Collected Works (Vol. I)

TANNHAUSER 237 The fact, and leave the dream, and so disdain These far-off splendours, catch the nearer joy, Take squalid kisses, banish crested love Intangible. Delights it thee, my friend, To reach the summits unattained before, And stumble on their snows? Thine old desire Was just to touch the mere impalpable, To formulate the formless. Otherwise Christ did as well—thine own words turn again ! TANNHAUSER. Ah, if pure love could grow material ! There are pure women ! VENUS. There you make me laugh! Remember—I have known such. But besides You ask hot snow and leaden feather-flights ! TANNHAUSER. And you—you keep me worrying, fair queen, In logic and its meshes, when to-day I rather would be caught in other nets, The burning gold and glory of your hair, Lightning and sunshine, storm and radiance, Your flaming pell !! VENUS. Come, sing to me again! That we may watch each other as you sing ; Feel how it overmasters and o’erwhelms, The growing pang of hunger for a kiss ! ‘TANNUAUSER, Brood evil, then, in your amazing cyes, That I may see the serpent grow in you ; As I were just the bird upon the bough—- So let the twittering grow faint and still, And let me fall, fall into the abyss, Your arms—a culminating ecstasy, Darkness and death and rapture. you? Sing to 1 From [Latin pedZ7s, skin. What song? too oft My first great cry of love inaudible Sapped me of music. My tunes are played upon VENUS, Sing me that again! TANNHAUSER. Who is this maiden robéd for a bride, White shoulders and bright brows adorable, The flaming locks that clothe her, and abide, As God were bathing in the fire of Hell? They change, they grow, they shake As sunlight on the lake: They hiss, they glisten on her bosom bare. O maiden, maiden queen ! The lightning flows between Thy mounting breasts, too magically fair. Draw me, O draw me to a dreaming death! Send out thine opiate breath, And lull ine to the everlasting sleep, That, closing from the kisses of disdain To ecstasy of pain, I may sob out my life into their dangerous deep. Who cometh from the mountain as a tower Stalwart. and set against the fiery foes? Who, breathing as a jasmine-laden bower? Who, crowned and lissome as a living rose ? Sharp thorns in thee are set ; In me, in me beget The dolorous despair of this desire. Thy body sways and swings Above the tide of things, Laps me as ocean, wraps me round as fire ! Ye elemental sorceries of song, Surge, strenuous and strong, Seeking dead dreams, the secret of the shrine ; So that she drain my life and being up As from a golden cup, To mingle in her blood, dcath’s kiss incarna- dine.