Swifter and still more swift, As the crowding peace Doth to joy increase In the wide blind eyes uplift Thro' the darkness and the drift!
While I--to the shape, I too Feel my soul dilate Nor a whit abate, And relax not a gesture due, As I see my belief come true. 100
For, there! have I drawn or no Life to that lip? Do my fingers dip In a flame which again they throw On the cheek that breaks a-glow?
Ha! was the hair so first? What, unfilleted, Made alive, and spread Through the void with a rich outburst, Chestnut gold-interspersed? 110
Like the doors of a casket-shrine, See, on either side, Her two arms divide Till the heart betwixt makes sign, Take me, for I am thine!
"Now--now"--the door is heard! Hark, the stairs! and near-- Nearer--and here-- "Now!" and at call the third She enters without a word. 120
On doth she march and on To the fancied shape; It is, past escape, Herself, now: the dream is done And the shadow and she are one.
First I will pray. Do Thou That ownest the soul, Yet wilt grant control To another, nor disallow For a time, restrain me now! 130
I admonish me while I may, Not to squander guilt, Since require Thou wilt At my hand its price one day! What the price is, who can say?
NOTES: "Mesmerism." With a continuous tension of will, whose unbroken concentration impregnates the very structure of the poem, a mesmerist describes the processes of the act by which he summons shape and soul of the woman he desires; and then reverent perception of the sacredness of the soul awes him from trespassing upon another's individuality.
"Heigho!" yawned one day King Francis, "Distance all value enhances. When a man's busy, why, leisure Strikes him as wonderful pleasure: Faith, and at leisure once is he? Straightway he wants to be busy. Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm Caught thinking war the true pastime. Is there a reason in metre? Give us your speech, master Peter!" 10 I who, if mortal dare say so, Ne'er am at loss with my Naso "Sire," I replied, "joys prove cloudlets: "Men are the merest Ixions"-- Here the King whistled aloud, "Let's --Heigho--go look at our lions." Such are the sorrowful chances If you talk fine to King Francis.
And so, to the courtyard proceeding, Our company, Francis was leading, 20 Increased by new followers tenfold Before he arrived at the penfold; Lords, ladies, like clouds which bedizen At sunset the western horizon. And Sir De Lorge pressed 'mid the foremost With the dame he professed to adore most. Oh, what a face! One by fits eyed Her, and the horrible pitside; For the penfold surrounded a hollow Which led where the eye scarce dared follow 30 And shelved to the chamber secluded Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded.