I.
THE flowing night awoken from my sleep
Revealed a world of glory, while I stood
Watching the hazy, creeping ocean sweep
Out of all depths beyond where cloud and flood
Grew one in darkness. Shimmering overhead
Sheer cliffs ran high of jagged crag and wood,
And o’er white marble balustrades was shed
A moonlight calm. I stood alone. I deemed
This isolated fastness wrought for me;
Far down beneath the foaming water gleamed;
I stood alone in awed expectancy.
II.
Dark years long trodden down, my heritage.
Fell vanquished years which fed on love and care,
Surrendered to my will power to assuage
Remembered torture of my past despair:
My sorrow had enthroned me, I was strong.
From deeps afar the livid ocean bare
Swooned to the shore, met by swart trees athrong;
And beetling cliffs and sky-caught mountains walled
The outmost wilderness whence haggard trees
Clung huddling thick – beyond the earth, recalled,
Lay, a rank flood of writhing memories.
III.
Clear on a gust of laughter came her voice;
I heard her footsteps touch the ivory stair;
Her fragrant raiment fluttering held my choice
Pledged to divine desire; and dubious there
Confronting silence for one moment bright
The world I knew – and from within the glare
Across the purple darkness billowed white;
And tower and carven pillar, sculptured forms
Grotesque and noble, fountain and cascade,
Beneath white stars aglint in clustering swarms,
Shone from amid the glimmering garden glade.
IV.
One moment’s pause shall brave oblivion.
One moment held my life. Then forth she leapt
And straitway all before her radiance shone
With sickly lustre fain to intercept
No boon or mandate of her presence – she,
White-swathed drew close and by me, laughing,
swept
Back to the glare within and fled from me
Through rooms deserted while her loveliness
Filled these unlighted haunts of revelling death,
Silent save for the threshing of her dress
And the low tremor of her eager breath.
V.
Seductive for my soul she lured me on,
The reject of the world, me who had caught
Dim rapture from the sky to learn anon
Remorse of hope from futile passion wrought,
Stale years the dower of time to time returned.
Rich with all life and with my longing fraught;
I followed her, for her my being yearned
As death must crave for life, as life for love,
As love for sorrow – from the fleeting walls
Quick mirrors flashed reflecting her above;
She fled before me through the vacant halls.
VI.
Drugged incense and the balm of petals crushed.
Of beauty all her face the holiest,
Soft melodies and sense of silence hushed
To hear the mute response of worship blessed –
All this so sweet was mine that hallowed hour
When my strong life, proved by past bitter test,
Knew love at length so longed-for by her power;
Yea, sweet, and still my solitude again
Lives in each joy reviving for my care
Thy love that sought me fleeing, fleeing then.
My love that found thee sweet and perished there.
VII.
And hope endowed her with my love, with time
Whereof each moment caught was sweet for her,
With vital worship offered up, sublime;
All else abandoned showed her lovelier;
My hoarded virtue fervent yet for truth
Enshrined her resolute still to aver
Sweet her divinity by toil and ruth,
Revealing earth devoid and love all vain –
Whereat I doubted her, and doubting fled
To seek some worth of beauty to maintain;
Now all is silent – even death is dead.
VIII.
And so too frail for worship her I left;
And wide with haunting memories of that night
My baffled vision shrank from her bereft
And my whole strength for love of love took flight;
Along dumb galleries, illumined ways.
Through vacant halls beneath dark dome and white,
Aggrieved I braved the eddying of spent days.
Tempestuous the tide of years that swelled
To daunt advance, encumbering followed me
Till from the dusky rampart I beheld
Murk sunken clouds and heard the muffled sea.
IX.
Joy far too faint and transient to revive
– As by some odour reminiscent yet
With youthful rapture potent to deprive
Fate of some vanquished hour – this joy, my debt
From centuries of meditative awe,
Had failed before her; nor could I forget
Thereof the onetime knowledge though I saw
Now night impassive, sombre, taciturn,
Yielding not joy but yielding me again
Obscurity of hope still strong to yearn
For the void dreams that hollow years retain.
X.
One moment known my being’s rapture marked
Thenceforth an alienated memory
Sweet when my will bore hope, with woe embarked
On perilous ways when sorrow menaced me;
And since illumined from my soul the world
Had once appeared all-good, by that decree
All else I spurned; for passion had been hurled
As to the brooding confines darkly girt
Whereon I gazed and on the changing sky.
Patient to find the charm that would avert
The dire threat dreaded of sweet years that die.
XI.
And though time withers, time shall ever thrive
Self-wrought to make diversion at my will,
While, creature of dead ages, I derive
All that has been, and all shall time fulfil;
And what has yielded life more life shall yield;
And I shall perish never though I still
Forget the beauties which the past revealed;
As any hour the beauty of some maid,
Receptacle of wanton love and charm,
Detaches life until such memories fade
Like ripples lost upon the level calm.
XII.
Then I arose and paced the beetling height
Expectant of desire, and while I stood
Confronting silence, from within the light
Shone thirsty for my life. My solitude
Yearned for the mirth of glittering revelry;
And then I found the flags beneath were strew’d
With gaudy petals breathing drowsily;
And from the lofty portals wafted fell
Dim harmonies of wonderment, all choice
Insatiable thereof; and o’er the swell.
Clear in the muffled music, thrilled her voice.
XIII.
And so she came to me and down lit ways,
Through glittering corridors and vestibules,
We wandered happy with a glad amaze
Amid the gathering revellers and fools,
Clowns quick with joyous folly jesting loud;
I knew that bliss which naught save pleasure rules;
And light refrains rose from the mingling crowd,
Sweet woman-laughter dulcet and unbound
To heavenward flight, deep vibrant tones and free,
Re-echoed with their movement, and the sound
Became one varying vivid symphony.
Sweet earnest of eternity of love,
Her I beheld with dazzled vision; her
Beholding, life I deemed good but to prove
My being hers, my passion lovelier
Than faith or base devotion and mine own;
She took my love and smiled with sweet demur;
Rose-petal-deep we lay, we two alone
Lulled by faint music silent or with speech
Made warm with touching lips warm as her breast
Against my skin, and her lips could beseech
Only the rapture that our love confess’d.
XV.
And love exultant, love abandoned me;
I have no need for her nor can I bear
Her murmurous kisses breathing flattery;
Her soft cool shape enrages me; her hair,
Her ravishing shape of face and breast and flank,
Belie past pride of honour, for I share
Idolatry of flesh with her who sank
Down to this pomp of barren turpitude;
And still the throbbing balmy air is rife
With dull enchantment, loud with love and feud,
And cosmic ripples billow through my life.
XVI.
And I am surfeited with happiness.
Shamed by the homage of rich joys in flight,
Revolted, faint with visions which obsess
Ambition vainly through the fervent night;
I have outstriven need, the purblind past
Gapes for my barren being while my might
Pines for the future eager to recast
This sick hour’s adamant inheritance;
And love importunate for my desire
Absorbs all hope, and in a gaudy trance
Alone I watch the glittering hours expire.
XVII.
Alone, for I have fled from her, I stand
Unawed by silence – yea, defiant I
Confront this moving reach of sea and sand
And overreaching heights of cloud and sky –
Which pause but alter ever, grim and tense –
This air, each second, only stirs to die;
But from behind all this Omnipotence
Stares ever through my nakedness and strange
Thoughts whimpering from abysms well through me
Dead where the light consumes all hope, where change
Abiding mocks me; but I cannot flee.
XVIII.
Winged harmonies have lured and captured me
And ceasing dropt me in the dead abyss
Beneath extinction, where hope lavishly
Devouring life so failed by artifice;
And while I poised my soul upon one note
Which thrilled the zenith, beneath my cowardice
Drew down my hankering to the depth remote;
Thus though I strove futility I found;
And, waking from dead slumber, fugitive
My soul has sought itself and every sound
Whereon faith clung collapsed – yet I must live.
XIX.
She came to me; her fragrant hair afleck
About her shoulders touched my lips; she hung
The burden of her arms about my neck
And, piteous as an outcast wraith among
Past opulence, she sought for life from me
With proffered vampire-love – her hot mouth clung
Athirst upon my throat despairingly;
Her chill arms trembled and her speech convulsed
Sobbed plaintively for love by right of grief,
And on my heart austere her bosom pulsed
With fearful hunger eager for relief.
XX.
And she has fallen hence forever, lost;
And never shall reluctance once retain
Thought for this amorous thing, for she has cost
My life all future will to find again
Her supple flesh mine own to love and hold,
And wine the boon to quell her coy disdain;
And as all vanished power of time is told
Within the pulsing of an instant, she
One silver glimpse is bright within me yet.
One sweetness pledged to immortality,
Which hope and life or love can ne’er forget.
XXI.
No boast of courage mine or fortitude
Or virtue, nor shall vice enthrall desire;
But I shall live so may no lore elude
Me, and my thought may grovel or aspire.
Life I shall hold, life I shall comprehend;
And though death-wearied yet I shall not tire,
For having life I change, I shall transcend
All my past will of love and reverence.
Thus only can I suffer as I must.
Thus only can I find Omnipotence;
My doubt each day shall draw more near to trust.
XXII.
And even now the night has vanished – here
The molten sunrise splashed across the wave
Fires the horizon, rugged clouds uprear
And issuing flames of gaudy brilliance lave
Long shores resplendent in the towering west.
Black far beyond where hurtling tempests rave.
And I am sickened with desires unguessed;
Enraged, disabled, patient I shall wait,
Till through the world undaunted I can fare;
And shimmering space I hear reiterate
Blank moments which repeat my void despair.
(E J Rupert Atkinson)
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