Volume Iii Part 3 (1/2)
III
So spake she her first utterance on the rack.
It softened torment, in the funeral hues Round wan Romance at ebb, but drove her back To listen to herself, herself accuse Harshly as Love's imperial cause allowed.
She meant to grovel, and her lover praised So high o'er the condemnatory crowd, That she perforce a fellow phoenix blazed.
The picture was of hand fast joined to hand, Both pushed from angry skies, their grasp more pledged Under the threatened flash of a bright brand At arm's length up, for severing action edged.
Why, then Love's Court of Honour contemplate; And two drowned sh.o.r.ecasts, who, for the life esteemed Above their lost, invoke an advocate In Pa.s.sion's purity, thereby redeemed.
Redeemed, uplifted, glimmering on a throne, The woman stricken by an arrow falls.
His advocate she can be, not her own, If, Traitress to thy s.e.x! one sister calls.
Have we such scenes of drapery's mournfulness On Beauty's revelations, witched we plant, Over the fair shape humbled to confess, An angel's buckler, with loud choiric chant.
IV
No knightly sword to serve, nor harp of bard, The lady's hand in her physician's knew.
She had not hoped for them as her award, When zig-zag on the tongue electric flew Her charge of counter-motives, none impure: But muteness whipped her skin. She could have said, Her free confession was to work his cure, Show proofs for why she could not love or wed.
Were they not shown? His muteness shook in thrall Her body on the verge of that black pit Sheer from the treacherous confessional, Demanding further, while perusing it.
Slave is the open mouth beneath the closed.
She sank; she s.n.a.t.c.hed at colours; they were peel Of fruit past savour, in derision rosed.
For the dark downward then her soul did reel.
A press of hideous impulse urged to speak: A novel dread of man enchained her dumb.
She felt the silence thicken, heard it shriek, Heard Life subsiding on the eternal hum: Welcome to women, when, between man's laws And Nature's thirsts, they, soul from body torn, Give suck at breast to a celestial cause, Named by the mouth infernal, and forsworn.
Nathless her forehead twitched a sad content, To think the cure so manifest, so frail Her charm remaining. Was the curtain's rent Too wide? he but a man of that herd male?
She saw him as that herd of the forked head b.u.t.ting the woman harrowed on her knees, Clothed only in life's last devouring red.
Confession at her fearful instant sees Judicial Silence write the devil fact In letters of the skeleton: at once, Swayed on the supplication of her act, The rabble reading, roaring to denounce, She joins. No longer colouring, with skips At tangles, picture that for eyes in tears Might swim the sequence, she addressed her lips To do the scaffold's office at his ears.
Into the bitter judgement of that herd On women, she, deeming it present, fell.
Her frenzy of abas.e.m.e.nt hugged the word They stone with, and so pile their citadel To launch at outcasts the foul levin bolt.
As had he flung it, in her breast it burned.
Face and reflect it did her hot revolt From hardness, to the writhing rebel turned; Because the golden buckler was withheld, She to herself applies the powder-spark, For joy of one wild demon burst ere quelled, Peris.h.i.+ng to astound the tyrant Dark.
She had the Scriptural word so scored on brain, It rang through air to sky, and rocked a world That danced down shades the scarlet dance profane; Most women! see! by the man's view dustward hurled, Impenitent, submissive, torn in two.
They sink upon their nature, the unnamed, And sops of nourishment may get some few, In place of understanding, scourged and shamed.
Barely have seasoned women understood The great Irrational, who thunders power, Drives Nature to her primitive wild wood, And courts her in the covert's dewy hour; Returning to his fortress nigh night's end, With execration of her daughters' lures.
They help him the proud fortress to defend, Nor see what front it wears, what life immures, The murder it commits; nor that its base Is s.h.i.+fty as a huckster's opening deal For bargain under smoothest market face, While Gentleness bids frigid Justice feel, Justice protests that Reason is her seat; Elect Convenience, as Reason masked, Hears calmly cramped Humanity entreat; Until a sentient world is overtasked, And rouses Reason's fountain-self: she calls On Nature; Nature answers: Share your guilt In common when contention cracks the walls Of the big house which not on me is built.
The Lady said as much as breath will bear; To happier sisters inconceivable: Contemptible to veterans of the fair, Who show for a convolving pearly sh.e.l.l, A treasure of the sh.o.r.e, their written book.
As much as woman's breath will bear and live Shaped she to words beneath a knotted look, That held as if for grain the summing sieve.
Her judge now brightened without pause, as wakes Our homely daylight after dread of spells.
Lips sugared to let loose the little snakes Of slimy l.u.s.tres ringing elfin bells About a story of the naked flesh, Intending but to put some garment on, Should learn, that in the subject they enmesh, A traitor lurks and will be known anon.
Delusion heating p.r.i.c.ks the torpid doubt, Stationed for index down an ancient track: And ware of it was he while she poured out A broken moon on forest-waters black.
Though past the stage where midway men are skilled To scan their senses wriggling under plough, When yet to the charmed seed of speech distilled, Their hearts are fallow, he, and witless how, Loathing, had yielded, like bruised limb to leech, Not handsomely; but now beholding bleed Soul of the woman in her prostrate speech, The valour of that rawness he could read.
Thence flashed it, as the crimson currents ran From senses up to thoughts, how she had read Maternally the warm remainder man Beneath his crust, and Nature's pity shed, In shedding dearer than heart's blood to light His vision of the path mild Wisdom walks.
Therewith he could espy Confession's fright; Her need of him: these flowers grow on stalks; They suck from soil, and have their urgencies Beside and with the lovely face mid leaves.
Veins of divergencies, convergencies, Our botanist in womankind perceives; And if he hugs no wound, the man can prize That splendid consummation and sure proof Of more than heart in her, who might despise, Who drowns herself, for pity up aloof To soar and be like Nature's pity: she Instinctive of what virtue in young days Had served him for his pilot-star on sea, To trouble him in haven. Thus his gaze Came out of rust, and more than the schooled tongue Was gifted to encourage and a.s.sure.