No More Learning

_Holofernes_.
I also: these are the joys that fear doth own.


IV

_At the Gate of Bethulia. On the walls, on either side of
the Gate, are citizens watching the Assyrian camp;_
OZIAS _also, standing by himself_.

_Ozias_.
When wilt thou cure thyself, spirit of the earth,
When wilt thou cure thyself of thy long fever,
That so insanely doth ferment in thee? --
'Tis not man only: the whole blood of life
Is fever'd with desire. But as the brain,
Being lord of the body, is served by blood
So well that a hidden canker in the flesh
May send, continuous as a usury,
Its breeding venom upward, till in the brain
It vapour into enormity of dreaming:
So man is lord of life upon the earth;
And like a hastening blood his nature wells
Up out of the beasts below him, they the flesh
And he the brain, they serving him with blood;
And blood so loaden with brute lust of being
It steams the conscious leisure of man's thought
With an immense phantasma of desire,
An unsubduable dream of unknown pleasure;
Which he sends hungering forth into the world,
But never satisfied returns to him.
Who hath found beauty? Who hath not desired it?
'Tis but the feverish spirit of earthly life
Working deliriously in man, a dream
Questing the world that throngs upon man's mind
To find therein an image of herself;
And there is nothing answers her entreaty. --
I climb towards death: it is not falling down
For me to die, but up the event of the world
As up a mighty ridge I climb, and look
With lifted vision backward down on life.
So high towards death I am gone, listless I gaze
Where on the earth beneath me, into the fires
Of that Assyrian strength, our siege of fate,
Judith, the dream of my desire of beauty,
Goes daring forth, to shape herself therein,
Seeking to fashion in its turbulence
Some deed that will be likeness of herself.
For now I know her purpose: and I know
She will be murdered there. Against the world
The beauty I have lived in, my loved dream,
Goes, wild to master the world; and she will
Therefore be murdered. It is nothing now;
Wind from the heights of death is on my brow.

_Talk among the other watchers_.
It must be, God is for us. Such a mind
As this of Judith's could not be, unless
God had spoken it into her. She is
His special voice, to tell the Assyrians
Terrible matters.

Is she God's? I think
'Tis Holofernes hath her now.

If not,
Upon his soldiers he hath lavisht her.

Not he. Now they have known her, his filled senses
Never will leave go our wonderful Judith.

Ay, wonderful in Jewry. But there are
In Babylon women so beautiful,
They make men's spirits desperate, to know
Flesh cannot ever minister enough
Delight to ease the craving they are taskt with.

Who talks of Babylon when God even now
Is training her fierce champion, Holofernes,
Into the death a woman holds before him?

A woman killing Holofernes!

Ay;
Be she abused by him or not, I know
God means to give her marvellous hands to-night.
I know it by my heart so strangely sick
With looking out for the first drowsy stir
In that huge flaming quiet of the camp.
Now fearfuller qualm than famine eagerly
Handles my life and pulls at it,--my faith's
Hunger for being fed with sounds and visions:
The firelight mixt with a trooping bustle of shadows,
The silence suddenly shouting with surprise,
That tells of men astounded out of sleep
To find that God hath dreadfully been among them.

We have mistaken Judith.

Even as now
God is mistaken by your doubting hearts.

She that has dealt with such a pride of spirit
In all her ways of life, so that she seemed
To feel like shadow, falling on the light
Her own mind made, the common thoughts of men;
Ay, she that to-day came down into our woe
And stood among the griefs that buzz upon us,
Like one who is forced aside from a bright journey
To stoop in a small-room'd cottage, where loud flies
Pester the inmates and the windows darken;
This she, this Judith, out of her quiet pride,
And out of her guarded purity, to walk
Where God himself from violent whoredom could
Scarcely preserve her shuddering flesh! and all
For our sake, for the lives she hath in scorn,
This horrible Assyrian risk she ventures.

There should be prayer for that. Let us ask God
To bind the men, whose greed now glares upon her,
In some strange feebleness; surely he will;
Surely not with woman's worst injury
Her noble obedience he will reward!
Let us ask God to bind these men before her.

They are not his to bind: else, were they here?
They are the glorying of Nebuchadnezzar's
Heart of fury against our God, sent here
Like insolent shouting into his holy quiet.
God could not bind these bragging noises up
In Nebuchadnezzar's heart; it is not his,
But made by Babylonian gods or owned
By thrones that hold the heavens over Nineveh.
For all these outland greatnesses, these kings
Whose war goes pealing through the world, these towns
Infidel and triumphant, reaching forth
Armies to hug the world close to their lust,--
What are they but the gods making a scorn
Of our God on the earth? Then how can he
Alter these men from wicked delight? or how
Keep Judith all untoucht among their hands,
When his own quietness he could not keep
Unbroken by the god's Assyrian insult?

But with a thunder he can shatter this
Intruding noise, and make his quiet again.

And in their lust he can entangle them,
Deceiving them far into Judith's beauty,
Which is his power, and lop them from their gods.

Their outrage will be ornament upon her!

Out of the hands of the goblins she will come
Not markt with shame, but wearing their vile usage
Like one whom earthly reign covers with splendour.

The ignominy they thought of shall be turned
To shining, yea, to announcing through the world
How God hath used her to beguile the heathen.
It begins! Now it begins! Lo, how dismay
Is fallen on the camp in a strange wind:
The ground, that seemed as spread with yellow embers,
Leaps into blazing, and like cinders whirled
And scattered up among the flames, are black
Bands of frantic men flickering about!

Ozias! seest thou how our enemies
Are labouring in amazement? How they run
Flinging fuel to light them against fear?

Now they begin to roar their terror: now
They wave and beckon wordless desperate things
One to another.

Hear the iron and brass
Ringing above their voices, as they snatch
The arms that seem to fight among themselves,
Seized by their masters' anguish; dost thou hear
The clumsy terror in the camp, the men
Hasting to arm themselves against our God,
Ozias?

_Ozias_.
Lions have taken a sentinel.

_A Citizen_.
Judith hath taken Holofernes.

_Judith's voice outside, under the gate_.
Yea,
And brought him back with her. Open the gates.

_The Citizens_.
Open the gates. Bring torches. Wake, ye Jews!
Hail, Judith, marvellously chosen woman!
How bringst thou Holofernes? Show him to us.

_Judith_.
Dare you indeed behold him?

_A Citizen_.
Is he bound?

_Judith_.
Drugged rather, with a medicine that God
Prepared for him and gave into my hands.
Open the gates! It is a harmless thing,
The Holofernes I have made your show;
You may gaze blithely upon him. I have tamed
The man's pernicious brain. Open the gates!
What, are your hands still nerveless? But my hands,
The hands of a woman, have done notable work.

_The Gates open_. JUDITH _appears, standing against
the night and the Assyrian fires. Torches and
shouting in the town_.

_Citizens_.
Judith! Judith alone! Where is thy boast
Of Holofernes captured?

_Judith_.
I am alone,
Indeed; and you are many; yet with me
Comes Holofernes, certainly a captive.

_Ozias_.
What trifle is this?

_Judith_.
Trifle? It is the word.
A trifle, a thing of mere weight, I have brought you
From the Assyrian camp. My apron here
Is loaded now more heavily, but as meanly
As an old witch's skirt, when she comes home
From seeking camel's-dung for kindling; yet
My burden was, an hour ago, the world
Where you were ground to tortures; it was the brain
Inventing your destruction. --Look you now!
[_Holding up the head of_ HOLOFERNES.
This is the mouth through which commandment came
Of massacre and damnation to the Jews;
Here was the mind the gods that hate our God
Used to empower the agonies they devised
Against us; here your dangers were all made,
Your horrible starvation; and the thirst
Those wicked gods supposed would murder you,
Here a creature became, a ravenous creature;
Yea, here those mighty vigours lived which took,
Like ocean water taking frost, the hate
Those gods have for Jehovah, shaping it
Atrociously into the war that clencht
Their fury about you, frozen into iron.
Jews, here is the head of Holofernes: take it
And let it grin upon our highest wall
Over against the camp of the Assyrians.
[_She throws them the head_.
Ay, you may worry it; now is the jackals' time;
Snarl on your enemy, now he is dead.

_Ozias_.
Judith, be not too scornful of their noise.
There are no words may turn this deed to song:
Praise cannot reach it. Only with such din,
Unmeasured yelling exultation, can
Astonishment speak of it. In me, just now,
Thought was the figure of a god, firm standing,
A dignity like carved Egyptian stone;
Thou like a blow of fire hast splinter'd it;
It is abroad like powder in a wind,
Or like heapt shingle in a furious tide,
Thou having roused the ungovernable waters
My mind is built amidst, a dangerous tower.
My spirit therein dwelling, so overwhelmed
In joy or fear, disturbance without name,
Out of the rivers it is fallen in
Can snatch no substance it may shape to words
Answerable to thy prowess and thy praise.
We are all abasht by thee, and only know
To worship thee with shouts and astounded passion.

_Judith_.
Yes, now the world has got a voice against me:
At last now it may howl a triumph about me.

_Ozias_.
This, nevertheless, my thought can seize from out
The wildness that goes pouring past it. God,
Wondrously having moved thee to this deed,
Hath shown the Jews a wondrous favouring love.
Thee it becomes not, standing though thou art
On this high action, to think scorn of men
Whom God thinks worthy of having thee for saviour.

_Judith_.
This is a subtle flattery. What know I
Of whom God loves, of whom God hates? I know
This only: in my home, in my soul's chamber,
A filthy verminous beast hath made his lair.
I let him in; I let this grim lust in;
Not only did not bolt my doors against
His forcing, but even put them wide and watcht
Him coming in, to make my house his stable.
What though I killed him afterward? All my place,
And all the air I live in, is foul with him.
I killed him? Truly, I am mixt with him;
Death must have me before it hath all him.

_Ozias_.
In thee, too, are the floods, the wild rivers,
Overrunning thy thought, the nameless mind?
How else, indeed? Nay, we are dull with joy:
Of thee we thought not, out of the hands of outrage
Coming back, although with victory coming.
But this makes surety once more of my thought,
And gives again my reason its lost station;
For it may come now in my privilege
(A thing that could cure madness in my brain)
That thou from me persuasion hast to endure
What well I know thy soul, thy upright soul,
Feels as abominable harness on it
Fastening thee unwillingly to crime,--
The wickedness that hath delighted in thee.

_Judith_.
Ay? Art thou there already? Tasting, art thou,
What the Assyrians may have forced on me,
Ere thou hast well swallowed thy new freedom?
Indeed, I know this is the wine of the feast
Which I have set for thee and thy Bethulia;
And 'tis the wine makes delicate the banquet.

_Ozias_.
Wait: listen to me. 'Tis I now must be wise
And thou the hearkener. Not without wound
(So I make out, at least, thy hurrying words)
Comest thou back to us from conquering.
And such a wound, I easily believe,
As eats into thy soul and rages there;
Yea, I that know thee, Judith, know thy soul
Worse rankling hath in it from heathen insult
Than flesh could take from steel bathed in a venom
Art magic brewed over a charcoal fire,
Blown into flame by hissing of whipt lizards.
Yet is it likely, by too much regarding,
Thy hurt is pamper'd in its poisonous sting.
Wounds in the spirit need no surgery
But a mind strong not to insist on them.
See, then, thou hast not too much horror of this;
Who that fights well in battle comes home sound? --
Much less couldst thou, who must, with seeming weakness,
Invite the power of Holofernes forth
Ere striking it, thy womanhood the ambush.
For thou didst plan, I guess, to duel him
In snares, weaving his greed about his limbs,
Drawn out and twisted winding round his strength
By ministry of thy enticing beauty;
That when he thought himself spending on thee
Malicious violence, and thou hadst made him
Languish, stupid with boasting and delight,
Thy hands might find him a tied quiet victim
Under their anger, maiming him of life.
Now, thy device accomplisht, wilt thou grudge
Its means? Wilt thou scruple to understand
Thy abus'd sex will show upon thy fame
A nobler colour of glory than a soldier's
Wounded bravery rusting his habergeon?
Nay, will not the world rejoice, thou being found
Among its women, ready such insolence
To bear as is unbearable to think on,
Thereby to serve and save God and his people?

_Judith_.
The world rejoice over me? Yea, I am certain.

_Ozias_.
Then art thou too fastidious. It is weak
To make thyself a shame of being injured;
And is it injury indeed? Nay, is it
Anything but a mere opinion hurt?
Not thou, but customary thought is here
Molested and annoyed; the only nerve
Can carry anguish from this to thy soul,
Is that credulity which ties the mind
Firmly to notional creature as to real.
Advise thee, then; dark in thyself keep hid
This grief; and thou wilt shortly find it dying.

_A Citizen_.
Judith,
Pardon our ecstasy. 'Tis time thou hadst
Our honour. But first tell us all the event,
That in thy proper height thou with thy deed
May stand against our worship.

_Judith_.
Why do you stop
Your shouts, and glare upon me? Have you need
Truly to hear my tale? I think, not so.
Ozias here, as he hath whiled at ease
Upon the walls my stay in the camp yonder,
Hath fairly fancied all that I have done,
And more exactly, and with a relishing gust,
All that was done to me. Ask him, therefore;
If he hath not already entertained
Your tedious leisure with my story told
Pat to your liking, enjoyed, and glosst with praise. --
And yet, why ask him? Why go even so far
To hear it? Ask but the clever libidinousness
Dwelling in each of your hearts, and it will surely
Imagine for you how I trained to my arms
Lewd Holofernes, and kept him plied with lust,
Until his wild blood in the end paused fainting,
And he lay twitching, drained of all his wits;--
But there was wine as well working in him,
Feebling his sinews; 'twas not all my doing,
The snoring fit that came before his death,
The routing beastly slumber that was my time.
You know it all! Why ask me for the tale?

_Ozias_.
Comfort her: praise her. She is strangely ashamed
Of Holofernes having evilly used her.

_A Citizen_.
We will contrive the triumph of our joy
Into some tune of words, and bring thee on,
Accompanied by singing, to thy house.

_Judith_.
I pray you, rather let me go alone.
You will do better to be searching out
All sharpen'd steel that may take weapon-use.
The Assyrians are afraid: it is your time.

[_They surround_ JUDITH _and go with her_.

CHORUS _of Citizens praising_ JUDITH _and
leading her to her house_.
Over us and past us go the years;
Like wind that taketh sound from jubilee
And aloud flieth ringing,
Over us goeth the speed of the years,
Like loud noise eternally bringing
The greatness women have done.

Deborah was great; with her singing
She hearten'd the men that the horses had dismayed;
Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, alone
Stood singing where the men were horribly afraid,
Singing of God in the midst of fear;
When archers out of Hazor were
Eating the land like grasshoppers,
And darkness at noon was plundering the air
Of the light of the sun's insulted fires,
Red darkness covering Sisera's host
As Jewry was covered by the Canaanite's boast:
For the earth was broken into dust beneath
The force of his chariots' thundering tyres,
Nine hundred chariots of iron.

Deborah was great in her prophesying;
But, though her anger moved through the Israelites,
And the loose tribes her indignant crying
Bound into song, fashion'd to an army;
And before the measure of her song went flying,
Like leaves and breakage of the woods
Fallen into pouring floods,
The iron and the men of Sisera and Jabin;
Not by her alone
God's punishment was done
On Canaan intending a monstrous crime,
On the foaming and poison of the serpent in Hazor;
Two women were the power of God that time.

Yea, and sullenly down
Into its hiding town,
Even though the lightning were still in its heart,
The broken dragon, drawing in its fury,
Had croucht to mend its shatter'd malice,
Had lifted its head again and spat against God.
But God its endlessly devising brain,
Its braving spirit, its captain Sisera,
Into the hands of another woman brought:
In nets of her persuasion
She that wild spirit caught,
She fasten'd up that uncontrollable thought.
Sisera spake, and the crops were flames;
Sisera lookt, and blood ran down the door-sills.
But weary, trusting his entertainment,
He came to Jael, the Kenite woman;
A woman who gave him death for a bed,
And with base tools nailed down his murderous head
Fast to the earth his rage had fed
With men unreckonably slain.

But than these wonderfully greater,
Judith, art thou;
The praise of both shall follow like a shadow
After thy glory now,
Who alone the measureless striding,
The high ungovern'd brow,
Of Assur upon the hills of the world
Hast tript and sent him hugely sliding,
Like a shot beast, down from his towering,
By his own lamed
Mightiness hurl'd
To lie a filth in disaster.
Deborah and Jael, famously named,
Like rich lands enriching the city their master,
Bring thee now their most golden honour.
For the beauty of thy limbs was found
By a dreadfuller enemy dreadful as the sound
Of Deborah's singing, though hers was a song
That had for its words thousands of men.
But thou thyself, looking upon them,
Didst weaken the Assyrians mortally.
They thought it terrible to see thee coming;
They falter'd in their impiousness,
Their hearts gave in to thee; they went
Backward before thee and shewed thee the tent
Where Holofernes would have thee in to him,
Yea, for his slayer waiting,
Waiting thee to entertain,
Desiring thee, his death, to enjoy, as Jael
Waited for Sisera her slain.

_Judith_.
Have done!
Do you think I know not why your souls
Are so delighted round me? Do you think
I see not what it is you praise? --not me,
But you yourselves triumphing in me and over me.

_A Citizen_.
Did we kill Holofernes?

_Judith_.
No: nor I.
That corpse was not his death. He is alive,
And will be till there is no more a world
Filled with his hidden hunger, waiting for souls
That ford the monstrous waters of the world.
Alive in you is Holofernes now,
But fed and rejoicing; I have filled your hunger.
Yea, and alive in me: my spirit hath been
Enjoyed by the lust of the world, and I am changed
Vilely by the vile thing that clutcht on me,
Like sulphurous smoke eating into silver.
Your song is all of this, this your rejoicing;
You have good right to circle me with song!
You are the world, and you have fed on me.

_A Citizen_.
We are the world; yes, but the world for ever
Honouring thee.

_Judith_.
How am I honoured so,
If I no honour have for the world, but rather
Hold it an odious and traitorous thing,
That means no honour but to those whose spirits
Have yielded to its ancient lechery? --
Defiled, defiled!

_A Citizen_.
Thou wert moved by our grief:
Was that a vile thing?

_Judith_.
That was the cunning world.
It moved me by your grief to give myself
Into the pleasure of its ravenous love.

_A Citizen_.
Judith, if thy hot spirit beareth still
Indignant suffering of villainy,
Think, that thou hast no wrong from it. Such things
Are in themselves dead, and have only life
From what lives round them. And around thee glory
Lives and will force its splendour on the harm
Thy purity endured, making it shine
Like diamond in sunlight, as before
Unviolated it could not.

_Judith_.
Ay, to you
I doubt not I seem admirable now,
Worthy of being sung in loudest praise;
But to myself how seem I?

_A Citizen_.
Surely as one
Whose charity went down the stairs of hell,
And barter'd with the fiends thy sacredest
For our deliverance.

_Judith_.
And that you praise! --
I was a virgin spirit. Whence I come
I know not, and I care not whither I go.
One fearful knowledge holds me: that I am
A spirit walking dangerously here.
For the world covets me. I am alone,
And made of something which the world has not,
Unless its substance can devour my spirit.
And it hath devoured me! In Holofernes
It seized me, fed on me; and then gibed on me,
With show of his death scoffing at my rage,--
His death! --He lay there, drunken, glutted with me,
And his bare falchion hung beside the bed,--
Look on it, and look on the blood I made
Go pouring thunder of pleasure through his brain! --
And like a mad thing hitting at the madness
Thronging upon it in a grinning rout,
I my defilement smote, that Holofernes.
But does a maniac kill the frenzy in him,
When with his fists he beats the clambering fiends
That swarm against his limbs? No more did I
Kill my defilement; it was fast within me;
And like a frenzy can go out of me
And dress its hideous motions in my world.
For when I come back here, behold the thing
I murdered in the camp leaps up and yells!
The carrion Holofernes, my defilement,
Dances a triumph round me, roars and rejoices,
Quickened to hundreds of exulting lives.

_A Citizen_.
God help thee in this wildness! Are we then
As Holofernes to thee?

_Judith_.
You are naught
But the defilement that is in me now,
Rejoicing to be lodged safely within me.
You are the lust I entertained, rejoicing
To wreak itself upon my purity.
The stratagems of my ravishment you are,
Rejoicing that the will you serve has dealt
Its power on me. O, I hate you not.
You and your crying grief should have blown past
My heart like wind shaking a fasten'd casement.
But I must have you in. Myself I loathe
For opening to you, and thereby opening
To the demon which had set you on to whine
Pitiably in the porches of my spirit.
You are but noise; but he is the lust of the world,
The infinite wrong the spirit, the virgin spirit,
Must fasten against, or be for ever vile.

_A Citizen_.
But is it naught that we, the folk of God,
Are safe by thee?

_Judith_.
God hath his own devices.
But I would be God's helper! I would be
Known as the woman whom his strength had chosen
To ruin the Assyrians! --O my God,
How dreadfully thou punishest small sins!
If it is thou who punishest; but rather
It is that, when we slacken in perceiving
The world's intent towards us, and fatally,
Enticed out of suspicion by fair signs,
Go from ignoring its proposals, down
To parley,--thou our weakness dost permit.
In all my days I from the greed of the world
Virginal have kept my spirit's dwelling,--
Till now; yea, all my being I have maintained
Sacredly my own possession; for love
But made more beautiful and more divine
My spirit's ownership. And yet no warning,
When I infatuate went down to be
Procuress of myself to the world's desire,
Did God blaze on my blindness, no rebuke.
Therefore I am no more my virgin own,
But hatefully, unspeakably, the world's.
To these now I belong; they took me and used me.
I have no pride to live for; and why else
Should one stay living, if not joyfully proud?
For I have yielded now; mercilessly
What is makes foolish nothing of what was.
To know the world, for all its grasping hands,
For all its heat to utter its pent nature
Into the souls that must go faring through it,
Availing nothing against purity,
Made always like rebellion trodden under,--
By this was life a noble labour. Now
I have been persuaded into the world's pleasure:
And now at last I will all certainly
Contrive for myself the death of Holofernes.

[OZIAS _comes behind her and catches the lifted falchion_.

_Judith_.
It was well done, Ozias.

_Ozias_.
I have watcht
Thy anguish growing, and I lookt for this.

_Judith_.
Thou knowest me better than I know myself.
What moves in me is strange and uncontrolled,
That once I thought was ruled: thou knew'st me better. --
Indeed thou must forgive me; what was I
To take so bitterly thy suit? What right
Had I to give thee anger, when thou wouldst
Brighten thy hopeless death with me enjoyed,
I, even from that anger, going to be
Holofernes' pleasure? --Thou knewest me better,
And therefore shalt forgive me. Ay, no doubt
My spirit answered thee so fiercely then
Because it felt thee reading me aright,
How a mere bragging was my purity.
But now to pardon askt, I must add thanks. --
I had forgot Manasses! Even love
Was driven forth of me by these loud mouths!
Whether in death he waits for me, I know not;
But it had been an unforgivable thing
To have made this the end; not to have gone
To death as unto spousals, leaving life
As one sets down a work faithfully done,
And knows oneself by service justified,
Worthy of love, whether love be or not.
But, soiled with detestation, to have thrown
Fiercely aside the garment of this light;
Proved at the last impatient, death desiring
Like a mere doffing of foul drenchèd clothes;
Release from the wicked hindering mire of sorrow;
A comfortable darkness hiding me
Out of the glowing world myself have made
An insult, domineering me with splendour;--
O such a death had turned, past all forgiving,
My insult to Manasses, and searcht him out,
Even where he is quiet, with the blaze,
Ranging like din, of this contempt, this triumph.
Not crying out such hateful news should I
Flee hunted into death, unto my love.
From this, Ozias, thou hast saved me. Now
I am to learn my shame, that not amazed,
But practised in my burden, I at last,
When my time comes, may all in gladness fare
The road made sacred by Manasses' feet.

[JUDITH _goes into her house_.

_Ozias (addressing the citizens)_.
You do well to be stricken silent here.
Terrible Holofernes slain by a woman
Was something wonderful, to be noised aloud;
But this is a wonder past applauding thought,
This grief darkening Judith, in the midst
Of the new shining glory she herself
Has brought to conquer in our skies the storm.
You do well to be dumb: for you have seen
Virginity. That spirit you have seen,
Seen made wrathfully plain that secret spirit,
Whereby is man's frail scabbard filled with steel.
This, cumbered in the earthen kind of man,
Which ceaseless waters would be wearing down,
Alone giveth him stubborn substance, holds him
Upright and hard against impious fate.
All things within it would the world possess,
And have them in the tide of its desire:
Man hath his nature of the vehement world;
He is a torrent like the stars and beasts
Flowing to answer the fierce world's desire.
But like a giant wading in the sea
Stands in the rapture, and refusing it,
And looking upward out of it to find
Who knows what sign? --spirit, virginity;
A power caught by the power of the world;
The spirit in whose unknown hope doth man
Deny the mastery of his fortune here;
Virginity, whose pride, impassion'd only
To be as she herself would be, nor thence
To loosen for the world's endeavouring,
And, though all give the rash obedience, stand
Her own possession,--this virginity,
This pride of the spirit, asking no reward
But to be pride unthrown, this is the force
Whereby man hath his courage in the strange
Fearful turmoil of being conscious man.
Yea, worshipping this spirit, he will at last
Grow into high divine imagination,
Wherein the envious wildness of the world
Yieldeth its striving up to him, and takes
His mind, building the endless stars like stone
To house his towering joy of self-possessing.
This made you dumb; ignorant knowledge of this,
Blind vision of virginity's mightiness,
Did chide the exclamation in your hearts.
And think not you have seen, in Judith's grief,
Virginity drown'd in the pouring world.
For what is done is naught; what is, is all:
And Judith is virginity's appointed.
Even by her injury she showeth us,
As fire by violence may be revealed,
How sovereign is virginity. --
But let us now consult what way her grief,
Which is not to be understood by us,
May spend itself, with naught to urge its power.
Let us within our walls keep close this tale,
Close as the famine and the thirst were kept
Devouring us by the Assyrians.
Let there be no news going through the land
Out of Bethulia but this: that we
At Judith's hands had our deliverance,
But she from Holofernes and his crew
Unwilling and astonisht reverence,
As they were men with minds opprest by God.




THE ETERNAL WEDDING


_He_.
Even as a wind that hasteth round the world
From out cold hours fill'd with shadow of earth,
To pour alight against the risen sun;
So unto thee adoring, out of its shadow
Floweth my spirit, into the light of thee
Which Beauty is, and Joy. From my own fate,
From out the darkness wherein long I fared
Worshipping stars and morsels of the light,
Through doors of golden morning now I pass
Into the great whole light and perfect day
Of shining Beauty, open to me at last.
Yea, into thee now do I pass, beloved:
Beauty and thou are mine!

_She_.
And I am thine!
I am desirable to my desire:
Thence am I clean as immortality
With Beauty and Joy, the fiery power of Beauty.

_He_.
And by my spirit made marvellous here by thee,
Poured out all clear into the gold of thee,
Not myself only do I know; I have
Golden within me the whole fate of man:
That every flesh and soul belongs to one
Continual joyward ravishment, whose end
Is here, in this perfection. Now I know--
For all my speculation soareth up,
A bird taking eternity for air,--
Now being mixt with thee, in the burning midst
Of Beauty for my sense and mind and soul,--
That life hath highest gone which hath most joy.
For like great wings forcefully smiting air
And driving it along in rushing rivers,
Desire of joy beats mightily pulsing forward
The world's one nature, and all the loose lives therein,
Carried and greatly streaming on a gale
Of craving, swept fiercely along in beauty;--
Like a great weather of wind and shining sun,
When the airs pick up whole huge waves of sea,
Crumble them in their grasp and high aloft
Sow them glittering, a white watery dust,
To company with light: so we are driven
Onward and upward in a wind of beauty,
Until man's race be wielded by its joy
Into some high incomparable day,
Where perfectly delight may know itself,--
No longer need a strife to know itself,
Only by its prevailing over pain.

_She_.
Beloved, but no pain may strive with us.

_He_.
No, for we are flown far ahead of life:
The feet of our Spirit have wonderfully trod
The dangers of the rushing fate of life,
As summer-searching birds tread with their wings
Mountainous surges in the air. But many,
Not strongly fledge to ride the world's great rapture,
Must break, down fallen into steep confusion,
Where we climb easily and tower with joy.
Nevertheless doth life foretell in us
How it shall all make seizure at the last
Upon this height of ecstasy, this fort
Life like an army storms: Captains we are
In the great assault; and where we stand alone
Within these hours, built like establisht flames
Round us, at long last all man's life shall stand
At peace with joy, wearing delighted sense
As meadows wear their golden pleasure of flowers.
Certain my heart dwells in these builded hours,
That there is no more beauty beyond thee.
Thou art my utter beauty; and--behold
The marvel, God in Heaven! --I am thine.
Therefore we know, in this height-guarded place
Whereto the speed of our desire hath brought us;
Here in this safety crowning, like a fort
Built upon topmost peaks, the height of beauty,--
We know to be glad of life as we were gods
Timelessly glad of deity; yea, to enjoy
Fleshly, spiritual Being till the swift
Torrent of glee (as hurled star-dust can change
Dim earthly weather to a moment like the sun,)
Doth startle life to self-adoring godhead,--
Divine body of Power and divine
Burning soul of Light and self-desire.
And having given ourselves all to amazement,
We are made like a prophesying song
Of life all joy, a bride in the arms of God. --
Yea, God shall marry his people at the last;
And every man and woman who has sworn
That only joy can make this Being sacred,
Weaves at the wedding-garment.

_She_.
Ah, my beloved,
Feelest thou too that out of earth and time
We are transgressing into Heavenly hours?
Or, threading the dark worldly multitude
And making lightning of its path, there comes
A zeal from God posting along our lives.

_He_.
For some eternal pulse hath chosen us,
Some divine anger beats within our hearts.

_She_.
Anger? But how far off is love from anger!

_He_.
Nay, both belong to joy; joy's kind is twain.
And close as in the pouring of sun-flame
Are mingled glory of light and fury of heat,
Joy utters its twin radiance, love and anger;
If joy be not indeed all sacred wrath
With circumstance; indignant memory
Of what hath been, when the new lusts of God
Exulted unimaginably, before
Rigours of law fastened like creeping habit
Upon their measureless wont, and forced them drive
Their ranging music of delighted being
Through the fixt beating tune of a circling world. --
Is not love so? Amazement of an anger
Against created shape and narrowness?
The bound rage of the uncreated Spirit
Whose striving doth impassion us and the world?
A wrath that thou and I are not one being?

_She_.
Yes, and not only words that thou and I
Out of our sexes with a flame's escape
Are fashioned into one. The Spirit in us
Hath, like imagination in a prison,
Kindled itself free of all boundary,
So that it hath no room but its own joy,
Ample as at the first, before it fell
Into this burthenous habit of a world.
What have we now to do with the world? We are
Made one unworldly thing; we are past the world;
Yea, and unmade: we are immortality.

_He_.
And only fools abominably crazed,
Those who will set imagination down
As less in truth than their dim sensual wit,
Dare doubt that, while these dreams of ours, these bodies,
Still quiver in the world each with its own
Delight, the great divine wrath of our love
Hath stricken off from us the place of the world!
Yea, as we walk in spiritual freedom
Upright before the shining face of God,
Behold, as it were the shadow of our stature
Thrown by that light, we draw the world behind us,--
That world wherein, darkly I remember,
We thought we were as twain.

_She_.
Yet, since God means
That love should sunder our fixt separateness
And make our married spirits leap together,
As lightning out of the clouds of sexual flesh,
Into one sexless undivided joy;
Why hath he made us a divided flesh?
We being single ecstasy, now as strange
As if a shadow stained where no one stood
The ground in the noon-glare, seemeth to me
The long blind time wherein our lives and the world
Lay stretcht out dark upon the light of heaven,
Like shadow of some bulk that took the glory;
While yet there stood not over it, to shade
The splendour from it, our heaven-fronting love,
This great new soul that our two souls have kindled.
Yea, and how like, that in the world's chance-medley
This our exulting destiny had been slain,
Though here it lords the world as a man his shadow!

_He_.
But the world is not chance, except to those
Most feeble in desire: who needeth aught
Shall have it, if he fill his soul with the need.
While still our ignorant lives were drowned beneath
The flooding of the earthly fate, and chance
Seemed pouring mightily dark and loud between us,
Unspeakable news oft visited our hearts:
We knew each other by desire; yea, spake
Out of the strength of darkness flowing o'er us,
Across the hindering outcry of the world
One to another sweet desirable things.
Until at last we took such heavenly lust
Of those unheard messages into our lives,
We were made abler than the worldly fate.
We held its random enmity as frost
The storming Northern seas, and fastened it
In likeness of our love's imagining;
Or as a captain with his courage holds
The mutinous blood of an army aghast with fear,
And maketh it unwillingly dare his purpose,
Our lust of love struck its commandment deep
Into the froward turbulence of world
That parted us. Suddenly the dark noise
Cleft and went backward from us, and we stood
Knowing each other in a quiet light;
And like wise music made of many strings
Following and adoring underneath
Prevailing song, fate lived beneath our love,
Under the masterful excellent silence of it,
A multitudinous obedience.

_She_.
Yea, but not this my marvel: not that we
Should master with desire the sundering world,
We who bore in our hearts such destiny,
There was no force knew to be dangerous
Against it, but must turn its malice clean
Into obsequious favour worshipping us.
Rather hath this astonisht me, that we
Have not for ever lived in this high hour.
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 twain,--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 out 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_.