dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse  »  340. Emblems of Love

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

Lascelles Abercrombie (1881–1938)

340. Emblems of Love

She

ONLY to be twin elements of joy

In this extravagance of Being, Love,

Were our divided natures shaped in twain;

And to this hour the whole world must consent.

Is it not very marvellous, our lives

Can only come to this out of a long

Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He

Shall life do more than God? for hath not God

Striven with himself, when into known delight

His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth,—

This mystery of a world sign of his striving?

Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind

With labouring in the wonder of it, that here

Being—the world and we—is suffered to be!—

But, lying on thy breast one notable day,

Sudden exceeding agony of love

Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge.

I was not: yet I saw the will of God

As light unfashion’d, unendurable flame,

Interminable, not to be supposed;

And there was no more creature except light,—

The dreadful burning of the lonely God’s

Unutter’d joy. And then, past telling, came

Shuddering and division in the light:

Therein, like trembling, was desire to know

Its own perfect beauty; and it became

A cloven fire, a double flaming, each

Adorable to each; against itself

Waging a burning love, which was the world;—

A moment satisfied in that love-strife

I knew the world!—And when I fell from there,

Then knew I also what this life would do

In being twin,—in being man and woman!

For it would do even as its endless Master,

Making the world, had done; yea, with itself

Would strive, and for the strife would into sex

Be cloven, double burning, made thereby

Desirable to itself. Contrivèd joy

Is sex in life; and by no other thing

Than by a perfect sundering, could life

Change the dark stream of unappointed joy

To perfect praise of itself, the glee that loves

And worships its own Being. This is ours!

Yet only for that we have been so long

Sundered desire: thence is our life all praise.—

But we, well knowing by our strength of joy

There is no sundering more, how far we love

From those sad lives that know a half-love only,

Alone thereby knowing themselves for ever

Sealed in division of love, and therefore made

To pour their strength always into their love’s

Fierceness, as green wood bleeds its hissing sap

Into red heat of a fire! Not so do we:

The cloven anger, life, hath left to wage

Its flame against itself, here turned to one

Self-adoration.—Ah, what comes of this?

The joy falters a moment, with closed wings

Wearying in its upward journey, ere

Again it goes on high, bearing its song,

Its delight breathing and its vigour beating

The highest height of the air above the world.

She

What hast thou done to me!—I would have soul,

Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held

By flesh. Now, inly delighted with desire,

My body knows itself to be nought else

But thy heart’s worship of me; and my soul

Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air.

Nay, all my body is become a song

Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song.

He

And mine is all like one rapt faculty,

As it were listening to the love in thee,

My whole mortality trembling to take

Thy body like heard singing of thy spirit.

She

Surely by this, Beloved, we must know

Our love is perfect here,—that not as holds

The common dullard thought, we are things lost

In an amazement that is all unware;

But wonderfully knowing what we are!

Lo, now that body is the song whereof

Spirit is mood, knoweth not our delight?

Knoweth not beautifully now our love,

That Life, here to this festival bid come

Clad in his splendour of worldly day and night,

Filled and empower’d by heavenly lust, is all

The glad imagination of the Spirit?

He

Were it not so, Love could not be at all:

Nought could be, but a yearning to fulfil

Desire of beauty, by vain reaching forth

Of sense to hold and understand the vision

Made by impassion’d body,—vision of thee!

But music mixt with music are, in love,

Bodily senses; and as flame hath light,

Spirit this nature hath imagined round it,

No way concealed therein, when love comes near,

Nor in the perfect wedding of desires

Suffering any hindrance.

She

Ah, but now,

Now am I given love’s eternal secret!

Yea, thou and I who speak, are but the joy

Of our for ever mated spirits; but now

The wisdom of my gladness even through Spirit

Looks, divinely elate. Who hath for joy

Our Spirits? Who hath imagined them

Round him in fashion’d radiance of desire,

As into light of these exulting bodies

Flaming Spirit is uttered?

He

Yea, here the end

Of love’s astonishment! Now know we Spirit,

And Who, for ease of joy, contriveth Spirit.

Now all life’s loveliness and power we have

Dissolved in this one moment, and our burning

Carries all shining upward, till in us

Life is not life, but the desire of God,

Himself desiring and himself accepting.

Now what was prophecy in us is made

Fulfilment: we are the hour and we are the joy,

We in our marvellousness of single knowledge,

Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate

And drawing into his light the greeting fire

Of God,—God known in ecstasy of love

Wedding himself to utterance of himself.