We cannot understand her, cannot teach;
She makes us love her, but she loves not us;
And quits us as she came and looks back never.
Wherefore we fly to Fiction’s warm embrace,
With her to relax and bask ourselves at ease;
And, in her loving and unhindering lap
Voluptuously lulled, we dream at most
On death and truth: she knows them, loves them not;
Therefore we hate them and deny them both.
Call up the dead!
Let rest while rest they may!
For free from pain and from this world’s wear and tear
It may be a relief to them to rot;
And it must be that at the day of doom,
If mortals should take up immortal life,
They will curse me with a thunder which shall shake
The sun from out the socket of his sphere.
The curse of all created. Think on it!
Those souls thou mean’st whom thou hast ruined, damned.
Nor only those; when once the virgin bloom
Of soul is soiled—and rudely hath my hand
Swept o’er the swelling clusters of all life—
Little it matters whether crushed or touched
Scarcely: each speaks the spoiler hath been there.
The saved, the lost, shall curse me both alike:
God too shall curse me, and I, I, myself.
That curse is ever greatening—quick with hell;
The coming consummation of all woe.
O man, be happy! Die and cease for ever!
Why wear we not the shroud alway, that robe
Which speaks our rank on earth, our privilege?
To know I have a deathless soul I would lose it
Believest thou all I tell thee?
All, I do.
Stringing the stars at random round her head,
Like a pearl network, there she sits—bright night!
I love night more than day—she is so lovely.
But I love night the most because she brings
My love to me in dreams which scarcely lie;
Oh! all but truth and lovelier oft than truth!
Let me have dreams like these, sweet Night, for ever,
When I shall wake no more; an endless dream
Of love and holy beauty ’mid the stars.
I see thy heart and I will grant thy wish.
I have lied to thee. I have command over spirits.
Whom wilt thou that I call?
Mine Angela!
There is an Angel ever by thine hand.
What seest thou?
It is my love! It is she!
My glory! spirit! beauty, let me touch thee.
Nay, do not shrink back: well then I am wrong:
Thou didst not use to shrink from me, my love.
Angela! dost thou hear me? Speak to me.
And thou art there—looking alive and dead.
Thy beauty is then incorruptible.
I thought so, oft as I have looked on thee.
Thou art too much even now for me as once.
I cannot gather what I raved to say;
Nor why I had thee hither. Stay, sweet sprite!
Dear art thou to me now, as in that hour
When first Love’s wave of feeling, spray-like broke
Into bright utterance, and we said we loved.
Yea, but I must come to thee. Move no more!
Art thou in death or Heaven or from the stars?
Have I done wrong in calling for thee thus?
What art thou? Speak, love; whisper me as wont
In the dear times gone bye; or durst thou not
Unfold the mystery of thine and mine
Own being? Was it Death who hushed thy lips?
Is his cold finger there still? Let me come!
She is not!
And thou canst not bring her back.
I will not, cannot be without her. Call her!
I call on spirits and I make them come:
But they depart according to their own will.
Another time and she shall speak with thee—
Ere long—and she shall show thee where she dwells,
And how doth pass her immortality;—
If lengthening decay can so be called.
Can lines finite one way be infinite
Another? And yet such is deathlessness.
It is hard to deem that spirits cease, that thought
And feeling flesh-like perish in the dust.
Shall we know those again in a future state
Whom we have known and loved on earth? Say yes!
The mind hath features as the body hath.
But is it mind which shall rerise?
Man were
Not man without the mind be had in life.
Shall all defects of mind and fallacies
Of feeling be immortalized? all needs,
All joys, all sorrows, be again gone through,
Before the final crisis be imposed?
Shall Heaven but be old earth created new?
Or earth, treelike, transplanted into Heaven,
To flourish by the waters of all life,
And we within its shade, as heretofore,
Cropping its fruit, with life-seeds cored at heart?
Man’s nature, physical and psychical,
Will be together raised, changed, glorified;
And all shall be alike, like God; and all
Unlike each other, and themselves. The earth
Shall vanish from the thoughts of those she bore,
As have the idols of the olden time
From men’s hearts of the present. All delight
And all desire, shall be with Heavenly things,
And the new nature God bestowed on man.
Then man shall be no more man but an Angel.
When he is dead and buried. What remains—
That such an obscure, contradictory, thing
Should be perpetuated anywhere?
Oh! if God hates the flesh, why made He it
So beautiful that e’en its semblance maddens?
Am I to credit what I think I have seen?
Or am I suffering some deceit of thine?
I am explaining, not deluding.
True.
Defining night by darkness, death by dust.
I run the gauntlet of a file of doubts,
Each one of which down hurls me to the ground.
I ask a hundred reasons what they mean,
And every one points gravely to the ground,
With one hand, and to Heaven with the other.
In vain I shut mine eyes. Truth’s burning beam
Forces them open, and when open, blinds them.
Doubly unhappy!
I am too unhappy
To die; as some too way-worn cannot sleep.
Planets and suns, that set themselves on fire
By their own rapid self-revolvements, are
But like some hearts. Existence I despise.
The shape of man is wearisome; a bird’s,
A worm’s—a whirlwind’s, I would change with aught.
Time! dash thine hour-glass down. Have done with this!
The course of Nature seems a course of Death,
And nothingness the sole substantial thing.
Corruption springs from Light: ’tis the same power
Creates, preserves,
