Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti Along her arm the sundered bloom falls sheer,

In separate petals shed, each like a tear;

The first three of these poems were written on the back of canvases of While from the quivering bough the bird expands
paintings that Rossetti did, each bearing the same title. Words are thus in His wings. And lo! thy spirit understands
some tense dialogue to images. Do the poems direct our gaze? Frame the Life shaken and shower'd and flown, and Death drawn near.
image somehow? Are they ekphrastic? Do they give voice to these painted All stirs with change. Her garments beat the air:
faces? The angel circling round her aureole
Shimmers in flight against the tree's grey bole:
It’s hard to say, but they are certainly in stark contrast to the ekphrastic prose While she, with reassuring eyes most fair,
of Ruskin describing a work like “The Slave Ship.” A presage and a promise stands; as 'twere
On Death's dark storm the rainbow of the Soul.
For best result, of course, you should read these three poems while looking at
their pared paintings (on the Website). Astarte Syriaca

The Lady Lilith MYSTERY: lo! betwixt the sun and moon
Astarte of the Syrians: Venus Queen
Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,) Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon
That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune:
And her enchanted hair was the first gold. And from her neck's inclining flower-stem lean
And still she sits, young while the earth is old, Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean
And, subtly of herself contemplative, The pulse of hearts to the spheres' dominant tune.
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, Torch-bearing, her sweet ministers compel
Till heart and body and life are in its hold. All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea
The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where The witnesses of Beauty's face to be:
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent That face, of Love's all-penetrative spell
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? Amulet, talisman, and oracle,—
Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery.
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling golden hair.
Insomnia
Fiametta
Thin are the night-skirts left behind
BEHOLD Fiammetta, shown in Vision here. By daybreak hours that onward creep,
Gloom-girt 'mid Spring-flushed apple-growth she stands; And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
And as she sways the branches with her hands, That wavers with the spirit's wind:
But in half-dreams that shift and roll Is countless gold incomparable:
And still remember and forget, Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell
My soul this hour has drawn your soul Of Love’s exuberant hotbed:—Nay,
A little nearer yet. Poor flower left torn since yesterday
Until to-morrow leave you bare;
Our lives, most dear, are never near, Poor handful of bright spring-water
Our thoughts are never far apart, Flung in the whirlpool’s shrieking face;
Though all that draws us heart to heart Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
Seems fainter now and now more clear. Thus with your head upon my knee;—
To-night Love claims his full control, Whose person or whose purse may be
And with desire and with regret The lodestar of your reverie?
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet. This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
A change from mine so full of books,
Is there a home where heavy earth Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
Melts to bright air that breathes no pain, So many captive hours of youth,—
Where water leaves no thirst again The hours they thieve from day and night
And springing fire is Love's new birth? To make one’s cherished work come right,
If faith long bound to one true goal And leave it wrong for all their theft,
May there at length its hope beget, Even as to-night my work has left:
My soul that hour shall draw your soul Until I vowed that since my brain
For ever nearer yet. And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
My feet should have some dancing too:—
Jenny And thus it was I met with you.
Well, I suppose ’twas hard to part,
“Vengeance of Jenny’s case! Fie on her! Never name her, child!”—Mrs. Quickly For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
You seem too tired to get to bed.
Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea, It was a careless life I led
Whose head upon my knee to-night When rooms like this were scarce so strange
Rests for a while, as if grown light Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
With all our dances and the sound The many aims or the few years?
To which the wild tunes spun you round: Because to-night it all appears
Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen Something I do not know again.
Of kisses which the blush between
Could hardly make much daintier; The cloud’s not danced out of my brain,—
Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair The cloud that made it turn and swim
While hour by hour the books grew dim. Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,— From shame and shame’s outbraving too,
For all your wealth of loosened hair, Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
Your silk ungirdled and unlac’d But most from the hatefulness of man
And warm sweets open to the waist, Who spares not to end what he began,
All golden in the lamplight’s gleam,— Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,
You know not what a book you seem, Who, having used you at his will,
Half-read by lightning in a dream! Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
How should you know, my Jenny? Nay, I serve the dishes and the wine.
And I should be ashamed to say:—
Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss! Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up:
But while my thought runs on like this I’ve filled our glasses, let us sup,
With wasteful whims more than enough, And do not let me think of you,
I wonder what you’re thinking of. Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
If of myself you think at all, Your head there, so you do not sleep;
What is the thought?—conjectural But that the weariness may pass
On sorry matters best unsolved?— And leave you merry, take this glass.
Or inly is each grace revolved Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless’d
To fit me with a lure?—or (sad If ne’er in rings it had been dress’d
To think!) perhaps you’re merely glad Nor ever by a glove conceal’d!
That I’m not drunk or ruffianly
And let you rest upon my knee. Behold the lilies of the field,
They toil not neither do they spin;
For sometimes, were the truth confess’d, (So doth the ancient text begin,—
You’re thankful for a little rest,— Not of such rest as one of these
Glad from the crush to rest within, Can share.) Another rest and ease.
From the heart-sickness and the din Along each summer-sated path
Where envy’s voice at virtue’s pitch From its new lord the garden hath,
Mocks you because your gown is rich; Than that whose spring in blessings ran
And from the pale girl’s dumb rebuke, Which praised the bounteous husbandman,
Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak, The lilies sickened unto death.
And other nights than yours bespeak;
And from the wise unchildish elf, What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
To schoolmate lesser than himself Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
Pointing you out, what thing you are:— Like winter on the garden-bed.
But you had roses left in May,— When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
They were not gone too. Jenny, nay, Along the streets alone, and there,
But must your roses die, and those Round the long park, across the bridge,
Their purfled buds that should unclose? The cold lamps at the pavement’s edge
Even so; the leaves are curled apart, Wind on together and apart,
Still red as from the broken heart, A fiery serpent for your heart.
And here’s the naked stem of thorns.
Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
Nay, nay mere words. Here nothing warns Suppose I were to think aloud,—
As yet of winter. Sickness here What if to her all this were said?
Or want alone could waken fear,— Why, as a volume seldom read
Nothing but passion wrings a tear. Being opened halfway shuts again,
Except when there may rise unsought So might the pages of her brain
Haply at times a passing thought Be parted at such words, and thence
Of the old days which seem to be Close back upon the dusty sense.
Much older than any history For is there hue or shape defin’d
That is written in any book; In Jenny’s desecrated mind,
When she would lie in fields and look Where all contagious currents meet,
Along the ground through the blown grass, A Lethe of the middle street?
And wonder where the city was, Nay, it reflects not any face,
Far out of sight, whose broil and bale Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
They told her then for a child’s tale. But as they coil those eddies clot,
And night and day remembers not.
Jenny, you know the city now,
A child can tell the tale there, how Why, Jenny, you’re asleep at last!—
Some things which are not yet enroll’d Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—
In market-lists are bought and sold So young and soft and tired; so fair,
Even till the early Sunday light, With chin thus nestled in your hair,
When Saturday night is market-night Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue
Everywhere, be it dry or wet, As if some sky of dreams shone through!
And market-night in the Haymarket.
Our learned London children know, Just as another woman sleeps!
Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe; Enough to throw one’s thoughts in heaps
Have seen your lifted silken skirt Of doubt and horror,—what to say
Advertise dainties through the dirt; Or think,—this awful secret sway,
Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke The potter’s power over the clay!
On virtue; and have learned your look Of the same lump (it has been said)
For honour and dishonour made, Till in the end, the Day of Days,
Two sister vessels. Here is one. At Judgement, one of his own race,
As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—
My cousin Nell is fond of fun, His daughter, with his mother’s eyes?
And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
So mere a woman in her ways: How Jenny’s clock ticks on the shelf!
And if her sweet eyes rich in youth Might not the dial scorn itself
Are like her lips that tell the truth, That has such hours to register?
My cousin Nell is fond of love. Yet as to me, even so to her
And she’s the girl I’m proudest of. Are golden sun and silver moon,
Who does not prize her, guard her well? In daily largesse of earth’s boon,
The love of change, in cousin Nell, Counted for life-coins to one tune.
Shall find the best and hold it dear: And if, as blindfold fates are toss’d,
The unconquered mirth turn quieter Through some one man this life be lost,
Not through her own, through others’ woe: Shall soul not somehow pray for soul?
The conscious pride of beauty glow
Beside another’s pride in her, Fair shines the gilded aureole
One little part of all they share. In which our highest painters place
For Love himself shall ripen these Some living woman’s simple face.
In a kind of soil to just increase And the stilled features thus descried
Through years of fertilizing peace. As Jenny’s long throat droops aside,—
The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
Of the same lump (as it is said) And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
For honour and dishonour made, Whit Raffael’s, Leonardo’s hand
Two sister vessels. Here is one. To show them to men’s souls, might stand,
Whole ages long, the whole world through,
It makes a goblin of the sun. For preachings of what God can do.
What has man done here? How atone,
So pure,—so fall’n! How dare to think Great God, for this which man has done?
Of the first common kindred link? And for the body and soul which by
Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn Man’s pitiless doom must now comply
It seems that all things take their turn; With lifelong hell, what lullaby
And who shall say but this fair tree Of sweet forgetful second birth
May need, in changes that may be, Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
Your children’s children’s charity? What measure of God’s rest endows
Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn’d! The many mansions of his house.
Shall no man hold his pride forewarn’d
If but a woman’s heart might see Which sits there since the earth was curs’d
Such erring heart unerringly For Man’s transgression at the first;
For once! But that can never be. Which, living through all centuries,
Not once has seen the sun arise;
Like a rose shut in a book Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
In which pure women may not look, The earth’s whole summers have not warmed;
For its base pages claim control Which always—whitherso the stone
To crush the flower within the soul; Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings, Aye, and shall not be driven out
Pale as transparent psyche-wings, Till that which shuts him round about
To the vile text, are traced such things Break at the very Master’s stroke,
As might make lady’s cheek indeed And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
More than a living rose to read; And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
So nought save foolish foulness may Even so within this world is Lust.
Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
And so the life-blood of this rose, Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose: You’d not believe by what strange roads
Yet still it keeps such faded show Thought travels, when your beauty goads
Of when ’twas gathered long ago, A man to-night to think of toads!
That the crushed petals’ lovely grain, Jenny, wake up. . . . Why, there’s the dawn!
The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
Seen of a woman’s eyes, must make And there’s an early waggon drawn
Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache, To market, and some sheep that jog
Love roses better for its sake:— Bleating before a barking dog;
Only that this can never be:— And the old streets come peering through
Even so unto her sex is she. Another night that London knew;
And all as ghostlike as the lamps.
Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
The woman almost fades from view. So on the wings of day decamps
A cipher of man’s changeless sum My last night’s frolic. Glooms begin
Of lust, past, present, and to come, To shiver off as lights creep in
Is left. A riddle that one shrinks Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
To challenge from the scornful sphinx. And the lamp’s doubled shade grows blue,—
Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,
Like a toad within a stone Like a wise virgin’s, all one night!
Seated while Time crumbles on; And in the alcove coolly spread
Glimmers with dawn your empty bed; Or like a palpitating star
And yonder your fair face I see Thrilled into song, the opera-night
Reflected lying on my knee, Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
Where teems with first foreshadowings Or at the carriage-window shine
Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings: Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
And on your bosom all night worn Whirls through its hour of health (divine
Yesterday’s rose now droops forlorn, For her) the concourse of the Park.
But dies not yet this summer morn. And though in the discounted dark
Her functions there and here are one,
And now without, as if some word Beneath the lamps and in the sun
Had called upon them that they heard, There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
The London sparrows far and nigh Apparelled beyond parallel.
Clamour together suddenly; Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.
And Jenny’s cage-bird grown awake
Here in their song his part must take, For even the Paphian Venus seems,
Because here too the day doth break. A goddess o’er the realms of love,
When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:
And somehow in myself the dawn Aye, or let offerings nicely placed
Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn But hide Priapus to the waist,
Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep. And whoso looks on him shall see
But will it wake her if I heap An eligible deity.
These cushions thus beneath her head
Where my knee was? No,—there’s your bed, Why, Jenny, waking here alone
My Jenny, while you dream. And there May help you to remember one,
I lay among your golden hair Though all the memory’s long outworn
Perhaps the subject of your dreams, Of many a double-pillowed morn.
These golden coins. I think I see you when you wake,
For still one deems And rub your eyes for me, and shake
That Jenny’s flattering sleep confers My gold, in rising, from your hair,
New magic on the magic purse,— A Danaë for a moment there.
Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
Between the threads fine fumes arise Jenny, my love rang true! for still
And shape their pictures in the brain. Love at first sight is vague, until
There roll no streets in glare and rain, That tinkling makes him audible.
Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
But delicately sighs in musk And must I mock you to the last,
The homage of the dim boudoir; Ashamed of my own shame,—aghast
Because some thoughts not born amiss I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,
Rose at a poor fair face like this? Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease.
Well, of such thoughts so much I know: Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take,
In my life, as in hers, they show, The laurel, the palms and the pæan, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake;
By a far gleam which I may near, Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;
A dark path I can strive to clear. And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;
All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,
Only one kiss. Good-bye, my dear. Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.
More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things?
Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.
Some poems by Algernon Swinburne A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?
For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
Hymn to Proserpine And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:
Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years?
(After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith)
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy
Vicisti, Galilæe.
breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end; Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend. But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end;
weep; For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep. Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove; But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides.
But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love. O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods!
Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold, O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods!
A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold? Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
I am sick of singing; the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.
To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain. All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast
For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath, Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past:
We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death. Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,
O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day! Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:
From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say. Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,
New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods; And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,
They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods. White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,
But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare; Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world.
Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were. The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;
Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof, In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;
Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.
In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears; But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end;
With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years: Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour; O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,
And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour: I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.
And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be; In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night where
And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of the sea: thou art,
And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air: Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the
And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made heart,
bare. Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose is
Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods? white,
Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods? And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the night,
All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past; And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar
Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last. Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,
In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things, In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,
Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for kings. Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and undone.
Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our forefathers Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath;
trod, Let these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.
Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God, Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know
Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head, I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead. For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around; A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she is So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
crowned. For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.
Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these.
Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas,
Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam, Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)
And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.
For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.
Red mouth like a venomous flower;
For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she
When these are gone by with their glories,
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea.
What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
O mystic and sombre Dolores,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.
Our Lady of Pain?
Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wise that ye should not fall.
Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.
Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin;
 But thy sins, which are seventy times seven, Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores,
Seven ages would fail thee to purge in, When desire took thee first by the throat?
And then they would haunt thee in heaven: What bud was the shell of a blossom
Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, That all men may smell to and pluck?
And the loves that complete and control What milk fed thee first at what bosom?
All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows What sins gave thee suck?
That wear out the soul.
We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,
O garment not golden but gilded, Thou art noble and nude and antique;
O garden where all men may dwell, Libitina thy mother, Priapus
O tower not of ivory, but builded Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek.
By hands that reach heaven from hell; We play with light loves in the portal,
O mystical rose of the mire, And wince and relent and refrain;
O house not of gold but of gain, Loves die, and we know thee immortal,
O house of unquenchable fire, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain!
Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;
O lips full of lust and of laughter, Thou art fed with perpetual breath,
Curled snakes that are fed from my breast, And alive after infinite changes,
Bite hard, lest remembrance come after And fresh from the kisses of death;
And press with new lips where you pressed. Of languors rekindled and rallied,
For my heart too springs up at the pressure, Of barren delights and unclean,
Mine eyelids too moisten and burn; Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid
Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure, And poisonous queen.
Ere pain come in turn.
Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?
In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's, Men touch them, and change in a trice
Out of sight though they lie of to-day, The lilies and languors of virtue
There have been and there yet shall be sorrows For the raptures and roses of vice;
That smite not and bite not in play. Those lie where thy foot on the floor is,
The life and the love thou despisest, These crown and caress thee and chain,
These hurt us indeed, and in vain, O splendid and sterile Dolores,
O wise among women, and wisest, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain.
There are sins it may be to discover,
Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories There are deeds it may be to delight.
That stung thee, what visions that smote? What new work wilt thou find for thy lover,
 What new passions for daytime or night? The delight that consumes the desire,
What spells that they know not a word of The desire that outruns the delight,
Whose lives are as leaves overblown? By the cruelty deaf as a fire
What tortures undreamt of, unheard of, And blind as the night,
Unwritten, unknown?
By the ravenous teeth that have smitten
Ah beautiful passionate body Through the kisses that blossom and bud,
That never has ached with a heart! By the lips intertwisted and bitten
On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody, Till the foam has a savour of blood,
Though they sting till it shudder and smart, By the pulse as it rises and falters,
More kind than the love we adore is, By the hands as they slacken and strain,
They hurt not the heart or the brain, I adjure thee, respond from thine altars,
O bitter and tender Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain.
Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining
As our kisses relax and redouble, The light fire in the veins of a boy?
From the lips and the foam and the fangs But he comes to thee sad, without feigning,
Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble, Who has wearied of sorrow and joy;
No dream of impossible pangs? Less careful of labour and glory
With the sweet of the sins of old ages Than the elders whose hair has uncurled:
Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore? And young, but with fancies as hoary
Too sweet is the rind, say the sages, And grey as the world.
Too bitter the core.
I have passed from the outermost portal
Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time, To the shrine where a sin is a prayer;
And bared all thy beauties to one? What care though the service be mortal?
Ah, where shall we go then for pastime, O our Lady of Torture, what care?
If the worst that can be has been done? All thine the last wine that I pour is,
But sweet as the rind was the core is; The last in the chalice we drain,
We are fain of thee still, we are fain, O fierce and luxurious Dolores,
O sanguine and subtle Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain.
All thine the new wine of desire,
By the hunger of change and emotion, The fruit of four lips as they clung
By the thirst of unbearable things, Till the hair and the eyelids took fire,
By despair, the twin-born of devotion, The foam of a serpentine tongue,
By the pleasure that winces and stings, The froth of the serpents of pleasure,
 More salt than the foam of the sea, Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores,
Now felt as a flame, now at leisure The myrtle to death.
As wine shed for me.
And they laughed, changing hands in the measure,
Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen, And they mixed and made peace after strife;
Marked cross from the womb and perverse! Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure;
They have found out the secret to cozen Death tingled with blood, and was life.
The gods that constrain us and curse; Like lovers they melted and tingled,
They alone, they are wise, and none other; In the dusk of thine innermost fane;
Give me place, even me, in their train, In the darkness they murmured and mingled,
O my sister, my spouse, and my mother, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain.
In a twilight where virtues are vices,
For the crown of our life as it closes In thy chapels, unknown of the sun,
Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; To a tune that enthralls and entices,
No thorns go as deep as a rose's, They were wed, and the twain were as one.
And love is more cruel than lust. For the tune from thine altar hath sounded
Time turns the old days to derision, Since God bade the world's work begin,
Our loves into corpses or wives; And the fume of thine incense abounded,
And marriage and death and division To sweeten the sin.
Make barren our lives.
Love listens, and paler than ashes,
And pale from the past we draw nigh thee, Through his curls as the crown on them slips,
And satiate with comfortless hours; Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes,
And we know thee, how all men belie thee, And laughs with insatiable lips.
And we gather the fruit of thy flowers; Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses,
The passion that slays and recovers, With music that scares the profane;
The pangs and the kisses that rain Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses,
On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain.
Thou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle,
The desire of thy furious embraces Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive;
Is more than the wisdom of years, In his lips all thy serpents shall nestle,
On the blossom though blood lie in traces, In his hands all thy cruelties thrive.
Though the foliage be sodden with tears. In the daytime thy voice shall go through him,
For the lords in whose keeping the door is In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache;
That opens on all who draw breath Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him
 Asleep and awake.
There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,
Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses Drew bitter and perilous breath;
With juice not of fruit nor of bud; There torments laid hold on the treasure
When the sense in the spirit reposes, Of limbs too delicious for death;
Thou shalt quicken the soul through the blood. When thy gardens were lit with live torches;
Thine, thine the one grace we implore is, When the world was a steed for thy rein;
Who would live and not languish or feign, When the nations lay prone in thy porches,
O sleepless and deadly Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain.
When, with flame all around him aspirant,
Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber, Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands,
In a lull of the fires of thy life, The implacable beautiful tyrant,
Of the days without name, without number, Rose-crowned, having death in his hands;
When thy will stung the world into strife; And a sound as the sound of loud water
When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion Smote far through the flight of the fires,
Smote kings as they revelled in Rome; And mixed with the lightning of slaughter
And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian, A thunder of lyres.
Foam-white, from the foam?
Dost thou dream of what was and no more is,
When thy lips had such lovers to flatter; The old kingdoms of earth and the kings?
When the city lay red from thy rods, Dost thou hunger for these things, Dolores,
And thine hands were as arrows to scatter For these, in a world of new things?
The children of change and their gods; But thy bosom no fasts could emaciate,
When the blood of thy foemen made fervent No hunger compel to complain
A sand never moist from the main, Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate,
As one smote them, their lord and thy servant, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain.
As of old when the world's heart was lighter,
On sands by the storm never shaken, Through thy garments the grace of thee glows,
Nor wet from the washing of tides; The white wealth of thy body made whiter
Nor by foam of the waves overtaken, By the blushes of amorous blows,
Nor winds that the thunder bestrides; And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,
But red from the print of thy paces, And branded by kisses that bruise;
Made smooth for the world and its lords, When all shall be gone that now lingers,
Ringed round with a flame of fair faces, Ah, what shall we lose?
And splendid with swords.
Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion, One god had a wreath to his shrine;
And thy limbs are as melodies yet, Then love was the pearl of his oyster,
And move to the music of passion And Venus rose red out of wine.
With lithe and lascivious regret. We have all done amiss, choosing rather
What ailed us, O gods, to desert you Such loves as the wise gods disdain;
For creeds that refuse and restrain? Intercede for us thou with thy father,
Come down and redeem us from virtue, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain.
In spring he had crowns of his garden,
All shrines that were Vestal are flameless, Red corn in the heat of the year,
But the flame has not fallen from this; Then hoary green olives that harden
Though obscure be the god, and though nameless When the grape-blossom freezes with fear;
The eyes and the hair that we kiss; And milk-budded myrtles with Venus
Low fires that love sits by and forges And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod;
Fresh heads for his arrows and thine; And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us,
Hair loosened and soiled in mid orgies A visible God."
With kisses and wine.
What broke off the garlands that girt you?
Thy skin changes country and colour, What sundered you spirit and clay?
And shrivels or swells to a snake's. Weak sins yet alive are as virtue
Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller, To the strength of the sins of that day.
We know it, the flames and the flakes, For dried is the blood of thy lover,
Red brands on it smitten and bitten, Ipsithilla, contracted the vein;
Round skies where a star is a stain, Cry aloud, "Will he rise and recover,
And the leaves with thy litanies written, Our Lady of Pain?"
Our Lady of Pain.
Cry aloud; for the old world is broken:
On thy bosom though many a kiss be, Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest,
There are none such as knew it of old. And rears not the bountiful token
Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe, And spreads not the fatherly feast.
Male ringlets or feminine gold, From the midmost of Ida, from shady
That thy lips met with under the statue, Recesses that murmur at morn,
Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves They have brought and baptized her, Our Lady,
From the eyes of the garden-god at you A goddess new-born.
Across the fig-leaves?
And the chaplets of old are above us,
Then still, through dry seasons and moister, And the oyster-bed teems out of reach;
Old poets outsing and outlove us, As the serpent again to a rod.
And Catullus makes mouths at our speech. Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it;
Who shall kiss, in thy father's own city, Thou shalt live until evil be slain,
With such lips as he sang with, again? And good shall die first, said thy prophet,
Intercede for us all of thy pity, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain.
Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it,
Out of Dindymus heavily laden Now he lies out of reach, out of breath,
Her lions draw bound and unfed Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet,
A mother, a mortal, a maiden, Sin's child by incestuous Death?
A queen over death and the dead. Did he find out in fire at his waking,
She is cold, and her habit is lowly, Or discern as his eyelids lost light,
Her temple of branches and sods; When the bands of the body were breaking
Most fruitful and virginal, holy, And all came in sight?
A mother of gods.
Who has known all the evil before us,
She hath wasted with fire thine high places, Or the tyrannous secrets of time?
She hath hidden and marred and made sad Though we match not the dead men that bore us
The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces At a song, at a kiss, at a crime —
Of gods that were goodly and glad. Though the heathen outface and outlive us,
She slays, and her hands are not bloody; And our lives and our longings are twain —
She moves as a moon in the wane, Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us,
White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain.
Who are we that embalm and embrace thee
They shall pass and their places be taken, With spices and savours of song?
The gods and the priests that are pure. What is time, that his children should face thee?
They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken? What am I, that my lips do thee wrong?
They shall perish, and shalt thou endure? I could hurt thee — but pain would delight thee;
Death laughs, breathing close and relentless Or caress thee — but love would repel;
In the nostrils and eyelids of lust, And the lovers whose lips would excite thee
With a pinch in his fingers of scentless Are serpents in hell.
And delicate dust.
Who now shall content thee as they did,
But the worm shall revive thee with kisses; Thy lovers, when temples were built
Thou shalt change and transmute as a god, And the hair of the sacrifice braided
As the rod to a serpent that hisses, And the blood of the sacrifice spilt,
In Lampsacus fervent with faces, Find out whether tares be not grain,
In Aphaca red from thy reign, And the joys of thee seventy times seven,
Who embraced thee with awful embraces, Our Lady of Pain.
Our Lady of Pain?

Where are they, Cotytto or Venus,

Astarte or Ashtaroth, where?
Do their hands as we touch come between us?
Is the breath of them hot in thy hair?
From their lips have thy lips taken fever,
With the blood of their bodies grown red?
Hast thou left upon earth a believer
If these men are dead?

They were purple of raiment and golden,

Filled full of thee, fiery with wine,
Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden,
In marvellous chambers of thine.
They are fled, and their footprints escape us,
Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain,
O daughter of Death and Priapus,
Our Lady of Pain.

What ails us to fear overmeasure,

To praise thee with timorous breath,
O mistress and mother of pleasure,
The one thing as certain as death?
We shall change as the things that we cherish,
Shall fade as they faded before,
As foam upon water shall perish,
As sand upon shore.

We shall know what the darkness discovers,

If the grave-pit be shallow or deep;
And our fathers of old, and our lovers,
We shall know if they sleep not or sleep.
We shall see whether hell be not heaven,