above our heads the deepening blue
Burnished the gathering stars. Her sweetness drew
A veil before my eyes. The minutes passed
Heavy like loaded vines. She spoke at last.
“She said, for this land only did men love
The shadow-lands of earth. All our disease
Of longing, all the hopes we fabled of,
Fortunate islands or Hesperian seas
Or woods beyond the West, were but the breeze
That blew from off those shores: one far, spent breath
That reached even to the world of change and death.
“She told me I had journeyed home at last
Into the golden age and the good countrie
That had been always there. She bade me cast
My cares behind forever:—on her knee
Worshipped me, lord and love—oh, I can see
Her red lips even now! Is it not wrong
That men’s delusions should be made so strong?
“For listen, I was so besotted now
She made me think that I was somehow seeing
The very core of truth … I felt somehow,
Beyond all veils, the inward pulse of being.
Thought was enslaved, but oh, it felt like freeing
And draughts of larger air. It is too much!
Who can come through untainted from that touch?
“There I was nearly wrecked. But mark the rest:
She went too fast. Soft to my arms she came.
The robe slipped from her shoulder. The smooth breast
Was bare against my own. She shone like flame
Before me in the dusk, all love, all shame—
Faugh!—and it was myself. But all was well,
For, at the least, that moment snapped the spell.
“As when you light a candle, the great gloom
Which was the unbounded night, sinks down, compressed
To four white walls in one familiar room,
So the vague joy shrank wilted in my breast
And narrowed to one point, unmasked, confessed;
Fool’s paradise was gone: instead was there
King Lust with his black, sudden, serious stare.
“That moment in a cloud among the trees
Wild music and the glare of torches came.
On sweated faces, on the prancing knees
Of shaggy satyrs fell the smoky flame,
On ape and goat and crawlers without name,
On rolling breast, black eyes and tossing hair,
On old bald-headed witches, lean and bare.
“They beat the devilish tom-tom rub-a-dub;
Lunging, leaping, in unwieldy romp,
Singing Cotytto and Beelzebub,
With devil-dancers’ mask and phallic pomp,
Torn raw with briers and caked from many a swamp,
They came, among the wild flowers dripping blood
And churning the green mosses into mud.
“They sang, ‘Return! Return! We are the lust
That was before the world and still shall be
When your last law is trampled into dust,
We are the mother swamp, the primal sea
Whence the dry land appeared. Old, old are we.
It is but a return … it’s nothing new,
Easy as slipping on a well-worn shoe.’
“And then there came warm mouths and finger-tips
Preying upon me, whence I could not see,
Then … a huge face, low-browed, with swollen lips
Crooning, ‘I am not beautiful as she,
But I’m the older love; you shall love me
Far more than Beauty’s self. You have been ours
Always. We are the world’s most ancient powers.’
“First flatterer and then bogy—like a dream!
Sir, are you listening? Do you also know
How close to the soft laughter comes the scream
Down yonder?” But his host cried sharply, “No.
Leave me alone. Why will you plague me? Go!
Out of my house! Begone!”—“With all my heart,”
Said Dymer. “But one word before we part.”
He paused, and in his cheek the anger burned:
Then turning to the table, he poured out
More water. But before he drank he turned—
Then leaped back to the window with a shout
For there—it was no dream—beyond all doubt
He saw the Master crouch with levelled gun,
Cackling in maniac voice, “Run, Dymer, run!”
He ducked and sprang far out. The starless night
On the wet lawn closed round him every way.
Then came the gun-crack and the splash of light
Vanished as soon as seen. Cool garden clay
Slid from his feet. He had fallen and he lay
Face downward among leaves—then up and on
Through branch and leaf till sense and breath were gone.
Canto VIII
When next he found himself no house was there,
No garden and great trees. Beside a lane
In grass he lay. Now first he was aware
That, all one side, his body glowed with pain:
And the next moment and the next again
Was neither less nor more. Without a pause
It clung like a great beast with fastened claws;
That for a time he could not frame a thought
Nor know himself for self, nor pain for pain,
Till moment added on to moment taught
The new, strange art of living on that plane,
Taught how the grappled soul must still remain,
Still choose and think and understand beneath
The very grinding of the ogre’s teeth.
He heard the wind along the hedges sweep,
The quarter striking from a neighbouring tower.
About him was the weight of the world’s sleep;
Within, the thundering pain. That quiet hour
Heeded it not. It throbbed, it raged with power
Fit to convulse the heavens: and at his side
The soft peace drenched the meadows far and wide.
The air was cold, the earth was cold with dew,
The hedge behind him dark as ink. But now
The clouds broke and a paler heaven showed through
Spacious with sudden stars, breathing somehow
The sense of change to slumbering lands. A cow
Coughed in the fields behind. The puddles showed
Like pools of sky amid the darker road.
And he could see his own limbs faintly white
And the blood black upon them. Then by chance
He turned … and it was strange: there at his right
He saw a woman standing, and her glance
Met his: and at the meeting his deep trance
Changed not, and while he looked the knowledge grew
She was not of the old life but the new.
“Who is it?” he said. “The loved one, the long lost.”
He stared upon her. “Truly?”—“Truly indeed.”
—“Oh, lady, you come late. I am tempest-tossed,
Broken and wrecked. I am dying. Look, I bleed.
Why have you left me thus and given no heed
To all my prayer?—left me to be the game
Of all deceits?”—“You should have asked my name.”
—“What are you, then?” But to his sudden cry
She did not answer. When he had thought awhile
He said: “How can I tell it is no lie?
It may be one more phantom to beguile
The brain-sick dreamer with its
