Читать книгу The Victories of Love, and Other Poems - Coventry Patmore - Страница 11

I thought the worst had brought me balm:

’Twas but the tempest’s central calm.

Vague sinkings of the heart aver

That dreadful wrong is come to her,

And o’er this dream I brood and dote,

And learn its agonies by rote.

As if I loved it, early and late

I make familiar with my fate,

And feed, with fascinated will,

On very dregs of finish’d ill.

I think, she’s near him now, alone,

With wardship and protection none;

Alone, perhaps, in the hindering stress

Of airs that clasp him with her dress,

They wander whispering by the wave;

And haply now, in some sea-cave,

Where the ribb’d sand is rarely trod,

They laugh, they kiss, Oh, God! oh, God!

There comes a smile acutely sweet

Out of the picturing dark; I meet

The ancient frankness of her gaze,

That soft and heart-surprising blaze

Of great goodwill and innocence.

And perfect joy proceeding thence!

Ah! made for earth’s delight, yet such

The mid-sea air’s too gross to touch.

At thought of which, the soul in me

Is as the bird that bites a bee,

And darts abroad on frantic wing,

Tasting the honey and the sting;

And, moaning where all round me sleep

Amidst the moaning of the deep,

I start at midnight from my bed—

And have no right to strike him dead.

   What world is this that I am in,

Where chance turns sanctity to sin!

’Tis crime henceforward to desire

The only good; the sacred fire

That sunn’d the universe is hell!

I hear a Voice which argues well:

‘The Heaven hard has scorn’d your cry;

Fall down and worship me, and I

Will give you peace; go and profane

This pangful love, so pure, so vain.

And thereby win forgetfulness

And pardon of the spirit’s excess,

Which soar’d too nigh that jealous Heaven

Ever, save thus, to be forgiven.

No Gospel has come down that cures

With better gain a loss like yours.

Be pious!  Give the beggar pelf,

And love your neighbour as yourself!

You, who yet love, though all is o’er,

And she’ll ne’er be your neighbour more,

With soul which can in pity smile

That aught with such a measure vile

As self should be at all named “love!”

Your sanctity the priests reprove;

Your case of grief they wholly miss;

The Man of Sorrows names not this.

The years, they say, graft love divine

On the lopp’d stock of love like thine;

The wild tree dies not, but converts.

So be it; but the lopping hurts,

The graft takes tardily!  Men stanch

Meantime with earth the bleeding branch.

There’s nothing heals one woman’s loss,

And lightens life’s eternal cross

With intermission of sound rest,

Like lying in another’s breast.

The cure is, to your thinking, low!

Is not life all, henceforward, so?’

   Ill Voice, at least thou calm’st my mood:

I’ll sleep!  But, as I thus conclude,

The intrusions of her grace dispel

The comfortable glooms of hell.

   A wonder!  Ere these lines were dried,

Vaughan and my Love, his three-days’ Bride,

Became my guests.  I look’d, and, lo,

In beauty soft as is the snow

And powerful as the avalanche,

She lit the deck.  The Heav’n-sent chance!

She smiled, surprised.  They came to see

The ship, not thinking to meet me.

   At infinite distance she’s my day:

What then to him?  Howbeit they say

’Tis not so sunny in the sun

But men might live cool lives thereon!

   All’s well; for I have seen arise

That reflex sweetness of her eyes

In his, and watch’d his breath defer

Humbly its bated life to her,

His wife.  My Love, she’s safe in his

Devotion!  What ask’d I but this?

   They bade adieu; I saw them go

Across the sea; and now I know

The ultimate hope I rested on,

The hope beyond the grave, is gone,

The hope that, in the heavens high,

At last it should appear that I

Loved most, and so, by claim divine,

Should have her, in the heavens, for mine,

According to such nuptial sort

As may subsist in the holy court,

Where, if there are all kinds of joys

To exhaust the multitude of choice

In many mansions, then there are

Loves personal and particular,

Conspicuous in the glorious sky

Of universal charity,

As Phosphor in the sunrise.  Now

I’ve seen them, I believe their vow

Immortal; and the dreadful thought,

That he less honour’d than he ought

Her sanctity, is laid to rest,

And blessing them I too am blest.

My goodwill, as a springing air,

Unclouds a beauty in despair;

I stand beneath the sky’s pure cope

Unburthen’d even by a hope;

And peace unspeakable, a joy

Which hope would deaden and destroy,

Like sunshine fills the airy gulf

Left by the vanishing of self.

That I have known her; that she moves

Somewhere all-graceful; that she loves,

And is belov’d, and that she’s so

Most happy, and to heaven will go,

Where I may meet with her, (yet this

I count but accidental bliss,)

And that the full, celestial weal

Of all shall sensitively feel

The partnership and work of each,

And thus my love and labour reach

Her region, there the more to bless

Her last, consummate happiness,

Is guerdon up to the degree

Of that alone true loyalty

Which, sacrificing, is not nice

About the terms of sacrifice,

But offers all, with smiles that say,

’Tis little, but it is for aye!