ASSUMPTA CANIDIA
27
The mystic slumber of my sense forlorn
Stirs only now and then; some deeper
pang
Reminds despair there is a sharper fang,
Reminds my night of a tempestuous morn.
For I am lost and lonely: in the skies
I see no hope of any sun or star ;
On earth there blooms no rose, no nenu-
phar;
No cross is set for hope of sacrifice.
I cannot sleep, I cannot wake; and death
Passes me by with his desiréd breath.
No shadow in my mind to prove a sun ;
No sorrow to declare that joy exists ;
A cycle of dim spectres in the mists
Moves just a little; lastly there is One,
One central Being, one elusive shape,
Not to aspire to, not to love; alas!
Only a memory in the aged mass
Of chained ones bound to me without escape !
Oh, doom of God! Oh, brand how worse
than Cain’s !
Divided being, undivided pains !
What is this life 2
No inch throughout all time.)
ness
Too weak and hateful to be called distress?
Slow memory working backward only knows
There was some horror grown to it for kin;
Some final leprous growth that took my
brain,
Weaving a labyrinth of dullest pain
From the sweet scarlet thread I thought was
sin.
I cannot sin! Alas, one sin were sweet !
But sin is living—and we cannot meet !
(To call it life that grows
This bitter-
So long ago, so miserably long !
I was a maiden—oh how rich and rare
Seemed the soft sunshine woven in my hair!
How keen the music of my body’s song !
How white the blossom of my body’s light !
How red the lips, how languorous the eyes,
How made for pleasure, for the sleepy
sighs
Softer than sleep; amorous dew-dreams of
night
That draw out night in kisses to the day !
So was I to my seeming as I lay.
That soft smooth-moving ocean of the west
Under the palm and cactus as it rolled,
Immortal blue, fixed with immortal gold,
Moving in rapture with my sleeping breast !
The young delicious green, the drunken smell
Of the fresh earth, the luxury of the glow
Where many colours mingled into snow,
Song-marvels in the air desirable.
So lazily I lay, and watched my eyes
In the deep fountain’s sun-stirred har-
monies.
I loved myself! O Thou! (I cried) divine
Woman more lovely than the flowers of
earth !
O Self-hood softer than the babe at birth,
Sweeter than love, more amorous than wine,
Where is thy peer upon the face of life2
I love myself, the daughter of the dawn.
Come, silken night, in your deep wings
withdrawn
Let me be folded, as a tender wife
In my own arms imagined! Let me sleep,
Unwaking from the admirable deep !
My arms fell lazily about the bed.
I lay in some delicious trance. I fell
Deep through sleep’s chambers to the gate
of Hell,
And on that flaming portalice I read
The legend, ‘‘ Here is beauty, here delight,
Here love made more desirable than thine,
Fiercer than light, more dolorous than wine.
Here the embraces of the Sons of Night !
Come, sister, come; come, lonely queen
of breath !
Here are the lustres and the flames of
death.”
Hence I was whirled, as in a wind of light,
Out to the fragrance of a loftier air,
A keener scent, and rising unaware
Out of the Palace of Luxurious Night,