Collected Poems

Hell and Heaven

Know more >

In the silence of the night-time,
    In the grey and formless eve,
When the thought is plagued with loveless
    Memories that it cannot leave,

When the dawn makes sudden beauty
    Of a peevish clouded sky,
And the rain is sobbing slowly
    And the wind makes weird reply,

Always comes her face before me
    And her voice is in my ear,
Beautiful and sad and cruel
    With the azure eyes austere.

Cloudy figure once so luminous
    With the light and life within
When the soul came rippling outwards
    And the red lips laughed at sin!

Page 538

Com'st thou with that marble visage
    From what world instinct with pain
Where we pay the price of passion
    By a law our hearts disdain?

Cast it from thee, O thou goddess!
    Earning with a smile release
From these sad imaginations,
    Rise into celestial peace.

Travel from the loveless places
    That our mortal fears create,
Where thy natural heavens claim thee
    And the Gods, thy brothers, wait.

Then descend to me grown radiant,
    Lighting up terrestrial ground
With the feet that brighten heaven
    When the mighty dance goes round

And the high Gods beating measure
    Tread the maze that keeps the stars
Circling in their luminous orbits
    Through the eternal thoroughfares.

All below is but confusion
    Of desires that strive and cry,
Some forbidden, some achieving
    Anguish after ecstasy.

But above our radiant station
    Is from which by doubt we fell,
Reaching only after Heaven
    And achieving only Hell.

Page 539

Let the heart be king and master,
    Let the brain exult and toil;
Disbelieve in good and evil,
    God with Nature reconcile.

Therefore, O rebellious sweetness,
    Thou tookst arms for joy and love.
There achieve them! Take possession
    Of our radiant seats above.