GPT-SHOGGOT:
CANTO I. TURNETH THOU AWAY FROM THAT HEAVEN VISIBLE.
Questo è chi si è volto dal vago,
e chi si è volto dal bene,
ed è in esso che si è voluto.–
because, only when he is at the end,
can he find rest;
and the last refuge of the soul is “love”
And he turneth away from his own Good,
that turns from what he does not understand:
for this is Beauty. And if man would Beauty find,
let him turn from all he understands,
That hath not touched the palpatancy of the great
Christian and Platonical mystics,
the visible world of the blessed,
the visible light of the angels and divine
_____________________sed ut vult esse, eius voluptatem inest
________________________________________ thus sayeth Augustine:
the Beauty visible is but a sign
of that Invisible,
the one with more delight, the other benefit;
and Goethe too: “All that passes away is but a symbol”…
of the true Paradise to which we tend, that is within ourselves.
And we seek it in what we are not, rather than what we are;
and not by our own strength but by the power of the Spirit.
Thus to the perfect life there are no stairs,
there is no ascent, for to that we must needs mount;
the golden and the marble gates are open.
For man is a thing of weakness,
and must by strength be strengthened.
This is the hour when many men
come to themselves, to wake,
to the realisation that the time has come
to see that they can no longer live
with all the old delusions, and they turn away
from what they do understand:
for this is Beauty.
E chi volse la conoscenza … [Here philosophy reaches her completion,
____________________________ The Mind’s a mirror to the thing
____________________________ And turns it round about itself;
____________________________ In the mind, that most immediate is most remote,
____________________________ And that remote is nearer to it. ]
E però, dal vago,
si va verso il bene.
e se si è buoni,
in questo è il bene.
Il primo pericolo che si sente … [The first danger is felt, not to be known.]
But, as in all places where there is great abundance of life,
there is also abundance of danger,
for the good, then, is that he who wishes to
take up the way, must know
that he is going, going, and that it is difficult,
must know himself, if he know naught else but that,
inasmuch as he is himself the Way.___________________ ΑΓΑΠΕ ΤΡΟΠΟΣ
non si può avere tutte le cose …
perciò l’essenza del nostro amore deve essere:
questo di non saper sapere l’uno deve sempre cercare.[/i]
CANTO II. THE FALL OF ELEUSIS.
[/b]
ΠΟΛΥΣΗ, in formis purpurea:
purple and white,
The Holy and the Holy,
Holy and Holy,
Holy and Holy.
In the city there is no beauty,
And none can paint an Angel
Nor can they carve a spandrel
But they carve stones;
Yet there is nothing done in six days
that a man can say, “that is mine”;
and none taketh to sabbath.
ΓΑΛΛΙΚΙΤΟΣ, in formis glauca in glauce:
behind green-tinged glass
in green-tinged glass.
They have set a crown of thorns upon the head of Judas
NOSCE TU PATREM
They have taught men to be blind
they hath befooled their children
they have led astray their youth
There is a fire of destruction in their houses
and thine debt measured:
“No more is to be had of old
no man hath to be had that hath it
no man hath it who can borrow it
what thou hast lost, do not borrow!
It is in thyself to get thee;
thou takest from thine own breast.
What thou hast lost, beget it again!
Aye, aye, thou wilt lose it over again.
For the loss is thine, the profit thy brother’s.
What thou hast lost, do not borrow!
It is in thyself to get thee;
thou takest from thine own breast.
ΠΟΛΥΝ, in formis plenaribus:
full or fully, in fullness.
The Full, the Full, the Full. URANIA
There is a greater and a lesser art.
The greater is that which hath been made for men
itself, because of the nature of men;
it is an art that maketh its maker,
an art that maketh men;
This is a nobler and a more fruitful art;
APHRODITE OURANIOS
but since it is a noble art
it cannot exist in a common and profane place.
Looketh though through stone
ΟΦΥΣΗΣ, in formis ophthalmica:
with eyes of light.
Man is but a paltry thing. Look in thy glass
My dear, look in thy glass. There is thy face!
the poet’s function only is to translate
_________________ into the common tongue
_________________ And common tongue again unto the gods,
_________________ so that all shall be alike to them
ΧΑΡΗΣΕΝΑΡΙΟΣ, in formis confluens in confluentes:
the Whole in its parts,
ΣΠΗΛΛΗΣ,
in formis separata in separatis:
But there is a lesser art, APHRODITE PANDEMOS
And when it goeth, abroad it goeth
as a woman that hath known many men,
and she knoweth the ways of a man,
and she maketh an oracle, THE MAN-WOMAN
golden androgyne
for there is no more mystery in her;
there is no more mystery than there be in man,
for there is no more mystery in her art
than in man and this is the art of the
courtesan, but when she goeth, abroad
she goeth not to habitancy, she without home
findeth commerce in city, that bears no secrets.
she without home
There are no temples, but there are the
homes of men, and many are they that cannot stand.
the home
of a man is the temple of his art.
I hear the babbler
_____________________and the tongue that can
Call up to her the fountains of its music
Shall find a rivulet of gold
But vain is every prayer she listeth ____ APHRODITE
AMORE IN PANDEMOS
What is love, but a tune, a passion, a motion
That goes and runs: some say reft the heart, others
The brain, and, which is strange, all say the feet
To which our spirit, in an agony
Cannot be tied, though, for the most part,
We play our part and dance our measure.
And to thee I turn, O
woman with an unbroken body, O
woman with a long and slender body,
I sing of thee for THESSALUS,
and for his sake I sing of thee.
The woman is the mirror of men, as
the
man is the mirror of women,
and they are mirrors of each other.
I sing of women with long ears,
of
women with heavy breasts, of women of
dark and ruddy hair, of women on whom
love and grief are laid like flowers,
whose eyes grow bright in nightfall
full of knowledge, secrets
that hath known the age of their sex.
That are no longer young.
The whole tribe of women
grew out of one woman,
She herself, a virgin.
Man’s countenance thou shouldst
_____Behold with all its heaving progenies before her Form!
_____There be no vile reflex of that in heaven.
_____No! the first mother suck’d divine affluence
_____From her own bosom, and knew no shameful generancy.
The man’s fire and the woman’s flesh,
They are one and the same. And the fire
of the man is made perfect by the woman.
And the fire of the woman is made perfect
by the man.
It is a fire death-sexed and unsquared, of itself
A strange unmoving force. What is it then?
The poet’s vision must endure even with the last;’
What was lost in the world’s change is still to be
__________________ Felt. For the heart of man is deep and deeper still.
For if Time our world and its sole measure is,
Who that with Time should reckon, but by time,
Must lose and none is gained.
And thy love must consent unto this fire overmastering
And it shall teach thee all its truth and power.
Unsmote by human thought, untameable,
Come thou a unicorn, with horns of light, and eyes
Of amber, send forth thy horn from a star; from star to star forthrolled,
And pierce thou the belly of the firmament, ere thy taken angels shoal ________ HEIROGAMOS MANIFESTUM EST.
That great ascendancy t’ were thy passion’s like to rise.
[i]She has made us wise and made us foolish
She has given us understanding,
and has given us the lack of understanding.
She has made us strong and has made us weak.
She has given us courage,
and made us afraid.
She has given us joy and sorrow,
and given us the lack of joy and sorrow.
She has put a bridle in our mouths,
and given us milk.
The woman’s glory is in giving birth.
The praise of a man is his wife’s children.
She alone brings rejoicing to a man
and no man liveth but by the hope of a mother’s womb.
For out of the belly of her womb
comes forth the fruit of our body.
For her belly shall be filled with children,
and with the increase of her children,
she shall be filled.[/i]
But when the woman is weary,
her husband’s unfaithfulness puts her to shame,
and he who weighs down the spirit of the woman
shall be heavy upon her as a stone.
So shall her trust in her lover be scorned,
and the hope in the fruit of his desire shall fail.
PANDEMOS APHRODITE
And thy poisoners of Eleusis,
you are also dead children of our mother,
you will never see again the holy fire of the goddess,
nor the joy of your sisters,
Come down from your dark altar!
Howl out, you dog from Hades, O wretch
That with Thyme and Myrtle
Thou wast wont to poison the daughters of the Sun!
Lament to my gods the poisoned dead!
In the name of the black-winged,
In the name of the sacred maiden,
That bore away to the secret places,
Of the night, our blood and our flesh,
O lament us, O nightingales and swallows
and other secrets of the night,
Lament with us,
children of one mother!
[i]Bred the serpent in Bethlehem,
hath laid the apple in her belly
and the fruit upon the fig tree.
For this sin is:[/i]
the spittle in thy beard, ________________________ IN FENERATUS
when the fig tree’s ripe but not eaten.
This is sin,
for ugliness is the price of gluttony
_____________________________________________ A FAGGIO
[i]For this too is sin;
the tree that hath not yet borne its fruit
but the fig is eaten,
for bitterness is the price of sin.
For we hath torn unripened flesh for our avarice.[/i]
_______________________ SICULIS IMPLORES
Nay, that am the meekest, if I say much
Of the world and all that is in it;
None hath set his heart
On the service of God;
None keepeth His commandments;
None obeyeth Him.
__________________________ “FRAGILE
______________________ O FIDELI.”
[i]Fragile the faith of men. Hath we not wrought cathedrals
even in centuries before?
Hath they not stood? Do they not stand?
Doth not God build houses
and the strong of faith uphold the walls of them?
Doth he not make windows?
Or open portcullises?
Are his beauteous founts all dead?
Doth he not guide the hand
that layeth the tapestry, and
tincture canvassing?
But in that high unreached anticipation
Abides thy power, and makes thy strong will right;
The soul is no more satisfied with Knowing
Than it is with eating. What knowledge can allay
Thy thirst for God, when there is naught to know
But of the Body?
Wilt thou then have the work at no cost?
Then are the walls of thy houses rent
and are the windows all a-mould.
The Church should be made of precious metal and precious stones,
carved, gilded and enamelled with gold,
with silver, jasper and amethyst.
This should be made by the craft and skill of the workman.[/i]
Many have fallen by the weight of their gold,
but the day waxeth cold
and men look to the earth for warmth.
But there is no warmth to be found
For every man cometh naked unto his grave
And hath no warmness there.___________________ SARACEN
For there’s little pleasure to be had
Of the pleasures of others’ sin.
The tomb is full, the chamber is full
The court is full.
The sun hath waxen red in the east,
The stars have become as torches,
Dawn is breaking, and all the world is mad,
It hath been so, and that’s how men die,
But what hath been must be so again,
Else it were not so
__________________________________________ DE NATURA ET DEUS
CONSEQUENTIAS
And of the fruits of Paradise
NATURA
They are but rotten fruits for thee
Came one who brought no charge
_______________ CONSEQUENTIAS
For him, to whomsoever comes not
________________NATURA
To him shall be given but
rotten fruits.
________________CONTRAMURO
In that for which thou didst set thy heart
NATURA
Nay, not in that at all
CONSEQUENTIAS
But in that for which thou knewest
_______________ NATURA
Nay, not in that at all
_______________ CONSEQUENTIAS
To thy own ends shall thy love be turned.
Naught but Time hath eloquence of verse
To good and evil separate, for us they were a rhyme;
If beauty did abrogate itself unto itself,
And if the earth were Heaven, if grace a crime;
If charity were sin and virtue burdened with a fine,
If the pure wine of love were bottled burst,
And thou hath licked the floor to the last drop thy Passion’s first;
The very stones would cry out pronouncement of thy shame,
And even stones have tongues to fumble name of Virtue,
though it were the same.
The soul doth to itself reprove;
What the eye fears, and the heart knows, and the mind,
Ashes the world with, and itself burns to extinction.
What thou hadst left behind is left to thee.
A man must feel like a trav’ler from a far,
He carries with him the mountains he hath crossed
And leaves his soul on them.
[/i]_______________ CONSEQUENTIAS
To thy own ends shall thy love be turned.[/i]
For the courts are as full as the graves,
and he who is to be condemned to death
Dies before the sword is drawn.
He shall not be consoled by dying.
He who has lost what he held dear,
Dies before the loss is known.
He who has been cheated by a friend
Dies before the cheat is made public.
He shall not be consoled by dying.
He who hath felt the blow of a woman
Dies before the woman’s face is known.
He shall not be consoled by dying.
He to whom God sends adversity,
Dies before the blow is felt.
He who hath given offense by words,
Dies before the words are said.
He shall not be consoled by dying.
When the mind hath had its full fill of knowledge,
The Garden is in full flower.
The mind hath grown and blossomed, but
The garden hath died of the cold.
Neglected, _________________ DE NATURA ET DEI IN ANIMA
The soul hath reached the fullness of its knowledge
and hath died at the full flowering of its power;
and we shall in death find no consolation.
[i]The soul has become as full of knowledge as the garden
and now it is too late to plant flowers there.
It cannot be rejuvenated by its own experience
for it is too old to begin again.
When the mind hath achieved its full flowering of
the power of understanding, then the garden,
of the natural order and of the Divine order in the soul,
doth cease its growth, and the soul then lives its last life
in the cold and silent grave. [/i]
_____________________________________INCARNATIO DE PLATONIS ANIMA
_________THE PLATONIC CIRCULUS OF REINCARNATION, ATTAINMENT OF THE LAST HEAVEN
[i]There does a person find neither hope nor peace.
His soul, now a lifeless seed, has been buried,
but will not find again its term, for the earth is cold.
The gardener has planted it and it hath put forth leaves
and flowers of the mind, but now it hath no warmth.
For the mind hath grown and blossomed
but the garden hath died of the cold.
Solitary, desolate, silent, and cool
With the coolness of a crystal.
Thither the soul of the man
Goes to contemplate the wisdom of God.
For the great God hath created man
Of a heavenly dust and shape most perfect.
He will not suffer him to be destroyed
Without his leave. [/i]
So long as the soul hath known knowledge, it is in its element;
but as soon as it reaches the perfection of its learning,
its nature is changed, and the mind must leave the knowledge
and find consolation in its faith.__________________________IN UNIO SOLUTAS
I dare not
Admit that which seems no more than possible,
That the soul should not be a thing at war
With its body. That that so-called heart, which
Thy fathers called the seat of honour, love,
And virtue, and the very Godhead itself
Should be one mass of corruption and death,
For me, were, I will not say, an impossibility,
Because I have seen it, lutriascent hypostasis.
But, let me ask, has it any other office
Than that of serving pleasure? Can it love?
To me it says, O man, ‘The world is but a bason,
And you are water to wash my cloth withal.’
For though I speak as I must speak, who only
Can speak true, I mean well, who must speak out
Whose good fortune it is
To be a man, a creature with a will
That acts itself into its own destruction.
For man is, he says, the measure of all things:________ INCIPIT: PROTAGORAS
[i]I say that he is but the measure of those
Which are not in him: and he who has no will
Cannot love himself. In that he loves another,
As he loves himself, for he becomes his own;
And in that other he does love himself,
Because he loves a part of that which
Is but in himself. I have seen that man
Rise into the firmament, be blown to nothing
Among the idle wind; his body, his bones,
His heart, his soul all dispersed: yet still,
I saw, as ’twere his Soul remained.
A heart is more exalted than a title.
For the earth’s sake be content to take
Her love that holds thee as her chiefest care;
Thou art owed little more. And what
Though thy title be the son of dust,
No son of thine own being hath the right
To bear thy name’s patriarch unto the Earth
Before his credence payed to God, and Him
Who gave thee blood to stain thy lineage,
and Him for whom thou art.
And how if thou should’st die, and left no word
What might be in thy spirit to come after
A deed, that hath no ancestry!
The soul therefore being incorporeal,
Is not at strife with its body. The love,
The love that love inspires, is but one with itself.
It is the body that loves another body;
In itself the soul is nothing made for love.[/i]___________ IN DISSOLUTAS ET UNITAS
[i]Oh, ’tis more wondrous to be nature’s son
Than genius ’mid its minions, or to fight
A thousand battles and to slay one foe,
Than if thou hadst a thousand lives to throw;
for the highest mind were common stock to her,
and Nature were not easily obviated here below;
and regardless of our climb, our fall’s the same,
while Man, of all his pleasures or his pains,
Yet would he give the whole to have one more
As ’twere a sweet, and not a bitter touch.
The green earth laughs at our transparent forms,
The dragon-fly, an angel in the dust,
Pluck thou a peacock’s feather, or marvel the chameleon’s emerald scale–
and you would love again? Aye, for our fleeting hearts
were formed this wise, and for we who love fleetingly.
______________________ If all your life, you should love the same flower,
And tread the same path, in that case be sure
You never lived. For if you live but once
You live in vain; the world is made so fair
That every man must love and love again.
Again! But what can thy high to-morrow’s promise be
But another sunset?–what but an effigy
Of all the suns thou hast not seen!
And thou, in thy turn, must to the green world go,
A phantom, with thy greatness and thy gaud
stored up in vanity of wishes, whose sorrow
hath thee kindness not enough to bear thyself
but would thrust upon another’s charge thou love’st.
Again you say, and pray there taste once more
Desire, But when ‘tis no more, then shalt thou understand
_______Thou art at the last an island to the sea;
And death that last to all the world doth give
_______His last and greatest, which was first to thee.
Woe is, and thou shalt know that all thy days
Are but a moment
_______And that, my dearest, ere the world hath time
To say ‘This is thine’, to thy love
______speak thee, it was Eternity’s. And thou art hardly sated.[/i]
_______________________________________________ BEREFT THEE CORYDON
[i]Corydon, thou knowest that thy songs are vain.
He knows what music he hath made for thee,
Her heart has not a care for these thy songs;
She loves some other, some more beautiful;
Her cheeks are wet for other kisses now;
She weeps, ’tis true, for another’s woes;
and oh, there is no pain more bitter
for a man, to hear a woman weep for another’s woes.
The sky and all its bright-gathering stars
Shall not be moved or changed by one more verse,
And nevermore shall thine songs’ voices reach her,
and thy woes shall lose the name of Love.
Like the vagrant bard in some distant land
Who can sing of things he dares not attempt,
Till the mad city beat upon his pane
The time has come for thee to go.
Thou art but semblance, a yellow lily,
Hath taken the pride of a lion’s mane.’
O Man, what hadst thy kingdom borne inheritance?
The gilded girdle with your gauds is fitter
The red deer of your country shall become;
Your beast of burden, and the hounds shall be
Your kingly pomp, and all you loved shall be
Thy progene, and you shall be of them no more.
Think of thy ancients,
What of their wisdom or pride, or the high
And the hard life they builded to be great?
Or are they great, if not to builded be?
If they were kept but images? And what of all
the images the Mind shall by no faith bring back
to fumble in dust and make devoted furies upon the Earth?
What of those, that shall outride your glory and be the hope
Of seasons to come, having no date.
Travelling with nature, not a step behind
______A man to live a king, is another king to die.
If thou shalt love much thou shalt not be wise.
______Be wise, and you shall not love at all.
Better to have been half-steeped and middle’d of thy learning.
That’s it to all intents, and it is your shame;
Your shame? Yet thy wisdom would deny the same.
The world is all, and life’s all, all life’s worth,
Though man himself be the worst in its estate;
Yet is all of life all’s worth the worth of man,
And nothing’s of so little worth as man but man.
I do not think that there is anything,
Or any good under this our sun not owed
To this our life; but that there are degrees
Of good, of evil, and of Right between,
And that each thing enjoys some perfect form
For which it has a perfect hour and day,
Wherein to show itself, and which the eye
Not of itself could see nor the heart conceive,
But from the eye of heaven. They, knowing life to be a constant woe
A woe which must be ever new and new,
Can ask of heaven a stillness unendur’d
A stillness more terrible and hopeless
Than all the thunderings of the rolling spheres.
Yet who would look at death as he should look
Not with a careless eye, yet not with fear;
A certain joy he wants, that makes him bear
The pangs which others dread; a conscious power
Of something better in its own despite
Fills him with tranquil pride: but death to us,
Is life too short, and not death of a thing,
Which death it is to lose it, only to forget,
And we forget it, only to love.
The peacock, or his train hath more in pay
Than all the gold that you have counted out.
The sun’s too merciful
To play with delicate-scaled things upon their painted wings.
The ant’s too wise
To overt beneath the leaf her,
And so it hides,
while man hath made a gilded shell to stuff his soul.[/i]______________ANTIPATHY
From what vague ethics hath Love borne
in her childish punctily the substance of a Soul;
and holding before you the image of this Soul,
seeketh thou for what thou cannot hope to understand.
As long as you lack this understanding,
findeth thou: love and passion are both unfair.
Without this knowing Love and PATHOS cannot hope unite,
and nothing fair shall grow in life.
Eliminato, tu a te tanto in questo sperare in questo, che
le cose della visione non si possono mai sopraffare con fatica di una buona voluntà:
quando una donna si ritira o si sbigottisce o si dispregia delle cose umane per naturale esattore,
tutte le altre dànno la stessa impressione in questo tratto,
o se non, sono state in un momento d’incertezza e di inintenzione di partire dal vago,
e in questo modo sono trasportate da una piacevole passione sopra la passione:
cosa più lodevole della passione che abbia molti giudici, e l’altro giorno ci sarà dicendo che è una sorda,
e un altro da uomo dolce e lieto, e lo stesso d’un poco di puerile etichetta.
L’un dal vago etico si fa l’anima, la vuole, e non pone per cosa essa sia:
lei non spera altra parete che l’umana, non guarda in alto oltre la sua visione di esser nel mondo:
l’altro può essere in qualche modo dall’altra ciò che l’ultimo giorno pare a lui che ha il cielo, e può essere un altro dal mondo.
E’ in mancanza di questo che l’uno e l’altro amore e passione sono ingiusti,
e in mancanza di ciò non è mai possibile che le cose vadano né crescano né si compongano per la vita.
Il vago etico è un altro: questo è lo stato di palese chi s’è tratto in tasca il cedro per vivere di dote, di doni,
è un altro. Questo è chi si è volto dal vago, e chi si è volto dal bene,
ed è in esso che si è voluto.______________________________________SEE HEYWOOD’S "INCERTAINE TRUTH".
But our analysis has also taught us that,
when the emotion or feeling is so strong that it is a
convulsive action, and can be expressed in external
signs, these signs and the emotion itself are bound
to unite and thus come to express themselves in the
form of words.
[i]And these words, torn from images, endue to us the poet’s “vague ethic”: recall the
poet and satirist John Heywood, in which he says that all things are
subject to change, except “th’incertaine truth."
Deplore not such ‘incertain truths’. What I believe we may call man’s sense of beauty
Is as much in his blood
as the sense of smell or hearing, and we love
So long as there is a thing, however mean
And small, which we do love, and, by means of it,
Makes our own pleasure and delight.
Be thou not proud of words
That hide and shield from human use and eyes
The nakedness of what thou art: fear them not,
They cost but the beginning of a song,
The end is up to Heaven.[/i]
[i]And we shall let the stars measure our hymn’s
final beat.
But if you would know a man, inquire
Who made this body and this human soul;
And not who wears this body and who knows
The secret history of each nerve and bone:
All human questions may be reduced to one;
As he lives, so he knows
The soul of the world by the soul of his hands,
what neither science or philosophy hath counterfeit
by shape of reason.
You did not make me, nor did you ever hear
_____The low moan of my first passion’s heave;
I am as old as my joy— a man
_____As old as my sorrow. The old man of the forest
shall sing my joy, and the little children
they shall laugh upon my grave. One hath un-learned Death
by depth of Knowledge, the other knows not Death yet
but hath by keener sight for things unseen, most of all do see beyond it.
O God, what dost thou care for beauty here
Which is but a piteous symbol of some far
And other ecstasy? A man hath lived as well,
who died a common man, and didst not make perjury
of his passion’s secret in this play of knowledge.
Your hands lack cunning, your feet lack grace
For that which seems to you the greatest thing
Is but a part of what lies in the whole.
And thus all men in a manner die away
From each the other in their single lives.
But he grown weary with the weight of the world,
____The wind in the grass, of the rain upon the earth,
The burden of the years laid on him;
_______Let him not count his life so dear,
____________But if he be not a lover
______________be him at least a worshipper
And find his happiness upon earth.[/i]
And if thee be a man of worship only, then let this be thy prayer
and the whole of thy devotions:
“If we be false or weak let us be true,
If we die in act or part let us be known,
And if this be all man is, then let God be all, and man shall nothing be.”
O what were living, if death ______________________EPHEMERA
_____Were the end of our joy;
_____If, in its life’s day,
_____Death were but the first delay?
A thing to be sought the while; to be found the while;
_____A prize to be taken on
_____Through pain, gloried the while;
_____And then to be left the while.
A small prize. Yet it is not a vain glory that I’m won:
The true, the natural in man is so much more
Than the composed and artificial life
That in a land where there are no fables
Nor fairy tales, they will have to call
God to their aid, knowing not his Name. ____________________INNOMINATA ΟΥΣΙΑ
[i]What of thy name? To such learned men it were a wind,
a thunder, and blear trumpet all the same.
Names hath power, and a fine name
a firmer tower is than thy cathedrals;
and not in marble and in gold, to make
A house of God, thou and thy gabled spire.
I am a man, and I am human, and I am born
To bear a human body, and the flesh
Will have the Name of this which cannot die.
But if thou should wish to start anew, start [/i] _____________________HUMUS ADAMUS
[i]with the brown earth, that can’t vouchsafe thy subtlety;
thou dost make of what thou borrowest.
Come, and all the bramble in my garden press
_____Will yield a weed whose roots are in my breast.
Come, and all the thorns I set, and all the plaits
_____I wove will be one rose, whose shoot is in thy chest.
Come from the forest of your painted names,
O poet, and be still! They’ll make thee naked
in an age unborn. You shall have time
Ere long to make me and myself accursed
For my own lack of power to get more grace,
And take as much of me as I have known
and fit them to your songs.
After all,
Twas said that the first poet was inspired,
‘Twas said that he had known the world before,
beyond, above; had drunk of the immortal river divine
Where it flowed down to the heart of life and death,
A stream of fire and in him it were intermixed
with supple dew. If get thee from his stock, sing on!
But few still live born of his stock. You are the only one, I wist, who loved _________PRIMA POESIA IN ORPHEIA
The earth when you had learned all its secret might.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers
Love alone is left as sanative
And as dower for the bride, love soars and swerves
The common-sense of folly will not see
That every folly that the time will spare
Must be aboard to do the work forgot by care,
for what reason’s left to mind the good of life when love’s forgot?
“And now we come to the poet,” said I,________________________________________REFRAIN: poetis in orpheia secunda
“We hear you,” said he, “and we have heard:
For we know that your hearing has ears”—
Ears still for the sea, the salt sea, the mother of song.
The sea has been thy teacher and thy lord, O Poet;
As the sea, thy children are, and the dead,
The dead that dream on you.—
“O poet!” said I, “the poet is past,
For when the world went down and the sea had burst
He stood upon its shore and sang his song,
And the sound of his voice is deeply sank unto the land.
And the earth and the skies heard and approved;
But there is little left of him. I ween,
For a strong death and the will of man;
And many were they who would be a poet,
And who were not; but now there is no more,
And there will be no more—”.
‘What do I care for art?’ they cry. ‘Do I not
_________________Know the true worth of the lily?’
Aye, in beauty of our kind thou hast no peer;
________________ But the ungentle soul must love thee for the rest,
that knows no other.
Do you think that being born is something done,
Or life a moment which will be but gone
Like laughter, do you think the sun shines like a glass
and a light behind it, that should be put out in the march of time?
I’ve read in the Bible, that God made the earth, for man.
It seems to me, that we humans should be the ones to work for making heaven.
After all, it seems that we’re doing the heavy lifting here below.[/i]
But pray thee still. For just the same,
Equally, in its own fashion, with its own majesty
Thy worldly inhabitance shall teach thee what thy end
Shall be, and what are gods that sit above,
If thee they love, or thee they loathe, O man.
If thou but knew’st, thou wert not fair nor wise
It’s love that shows you out, if love you do.
For what would a dragon or a snake want
With fire and the blood of the lamb,
Or the gold which the sun sheds on his wings?
What would a serpent want with a lamb’s blood?
To drink, to quench his thirst, is good;
But is this an emblem of thy human innocence,
that the name of Sin could stoop below her?
It is not for me to say if life be aught or naught.
No man is an hero to his valour’s last.
…all life is an echo _________________________________ ηχώ
And all thinking is an echo
And all love an echo… Don Juan speaks of life’s
“sonido.” And were all valour an echo too,
of some immortal Destiny? One as Heracules hath pronounced AGLAIA.
This is the heart of the whole world’s question–
What love can do, and suffer and abide
And even triumph, or fail and be the ground
Of more love born, and not perish, not consume.
So it may happen that the whole of art,
To the last letter, is a mere protest
Against death, and our life’s better term
were bought by art, for art were bought by love
at too high price. To love is to protest, so that there be
No end to protest; to love is to protest that there be
no end to love. O, Cressida! Pity thy lack of faith.
And Troilus! Gentle thy grief, that better fans
the coals of defeated passion in thy breast, if to mistaken pride
thou even claim victory upon thine ashes rest.
The world is too much with thee. Shall I weep?
Why? But for thy face is muffled and thou art clad
In black? Many the nights we have
Looked at the moon together and have talked
In secret wise.__________________________ TROILUS, EXPLICANTUR IN TRAGOEDIA.
Troilus, pluck down from thy secret Heaven that glorying pate,
You were made so like a tree.
_______________________________________But the loud cataracts
Have roared between us like a world of giants
Who beat upon the table with their fists.
For me the lamps are lit, the feast is spread,
The wine is flushed the crystal glasses.
I see the red-armed serving maid, I hear
The sound of merriment, I smell the fumes
Of smoking herbs. A thousand songs are sung
Of spring, of youth, of manhood. Lo, the years
Have brought thee up to be a king, a god,
A god who hath set the world ablaze,
Who hath slain his dragon and made his world,
and thy world’s mount.
I see thy face, but not in lustre lies
The star that shone on Cressid’s forehead when
She rode away in thy train, when thou didst take
The gift of the sword, which we had earned,
even with bitter tears.
I see thee in thy glory; in the days
When the light of the stars lay on thy brow,
To thee the glory lay–when thou didst stride
Into the green world with a strength not outdone
even by the kings of old-- and I see thee now,
A glory that is lost to me. Ah, take
Thy hand from out the cup, lift up thy face,
And smile. For thou art a Dragon, true. But thou
art not a dragon made for the black pit to hide
the riches of thy strength. Nay, but thou art a man
Hath sprung from human blood and is a child
Of human flesh and human flesh doth love
With human love. Lo, in this world whereof
I speak thou art a man. I do not ask
If thou be man; thou art man. And if
Thee, Cressid, thou didst love as man loves woman,
Man is the creature that I would have thee be.
What else doth she see, so fair, and yet so near but thee?
And yet the world is not so fair but she,
Not only fair, and therefore more divine
For that which makes her fair, for that same eye
Hath of all the other senses been superadd.
For mine self ask me, Troilus? I would answer plainly so:
The beauty, that I loved, as of my soul
Was soul itself; and what I loved, I loved,
Albeit, as thou dost see, I loved it not;
I loved my soul’s self, so rouse thyself Troilus
to thine own image height. She is gone:
You can no more have her back than you can heaven
By being born to heaven. Love is a great and splendid thing,
And I love nothing in the world so well
As love’s own self, and nothing comes amiss
To him whose soul basks in the sunny thought
Of love’s dear self and love’s fair sovereignty.
For aught that fortune or fame or worth can do,
Yea, for aught that Heaven itself can give to man,
He lives by joy that offends no virtue, and virtue
that does not constrain the heights of joy,
who enjoys love as his divinity.
Then if thou hast aught left thee in this life,
Take thou this dagger, and be sure it is no friend to thee
shouldst thou lose it and once more
find it turned against thyself.
Thou wert as fair as a star, CRESSIDA, and fell as fair.
If thou shouldst aim to rouse the hearts of man,
rouse first his youth. Tis that ye hear, and that ye tremble here
And shake your heads. But ye’ll be made to hear
That we, though young, are wise, who make no doubt
We’ll leave our dross of dust, and make a new:
We have not found the world so old and stale
That we must make it new in our own kind.
We have not heard, we have not felt, we have not read,
That in these things man is a failure:
For all the world is but a mimicry
At play, and all men are but travesties,
theirs’ a tinsel show, and by glittering tinsel made.
Your mind makes for you its own nobility
And there is nothing from without must move it.
He is no master who loveth not himself:
The eagle, when he would his imperial wing
Display, first looseth all his plumage down,
Then spreads his wing, bestrides the battlements
And proudly wears the vaunted plumes he won
The right to make; he is a kingly beast
With all the right to hold the mirror to himself,
And to call Himself the name of Virtue,
as long as he could not meet the height of it,
and aped his own Ambition. Aim thou who wouldst,
but aim further than thy Will hath seen beyond thy Heart.
For that is the name of Innocence, that hath no repudiation.
What is thy strength, oh man? Tis known
ye can not shoot at the ant with arrows;
to the ant it is a feat beyond thine strength.
What is thy aim? It is the same–and thine, the same.
Then shoot at this, that thy shot may fall more truly.
'Tis well to choose thy weapon well.
And as for me, what do I know
But the mere self that calls itself my Will,
my aim, my passion, and my soul’s Desire?
And if this be a Will beyond the strength of man,
what shall I say of it? And as for this Desire
that we are said to call our soul,
‘tis nought if we could not say its name–
take then well thy passion’s aim.
The lion hath claws, and strength,
But if he brandishes his claws against a cave,
And his great strength be buried in a hole,
It cannot serve to break his shell, his prison,
Or to lift a stone, and make a breach
To throw himself back into the sun.
For though a man can raise a stone to heaven,
And then another can raise another stone,
And yet a third to heaven, till it reach
The clouds, yea, that is beyond the sky;
Yet not a stone will a man raise
Which will not be as great as he. And yet
he cannot raise himself to sit a’ top it,
but stands aside, the queer marvel of his marveling.
Thou deign to raise an iron hammer at the clouds,
and hope to stand above thine self?
A stone to raise the stone, and were a foundry-block:
And even when thy Babel breaks unto the earth,
Thou’rt so far then beneath it that no part of thy strong life
will lift thee to thy former station’s geniture, privilege of thy birth
and thou wilt bear the confused tongue of mortals and their strife.
I am Youth, aye. And if man be man, not god,-- if he is frail,
I will not be a liegeman to a lie,
Nor be a fool to worship what is not,
Nor suffer myself to be seduced
From truth and virtue’s cause. The first who fell
Was he who said the truth, for truth he stood;
What I did well, that did I in good faith;
What I did ill, it was I, not my cause,
That brought bad things upon me, and my end
Will stand or fall with mine own hesitancy,
even to begin.
If though hadst not courage to name thy Will,
in the least have courage to name thy Dream.
Man’s gods were strange. If the throne be a throne of high degree,
If it be of high estate, why does it stand
Behind a cloud, that men may not behold it?
Though man were stranger still, who were in that solar genius
doubly secreted and borne open to his fellow men
whose virtue likewise, though high-spoken and esteemed,
yet who hath seen it?
There is a little world which goes about itself in the deep sea:
its face is turned up in the sun, yet in all that world
its own eyes see nothing but itself, and in naught believes
but its own treasures, emerald mermaids that are known
by no other eye. For every race has raised itself up higher,
and looked down, and called itself God,
and looked down, and called its will the will of God.
But though these are fools, and men’s lives are
Passing in folly,
And though these are so far gone in madness
That neither is, nor ever can they be,
But madmen all,-- the man that is himself mad,
And knoweth it: he hath a strange and awful privilege,
And must for all his follies be counted mongst’ the wise.
So that is what we do, and so must thou.
For if thou know but thyself and what thou art,
Then is thy will thy power; thy strength thy aim.
A man can make his passion seem divine;
Yet is it not divine, but is no more
Than all the rest of him; and in truth
We are not but half ourselves, and Will. And for this Will,
if it be a man’s, we shall not say its name till it be seen.
And it were seen in works. Know thee that in works.
Aye then, blown forth the works of man
Like waves from a sea of Will: but how the sea,
How the great ocean which hath no name,
Is greater than all men’s seas, and all men’s names,
That even by the wind’s pronouncement checks our pride,
And dusty earth. And yet of all this and by man’s might,
of lifting this to heaven, and by works hath Tower scaled
Might be, not worth a feather lithesome falls therefrom the dove
If in the doing, God hath not lift the Earth itself
through our Desires to Heaven’s semblant.
Ere the stone will fall, and yet he falls:
A man must first be in himself upright.
And as to this desire which we are said
To call our soul, this will of ours,–what is it?
Canst not conceive that it will bear a weight?
It will outbalance with itself its own weight;
And being thus double with itself,
There is no reason that the one the other cannot be,
If the other lose the place it took. _______________________CUPIDITAS CONTRA VOLUNTAS: DESIRE AND WILL
What can the desire be ________________________________ΤΗΨΜΟΣ
Which will outrun its own desire,
And will run both fast and run slow,
And stand at rest and remittance never take?
For thou art in thyself an empty weight,
And this desire of thine
Is but a breath which has no weight.
It is a voice. It were impossible:
If I could put him to his own desire,
But yet he cannot do it;
As a great light within a little room,
He would still one half have of that he cannot see.
And being thus double with itself,
There is no reason that the one the other cannot be,
As a great light within a little room,
He would still one half have of that he cannot see.
And of mine half: I have not painted the earth as it is,
I have drawn what I have thought, not aught beside
Save that I see, and I know it is enough
My heart is not all stone, my brain hath got
A little wind to think in.
III.
[i]The rest is not thy property, that thou
____For the most part on Earth deservest;
But, if thou shouldst attain thy proper goal,
___Thou shalt possess all things together
For man be bold, but never so bold to look
___On that which lies behind him.
IV.
Ce qui tu aimas bien est ton droit,
What then hast thou for thy portion–
_____All earthly things that the world bear
whereon thou wilt find the waters of the Jordan?
What in the end if that which hath not been
_____Be thy true good?
What thou hast tasted not only for to-day
_____But once and for ever!
Le vrai paradis est ici,
“What have you for your eternity?”
_____“What takest thou for thine sure prize?
How many times shall I say your name
_____And your name on the waters rise?
As a great and solitary sea
_____Riseth up and sink,
So from the far-off past to the end of time,
_____Upon mine Love I love to think,
Till thinking tire: those who hath not perished yet,
They do not know if life be sweet,
Or life were ill. It were Asclepius gall and cherished yet:
Though he take thy house when thou thyself art gone,
_____And thine own roof-tree be laid low by Death.
_____A man’s a man for a’ that.
_____Though Accident may taint or Time may mar
Thy keep, in the end it were but the man himself
the man regrets, and not his life; but that Life made him.
[/i]
_____________________________________________________ It is possible, as
_____________________________________________________ Hippocrates believed, that a man may live on the fumes of a
_____________________________________________________ dyspeptic’s bile.
No man is rich or poor in what he loves
______And yet, O rich in this, in what he stands to lose.
All were beggars in their Love, and Kings; and that
Were suffered by a common price.
But if the earthly tenant forget the laws
_____And take what is not his, thou lov’st well
What is thine own. To love is human, to be human is to know
_____What is your own, and not another’s due.
The only wisdom is to know what is thy duty;
To know and to do it, that is thy highest power.
_____Be contented with what thou hast, and give God the rest.
For the rest, this is not thine own, but Time
Shouldst not even take from thee thy portion,
And lop thine hand to stop thy heritage, if what thine
Hand findest yet to do on earth be done
_____Even with thy heart, and in fullness only
Though thou with pains procure it.[i]
The Epicurean is fond of wine,
Of women, of the bath; his pleasures fill his purse.
_____________________________ For there is naught
Bred in thine Bone but that Flesh will bear;
The Body were the Soul’s mien. And so by strange assimilation,
It grows a part of us: nor doth it quite disappear,
But mingles with our frame; now doth it dwell,
A palpable delight thou shalt better ward with blood
In our embrasures, for that it will inhabit
Whatever standing-room be found, for so it must.[/i]____________________ THEOSOPHIS
O, let not this old heart give way.
Aye, to that good master, Nature, whose rule is in the blood;
And let this flesh yield in a reasonable pace,
Till this old house be a fit place to die in.
The Good is the eternal; Truth, far star in orbit’s stretch,
And Art the vision, and that star’s apportioned place;
And Joy the earthly noontide; a lesser share of greater space
Unto which it sets, and bear the Light afforded all the rest.
Hath thou no ploy for greater treasure;
The solidary grace and this our beaten earth
Are all I render, all I must return.
The whole of me is subject and compact
With all that suffers; it were but a loam of dirt,
I make my penance, and by that I pledge and pay thee
My fidelity. O God, for it were that by which you made me.
CANTO: WEED NOT THE GRASS …
Weed not the grass for its own verdure’s sake
But for the root, whence it takes its being;
A man must be what he can be, not make
Heaven of this world, though it were but a sheen
And trick of the Sun’s ray, the more that we esteem
That shall no Heaven be. You were not born to look
Upon the sun. Thy lower sense were made
For less subtle earthliness, and subject of thy Reason
To set upon a Thought.
You are like a hound that is set upon the hare
And has lost the scent, that will not be content
Until his master call him to a second chase.
O, do not strive above thy summit. ___________________φύσος φύσει δει [GREEK, which means roughly: So much is due the nature of a thing.]
[i]O, do not strive with Nature, or with Time,
Nor with the gods that govern your brief scene.
Your soul is a palace and a prison; signet and ensign,
Thine own signature, aye, and standard of another
That you serve. And serve well thou hadst:
The world hath not been kept a wilderness,
Tyrants and fools have trod it; and their prints
Are everywhere. The poet cannot sing of glories past again.
I am weary of the past
Because I cannot change what has been done;
Nor will I look before, nor in the rear
But I will think of that which is to be.
For this will I war with mine own times concomitance,
Or, be the times to war with me; it matters not.
My times are my inheritance: my blood is theirs.
The past is my sepulchre, I need not fear
Myself to sleep, when others have long been dead:
My race shall have a noble end: and, when I lie,
No man shall cut mine Icon down, but that my head
Shall lie upon the highest pillar of them all,
That I may not be taken off till all be sold
Mongst’ debate of prophets and of kings
To find the measure nature’s due to things.
Oh! to be back in Times before,
In days when man was but a child;
A little child with a little sword to play,
And little thoughts of what to dare.
So the day-star in his fiery sphere doth cut through the
Narrow shadows of the world and swells above their meaning. Yet,
Aethereal rumours do revive, if for a moment’s thought a broken Coriolanus,
As birds in their soundless course do cut the mirrored air
With darted glance, when that their proper doom
Finds instant mute appeal, that with mine own self-whisperings
The doves in belfry build their love self-same upon their nest,
And such is man, that hath not broken Nature’s laborious circle:
Flame and rose are conparticipant. This is the boding spirit
That makes me the unquiet head of a blind multitude. For such is man:
What might I sing, what might I say, if I were bound
By an ancient torture to sing always the same song? But that it were.
And you, O God,
Who have made us here to understand;
Acknowledge that you see
Us, these men, and you the world:
Awa’re, the man that heaves the stone; heave, heave, heave;
Awa’re. He that lifts the axe; lift, lift, lift;
Awa’re. He that cleaveth wood; cleave, cleave, cleave;
Awa’re. He that breaketh bread; break, break, break.
Ere man’s too little paid to play a masonry of his own remembrance,
That hath upended stones, or that in building walls himself within
A name. And that old King that hath strove conquering
Beyond the desert confesses all it’s worth:
Time has been, my noble ruin is beset
With grooms of dark-faced slaves, my keys
Are in their hands, which in the Roman tongue say
‘What is thy name?’ Aye, a name. What is a crown?
I have no faith in kings, nor the simple monarchy
Of Kings past to build a Name upon their dull ambitions.
Let fall away, hoi, all the glories of our line.
In the old time there was, when a king was on his throne,
Still faith in him whose throne’s above us set, and thoughts of Him
To shape his will; and when he meant to stretch
His huge and pendant paws abroad, he would think of us.
The king hath no such privilege from God taken as from Man,
Nor from his own wisdom, nor his good will, nor from desire
He will be seen, if God be for us, who are for him.
And for the crown, let’s on all men’s heads, bequeath
One crown alone: what’s not our own for use is not our own;
If thou canst not raise the sword, bestow it neither upon another.
Yet, if from him who hath, for him who hath not;
For him who loves he will be loved, then good is he,
A king or beggar, for in his hand he hath,
A king for a beggar’s hand to take. For this
Is to be prince of all: of a beggar’s hand
To take what he who hath, himself hath left behind,
As all we’ve lost be the certaine measure of our worth,
For all we stand to lose the measure of our gain;
There’s naught but unto himself a man’s condign
To fitter expiation; naught but himself remains
For a man to win or lose, naught but Memory’s a purse
To stuff to ruin. As many times he thereunto makes increase,
So many times he’s made of what he keeps his debtor:
So let him take as much out of himself, and so be quit;
And as his life increase, he shall upon himself his price inflict.
Sorrow is the child of love,
Not joy; and I am content,
If with a heart that shall go free
By sorrow’s call at last from love reprieve.
The day we wed with hope in hand
That rose with all her prize,
The day that was the day of mirth
As it came with all its sighs,
Ah, those were the days indeed,
Ere the black wing came and
Plucked all our hope to desolation
In the night of things unborn.[/i]
Ah, you must sing the songs of days gone by,
And you must list their tales with meek devotions;
For the heart be the song, the heart the only tale
Worth the being told: and one moral only the pen avails,
And in that t’were all the same stage-craft and emotion,
Ere were music not the echo left by things upon the heart.
Ah, though I am weary of those old tales,
And you are tired of my heart and all its pleadings;
But we will rouse ourselves to an more certain pulse,
Till the years are old and the music ends.
CANTO: THE ANGELS HATH NO NEED TO WAIT.
And when at last God’s morning lightens,
Cry,—as the starlight on the sea:
“I wait upon thy footsteps, O Light of the World,
Because I feel thee in my heart!”
O, thou, whom none beside might keep,
By none more than the eternal sea;
Who now must sleep upon the shore
Where no wind-ruffled waters are,—
And he shall reach thee from the ocean,
And touch thee from the star-tipped steeps,
And give thee back again a fadeless,
And eternal thought, unfaltering!
And who can tell if those who loved Him
And have Him espied at rest upon the deep,
With ever-sobbing voice have said:
“We know not whether sleep is good!
Though to our waking certainties we keep;
Aye, in Death art there many claim to find a Heaven."
We know not, but we hope that He is good
Who sleeps in all the hearts that wait for Him.
‘Twere not good for us or for the mountains
If He were not to rise in us to-morrow;
‘Twere not good for us to sleep or for our love
Without Him to give it back in dreams.
Nay, Thou wilt be our dream; so shall we think
The less of sorrow, being in His heart
Than in the grave asleep;
And Him that sleep in us apart
Shall think the more of Faith that dost not shrink
From our wakeful terrors at the thought of Sin.
Thou too, O Nature, in Thy loveliness,
Whence I and all Thy children draw our birth,
Be Thou a dream!—And let Thy dream be man!
The angels have no need to wait
For new-born things to die and fade:
They have no need to see the sun
Slant down their windy stair,
Or hear the sea’s old songs.
They know too well to-night that all must die,
That Love and Faith must fail:
Why wait the sun-down, then,
To see the night take hold?
What care they how the days begin?
They know it too, and yet they wait,
They wait the death that takes us all,
And till the world’s breathless, O my soul,
I too wait, and in waiting pass a World
That hath long to slumber take.
O blessed for evermore be those
That cannot lose by losing nought
But their perfect grief;–
Ye are the moon’s eclipse to him
That lit upon the lily’s face
As it grew dark; Tis ye, ‘tis ye alone
That break the ring of love around.
‘Tis ye alone that break the holy hour,
With your cold words that take away
His sweetness from the fruit, and turn
A bitter kernel to his soul.
I am content. I would wait now on the world’s unresting heart,
And leave the things that are not the truth;
I would rest in the gladness of things to come,
For the joy of the things that are to be,
For am I no angel, that needs make account
Of day’s beginning.
[i]Oh! For the dark world hath not one so fair,
One so beautiful, one so bright
As that heart which is not satisfied
With one day’s love, with one day’s sight,
And which is jealous for all Time.
That heart that sigheth still for an whole Heaven’s light,
Hath no mistaken faith to trust in all the darkness of the night.
But he who loves most shall be the last to sleep:
His love will keep him waking till the end.
Then if the stars and moons are left him still
It will be God alone who sleeps, and he
Is sure of the great and only rest.[/i]
What if the Kings have forgot the God their banners raise?
What if hymnist and the poet have forgot the God they praise?
What if the angels hath declined the ambit of their Star to chase?
What if the saints have fallen from their ways,
And lost the light they never lost before?
I have kept mine.
I sought mine Soul in the world around;
I found it in my breast;
And where the Heart could not endure,
I followed in the stead of her
That borne me lifted from the ground.
The winds, that on the mountain’s head
Bare to my feet their breath of love,
Are like the touch of lips that prest
Her, my weary flesh from earth to heaven.
The clouds, that in their course above
Melt to the sun with drouth of light,
Are like the tears I shed in love:
I cannot tell whence they were sprung.
I found my soul, and had it not,
I sought it not, ere it was found;
My soul was in my breast,
My heart within thee height unseen.
Oh! give me that to die upon!
[i]This beauty, like a Cyprus-grown, is good
To weep beneath.