_In_ SYLVAN'S _house_. SYLVAN _and_ KATRINA _talking to each other and betweenwhiles thinking to themselves_.

_Sylvan_.

How pleasant and beautiful it is to be At last obedient to love! (_To know Also, I've sold myself,--is that so pleasant_?)

_Katrina_.

I cannot think, why such a glorious wealth As this of love on our hearts should be spent.

What have we done, that all this gain be ours?

(_Nor can I think why my life should be mixt, Even its dearest secrecy, with another_.)

_Sylvan_.

Ay, there's the marvel! If to enter life Needed some courage, 'twere a kind of wages, As they let sacking soldiers take home loot: But we are shuffled into life like puppets Emptied out of a showman's bag; and then Made spenders of the joys current in heaven!

(_Not such a marvel neither, if this love Be but the price I'm paid for my free soul.

Who's the old trader that has lent this girl The glittering cash of pleasure to pay me with?

Who is it,--the world, or the devil, or G.o.d--that wants To buy me from myself?_)

_Katrina_.

And then how vain To think we can hold back from being enricht!

It is not only offered--

_Sylvan_.

No, 'tis a need As irresistible within our hearts As body's need of breathing. (_That I should be So avaricious of his gleaming price!_)

_Katrina_.

And the instant force it has upon us, when We think to use love as a privilege!

We are like bees that, having fed all day On mountain-heather, go to a tumbling stream To please their little honey-heated thirsts; And soon as they have toucht the singing relief, The swiftness of the water seizes them.

_Sylvan_.

And onward, sprawling and spinning, they are carried Down to a drowning pool.

_Katrina_.

O Sylvan, drowning?

(_Deeper than drowning! Why should it not be Our hearts need wish only what they delight in_?)

_Sylvan_.

Well, altogether gript by the being of love.

(_Yes, now the bargain's done; and I may wear, Like a cheated savage, scarlet dyes and strings Of beaded gla.s.s, all the pleasure of love_!)

_Katrina_.

It is a wonderful tyranny, that life Has no choice but to be delighted love!

(_I know what I must do: I am to abase My heart utterly, and have nothing in me That dare take pleasure beyond serving love.

Thus only shall I bear it; and perhaps-- Might I even of my abas.e.m.e.nt make A pa.s.sion, fearfully enjoying it_?)

_Sylvan_.

You are full of thoughts, sweetheart?

_Katrina_.

And so are you: A long while since you kist me! (_What have I said?

O fool so to remind him! I shall scarce Help crying out or shuddering this time!-- Ah no; I am again a fool! Not thus I am to do, but in my heart to break All the reluctance; it must have on me No pleasure; else I am endlessly tortured_.) Then I must kiss you, Sylvan!

[_She kisses him_.

_Sylvan_.

Ah, my darling!

(_G.o.d! it went through my flesh as thrilling sound Must shake a fiddle when the strings are s.n.a.t.c.ht!

Will she make the life in me all a slave Of my kist body,--a trembling, eager slave?

It ran like a terror to my heart, the sense, The shivering delight upon my skin, Of her lips touching me_.) My beloved,-- It may be it were wise, that we took care Our pleasant love come never in the risk Of being too much known.

_Katrina_.

O what a risk To think of here! Love is not common life, But always fresh and sweet. Can this grow stale?

[_She kisses him again_.

_Sylvan_.

O never! I meant not so.--Yes, always sweet!

(_She must not kiss me! Ah, it leaves my heart Aghast, and stopt with pain of the joy of her; And her loved body is like an agony Clinging upon me. O she must not kiss me!

I will not be a thing excruciated To please her pa.s.sion, an anguish of delight!_)

PART III

VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION

JUDITH

I

THE BESIEGED CITY OF BETHULIA

JUDITH (_at the window of an upper room of her house_).

This pitiable city!--But, O G.o.d, Strengthen me that I bend not into scorn Of all this desperate folk; for I am weak With pitying their lamentable souls.

Ah, when I hear the grief wail'd in the streets, And the same breath their tears nigh strangle, used To brag the G.o.d in them inviolate And fighting off the hands of the heathen,--Lord, Pardon me that I come so near to scorn; Pardon me, soul of mine, that I have loosed The rigour of my mind and leant towards scorn!-- Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the a.s.syrians: the town-walls Crumbling out of their masonry into mounds Of foolish earth, so smitten by the rams: The hunger-pangs, the thirst like swallowed lime Forcing them gulp green water maggot-quick That lurks in corners of dried cisterns: yea, Murders done for a drink of blood, and flesh Sodden of infants: and no hope alive Of rescue from this heat of prisoning anguish Until a.s.syrian swords drown it in death;-- These, and abandoned words like these, I hear Daylong shrill'd and groan'd in the lanes beneath.

What needeth Holofernes more? The Jews, The People of G.o.d, the Jews, lament their fortune; Their souls are violated by the world; Jewry is conquered; and the crop of men Sown for the barns of G.o.d, is withered down, Like feeblest gra.s.s flat-trodden by the sun, In one short season of fear. Yea, swords and fire Can do no more destruction on this folk: A fierce untimely mowing now befits This corn incapable of sacred bread, This field unprofitable but to flame!

What should the choice of G.o.d do for a people, But give them souls of temper to withstand The trying of the furnace of the world?-- And they are molten, and from G.o.d's device Unfashion'd, crazed in dismay; yea, G.o.d's skill Fails in them, as the skill a founder put In bra.s.s fails when the coals seize on his work.

For this fierce Holofernes and his power, This torture poured on the city, is no more Than a wild gust of wicked heat breathed out Against our G.o.d-wrought souls by the world's furnace.

No new thing, this camp about the city: Nebuchadnezzar and his hosted men But fearfully image, like a madman's dream, The fierce infection of the world, that waits To soil the clean health of the soul and mix Stooping decay into its upward nature.

Soul in the world is all besieged: for first The dangerous body doth desire it; And many subtle captains of the mind Secretly wish against its fortune; next, Circle on circle of lascivious world l.u.s.t round the foreign purity of soul For chance or violence to ravish it.

But the pure in the world are mastery.

Divinely do I know, when life is clean, How like a n.o.ble shape of golden gla.s.s The pa.s.sions of the body, powers of the mind, Chalice the sweet immortal wine of soul, That, as a purple fragrance dwells in air From vintage poured, fills the corrupting world With its own savour. And here I am alone Sound in my sweetness, incorrupt; the rest (They noise it unashamed) are stuff gone sour; The world has meddled with them. They have broacht The wine that had pleas'd G.o.d to flocking thirst Of flies and wasps, to fears and worldly sorrows.

Nay, they are poured out into the dung of the world, And drench, pollute, the fortune of their state, When they should have no fortune but themselves And the G.o.d in them, and be sealed therein.

Ah, my sweet soul, that knoweth its own sweetness, Where only love may drink, and only--alas!-- The ghost of love. But I am sweet for him, For him and G.o.d, and for my sacred self!

But hark, a troop of new woe comes this way, Making the street to ring and the stones wet With cried despair and brackish agony.