The Victories of Love, and Other Poems. Coventry Patmore

the inaugural hour of right

      Comes ever with a keen delight?

      Little relieves the labour’s heat;

      Disgust oft crowns it when complete;

      And life, in fact, is not less dull

      For being very dutiful.

      ‘The stately homes of England,’ lo,

      ‘How beautiful they stand!’  They owe

      How much to nameless things like me

      Their beauty of security!

      But who can long a low toil mend

      By looking to a lofty end?

      And let me, since ’tis truth, confess

      The void’s not fill’d by godliness.

      God is a tower without a stair,

      And His perfection, love’s despair.

      ’Tis He shall judge me when I die;

      He suckles with the hissing fly

      The spider; gazes calmly down.

      Whilst rapine grips the helpless town.

      His vast love holds all this and more.

      In consternation I adore.

      Nor can I ease this aching gulf

      With friends, the pictures of myself.

         Then marvel not that I recur

      From each and all of these to her.

      For more of heaven than her have I

      No sensitive capacity.

      Had I but her, ah, what the gain

      Of owning aught but that domain!

      Nay, heaven’s extent, however much,

      Cannot be more than many such;

      And, she being mine, should God to me

      Say ‘Lo! my Child, I give to thee

      ‘All heaven besides,’ what could I then,

      But, as a child, to Him complain

      That whereas my dear Father gave

      A little space for me to have

      In His great garden, now, o’erblest,

      I’ve that, indeed, but all the rest,

      Which, somehow, makes it seem I’ve got

      All but my only cared-for plot.

      Enough was that for my weak hand

      To tend, my heart to understand.

         Oh, the sick fact, ’twixt her and me

      There’s naught, and half a world of sea.

      IX.  FROM FREDERICK

      In two, in less than two hours more

      I set my foot on English shore,

      Two years untrod, and, strange to tell,

      Nigh miss’d through last night’s storm!  There fell

      A man from the shrouds, that roar’d to quench

      Even the billows’ blast and drench.

      Besides me none was near to mark

      His loud cry in the louder dark,

      Dark, save when lightning show’d the deeps

      Standing about in stony heaps.

      No time for choice!  A rope; a flash

      That flamed as he rose; a dizzy splash;

      A strange, inopportune delight

      Of mounting with the billowy might,

      And falling, with a thrill again

      Of pleasure shot from feet to brain;

      And both paced deck, ere any knew

      Our peril.  Round us press’d the crew,

      With wonder in the eyes of most.

      As if the man who had loved and lost

      Honoria dared no more than that!

         My days have else been stale and flat.

      This life’s at best, if justly scann’d,

      A tedious walk by the other’s strand,

      With, here and there cast up, a piece

      Of coral or of ambergris,

      Which, boasted of abroad, we ignore

      The burden of the barren shore.

      I seldom write, for ’twould be still

      Of how the nerves refuse to thrill;

      How, throughout doubly-darken’d days,

      I cannot recollect her face;

      How to my heart her name to tell

      Is beating on a broken bell;

      And, to fill up the abhorrent gulf,

      Scarce loving her, I hate myself.

         Yet, latterly, with strange delight,

      Rich tides have risen in the night,

      And sweet dreams chased the fancies dense

      Of waking life’s dull somnolence.

      I see her as I knew her, grace

      Already glory in her face;

      I move about, I cannot rest,

      For the proud brain and joyful breast

      I have of her.  Or else I float,

      The pilot of an idle boat,

      Alone, alone with sky and sea,

      And her, the third simplicity.

      Or Mildred, to some question, cries,

      (Her merry meaning in her eyes,)

      ‘The Ball, oh, Frederick will go;

      Honoria will be there! and, lo,

      As moisture sweet my seeing blurs

      To hear my name so link’d with hers,

      A mirror joins, by guilty chance,

      Either’s averted, watchful glance!

      Or with me, in the Ball-Room’s blaze,

      Her brilliant mildness threads the maze;

      Our thoughts are lovely, and each word

      Is music in the music heard,

      And all things seem but parts to be

      Of one persistent harmony,

      By which I’m made divinely bold;

      The secret, which she knows, is told;

      And, laughing with a lofty bliss

      Of innocent accord, we kiss:

      About her neck my pleasure weeps;

      Against my lip the silk vein leaps;

      Then says an Angel, ‘Day or night,

      If yours you seek, not her delight,

      Although by some strange witchery

      It seems you kiss her, ’tis not she;

      But, whilst you languish at the side

      Of a fair-foul phantasmal bride,

      Surely a dragon and strong tower

      Guard the true lady in her bower.’

      And I say, ‘Dear my Lord.  Amen!’

      And the true lady kiss again.

      Or else some wasteful malady

      Devours her shape and dims her eye;

      No charms are left, where all were rife,

      Except