PATMORE.

TO THE UNKNOWN EROS.

Published, in a volume of thirtyone odes, in 1877.

WHA

HAT rumour'd heavens are these
Which not a poet sings,

O Unknown Eros? What this breeze

Of sudden wings

Speeding at far returns of time from interstellar space

To fan my very face,

And gone as fleet,

Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat,

With ne'er a light plume dropp'd, nor any trace

To speak of whence they came, or whither they depart? And why this palpitating heart,

This blind and unrelated joy,

This meaningless desire,

That moves me like the Child

Who in the flushing darkness troubled lies,

Inventing lonely prophecies,

Which even to his Mother mild

He dares not tell;

To which himself is infidel;

His heart not less on fire

With dreams impossible as wildest Arab Tale,

(So thinks the boy,)

With dreams that turn him red and pale,

Yet less impossible and wild

Than those which bashful Love, in his own way and hour,

Shall duly bring to flower!

O Unknown Eros, sire of awful bliss,

What portent and what Delphic word,

Such as in form of snake forbodes the bird,

Is this?

In me life's even flood

What eddies thus?

What in its ruddy orbit lifts the blood

Like a perturbed moon of Uranus

Reaching to some great world in ungauged darkness hid;

And whence

This rapture of the sense

Which, by thy whisper bid,

Reveres with obscure rite and sacramental sign

A bond I know not of nor dimly can divine;

This subject loyalty which longs

For chains and thongs

Woven of gossamer and adamant,

To bind me to my unguessed want,

And so to lie,

Between those quivering plumes that thro' fine ether pant,

For hopeless, sweet eternity?

What God unhonour'd hitherto in songs,

Or which, that now

Forgettest the disguise

That Gods must wear who visit human eyes,
Art Thou?

Thou art not Amor; or, if so, yon pyre,

That waits the willing victim, flames with vestal fire;
Nor mooned Queen of maids; or, if thou'rt she,
Ah, then, from Thee

Let Bride and Bridegroom learn what kisses be!
In what veiled hymn

Or mystic dance

Would he that were thy Priest advance

Thine earthly praise, thy glory limn?
Say, should the feet that feel thy thought
In double-centr'd circuit run;

In that compulsive focus, Nought,

In this a furnace like the sun?

And might some note of thy renown

And high behest

Thus in enigma be exprest:

"There lies the crown

Which all thy longing cures.

Refuse it, Mortal, that it may be yours!

It is a Spirit, though it seems red gold;

And such may no man, but by shunning, hold. Refuse it, though refusing be despair,

And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair."

TO VICTOR HUGO IN EXILE.

SWINBURNE.

At the author's desire, this ode, which occurs in the "Poems and Ballads" of 1866, appears for the first time with the additional words" in exile." Mr. Swinburne tells me that it was written in 1865.

IN the fair days when God

IN

By man as godlike trod,

And each alike was Greek, alike was free,
God's lightning spared, they said,

Alone the happier head

Whose laurels screened it; fruitless grace for thee,
To whom the high gods gave of right
Their thunders and their laurels and their light.

Sunbeams and bays before

Our Master's servants wore,

For these Apollo left in all men's lands;

But far from these ere now,

And watched with jealous brow,

Lay the blind lightnings shut between God's hands, And only loosed on slaves and kings

The terror of the tempest of their wings.