free-verse171 lines

Marriage Song

by Lascelles Abercrombie

Come up, dear chosen morning, come,

Blessing the air with light,

And bid the sky repent of being dark:

Let all the spaces round the world be white,

And give the earth her green again.

Into new hours of beautiful delight,

Out of the shadow where she has lain,

Bring the earth awake for glee,

Shining with dews as fresh and clear

As my beloved's voice upon the air.

For now, O morning chosen of all days, on thee

A wondrous duty lies:

There was an evening that did loveliness foretell;

Thence upon thee, O chosen morn, it fell

To fashion into perfect destiny

The radiant prophecy.

For in an evening of young moon, that went

Filling the moist air with a rosy fire,

I and my beloved knew our love;

And knew that thou, O morning, wouldst arise

To give us knowledge of achieved desire.

For, standing stricken with astonishment,

Half terrified in the delight,

Even as the moon did into clear air move

And made a golden light,

Lo there, croucht up against it, a dark hill,

A monstrous back of earth, a spine

Of hunch'd rock, furred with great growth of pine,

Lay like a beast, snout in its paws, asleep;

Yet in its sleeping seemed it miserable,

As though strong fear must always keep

Hold of its heart, and drive its blood in dream.

Yea, for to our new love, did it not seem,

That dark and quiet length of hill,

The sleeping grief of the world? - Out of it we

Had like imaginations stept to be

Beauty and golden wonder; and for the lovely fear

Of coming perfect joy, had changed

The terror that dreamt there!

And now the golden moon had turned

To shining white, white as our souls that burned

With vision of our prophecy assured:

Suddenly white was the moon; but she

At once did on a woven modesty

Of cloud, and soon went in obscured:

And we were dark, and vanisht that strange hill.

But yet it was not long before

There opened in the sky a narrow door,

Made with pearl lintel and pearl sill;

And the earth's night seem'd pressing there, -

All as a beggar on some festival would peer, -

To gaze into a room of light beyond,

The hidden silver splendour of the moon.

Yea, and we also, we

Long gazed wistfully

Towards thee, O morning, come at last,

And towards the light that thou wilt pour upon us soon!

O soul who still art strange to sense,

Who often against beauty wouldst complain,

Doubting between joy and pain:

If like the startling touch of something keen

Against thee, it hath been

To follow from an upland height

The swift sun hunting rain

Across the April meadows of a plain,

Until the fields would flash into the air

Their joyous green, like emeralds alight;

Or when in the blue of night's mid-noon

The burning naked moon

Draws to a brink of cloudy weather near,

A breadth of snow, firm and soft as a wing,

Stretcht out over a wind that gently goes, -

Through the white sleep of snowy cloud there grows

An azure-border'd shining ring,

The gleaming dream of the approaching joy of her; -

What now wilt thou do, Soul? What now,

If with such things as these troubled thou wert?

How wilt thou now endure, or how

Not now be strangely hurt? -

When utter beauty must come closer to thee

Than even anger or fear could be;

When thou, like metal in a kiln, must lie

Seized by beauty's mightily able flame;

Enjoyed by beauty as by the ruthless glee

Of an unescapable power;

Obeying beauty as air obeys a cry;

Yea, one thing made of beauty and thee,

As steel and a white heat are made the same!

- Ah, but I know how this infirmity

Will fail and be not, no, not memory,

When I begin the marvellous hour.

This only is my heart's strain'd eagerness,

Long waiting for its bliss. -

But from those other fears, from those

That keep to Love so close,

From fears that are the shadow of delight,

Hide me, O joys; make them unknown to-night!

III

Thou bright God that in dream earnest to me last night,

Thou with the flesh made of a golden light,

Knew I not thee, thee and thy heart,

Knew I not well, God, who thou wert?

Yea, and my soul divinely understood

The light that was beneath thee a ground,

The golden light that cover'd thee round,

Turning my sleep to a fiery morn,

Was as a heavenly oath there sworn

Promising me an immortal good:

Well I knew thee, God of Marriages, thee and thy flame!

Ah, but wherefore beside thee came

That fearful sight of another mood?

Why in thy light, to thy hand chained,

Towards me its bondage terribly strained,

Why came with thee that dreadful hound,

The wild hound Fear, black, ravenous and gaunt?

Why him with thee should thy dear light surround?

Why broughtest thou that beast to haunt

The blissful footsteps of my golden dream? -

All shadowy black the body dread,

All frenzied fire the head, -

The hunger of its mouth a hollow crimson flame,

The hatred in its eyes a blaze

Fierce and green, stabbing the ruddy glaze,

And sharp white jetting fire the teeth snarl'd at me,

And white the dribbling rage of froth, -

A throat that gaped to bay and paws working violently,

Yet soundless all as a winging moth;

Tugging towards me, famishing for my heart; -

Even while thou, O golden god, wert still

Looking the beautiful kindness of thy will

Into my soul, even then must I be,

With thy bright promise looking at me,

Then bitterly of that hound afraid? -

Darkness, I know, attendeth bright,

And light comes not but shadow comes:

And heart must know, if it know thy light,

Thy wild hound Fear, the shadow of love's delight.

Yea, is it thus? Are we so made

Of death and darkness, that even thou,

O golden God of the joys of love,

Thy mind to us canst only prove,

The glorious devices of thy mind,

By so revealing how thy journeying here

Through this mortality, doth closely bind

Thy brightness to the shadow of dreadful Fear? -

Ah no, it shall not be! Thy joyous light

Shall hide me from the hunger of fear to-night.

For wonderfully to live I now begin:

So that the darkness which accompanies

Our being here, is fasten'd up within

The power of light that holdeth me;

And from these shining chains, to see

My joy with bold misliking eyes,

The shrouded figure will not dare arise.

For henceforth, from to-night,

I am wholly gone into the bright

Safety of the beauty of love:

Not only all my waking vigours plied

Under the searching glory of love,

But knowing myself with love all satisfied

Even when my life is hidden in sleep;

As high clouds, to themselves that keep

The moon's white company, are all possest

Silverly with the presence of their guest;

Or as a darken'd room

That hath within it roses, whence the air

And quietness are taken everywhere

Deliciously by sweet perfume.