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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse  »  131. Sponsa Dei

Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)

131. Sponsa Dei

WHAT is this maiden fair,

The laughing of whose eye

Is in man’s heart renew’d virginity;

Who yet sick longing breeds

For marriage which exceeds

The inventive guess of Love to satisfy

With hope of utter binding, and of loosing endless dear despair?

What gleams about her shine,

More transient than delight and more divine!

If she does something but a little sweet,

As gaze towards the glass to set her hair,

See how his soul falls humbled at her feet!

Her gentle step, to go or come,

Gains her more merit than a martyrdom;

And, if she dance, it doth such grace confer

As opes the heaven of heavens to more than her,

And makes a rival of her worshipper.

To die unknown for her were little cost!

So is she without guile,

Her mere refused smile

Makes up the sum of that which may be lost!

Who is this Fair

Whom each hath seen,

The darkest once in this bewailed dell,

Be he not destin’d for the glooms of hell?

Whom each hath seen

And known, with sharp remorse and sweet, as Queen

And tear-glad Mistress of his hopes of bliss,

Too fair for man to kiss?

Who is this only happy She,

Whom, by a frantic flight of courtesy,

Born of despair

Of better lodging for his Spirit fair,

He adores as Margaret, Maude, or Cecily?

And what this sigh,

That each one heaves for Earth’s last lowlihead

And the Heaven high

Ineffably lock’d in dateless bridal-bed?

Are all, then, mad, or is it prophecy?

‘Sons now we are of God,’ as we have heard,

‘But what we shall be hath not yet appear’d.’

O, Heart, remember thee,

That Man is none,

Save One.

What if this Lady be thy Soul, and He

Who claims to enjoy her sacred beauty be,

Not thou, but God; and thy sick fire

A female vanity,

Such as a Bride, viewing her mirror’d charms,

Feels when she sighs, ‘All these are for his arms!’

A reflex heat

Flash’d on thy cheek from His immense desire,

Which waits to crown, beyond thy brain’s conceit,

Thy nameless, secret, hopeless longing sweet,

Not by and by, but now,

Unless deny Him thou!