The Unknown Eros.

by Coventry Patmore.

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.

To this edition of "The Unknown Eros" are added all the other poems I have written, in what I venture--because it has no other name--to call "catalectic verse." Nearly all English metres owe their existence as metres to "catalexis," or pause, for the time of one or more feet, and, as a rule, the position and amount of catalexis are fixed. But the verse in which this volume is written is catalectic par excellence, employing the pause (as it does the rhyme) with freedom only limited by the exigencies of poetic pa.s.sion. From the time of Drummond of Hawthornden to our own, some of the n.o.blest flights of English poetry have been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive of its character.

Some persons, unlearned in the subject of metre, have objected to this kind of verse that it is "lawless." But it has its laws as truly as any other.

In its highest order, the lyric or "ode," it is a tetrameter, the line having the time of eight iambics. When it descends to narrative, or the expression of a less-exalted strain of thought, it becomes a trimeter, having the time of six iambics, or even a dimeter, with the time of four; and it is allowable to vary the tetrameter "ode" by the occasional introduction of pa.s.sages in either or both of these inferior measures, but not, I think, by the use of any other. The license to rhyme at indefinite intervals is counterbalanced, in the writing of all poets who have employed this metre successfully, by unusual frequency in the recurrence of the same rhyme. For information on the generally overlooked but primarily important function of catalexis in English verse I refer such readers as may be curious about the subject to the Essay printed as an appendix to the later editions of my collected poems.

I do not pretend to have done more than very moderate justice to the exceeding grace and dignity and the inexhaustible expressiveness of which this kind of metre is capable; but I can say that I have never attempted to write in it in the absence of that one justification of and prime qualification for its use, namely, the impulse of some thought that "voluntary moved harmonious numbers."

COVENTRY PATMORE.

HASTINGS, 1890.

THE UNKNOWN EROS

"Deliciae meae esse c.u.m filiis hominum."

PROV. VIII. 31.

PROEM.

'Many speak wisely, some inerrably: Witness the beast who talk'd that should have bray'd, And Caiaphas that said Expedient 'twas for all that One should die; But what avails When Love's right accent from their wisdom fails, And the Truth-criers know not what they cry!

Say, wherefore thou, As under bondage of some bitter vow, Warblest no word, When all the rest are shouting to be heard?

Why leave the fervid running just when Fame 'Gan whispering of thy name Amongst the hard-pleased Judges of the Course?

Parch'd is thy crystal-flowing source?

Pierce, then, with thought's steel probe, the trodden ground, Till pa.s.sion's buried floods be found; Intend thine eye Into the dim and undiscover'd sky Whose l.u.s.tres are the pulsings of the heart, And promptly, as thy trade is, watch to chart The lonely suns, the mystic hazes and throng'd sparkles bright That, named and number'd right In sweet, transpicuous words, shall glow alway With Love's three-stranded ray, Red wrath, compa.s.sion golden, lazuline delight.'

Thus, in reproof of my despondency, My Mentor; and thus I: O, season strange for song!

And yet some timely power persuades my lips.

Is't England's parting soul that nerves my tongue, As other Kingdoms, nearing their eclipse, Have, in their latest bards, uplifted strong The voice that was their voice in earlier days?

Is it her sudden, loud and piercing cry, The note which those that seem too weak to sigh Will sometimes utter just before they die?

Lo, weary of the greatness of her ways, There lies my Land, with hasty pulse and hard, Her ancient beauty marr'd, And, in her cold and aimless roving sight, Horror of light; Sole vigour left in her last lethargy, Save when, at bidding of some dreadful breath, The rising death Rolls up with force; And then the furiously gibbering corse Shakes, panglessly convuls'd, and sightless stares, Whilst one Physician pours in rousing wines, One anodynes, And one declares That nothing ails it but the pains of growth.

My last look loth Is taken; and I turn, with the relief Of knowing that my life-long hope and grief Are surely vain, To that unshapen time to come, when She, A dim, heroic Nation long since dead, The foulness of her agony forgot, Shall all benignly shed Through ages vast The ghostly grace of her transfigured past Over the present, hara.s.s'd and forlorn, Of nations yet unborn; And this shall be the lot Of those who, in the bird-voice and the blast Of her omniloquent tongue, Have truly sung Or greatly said, To shew as one With those who have best done, And be as rays, Thro' the still altering world, around her changeless head.

Therefore no 'plaint be mine Of listeners none, No hope of render'd use or proud reward, In hasty times and hard; But chants as of a lonely thrush's throat At latest eve, That does in each calm note Both joy and grieve; Notes few and strong and fine, Gilt with sweet day's decline, And sad with promise of a different sun.

'Mid the loud concert harsh Of this fog-folded marsh, To me, else dumb, Uranian Clearness, come!

Give me to breathe in peace and in surprise The light-thrill'd ether of your rarest skies, Till inmost absolution start The welling in the grateful eyes, The heaving in the heart.

Winnow with sighs And wash away With tears the dust and stain of clay, Till all the Song be Thine, as beautiful as Morn, Bedeck'd with shining clouds of scorn; And Thou, Inspirer, deign to brood O'er the delighted words, and call them Very Good.

This grant, Clear Spirit; and grant that I remain Content to ask unlikely gifts in vain.

BOOK I.

I. SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY.

Well dost thou, Love, thy solemn Feast to hold In vestal February; Not rather choosing out some rosy day From the rich coronet of the coming May, When all things meet to marry!

O, quick, praevernal Power That signall'st punctual through the sleepy mould The Snowdrop's time to flower, Fair as the rash oath of virginity Which is first-love's first cry; O, Baby Spring, That flutter'st sudden 'neath the breast of Earth A month before the birth; Whence is the peaceful poignancy, The joy contrite, Sadder than sorrow, sweeter than delight, That burthens now the breath of everything, Though each one sighs as if to each alone The cherish'd pang were known?

At dusk of dawn, on his dark spray apart, With it the Blackbird breaks the young Day's heart; In evening's hush About it talks the heavenly-minded Thrush; The hill with like remorse Smiles to the Sun's smile in his westering course; The fisher's drooping skiff In yonder sheltering bay; The choughs that call about the shining cliff; The children, noisy in the setting ray; Own the sweet season, each thing as it may; Thoughts of strange kindness and forgotten peace In me increase; And tears arise Within my happy, happy Mistress' eyes, And, lo, her lips, averted from my kiss, Ask from Love's bounty, ah, much more than bliss!

Is't the sequester'd and exceeding sweet Of dear Desire electing his defeat?

Is't the waked Earth now to yon purpling cope Uttering first-love's first cry, Vainly renouncing, with a Seraph's sigh, Love's natural hope?

Fair-meaning Earth, foredoom'd to perjury!

Behold, all-amorous May, With roses heap'd upon her laughing brows, Avoids thee of thy vows!

Were it for thee, with her warm bosom near, To abide the sharpness of the Seraph's sphere?

Forget thy foolish words; Go to her summons gay, Thy heart with dead, wing'd Innocencies fill'd, Ev'n as a nest with birds After the old ones by the hawk are kill'd.

Well dost thou, Love, to celebrate The noon of thy soft ecstasy, Or e'er it be too late, Or e'er the Snowdrop die!

II. WIND AND WAVE.

The wedded light and heat, Winnowing the witless s.p.a.ce, Without a let, What are they till they beat Against the sleepy sod, and there beget Perchance the violet!

Is the One found, Amongst a wilderness of as happy grace, To make Heaven's bound; So that in Her All which it hath of sensitively good Is sought and understood After the narrow mode the mighty Heavens prefer?

She, as a little breeze Following still Night, Ripples the spirit's cold, deep seas Into delight; But, in a while, The immeasurable smile Is broke by fresher airs to flashes blent With darkling discontent; And all the subtle zephyr hurries gay, And all the heaving ocean heaves one way, 'Tward the void sky-line and an unguess'd weal; Until the vanward billows feel The agitating shallows, and divine the goal, And to foam roll, And spread and stray And traverse wildly, like delighted hands, The fair and f.e.c.kless sands; And so the whole Unfathomable and immense Triumphing tide comes at the last to reach And burst in wind-kiss'd splendours on the deaf'ning beach, Where forms of children in first innocence Laugh and fling pebbles on the rainbow'd crest Of its untired unrest.

III. WINTER.

I, singularly moved To love the lovely that are not beloved, Of all the Seasons, most Love Winter, and to trace The sense of the Trophonian pallor on her face.

It is not death, but plenitude of peace; And the dim cloud that does the world enfold Hath less the characters of dark and cold Than warmth and light asleep, And correspondent breathing seems to keep With the infant harvest, breathing soft below Its eider coverlet of snow.

Nor is in field or garden anything But, duly look'd into, contains serene The substance of things hoped for, in the Spring, And evidence of Summer not yet seen.

On every chance-mild day That visits the moist shaw, The honeysuckle, 'sdaining to be crost In urgence of sweet life by sleet or frost, 'Voids the time's law With still increase Of leaflet new, and little, wandering spray; Often, in sheltering brakes, As one from rest disturb'd in the first hour, Primrose or violet bewilder'd wakes, And deems 'tis time to flower; Though not a whisper of her voice he hear, The buried bulb does know The signals of the year, And hails far Summer with his lifted spear.

The gorse-field dark, by sudden, gold caprice, Turns, here and there, into a Jason's fleece; Lilies, that soon in Autumn slipp'd their gowns of green, And vanish'd into earth, And came again, ere Autumn died, to birth, Stand full-array'd, amidst the wavering shower, And perfect for the Summer, less the flower; In nook of pale or crevice of crude bark, Thou canst not miss, If close thou spy, to mark The ghostly chrysalis, That, if thou touch it, stirs in its dream dark; And the flush'd Robin, in the evenings h.o.a.r, Does of Love's Day, as if he saw it, sing; But sweeter yet than dream or song of Summer or Spring Are Winter's sometime smiles, that seem to well From infancy ineffable; Her wandering, languorous gaze, So unfamiliar, so without amaze, On the elemental, chill adversity, The uncomprehended rudeness; and her sigh And solemn, gathering tear, And look of exile from some great repose, the sphere Of ether, moved by ether only, or By something still more tranquil.

IV. BEATA.

Of infinite Heaven the rays, Piercing some eyelet in our cavern black, Ended their viewless track On thee to smite Solely, as on a diamond stalact.i.te, And in mid-darkness lit a rainbow's blaze, Wherein the absolute Reason, Power, and Love, That erst could move Mainly in me but toil and weariness, Renounced their deadening might, Renounced their undistinguishable stress Of withering white, And did with gladdest hues my spirit caress, Nothing of Heaven in thee showing infinite, Save the delight.

V. THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW.