I see His Blood Upon the Rose
Occulta
Written Between November 1911 and July 1915
Seals of Thunder
They say I sing in secrets—they have ears
But do not hear; have eyes but do not see
Truth’s naked beauty is her panoply,
Their eyes are blinded with its splendid spears.
With shadowy symbols fitted to their fears
Now will I clothe a visible mystery,
Yet none shall understand the prophecy
Save you, nor pay the tribute of their tears.
But you will understand me, for I speak
First to your heart, then to your soul in song
Spreading its golden pennons for the strong,
Smiting like sunrise on the snowy peak
Of glory—and to you the stars belong
And all the glowing splendours that I seek.
Invocation
Sing all ye mouths of music, sing her praise
All stars and birds and flowers, all lovely things
Living in Earth and Heaven, Eyes and Wings
Of Cherubim and Seraphim that raise
Vision and Love Eternal; all her ways
Fill with your music, let no wind that sings
Of sorrow wither Joy’s young blossomings:
Prepare her paths against the fateful days
When she shall need flower-lamps before her feet
And herald-birds and all the stars to hold
Her heart upon the difficult laughter-sweet
Blood-salt and sorrow-bitter ways of gold
That she must tread, until her heart unfold
Its quivering pinions for the Paraclete.
Daybreak
As blazes forth through clouds the morning sun,
So shines your soul, and I must veil my sight
Lest it be stricken to eternal night
By too much seeing ere my song be done,
And I must sing your body’s clouds that run
To hide you with their crimson, green and white
At sunset dawn and noon—and then the flight
Of stars that chant your praise in unison.
But I beneath the planetary choir
Still as a stone lie dumbly, till the dark
Lifts its broad wings—then swift as you draw nigher
I raise Memnonian song, and all must hark,
For you have flung a brand and fixed a spark
Deep in the stone, of your immortal fire.
The Splendour of God
The drunken stars stagger across the sky,
The moon wavers and sways like a wind-blown bud,
Beneath my feet the earth like drifting scud
Lapses and slides, wallows and shoots on high;
Immovable things start suddenly flying by,
The city shakes and quavers, a city of mud
And ooze—a brawling cataract is my blood
Of molten metal and fire—like God am I.
When God crushes his passion-fruit for our thirst
And the universe totters—I have burst the grape
Of the world, and let its powerful blood escape
Untasted—crying whether my vision durst
See God’s high glory in a girl’s soft shape—
God! Is my worship blessed or accurst?
The Living Temple
O Covenant! O Temple! O trail pride
Of God’s high glory! Set your snowy feet
On the Red Mountain, while the pinions beat
Of proximate apocalypse. Uncried
Halloos of havoc, prophecies denied
Fulfilment till the Dawn of Wonder, fleet
In songs precursive down the glittering street
Where dripped the blood from wounded brows and side.
And you must walk the mountain tops where rode
Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, when the stars
Fell from their places, and where Satan strode
To make his leap. Now bend the cracking spars
Athwart the mast of the world—and five deep scars
From that strong Cross call you to their abode.
Initiation
Our lips can only stammer, yet we chant
High things of God. We do not hope to praise
The splendour and the glory of his ways,
Nor light up Heaven with our low descant:
But we will follow thee, his hierophant
Filling with secret canticles the days
To shadow forth in symbols for their gaze
What crowns and thrones await his militant.
For all his beauty showered on the earth
Is summed in thee, O thou most perfect flower;
His dew has filled thy chalice, and his power
Blows forth the fragrance of thy mystic worth:
White blossom of his Tree, behold the hour!
Fear not! thy fruit is Love’s most lovely birth.
Aaron
I am the Seer: for in you I see
The fair unfolding of a secret flower,
The pomp and pageant of eternal power,
The crown and pride of your high destiny.
I am the Prophet: this your prophecy—
Your deeds and Heaven’s fill the echoing hour,
The Splendour of all splendours for your dower
Is given, a witness of the things to be.
I am the Poet, but I cannot sing
Of your dear worth, or mortal or divine;
No music hidden in any song of mine
Can give you praise; yet the trimmed rod I bring
To you, O Temple, asking, for a sign,
That in the morn it may be blossoming.
In the Wilderness
Gaunt windy moons bedraggled in the dusk
Have drifted by and withered in their shame,
The once-proud Thunder-Terror, fallen tame,
Noses for truffles with unwhetted tusk;
A sickening scent of civet and of musk
Has clogged the nostrils of the Hound of Fame—
But flickering stars are blown to vivid flame
When leaps your beauty from its blazing husk.
Blossom of burning solitude! High things
Are lit with splendour—Love your glimmering ray
Smites them to glory—below them and away
A little song floats upward on the wings
Of daring, and the thunders of the Day
Clamour to God the messages it brings.
Arbor Vitae
Beside the golden gate there grows a tree
Whose heavy fruit gives entrance to the ways
Of Wonder, and the leaves thereof are days
Of desolation—nights of agony
The buds and blossom for the fruits to be:
Rooted in terror the dead trunk decays,
The burdened branches drooping to the clays
Clammy with blood of crushed humanity.
But lo the fruit! Sweet-bitter, red and white,
Better than wine—better than timely death
When surfeited with sorrow—Lo the bright
Mansions beyond the gate! And Love, thy breath
Fanning our flaming hearts where entereth
Thy Song of Songs with Love’s tumultuous light.
La Pucelle
She walks the azure meadows where the stars
Shed glowing petals on her moon-white feet,
The planets sing to see her, and to greet
Her, nebulae unfold like nenuphars.
No dread eclipse the morn of Heaven mars
But fades before her fearing, lest she meet
With darkness, while the reckless comets beat
A path of gold with flickering scimitars.
The battle-ranks of Heaven are marching past
Squadron by squadron, battalion, and brigade,
Both horse and foot—Soundless their swift parade,
Silent till she appears—then quick they cast
Upon the wind the banner of the Maid,
And Heaven rocks with Gabriel’s trumpet-blast.
Occulta
Crowns and imperial purple, thrones of gold,
Onyx and sard and blazing diadems,
Lazuli and hyacinth and powerful gems
Undreamt of even in Babylon of old
May for a price be given, bought and sold,
Bartered for silver as was Bethlehem’s—
And yet a Splendour lives that price contemns
Since Five loud Tongues a deeper worth have told.
Braver is she than ruby, far more wise
Even than burning sapphire, than emerald
Anchored more strongly to impalpable skies—
Upon a diamond pinnacle enwalled
The banners blaze, and “Victor” she is called,
Youthful, with laughter in her twilit eyes.
Heaven in Hell
If the dread all-seeing stars,
Ringed Saturn and ruddy Mars
And their companions all the seven,
That play before the lord of Heaven,
Each blossoming nebula and all
The constellations, were to fall
Low at my feet and worship me,
Endow me with all sovranty
Of their wide kingdom of the blue—
Yet I would not believe that you
Could love me—If besides the nine
Encircling legions all-divine
Should, chanting, teach me that my worth
Outshone the souls of men on earth
And seraphs in Heaven, and as well
That glittering demons deep in Hell
Fled at my frown, obeyed my word—
If every flower and beast and bird
In God’s great earth and splendid sea
Should live and love and fight, for me
And my sweet singing and sad art—
Yet could I not conceive your heart
Stooping to mine, nor your wild eyes
Unveiling their deep ecstasies,
Your tenebrous hair sweep near my lips,
Your eyelids bring your soul eclipse
For fear that I should be made blind
By love’s bright image in your mind.
You are the Standard of high Heaven,
The Banner brave towards which I’ve striven
To force my way—To seize and hold
The citadel of the city of gold
I must attain the Flag of love
Blazoned with the eternal Dove.
Once Immortality, a babe,
Played with the Future’s astrolabe
And marked a destiny thereon
More splendid than the morning sun
Leaping to glory from the earth:
More wondrous than the wonder-birth
Of the white moon from darkest rock;
More strange than should the sun unlock
His leashes and let slip the stars;
More desperate than the clanging wars
Twixt Hell and Heaven; still more great
Than any favourable fate;
But beyond all things beautiful,
Beyond Mortality’s foot-rule
Of loveliness, and little words—
Sometimes, at twilit eve, when birds
Lapse from dream-silence into song,
Sometimes when Thunder’s rolling note
Reverberates from his iron throat,
They speak of such high mysteries
But no one can interpret these—
All of this dim and deep design
If I should choose, its crown were mine
To win or lose by my sole hand
And heart. I chose, and joined the band
Of Heaven’s adventurers that seek
To climb the never-conquered peak
In solitude by their sole might.
In the dark innocence of night
I fought unknown inhuman foes
And left them in their battle-throes,
Hacked a way through them and advanced
To where the stars of morning danced
In your high honour, there I stood
To see you, till the morning-flood
Burst from the sky—but your sunrise
Striking my unaccustomed eyes
Smote them to darkness, and I turned
And stumbled towards the night. There burned
In heart and eyes a drunken flame
That sang and clamoured out your name,
And woke a madness in my head.
The enemies I had left for dead
Surrounded me with gibbering cries
And mocked me for my blinded eyes.
I curst them till they rose in rage
And flung me down a battle-gage
To fight them on the floors of Hell
Where solely they’re assailable.
I took the challenge straightaway
And leaped—and that was yesterday
Or was last year, but every hour
For weary years to break their power
Still must I fight, but now a gleam
Of hope comes to me like a dream,
To-day, though dimly, I do see,
My vision has come back to me.
And I have learnt in deepest Hell
I with terror-twisted eyes
Have watched you play in Paradise,
Tortured and torn by demons seven
Have kept my heart’s gaze fixed on Heaven,
Save when the smoky mists of blood
Have blinded me with their fell flood.
My desert heart all desolate
Lit with the mirage of your hate
I searched, my vision held above,
For green oasis of your love.
My heart’s dry desert, hot and wide,
Bounded by flames on every side,
So dim and old no song can tell,
Covers the tombs where dead kings dwell:
Now demons dance upon their tombs,
Shut with the seals of lasting dooms,
For them until the world be riven
No hope of Hell, no fear of Heaven.
But I, alas! am torn between
The things unseen and the things seen,
I alone of the souls I know
In Hell and Heaven am high and low,
High in Heaven and low in Hell:
From pit and peak inaccessible
To all but Satan and seraphim
My song gains power and grows more grim.
Only the straining of my vision
Toward the playing-fields elysian
Where you with starry comrades fling
Your fervours over eye and wing,
With deep and happy subtlety
Flavouring the wine-bag of the bee;
Thrones, principalities and powers
Showering with Eden-flowers:
With Michael’s sword and Raphael’s lute
Slaying and singing, making bruit
Of lovely laughter with your lips
Sounding as where the honey drips
At reaping-time by rippling brooks
Twining between the barley-stocks:
Only your shape that holds my sight,
Your ways that fill it with delight,
Your steps that blossom where you’ve trod,
Your laughter like the breath of God,
And all the braveries that extol
The living sword that is your soul:
Only your passion-haunted eyes
Interpreting your mysteries:
These are to me and my desire
For pillar of cloud and pillar of fire,
A gleam and gloom of Heaven, in Hell
A high continuous miracle.
Your Songs
If I have you then I have everything
In One, and that One nothing of them all
Nor all compounded, and within the wall
Beneath the tower I wait to hear you sing:
Love breathing low above the breast of Spring,
Pressing her heart with baby heart and small
From baby lips love-syllables lets fall
And strokes with gentle hand her quivering wing.
You come rejoicing all the wilderness,
Filling with praise the land to joy unknown,
Fresh from that garden whose perfumes have blown
Down through the valley of the cypresses—
O heart, you know not your own loveliness,
Nor these your songs, for they are yours alone.
The Vigil of Love
ILLA CANTAT: NOS TACEMUS: QUANDO VER VENIT MEUM?
QUANDO FIAM UTI CHELIDON, UT TACERE DESINAM?
PERDIDI MUSAM TACENDO, NEC ME PHOEBUS RESPICIT.
SIC AMYCLAS, CUM TACERENT, PERDIDIT SILENTIUM.
CRAS AMET QUI NUNQUAM AMAVIT: QUIQUE AMAVIT CRAS AMET.
She sings, but we are silent: when shall Spring
Of mine come to me? I as the swallow make
Me vocal, and this desolate silence break?
The Muse has left me for I cannot sing;
Nor does Apollo now his splendour bring
To aid my vision, blinded for her sake—
Thus mute Amyclas would not silence wake
And perished in the shadow of its wing.
The wings of the imperishable Dove
Unfold for flight, and we shall cease from sorrow;
Song shall the beauty of dead Silence borrow
When lips once mute now raise this chant above:
Love to the loveless shall be given to-morrow,
To-morrow for the lover shall be love.
The Worm Joseph
(I am a worm and no man—David)
The worm is clad in plated mail
And rides upon the envious Earth
His power prevails and shall prevail
When Death gleans in the fields of Birth.
He sips the purple wine of kings
From burnished skulls and bumper hearts,
Of fat and famine years he sings
And fills his granaries from the marts.
His brethren that have sold his name,
Denied him to his ancient Sire,
Shall seek him when they feel his fame
Shall find him when they fear his fire.
But you, O Benjamin, beloved,
Dove-like and young, with him shall sup
And then departing unreproved
Bear with you his divining cup.
The White Feather
I’ve watched with Death a dreadful year
Nor flinched until you plucked apart
A feather from the wings of Fear—
Your innocence has stabbed my heart.
I took your terrible trust to keep,
Deep in my heart it flames and sears,
And what I’ve sown I dare not reap
For bitterness of blinding tears.
I have not scattered starry seed
On windy ridges of the skies,
But I have ploughed my heart indeed
And sown the secrets of your eyes.
And now I cannot reap the grain
Growing above that stony sod
Because a shining plume lies plain
Fallen from following wings of God.
Your Fear
I try to blame
When from your eyes the battle-flame
Leaps: when cleaves my speech the spear
For fear lest I should speak your name:
Your name that’s known
But to your heart, your fear has flown
To mine: you’ve heard not any bird,
No wings have stirred save yours alone.
Alone your wings
Have fluttered: half-forgotten things
Come crowding home into your heart,
Filling your heart with other Springs,
Springs when you’ve sung
Your secret name with happy tongue
Loudly and innocent as the flowers
Through hours of laughter proudly young.
Young is the year
And other wings are waking: near
Your heart my name is knocking loud,
Ah, be not proud! You need not fear.
Fearing lest I
Should wrest your secret from on high
You will not listen to my name,
I cannot blame you though I try.
The Mask
What have I dared to claim
That you should thus deny?
If I have used your name
My songs to beautify
Mine is the greater fame.
And I have ever sought
But to proclaim your praise,
I have regarded naught
When wandering by your ways
But truth, my only thought.
What favour did I ask
That might constrain your heart
Or heavier make your task?
But now that you depart
Wearing a dreadful mask.
And those accusing eyes
As still as death and cold
Making my soul surmise
My song grown overbold
And all my words unwise—
Now is my claim from thence
That you should hear your heart’s
Pleading in my defence
Before your praise departs
And all your grace goes hence.
No Song
I loose the secrets of my soul
And mint my heart to heavy words
Lest you should need to ask a dole
Of singing from the winds and birds—
You will not heed nor bear my soul.
I coin again a greater sum
Of silence, and you will not heed:
The fallow spaces call you “Come,
The season’s ripe to sow the seed”—
Both I and these are better dumb.
I have no way to make you hear,
No song will echo in your heart;
Now must I with the fading year
Fade. Without meeting we must part—
No song nor silence you will hear.
The Cloud
(O cloud well appointed!—Blake)
I do not know how you can shun
His sight who sees himself a clod
Whose blindness still outstares the sun
And gazes on the hidden God.
I do not know how you can hate
A heart so set about with fire,
A sword so linked with heavy fate
And broken with unknown desire.
I see your eyes with glory blaze
And splendour bind your dusky hair,
And ever through the nights and days
My soul must struggle with despair.
Your beauty must forever be
My cloud of anguish, and your breath
Raise sorrow like the surging sea
Around the windy wastes of death.
Moriturus Te Salutat
These words that may not reach your heart
Are wrung from mine in bitter pain,
You, reading, but despise their art
That is not art but blood—in vain
The blood is ebbing from my heart.
The passions of my tortured mind
Trouble but lightly your calm soul—
No ugliness besets the blind—
A shadow on darkness is the whole
Of my misfortune in your mind.
And yet I love you that you say
You will not love me—truth is hard,
’Twere so much easier to give way
And stay the death-stroke, my reward—
Courage, brave heart! ’tis Love you slay.
The Dark Way
Rougher than Death the road I choose
Yet shall my feet not walk astray,
Though dark, my way I shall not lose
For this way is the darkest way.
Set but a limit to the loss
And something shall at last abide
The blood-stained beams that form the cross
The thorns that crown the crucified;
But who shall lose all things in One,
Shut out from heaven and the pit
Shall lose the darkness and the sun
The finite and the infinite;
And who shall see in one small flower
The chariots and the thrones of might
Shall be in peril from that hour
Of blindness and the endless night;
And who shall hear in one short name
Apocalyptic thunders seven
His heart shall flicker like a flame
Twixt hell’s gates and the gates of heaven.
For I have seen your body’s grace,
The miracle of the flowering rod,
And in the beauty of your face,
The glory of the face of God,
And I have heard the thunderous roll
Clamour from heights of prophecy
Your splendid name, and from my soul
Uprose the clouds of minstrelsy.
Now I have chosen in the dark
The desolate way to walk alone
Yet strive to keep alive one spark
Of your known grace and grace unknown.
And when I leave you lest my love
Should seal your spirit’s ark with clay,
Spread your bright wings, O shining dove,—
But my way is the darkest way.
Toihthe
No hungry star ascendant at my birth
Foretold the famine that consumes my days,
No flaming sword prohibited the ways
Of vision where I parch through beauty’s dearth,
Alas! no flower of heaven or of earth
Yields loveliness to fill your meed of praise,
Within my heart no spark divine betrays
The power to tell of your immortal worth.
You say you are unworthy—how can I
Fend from your truth the self-destroying dart?
Within my shield of vision is no part
Of mirrored certitude you can deny;
You are what God has made you—and my heart,
And in this faith at least I’ll live and die.
The Living Wire
I thought I’d never hear your tongue
Again in this dead world of shame
As once when heart and world were young
And then—you spoke my name.
The barriers of space were spread
Widely between us, when a shaft
Of driven lightning broke their dread,
Leaping—and you had laughed.
The harp-strings in the house of gold
Vibrate when chants the heavenly choir,
My heart bound to your heart you hold
With love—and a living wire.
We are not separate, we two,
(Alas, not one) beneath our feet
The blessed earth binds me to you,
The stones upon the street.
The very stones cry out: No more
Seek separate paths, each step you’ve trod
Brings you but nearer than before
Home to your heart—and God.
Die Taube
To-day when I beheld you all alone
And might have stayed to speak, the watchful love
Leapt up within my heart—then quick to prove
New strength, the fruit of sorrow you have sown
Sank in my stormy bosom like a stone
Nor dared to rise on flaming plumes above
Passionless winds, till you, O shining dove
Far from the range of wounding words had flown.
Far have you flown, and blows of battle cease
To drape the skies in tapestries of blood,
Now sinks within my heart the heaving flood
And Love’s long-fluttering pinions I release,
Bidding them not return till blooms the bud
On olive branch, borne by the bird of peace.
The Spark
Because I used to shun
Death and the mouth of hell
And count my battle won
If I should see the sun
The blood and smoke dispel,
Because I used to pray
That living I might see
The dawning light of day
Set me upon my way
And from my fetters free,
Because I used to seek
Your answer to my prayer
And that your soul should speak
For strengthening of the weak
To struggle with despair,
Now I have seen my shame
That I should thus deny
My soul’s divinest flame,
Now shall I shout your name.
Now shall I seek to die
By any hands but these
In battle or in flood,
On any lands or seas,
No more shall I share ease,
No more shall I spare blood
When I have need to fight
For heaven or for your heart,
Against the powers of light
Or darkness I shall smite
Until their might depart,
Because I know the spark
Of God has no eclipse,
Now Death and I embark
And sail into the dark
With laughter on our lips.
Earlier and Later Poems
Incorporating Selections from “The Circle and the Sword” (1911)
The New Judas
Thee, Christ, I sought to sell all day
And hurried to the mart to hold
A hundred heavy coins of gold
And lo! they would not pay.
But “thirty pieces of silver” cried
(Thine ancient price), and I agreed,
Six for each of the wounds that bleed
In hands and feet and side.
“Including cross and crown” we priced,
Is now their claim and I refuse,
I will not bargain all to lose,
I will not sell Thee, Christ!
I see His Blood Upon the Rose
I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies
I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.
All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.
The Stars sang in God’s Garden
The stars sang in God’s garden;
The stars are the birds of God;
The night-time is God’s harvest,
Its fruits are the words of God.
God ploughed His fields at morning,
God sowed His seed at noon,
God reaped and gathered in His corn
With the rising of the moon.
The sun rose up at midnight,
The sun rose red as blood,
It showed the Reaper, the dead Christ,
Upon His cross of wood.
For many live that one may die,
And one must die that many live—
The stars are silent in the sky
Lest my poor songs be fugitive.
I saw the Sun at Midnight
I saw the Sun at midnight, rising red,
Deep-hued yet glowing, heavy with the stain
Of blood-compassion, and I saw It gain
Swiftly in size and growing till It spread
Over the stars; the heavens bowed their head
As from Its heart slow dripped a crimson rain,
Then a great tremor shook It, as of pain—
The night fell, moaning, as It hung there dead.
O Sun, O Christ, O bleeding Heart of flame!
Thou givest Thine agony as our life’s worth,
And makest it infinite, lest we have dearth
Of rights wherewith to call upon Thy Name;
Thou pawnest Heaven as a pledge for Earth
And for our glory sufferest all shame.
It is her Voice who dwells
within the Emerald Wall and Sapphire House of Flame:
Behold! a white Hawk tangled in a twisted net of dreams
Struggles no more, but lines the cords with feathers from her breast
Seeing herself within the mystic circle of my voice,
Whereat forthwith its music turns to blades and tongues of fire
Rending the bonds and weaving round the Hawk a skein of light
Raising the work and the Toiler to the never-ending Day.
A Wave of the Sea
I am a wave of the sea
And the foam of the wave
And the wind of the foam
And the wings of the wind.
My soul’s in the salt of the sea
In the weight of the wave
In the bubbles of foam
In the ways of the wind.
My gift is the depth of the sea
The strength of the wave
The lightness of foam
The speed of the wind.
White Waves on the Water
White waves on the water,
Gold leaves on the tree,
As Mananan’s daughter
Arose from the sea.
The bud and the blossom,
The fruit of the foam
From Ocean’s dark bosom
Arose, from her home.
She came at your calling,
O winds of the world,
When the ripe fruit was falling
And the flowers unfurled.
She came at your crying
O creatures of earth,
And the sound of your sighing
Made music and mirth.
She came at your keening
O dreamers of doom,
And your sleep had new dreaming
And splendour and bloom.