, in Judith's grief, 
 
 Virginity drown'd in the pouring world. 
 
 For what is done is naught ; what is, is all : 
 
 And Judith is virginity's appointed. 
 
 Even by her injury she showeth us, 
 
 As fire by violence may be revealed, 
 
 How sovereign is virginity. 
 
 But let us now consult what way her grief, 
 
 Which is not to be understood by us, 
 
 May spend itself, with naught to urge its power. 
 
 Let us within our w r alls keep close this tale, 
 
 Close as the famine and the thirst were kept
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 187 
 
 Devouring us by the Assyrians. 
 
 Let there be no news going through the land 
 
 Out of Bethulia but this : that we 
 
 At Judith's hands had our deliverance, 
 
 But she from Holofernes and his crew 
 
 Unwilling and astonisht reverence, 
 
 As they were men with minds opprest by God.
 
 THE ETERNAL WEDDING 
 
 He. 
 
 Even as a wind that hasteth round the world 
 From out cold hours filPd with shadow of earth, 
 To pour alight against the risen sun ; 
 So unto thee adoring, out of its shadow 
 Floweth my spirit, into the light of thee 
 Which Beauty is, and Joy. From my own fate, 
 From out the darkness wherein long I fared 
 Worshipping stars and morsels of the light, 
 Through doors of golden morning now I pass 
 Into the great whole light and perfect day 
 Of shining Beauty, open to me at last. 
 Yea, into thee now do I pass, beloved : 
 Beauty and thou are mine ! 
 
 She. 
 
 And I am thine ! 
 I am desirable to my desire : 
 Thence am I clean as immortality 
 With Beauty and Joy, the fiery power of Beauty. 
 
 He. 
 
 And by my spirit made marvellous here by thee, 
 Poured out all clear into the gold of thee, 
 Not myself only do I know ; I have 
 Golden within me the whole fate of man : 
 
 188
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 189 
 
 That every flesh and soul belongs to one 
 
 Continual joy ward ravishment, whose end 
 
 Is here, in this perfection. Now I know 
 
 For all my speculation soareth up, 
 
 A bird taking eternity for air, 
 
 Now being mixt with thee, in the burning midst 
 
 Of Beauty for my sense and mind and soul, 
 
 That life hath highest gone which hath most joy. 
 
 For like great wings forcefully smiting air 
 
 And driving it along in rushing rivers, 
 
 Desire of joy beats mightily pulsing forward 
 
 The world's one nature, and all the loose lives therein, 
 
 Carried and greatly streaming on a gale 
 
 Of craving, swept fiercely along in beauty ; 
 
 Like a great weather of wind and shining sun, 
 
 When the airs pick up whole huge waves of sea, 
 
 Crumble them in their grasp and high aloft 
 
 Sow them glittering, a white watery dust, 
 
 To company with light : so we are driven 
 
 Onward and upward in a wind of beauty, 
 
 Until man's race be wielded by its joy 
 
 Into some high incomparable day, 
 
 Where perfectly delight may know itself, 
 
 No longer need a strife to know itself, 
 
 Only by its prevailing over pain. 
 
 She. 
 Beloved, but no pain may strive with us. 
 
 He. 
 
 No, for we are flown far ahead of life : 
 The feet of our Spirit have wonderfully trod
 
 190 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 The dangers of the rushing fate of life, 
 
 As summer-searching birds tread with their wings 
 
 Mountainous surges in the air. But many, 
 
 Not strongly fledge to ride the world's great rapture, 
 
 Must break, down fallen into steep confusion, 
 
 Where we climb easily and tower with joy. 
 
 Nevertheless doth life foretell in us 
 
 How it shall all make seizure at the last 
 
 Upon this height of ecstasy, this fort 
 
 Life like an army storms : Captains we are 
 
 In the great assault ; and where we stand alone 
 
 Within these hours, built like establisht flames 
 
 Round us, at long last all man's life shall stand 
 
 At peace with joy, wearing delighted sense 
 
 As meadows wear their golden pleasure of flowers. 
 
 Certain my heart dwells in these builded hours, 
 
 That there is no more beauty beyond thee. 
 
 Thou art my utter beauty ; and behold 
 
 The marvel, God in Heaven ! I am thine. 
 
 Therefore we know, in this height-guarded place 
 
 Whereto the speed of our desire hath brought us ; 
 
 Here in this safety crowning, like a fort 
 
 Built upon topmost peaks, the height of beauty, 
 
 We know to be glad of life as we were gods 
 
 Timelessly glad of deity ; yea, to enjoy 
 
 Fleshly, spiritual Being till the swift 
 
 Torrent of glee (as hurled star-dust can change 
 
 Dim earthly weather to a moment like the sun,) 
 
 Doth startle life to self-adoring godhead, 
 
 Divine body of Power and divine 
 
 Burning soul of Light and self-desire. 
 
 And having given ourselves all to amazement,
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 191 
 
 We are made like a prophesying song 
 Of life all joy, a bride in the arms of God. 
 Yea, God shall marry his people at the last ; 
 And every man and woman who has sworn 
 That only joy can make this Being sacred, 
 Weaves at the wedding-garment. 
 
 She. 
 
 Ah, my beloved, 
 
 Feelest thou too that out of earth and time 
 We are transgressing into Heavenly hours ? 
 Or, threading the dark worldly multitude 
 And making lightning of its path, there comes 
 A zeal from God posting along our lives. 
 
 He. 
 
 For some eternal pulse hath chosen us, 
 Some divine anger beats within our hearts. 
 
 She. 
 
 Anger ? But how far off is love from anger ! 
 
 He. 
 
 Nay, both belong to joy ; joy's kind is twain. 
 And close as in the pouring of sun-flame 
 Are mingled glory of light and fury of heat, 
 Joy utters its twin radiance, love and anger ; 
 If joy be not indeed all sacred wrath 
 With circumstance ; indignant memory 
 Of what hath been, when the new lusts of God 
 Exulted unimaginably, before 
 Rigours of law fastened like creeping habit
 
 192 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Upon their measureless wont, and forced them drive 
 
 Their ranging music of delighted being 
 
 Through the fixt beating tune of a circling world. 
 
 Is not love so ? Amazement of an anger 
 
 Against created shape and narrowness ? 
 
 The bound rage of the uncreated Spirit 
 
 Whose striving doth impassion us and the world ? 
 
 A wrath that thou and I are not one being ? 
 
 She. 
 
 Yes, and not only words that thou and I 
 Out of our sexes with a flame's escape 
 Are fashioned into one. The Spirit in us 
 Hath, like imagination in a prison, 
 Kindled itself free of all boundary, 
 So that it hath no room but its own joy, 
 Ample as at the first, before it fell 
 Into this burthenous habit of a world. 
 What have we now to do with the world ? We are 
 Made one unworldly thing ; we are past the world ; 
 Yea, and unmade : we are immortality. 
 
 He. 
 
 And only fools abominably crazed, 
 Those who will set imagination down 
 As less in truth than their dim sensual wit, 
 Dare doubt that, while these dreams of ours, these bodies, 
 Still quiver in the world each with its own 
 Delight, the great divine wrath of our love 
 Hath stricken off from us the place of the world ! 
 Yea, as we walk in spiritual freedom 
 Upright before the shining face of God,
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 193 
 
 Behold, as it were the shadow of our stature 
 Thrown by that light, we draw the world behind us, 
 That world wherein, darkly I remember, 
 We thought we were as twain. 
 
 She. 
 
 Yet, since God means 
 
 That love should sunder our fixt separateness 
 And make our married spirits leap together, 
 As lightning out of the clouds of sexual flesh, 
 Into one sexless undivided joy ; 
 Why hath he made us a divided flesh ? 
 We being single ecstasy, now as strange 
 As if a shadow stained where no one stood 
 The ground in the noon-glare, seemeth to me 
 The long blind time wherein our lives and the world 
 Lay stretcht out dark upon the light of heaven, 
 Like shadow of some bulk that took the glory; 
 While yet there stood not over it, to shade 
 The splendour from it, our heaven-fronting love, 
 This great new soul that our two souls have kindled. 
 Yea, and how like, that in the world's chance-medley 
 This our exulting destiny had been slain, 
 Though here it lords the world as a man his shadow ! 
 
 He. 
 
 But the world is not chance, except to those 
 Most feeble in desire : who needeth aught 
 Shall have it, if he fill his soul with the need. 
 While still our ignorant lives were drowned beneath 
 The flooding of the earthly fate, and chance 
 Seemed pouring mightily dark and loud between us,
 
 194 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Unspeakable news oft visited our hearts : 
 We knew each other by desire ; yea, spake 
 Out of the strength of darkness flowing o'er us, 
 Across the hindering outcry of the world 
 One to another sweet desirable things. 
 Until at last we took such heavenly lust 
 Of those unheard messages into our lives, 
 We were made abler than the worldly fate. 
 We held its random enmity as frost 
 The storming Northern seas, and fastened it 
 In likeness of our love's imagining ; 
 Or as a captain with his courage holds 
 The mutinous blood of an army aghast with fear, 
 And maketh it unwillingly dare his purpose, 
 Our lust of love struck its commandment deep 
 Into the froward turbulence of world 
 That parted us. Suddenly the dark noise 
 Cleft and went backward from us, and we stood 
 Knowing each other in a quiet light ; 
 And like wise music made of many strings 
 Following and adoring underneath 
 Prevailing song, fate lived beneath our love, 
 Under the masterful excellent silence of it, 
 A multitudinous obedience. 
 
 She. 
 
 Yea, but not this my marvel : not that we 
 Should master with desire the sundering world, 
 We who bore in our hearts such destiny, 
 There was no force knew to be dangerous 
 Against it, but must turn its malice clean 
 Into obsequious favour worshipping us.
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 195 
 
 Rather hath this astonisht me, that we 
 Have not for ever lived in this high hour. 
 Only to be twin elements of joy 
 In this extravagance of Being, Love, 
 Were our divided natures shaped in twain ; 
 And to this hour the whole world must consent. 
 Is it not very marvellous, our lives 
 Can only come to this out of a long 
 Strange sundering, with the years of the world between 
 us? 
 
 He. 
 
 Shall life do more than God ? for hath not God 
 Striven with himself, when into known delight 
 His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth, 
 This mystery of a world sign of his striving ? 
 Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind 
 With labouring in the wonder of it, that here 
 Being the world and we is suffered to be ! 
 But, lying on thy breast one notable day, 
 Sudden exceeding agony of love 
 Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge. 
 I was not : yet I saw the will of God 
 As light unfashion'd, unendurable flame, 
 Interminable, not to be supposed ; 
 And there was no more creature except light, 
 The dreadful burning of the lonely God's 
 Unutter'd joy. And then, past telling, came 
 Shuddering and division in the light : 
 Therein, like trembling, was desire to know 
 Its own perfect beauty ; and it became 
 A cloven fire, a double flaming, each
 
 196 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Adorable to each ; against itself 
 
 Waging a burning love, which was the world ; 
 
 A moment satisfied in that love-strife 
 
 I knew the world ! And when I fell from there, 
 
 Then knew I also what this life would do 
 
 In being twain, in being man and woman ! 
 
 For it would do even as its endless Master, 
 
 Making the world, had done ; yea, with itself 
 
 Would strive, and for the strife would into sex 
 
 Be cloven, double burning, made thereby 
 
 Desirable to itself. Contrived joy 
 
 Is sex in life ; and by no other thing 
 
 Than by a perfect sundering, could life 
 
 Change the dark stream of unappointed joy 
 
 To perfect praise of itself, the glee that loves 
 
 And worships its own Being. This is ours ! 
 
 Yet only for that we have been so long 
 
 Sundered desire : thence is our life all praise. 
 
 But we, well knowing by our strength of joy 
 
 There is no sundering more, how far we love 
 
 From those sad lives that know a half-love only, 
 
 Alone thereby knowing themselves for ever 
 
 Sealed in division of love, and therefore made 
 
 To pour their strength out always into their love's 
 
 Fierceness, as green wood bleeds its hissing sap 
 
 Into red heat of a fire ! Not so do we : 
 
 The cloven anger, life, hath left to wage 
 
 Its flame against itself, here turned to one 
 
 Self-adoration. Ah, what comes of this ? 
 
 The joy falters a moment, with closed wings 
 
 Wearying in its upward journey, ere 
 
 Again it goes on high, bearing its song,
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 197 
 
 Its delight breathing and its vigour beating 
 The highest height of the air above the world. 
 
 She. 
 
 What hast thou done to me ! I would have soul, 
 Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held 
 By flesh. Now, inly delighted with desire, 
 My body knows itself to be nought else 
 But thy heart's worship of me ; and my soul 
 Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air. 
 Nay, all my body is become a song 
 Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song. 
 
 He. 
 
 And mine is all like one rapt faculty, 
 As it were listening to the love in thee, 
 My whole mortality trembling to take 
 Thy body like heard singing of thy spirit. 
 
 She. 
 
 Surely by this, Beloved, we must know 
 Our love is perfect here, that not as holds 
 The common dullard thought, we are things lost 
 In an amazement that is all unware ; 
 But wonderfully knowing what we are ! 
 Lo, now that body is the song whereof 
 Spirit is mood, knoweth not our delight ? 
 Knoweth not beautifully now our love, 
 That Life, here to this festival bid come 
 Clad in his splendour of worldly day and night, 
 Filled and empower'd by heavenly lust, is all 
 The glad imagination of the Spirit ?
 
 198 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 He. 
 
 Were it not so, Love could not be at all : 
 Nought could be, but a yearning to fulfil 
 Desire of beauty, by vain reaching forth 
 Of sense to hold and understand the vision 
 Made by impassion'd body, vision of thee ! 
 But music mixt with music are, in love, 
 Bodily senses ; and as flame hath light, 
 Spirit this nature hath imagined round it, 
 No way concealed therein, when love comes near, 
 Nor in the perfect wedding of desires 
 Suffering any hindrance. 
 
 She. 
 
 Ah, but now, 
 
 Now am I given love's eternal secret ! 
 Yea, thou and I who speak, are but the joy 
 Of our for ever mated spirits ; but now 
 The wisdom of my gladness even through Spirit 
 Looks, divinely elate. Who hath for joy 
 Our Spirits ? Who hath imagined them 
 Round him in fashion'd radiance of desire, 
 As into light of these exulting bodies 
 Flaming Spirit is uttered ? 
 
 He. 
 
 Yea, here the end 
 
 Of love's astonishment ! Now know we Spirit, 
 And Who, for ease of joy, contriveth Spirit. 
 Now all life's loveliness and power we have 
 Dissolved in this one moment, and our burning
 
 VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION 199 
 
 Carries all shining upward, till in us 
 Life is not life, but the desire of God, 
 Himself desiring and himself accepting. 
 Now what was prophecy in us is made 
 Fulfilment : we are the hour and we are the joy, 
 We in our marvellousness of single knowledge, 
 Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate 
 And drawing into his light the greeting fire 
 Of God, God known in ecstasy of love 
 Wedding himself to utterance of himself.
 
 MARRIAGE SONG 
 
 Come up, dear chosen morning, come, 
 Blessing the air with light, 
 And bid the sky repent of being dark : 
 Let all the spaces round the world be white, 
 And give the earth her green again. 
 Into new hours of beautiful delight, 
 Out of the shadow where she has lain, 
 Bring the earth awake for glee, 
 Shining with dews as fresh and clear 
 As my beloved's voice upon the air. 
 For now, O morning chosen of all days, on thee 
 A wondrous duty lies : 
 
 There was an evening that did loveliness foretell ; 
 Thence upon thee, O chosen morn, it fell 
 To fashion into perfect destiny 
 The radiant prophecy. 
 For in an evening of young moon, that went 
 Filling the moist air with a rosy fire, 
 I and my beloved knew our love ; 
 And knew that thou, O morning, wouldst arise 
 To give us knowledge of achieved desire. 
 For, standing stricken w r ith astonishment, 
 Half terrified in the delight, 
 
 200
 
 MARRIAGE SONG 201 
 
 Even as the moon did into clear air move 
 
 And made a golden light, 
 
 Lo there, croucht up against it, a dark hill, 
 
 A monstrous back of earth, a spine 
 
 Of hunched rock, furred with great growth of pine, 
 
 Lay like a beast, snout in its paws, asleep ; 
 
 Yet in its sleeping seemed it miserable, 
 
 As though strong fear must always keep 
 
 Hold of its heart, and drive its blood in dream. 
 
 Yea, for to our new love, did it not seem, 
 
 That dark and quiet length of hill, 
 
 The sleeping grief of the world ? Out of it we 
 
 Had like imaginations stept to be 
 
 Beauty and golden wonder ; and for the lovely fear 
 
 Of coming perfect joy, had changed 
 
 The terror that dreamt there ! 
 
 And now the golden moon had turned 
 
 To shining white, white as our souls that burned 
 
 With vision of our prophecy assured : 
 
 Suddenly white was the moon ; but she 
 
 At once did on a woven modesty 
 
 Of cloud, and soon went in obscured : 
 
 And \ve were dark, and vanisht that strange hill. 
 
 But yet it was not long before 
 
 There opened in the sky a narrow door, 
 
 Made with pearl lintel and pearl sill ; 
 
 And the earth's night seem'd pressing there, 
 
 All as a beggar on some festival would peer, 
 
 To gaze into a room of light beyond, 
 
 The hidden silver splendour of the moon. 
 
 Yea, and we also, we 
 
 Long gazed wistfully
 
 202 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Towards thee, O morning, come at last, 
 
 And towards the light that thou wilt pour upon us soon 
 
 II 
 
 O soul who still art strange to sense, 
 Who often against beauty wouldst complain, 
 Doubting between joy and pain : 
 If like the startling touch of something keen 
 Against thee, it hath been 
 To follow from an upland height 
 The swift sun hunting rain 
 Across the April meadows of a plain, 
 Until the fields would flash into the air 
 Their joyous green, like emeralds alight ; 
 Or when in the blue of night's mid-noon 
 The burning naked moon 
 Draws to a brink of cloudy weather near, 
 A breadth of snow, firm and soft as a wing, 
 Stretcht out over a wind that gently goes, 
 Through the white sleep of snowy cloud there grows 
 An azure-border'd shining ring, 
 
 The gleaming dream of the approaching joy of her ;- 
 What now wilt thou do, Soul ? What now, 
 If with such things as these troubled thou wert ? 
 How wilt thou now endure, or how 
 Not now be strangely hurt ? 
 When utter beauty must come closer to thee 
 Than even anger or fear could be ; 
 When thou, like metal in a kiln, must lie 
 Seized by beauty's mightily able flame ; 
 Enjoyed by beauty as by the ruthless glee
 
 MARRIAGE SONG 203 
 
 Of an unescapable power ; 
 
 Obeying beauty as air obeys a cry ; 
 
 Yea, one thing made of beauty and thee, 
 
 As steel and a white heat are made the same ! 
 
 Ah, but I know how this infirmity 
 
 Will fail and be not, no, not memory, 
 
 When I begin the marvellous hour. 
 
 This only is my heart's strain'd eagerness, 
 
 Long waiting for its bliss. 
 
 But from those other fears, from those 
 
 That keep to Love so close, 
 
 From fears that are the shadow of delight, 
 
 Hide me, O joys ; make them unknown to-night ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Thou bright God that in dream earnest to me last 
 
 night, 
 
 Thou with the flesh made of a golden light, 
 Knew I not thee, thee and thy heart, 
 Knew I not well, God, who thou wert ? 
 Yea, and my soul divinely understood 
 The light that was beneath thee a ground, 
 The golden light that cover'd thee round, 
 Turning my sleep to a fiery morn, 
 Was as a heavenly oath there sworn 
 Promising me an immortal good : 
 
 Well I knew thee, God of Marriages, thee and thy flame ! 
 Ah, but wherefore beside thee came 
 That fearful sight of another mood ? 
 Why in thy light, to thy hand chained,
 
 204 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Towards me its bondage terribly strained, 
 
 Why came with thee that dreadful hound, 
 
 The wild hound Fear, black, ravenous and gaunt ? 
 
 Why him with thee should thy dear light surround ? 
 
 Why broughtest thou that beast to haunt 
 
 The blissful footsteps of my golden dream ? 
 
 All shadowy black the body dread, 
 
 All frenzied fire the head, 
 
 The hunger of its mouth a hollow crimson flame, 
 
 The hatred in its eyes a blaze 
 
 Fierce and green, stabbing the ruddy glaze, 
 
 And sharp white jetting fire the teeth snarl'd at me, 
 
 And white the dribbling rage of froth, 
 
 A throat that gaped to bay and paws working violently, 
 
 Yet soundless all as a winging moth ; 
 
 Tugging towards me, famishing for my heart ; 
 
 Even while thou, O golden god, wert still 
 
 Looking the beautiful kindness of thy will 
 
 Into my soul, even then must I be, 
 
 With thy bright promise looking at me, 
 
 Then bitterly of that hound afraid ? 
 
 Darkness, I know, attendeth bright, 
 
 And light comes not but shadow comes : 
 
 And heart must know, if it know thy light, 
 
 Thy wild hound Fear, the shadow of love's delight. 
 
 Yea, is it thus ? Are we so made 
 
 Of death and darkness, that even thou, 
 
 O golden God of the joys of love, 
 
 Thy mind to us canst only prove, 
 
 The glorious devices of thy mind, 
 
 By so revealing how thy journeying here 
 
 Through this mortality, doth closely bind
 
 MARRIAGE SONG 205 
 
 Thy brightness to the shadow of dreadful Fear ? 
 
 Ah no, it shall not be ! Thy joyous light 
 
 Shall hide me from the hunger of fear to-night. 
 
 IV 
 
 For wonderfully to live I now begin : 
 So that the darkness which accompanies 
 Our being here, is fasten'd up within 
 The power of light that holdeth me ; 
 And from these shining chains, to see 
 My joy with bold misliking eyes, 
 The shrouded figure will not dare arise. 
 For henceforth, from to-night, 
 I am wholly gone into the bright 
 Safety of the beauty of love : 
 Not only all my waking vigours plied 
 Under the searching glory of love, 
 But knowing myself with love all satisfied 
 Even when my life is hidden in sleep ; 
 As high clouds, to themselves that keep 
 The moon's white company, are all possest 
 Silverly with the presence of their guest ; 
 Or as a darken'd room 
 That hath within it roses, whence the air 
 And quietness are taken everywhere 
 Deliciously by sweet perfume.
 
 EPILOGUE
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 WHAT shall we do for Love these days ? 
 How shall we make an altar-blaze 
 To smite the horny eyes of men 
 With the renown of our Heaven, 
 And to the unbelievers prove 
 Our service to our dear god, Love ? 
 What torches shall we lift above 
 The crowd that pushes through the mire, 
 To amaze the dark heads with strange fire ? 
 I should think I were much to blame, 
 If never I held some fragrant flame 
 Above the noises of the world, 
 And openly 'mid men's hurrying stares, 
 Worshipt before the sacred fears 
 That are like flashing curtains furl'd 
 Across the presence of our lord Love. 
 Nay, would that I could fill the gaze 
 Of the whole earth with some great praise 
 Made in a marvel for men's eyes, 
 Some tower of glittering masonries, 
 Therein such a spirit flourishing 
 Men should see what my heart can sing : 
 All that Love hath done to me 
 Built into stone, a visible glee ; 
 p 209
 
 210 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Marble carried to gleaming height 
 As moved aloft by inward delight ; 
 Not as with toil of chisels hewn, 
 But seeming poised in a mighty tune. 
 For of all those who have been known 
 To lodge with our kind host, the sun, 
 I envy one for just one thing : 
 In Cordova of the Moors 
 There dwelt a passion-minded King, 
 Who set great bands of marble-hewers 
 To fashion his heart's thanksgiving 
 In a tall palace, shapen so 
 All the wondering world might know 
 The joy he had of his Moorish lass. 
 His love, that brighter and larger was 
 Than the starry places, into firm stone 
 He sent, as if the stone were glass 
 Fired and into beauty blown. 
 
 Solemn and invented gravely 
 In its bulk the fabric stood, 
 Even as Love, that trusteth bravely 
 In its own exceeding good 
 To be better than the waste 
 Of time's devices ; grandly spaced, 
 Seriously the fabric stood. 
 But over it all a pleasure went 
 Of carven delicate ornament, 
 Wreathing up like ravishment, 
 Mentioning in sculptures twined* 
 The blitheness Love hath in his mind ; 
 And like delighted senses were 
 The windows, and the columns there
 
 EPILOGUE 211 
 
 Made the following sight to ache 
 
 As the heart that did them make. 
 
 Well I can see that shining song 
 
 Flowering there, the upward throng 
 
 Of porches, pillars and windowed walls, 
 
 Spires like piercing panpipe calls, 
 
 Up to the roof's snow-cloud flight ; 
 
 All glancing in the Spanish light 
 
 White as water of arctic tides, 
 
 Save an amber dazzle on sunny sides. 
 
 You had said, the radiant sheen 
 
 Of that palace might have been 
 
 A young god's fantasy, ere he came 
 
 His serious worlds and suns to frame ; 
 
 Such an immortal passion 
 
 Quiver'd among the slim hewn stone. 
 
 And in the nights it seemed a jar 
 
 Cut in the substance of a star, 
 
 Wherein a wine, that will be poured 
 
 Some time for feasting Heaven, was stored. 
 
 But within this fretted shell, 
 The wonder of Love made visible, 
 The King a private gentle mood 
 There placed, of pleasant quietude. 
 For right amidst there was a court, 
 Where always musked silences 
 Listened to water and to trees \ 
 And herbage of all fragrant sort, 
 Lavender, lad's-love, rosemary, 
 Basil, tansy, centaury, 
 Was the grass of that orchard, hid 
 Love's amazements all amid.
 
 212 EMBLEMS OF LOVE 
 
 Jarring the air with rumour cool, 
 
 Small fountains played into a pool 
 
 With sound as soft as the barley's hiss 
 
 When its beard just sprouting is ; 
 
 Whence a young stream, that trod on moss, 
 
 Prettily rimpled the court across. 
 
 And in the pool's clear idleness, 
 
 Moving like dreams through happiness, 
 
 Shoals of small bright fishes were ; 
 
 In and out weed-thickets bent 
 
 Perch and carp, and sauntering went 
 
 With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare ; 
 
 Or on a lotus leaf would crawl, 
 
 A brinded loach to bask and sprawl, 
 
 Tasting the warm sun ere it dipt 
 
 Into the water ; but quick as fear 
 
 Back his shining brown head slipt 
 
 To crouch on the gravel of his lair, 
 
 Where the cooled sunbeams broke in wrack, 
 
 Spilt shatter'd gold about his back. 
 
 So within that green-veiled air, 
 Within that white-walled quiet, where 
 Innocent water thought aloud, 
 Childish prattle that must make 
 The wise sunlight with laughter shake 
 On the leafage overbowed, 
 Often the King and his love-lass 
 Let the delicious hours pass. 
 All the outer world could see 
 Graved and sawn amazingly 
 Their love's delighted riotise, 
 Fixt in marble for all men's eyes ;
 
 EPILOGUE 213 
 
 But only these twain could abide 
 In the cool peace that withinside 
 Thrilling desire and passion dwelt ; 
 They only knew the still meaning spelt 
 By Love's flaming script, which is 
 God's word written in ecstasies. 
 
 And where is now that palace gone, 
 All the magical skill'd stone, 
 All the dreaming towers wrought 
 By Love as if no more than thought 
 The unresisting marble was ? 
 How could such a wonder pass ? 
 Ah, it was but built in vain 
 Against the stupid horns of Rome, 
 That pusht down into the common loam 
 The loveliness that shone in Spain. 
 But we have raised it up again ! 
 A loftier palace, fairer far, 
 Is ours, and one that fears no war. 
 Safe in marvellous walls we are ; 
 Wondering sense like builded fires, 
 High amazement of desires, 
 Delight and certainty of love, 
 Closing around, roofing above 
 Our unapproacht and perfect hour 
 Within the splendours of love's power.
 
 The " Hymn to Love " 
 is reprinted by permission from " The Vineyard.
 
 INTERLUDES & POEMS 
 
 BY LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE 
 
 53. net. 
 
 SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 "The Times": 
 
 " Mr. Abercrombie has power and he has originality. His 
 mind is fearless, rebellious, sinister. He quails at nothing, 
 lightheartedly frolicking among the most tremendous ideas 
 and emotions. His words pour hot from his pen. . . . The 
 power and originality are beyond question. ... A remark- 
 able work, and we shall look with peculiar anticipation for 
 its successor." 
 
 Mr. Edward Thomas in "Daily Chronicle": 
 
 "There is only one English dramatist who has gone 
 beyond this poet in making blank verse, the march or 
 leap or stagger or crawl or hesitation of the syllables 
 correspond to varying emotions with thrilling delicacy. . . . 
 Any half-dozen lines in his book will prove Mr. Abercrombie 
 a poet. Almost any half-dozen will prove him a new poet. 
 ... A man with a noble and exquisite sense of words and 
 rhythms, with a fine pictorial power kept in its due place in 
 a large attitude towards all life, bold, energetic, nervous, 
 having an artist's harmony of sensual and spiritual life, Mr. 
 Abercrombie must move to things beyond the grandeur and 
 subtlety of this book" 
 
 Mr. John Masefield in " Daily News" : 
 
 "'Blind' is a very fine poem. . . . Mr. Abercrombie writes 
 with a delicacy and insight truly poetical. . . . The play is 
 a fine and touching tragedy." 
 
 " Westminster Gazette " : 
 
 "The perusal of 'Interludes and Poems' leaves us fasci- 
 nated. Here is obviously a very considerable poet. The 
 poem ' Blind ' reveals a remarkable dramatic quality." 
 
 E. H. L. in " Manchester Guardian " : 
 
 " The virility and directness of style and thought, the 
 ample, freshly coloured imagination that suggests and 
 illuminates, and the unquestionable responsiveness to the
 
 sensuous of eye and ear all these qualities are remarkable 
 enough in the 'Interludes' and in a really noteworthy ode on 
 'Indignation.'" 
 
 Mr. Robert Bridges in " Nation " 
 
 " One must recognize at once not only the genuine nature 
 of his inspiration, that is, his earnestness and abundance, but 
 also a most extraordinary gift of lucidity and exposition. 
 . . . Everyone who reads will wish for more." 
 
 Mr. A. F. Wallis in " Evening Standard " : 
 
 "Leaves upon the mind an impression of singular power. . . . 
 All must acknowledge Mr. Abercrombie's magnificent gifts, 
 his mastery of method, and that unswerving fidelity to his 
 conception of man." 
 
 "Spectator": 
 
 " Mr. Abercrombie is a refreshing figure to meet with in 
 modern poetry. ... He has thought, imagination, and a 
 rude gusto of style." 
 
 "Athenaeum" : 
 
 " There is force, freshness, and individuality. . . . ' Pere- 
 grinus' is a fine achievement vivid, dramatic, and relentless." 
 
 "Bookman": 
 
 " Mr. Abercrombie shows a fine apprehension of beauty. 
 He has too a subtle feeling for the symbolism of colour, for 
 the inner meaning of outward semblances. He has even that 
 sense of ecstasy of which so much great poetry has been born." 
 
 " Daily Graphic " : 
 
 " Mr. Abercrombie is possessed undoubtedly of power and 
 originality. . . . ' Blind' is authentic tragedy. . . . 'Peregrinus' 
 is also excellent." 
 
 " Daily Telegraph " : 
 
 " Mr. Abercrombie has the gift of imagination and he has 
 power of thought." 
 
 " Pall Mall Gazette " : 
 
 " The poet is one whose future work will be eagerly looked 
 for." 
 
 JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY 
 HEAD, VIGO ST., LONDON, W.
 
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