In a mortal garden they set the poet With mortal maiden and mortal child;
In a mortal garden they set the poet; As a trapped bird he breathed wild. He had smiled in sorrow: not now he smiled.
But into the garden pacing slowly, Came a lady with eyes inhuman. . . . And the sad slow mouth of him smiled again, This lady I know, and she is real, I know this lady, and she is Pain!
The Lady Pain figures, in one sense, in "Love in Dian's Lap." His only real love was itself a thing most strictly circumscribed; it existed only to be checked:--
"I yielded to the insistent commands of my conscience and uprooted my heart--as I supposed. Later, the renewed presence of the beloved lady renewed the love I thought deracinated. For a while I swung vacillant. I thought I owed it to her whom I loved more than my love of her finally to unroot that love, to pluck away the last fibres of it, that I might be beyond treachery to my resolved duty. And at this second effort I finished what the first had left incomplete. The initial agony had really been decisive, and to complete the process needed only resolution. But it left that lady still the first, the one veritable, full-orbed, and apocalyptic love of my life. Through her was shewn me the uttermost of what love could be--the possible divinities and celestial prophecies of it. None other could have taught them quite thus, for none other had in her the like unconscious latencies of utter spirituality. Surely she will one day realise them, as by her sweet, humble, and stainless life she has deserved to do."
"The concluding words of your letter, 'friend and child,' reminded me of some lines written at the time I was composing "Amphicypellon." They were written hastily to relieve an outburst of emotion; and, not thinking there was any poetry in them worthy of you, I never showed them you. But when I read those concluding words of your letter, I resolved to transcribe them that you might see you could not have addressed me more according to my wish."
Whence comes the consummation of all peace, And dignity past fools to comprehend, In that dear favour she for me decrees, Sealed by the daily-dullèd name of Friend,-- Debased with what alloy, And each knave's cheapened toy. This from her mouth doth sweet with sweetness mend, This in her presence is its own white end. Fame counts past fame The splendour of this name; This is calm deep of unperturbed joy.