I am more open, kinder than Lord G.o.d, Who never shows how much he has of thunder; Wherefore against him men presume, and go Often out of his ways extravagant.

But all the fear I keep obedient by me Now to the gather'd world I openly shew.

So G.o.d is spoken against, I am never, And I have a better terror in the world; And chiefly for the happiness built round me Divinely firm. O all the kings, my men, Shall fear this terrible happiness of mine!

But thee I will not shew; I'll have some wealth Not public. I'll have no adulteries, No eyes but mine enjoying thee. To me The sight of thee, all as the touch of thee, Belongeth, only my pleasure thou art: None but my senses shall come unto thee, And I will keep my pleasure pure as Heaven.

Happy art thou, Vashti, to have wedded One who so dearly rates possession of thee.

Better it is to spend my heart on thee Than on any of the women that I have.

II

THE FEAST OF KINGS: MIDNIGHT

_Ahasuerus_.

You kings, you thrones that burn about the world, Whom yet I king, lifted higher above you Than you are lifted up above your folks: This is my day. I have agreed with Heaven, My fellow in the fear of the world, to have This day unshar'd; and it is all mine, All that the G.o.ds from baseless fires and steams Have harden'd into the place and kind of the world: The great high quiet journey of the stars, And all the golden hours which the sun Utters aloft in heaven;--the whole is mine To fill with ceremonies of my throne.

This one day, I am where Heaven and I Commonly stand together; you shall not have Shelter from me in a worshipt G.o.d to-day, Kings; look yonder at many-power'd night, Telling her beauty to the sea and taking The p.r.o.ne adoring waters into her blue Desire, setting them as herself on flame With perils of joy, lending them her achieved Raptures, her white experiences of stars.

So shall your souls lie under me these hours; As they were waters shall they be beneath My burning, set alight with me, and none Escape from utterly understanding me And why I am so kindled in my soul.

Who has been like to me? My name travels A hundred seven and twenty languages, My name a ship upon them, trading fear.

My unseen power weighs upon the heads Of nations, like the blown abas.e.m.e.nt given By sedges when they are wretched to the wind.

Ay, and the farthest goings of the air Can reach no land my taxes do not labour.

The fear of me is the conscience of the world.

Ahasuerus is a region large As there is light upon the earth; when dawn With golden duties celebrates the sun, It does but serve to fetch the lives I own Out of shadow flinching into the light,-- Out of sleep's mercy the sore lives that know Only a penal sun, that are so chapt In winds of my sent spirit: I care not, I.

For as my flesh out of my father's joy Came, fraught from him with hunger for like joy,-- As, when roused ages of desire within me Play with my blood as storms play with the sea, And all my senses tug one way like sails, My flesh obeys, and into that perilous dream, Woman, exults;--so, but much more, my soul, That had its faculties from far beyond The tingling loam of flesh, obeys a need: Conquest, and nations to enjoy with war.

For 'tis a need that rode down out of G.o.d Upon my journeying soul into this world's Affairs, like smouldering fire besiegers throw Among a city's roofs, which cannot choose But take blaze from the whole town's timber; so My soul's desire for flame hath charred the world.

Till now, as the night full of perfect fires, I, full of conquests, am large over you.

And you must be like waters underneath me, Full of my burning; there's no more for me Now, but to dwell alone in my still soul's h.o.a.rding of ecstasies, a great place of l.u.s.ts Achieved and shining fixt; for every man Is mine, and every soil is mine, from here Round to the furthest cliffs that steadfast are To keep the hoofs of the sea from murdering The tilled leagues of the land. And by the coasts I am not kept. Far into the room of waters, Into the blue middle of ocean's summer, The white gait of my sea-going war invades.

I have a man here, one who makes with words, And he shall be my messenger to your hearts.

Not to make much of me; but he's the speech Of Spirit,--I the dangerous exultation, The Spirit's sacred joy in wrath against The heaps of its own spent kinds, melting anew To found in another image of itself.

He is the man to shew you, withinside The flashing and exclaim of my great moving About the places of the world; within The heat of my pleasure that has molten down, Like ingots in a furnace, all your nations Into my likeness treading on the earth; Within the smokes that make your eyes pour grief, This gleam of infinite purpose quietly nested,-- That I am given the world, and that my pleasure Is plain the latest word spoken by G.o.d.

So while our senses go among these wines, Wander in green deliciousness and crimson, And fragrance searches the else-unsearchable brain, Poet, tell out the glory of the king.

_The Poet_.

The glory of the king of all the kings.-- You with the golden power on your brows, You kings, I think you know not what you are.

First you shall learn yourselves: for neither light Understandeth itself, nor darkness light.

You see your glory; but you cannot see That which your glory conquers; and the peoples Know nought but that the glooming of their night Maketh a shining scope for crowns, as he, Even as he, your king, Ahasuerus, Maketh your splendour a darkness for his light.

But I, neither belonging to the kings Nor to the people, only I may know The golden fortune of light anointing kings.

Come with me now, and take my vision awhile.

The people of this world are misery.

What doth Man here? How thinketh G.o.d on him?

Surely he was sent here as if thereby G.o.d might forget him. Like infamous desire A wise heart puts aside, which yet remains A secret hated memory, man was In G.o.d, and is vainly discarded here.

I see him coming here; I see man's life Falling into this base and desert ground, This world that seems an evil riddance thrown Down by the winds of G.o.d's swift purposes; Some shame of grossness, that would cling upon The errand of their holy speed, and here Heapt up and strewn into the place wherein The mind and being of man wander darkly.

Behold him coming here!--Against my sight, Warning aback the gleam of sacred heaven, Is vast forbiddance raised; creatures like hills, Or darkness surging at the coasts of light, Stand, a great barricade behind our lives, Rankt as Eternity had put on stature.

The sharp sides of the peaks are finger'd white With flame, lit by the fires of G.o.d beyond; The rest is night; the whole people of dark hills A front of high impenetrable doom.

But lo!

Black in the blackness, is a yawn in the doom, And out of it flows the kind of man. Behold, It is a river, through the permission sent As through a snarling breakage in a cliff; Turned like a hated thing away from G.o.d; Spat out, the water of man's life, to spill Down bleak gullies, and thrid the gangways dark Through the reluctant hills, pouring as if It knew G.o.d were ashamed of it. And thence, Rejected down the abhorring steeps, man's life Is wasted in this country, set to run A blind, ignorant, unremembered course, Treading with hopeless feet of griev'd waters Unending unblest s.p.a.ces, the shameful road Of dirt thickening into slime its flow, An insane weather driving. For at the issue, Hovering mightily fledge to beat it on, A climate of demon's wings o'erarches man, The hatred G.o.d has sent pursuing him.

Fierce hawking spirits wrong him, hungry Cold, Crazes of Fear and sickening Want, and huge Injurious Darkness, lord of the bad wings That pester all the places beyond G.o.d,-- These at the door, with l.u.s.t to embody themselves, Wait for the naked journey of man's life To seize it into ache, ravenously.

They never leave, down all its patient way, To meddle with its waters, till they be sour As venom, salt as weeping, foully ailing With foreign evil,--all the sort of desires Whoring the shuddering life unto their l.u.s.t.

Behold man's river now; it has travelled far From that divine loathing, and it is made One with the two main fiends, the Dark and Cold, The faithful lovers of mankind. Behold, Broad it is now become, a plenteous water, A roomy tide. And lo, what oars are these?

To sweet sung measure rows what happy fleet, With at the lifted prows banners of flame, Bravely scaring the darkness to betray The black embara.s.st flood sheared by the stems?

Behold, at last G.o.d for man's misery Hath found excuse! Behold his wretchedness Gilded at last with beauty pleasant to G.o.d!

No longer a useless grief is man's life now; For floating on it, for enjoying it, A state of barges goes, the state of kings.

They bring a day with them of many lamps, And as they move, on the black slabbed waters Red wounds, and green, and golden, do they shoot About them, beautiful cruelty of light; And they throw music over the sounding river.

I too am walking on the sea of man; I watch your singing and your lamps row past; And under me I hear the river speaking, The great blind water moaning to itself For sorrow it was made. But in your blithe ships Silverly chained with luxury of tune Your senses lie, in a delicious gaol Of harmony, hours of string'd enchantment.

Or if you wake your ears for the river's voice, You hear the chime of fawning lipping water, Trodden to chattering falsehood by the keels Of kings' happiness. And what is it to you, When strangely shudders the fabric of your navy To feel the thrilling tide beneath it grieving; Or when its timber drinks the river's mood, The mighty mood of man's Despair, which runs Like subtle electric blood through all the hulls, And tips each masthead with a glimmering candle Blue pale and flickering like a ghost? For you Are too much lit to mark a corposant.

Nor yours the stale smell of the unhealthful stream, Clotted with mud and sullen with its weeds, Who carry your own air with you, blest sweet And drencht with many scattered fragrances.

You, sailing in golden ignorance, know not The anxious flow of life under your way: Do you not miss half the wonder of you?-- That so your happiness in the thought of G.o.d Stands, that he open'd man's expense of grief To give your oars unscrupulous room, to be The buoyancy of your delighted barges, Sliding with fortunate lanterns and with tunes And odorous holiday, O kings, O you The pleasure of G.o.d, richly, joyously launcht On this kind sea, the tame sorrow of Man?

You need poets to reckon your marvellousness----

_Ahasuerus_.

Where is he driving? I set thee not to this; It was to tell what I, not what they, be.

_Poet_.

How can they know what thou art, if not first I tell them what they are themselves, my king?

_Ahasuerus_.

Thou hast a night, man, not a week to tell them.

You men of words, dealers in breath, conceit Too bravely of yourselves;--O I know why You love to make man's life a villainous thing, And pose his happiness with heavy words.

You mean to puff your craft into a likeness Of what hath been in the great days of the G.o.ds.

When Tiamat, the old foul worm from h.e.l.l, Lay coiled and nested in the unmade world, All the loose stuff dragg'd with her rummaging tail And packt about her belly in a form, Where she could hutch herself and bark at Heaven,-- The G.o.d's bright soldier, Bel, fashioned a wind; And when her jaws began her whining rage Against him, into her guts he shot the wind And rent the membranes of her life. So you Wordmongers would be Bel to the life of man.

You like not that his will should heap the world About him in a fumbled den of toil; And set the strength of his spirit, not to joy, But to laborious money; so you stand forth And think with spoken wind to make such stir And rumble in the inwards of man's life, That he in a n.o.ble colic will leap up Out of his cave of work and breathe sweet air.

You will not do it: man prefers his den.

Now leave mankind alone and sing of me.

_Poet_.

So; I will tell thy glory now aright.

I will not make it thy chief wonder, King, That thou hast tied the world upon a rack; Or that thy armies be so huge, the earth Sways like a bridge of planks beneath their march, And leagues about their way out of the ground Like thunder comes the rumour of thy vengeance.

These be but shows of kingship; but one thing Exclaims, inevitably as a word Announced by G.o.d, thee first of the world's souls,-- That thou mayst have in thy arms Vashti the Queen.-- Princes, what looks are these?

Why are your minds astonisht so unwisely?

What, think you war the thing, or pompous fame?

See if I speak not truth of love and woman.

You will have heard how lightning's struck a man, Shepherd or wayfarer, and when they found The branded corpse, the rayment was torn off, Blown into tatters and strewn wide by that Withering death, and he birth-naked stretcht: Bethink you, is not that now very like How woman smites your souls? Whatever dress Of thought you take to royalize your nature,-- Gorgeous shawls of kingship, a world's fear, Or ample weavings of imagination, Or the spun light of wisdom,--like a gust Of flame, that weather of impersonal thought You strut beneath, that hanging storm of Love, Strikes down a terrible swift dazzling finger, Sight of some woman, on your clothed hearts, And plucks the winding folly off, and leaves Bare nature there. And hear another likeness.

Look, if the priests have made an altar-fire, They can have any flame they list, as gums Sprinkle the fluel, or salts, or curious earths,-- Tawny or purple, green, scarlet, or blue, Or moted with an upward rain of sparks; But first there must be air, or else no fire: Man's being is a fire lit unto G.o.d, And many thoughts colour the sacred flame; But the air for him, the draught wherein he glows, The breathing spirit that has turned mere life Into the hot vehement being of man Lambent upon the altar of the world, Is woman and desire of her, nought else.

Behold, we know not what we do at all When we love women: is it we who love, Or Destiny rather visiting our souls In pa.s.sion?--How shall I name thee what thou art, Woman, thou dream of man's desire that G.o.d Caught out of man's first sleep and fashioned real?

Deliverance art thou from his own strait thought, Wind come from beyond the stars To blow away like mist all the disgrace Of reasonable bars, The forgery of time and place, Whereinto soul was narrowly brought When it was gridded close behind The workings of man's mind.

But Woman comes to bless With an immoderateness, With a divine excess, l.u.s.t of life and yearn of flesh, Till there seems naught hindering our souls: Else we should crawl along the years Labour'd with measurable joys No greater than our life, Things carefully devised against tears; And as snails harden their sweat To brittle safety, a carried sh.e.l.l, So we might build out of our woe of toil Serious delight.

But to see and hear and touch Woman Breaks our sh.e.l.l of this accursed world, And turns our measured days to measureless gleam.

Up in a sudden burning flares The dark tent of nature pitched about our souls; And light, like a stound of golden din, A shadowless light like weather of infinite plains, Light not narrowed into place, Amazes the naked nerves of the soul; And like the pouring of immortal airs Out of a flowery season, Over us blows the inordinate desire.-- Ah, who from h.e.l.l did the wisdom bring That would make life a formal thing?

Who has invented all the manner and wont, The customary ways, That harness into evil scales Of malady our living?

But how they shrivel and craze If love but glance on them!

And as a bowl of gla.s.s to shattering Shivers at a sounding string, The brittle glittering self of man At beauty of Woman throbs apieces, And seems into Eternity spilled The being it contained.

Let it touch Woman and flesh becomes Finer and more thrilled Than air contrived in tune, Lighter round the soul Than flame is round burning.

She is G.o.d's bribery to man That he the world endure, His wage for carrying the weight of being.

Nay, she is rather the eternal lure Out of form and things that end, Out of all the starry snares, Out of the trap of years, Into measureless desire; Lest man be satisfied with mind,-- Be never stung into self-hate At crouching always in the crate Of prudent knowledge round him wrought, And so grow small as his own thought.

Kings, think of the woman's body you love best How the beloved lines twin and merge, Go into rhyme and differ, swerve and kiss, Relent to hollows or like yearning pout,-- Curves that come to wondrous doubt Or smooth into simplicities; Like a skill of married tunes Curdled out of the air; How it is all sung delivering magic To your pent hamper'd souls!

I tell you, kings, yours are but stammer'd songs To that enchantment fashion'd for him, That ceremony of life's powers, The loveliness of Vashti; That unbelievable worship made For King Ahasuerus.

He to whom the loveliest she is given, Least is bound to ended things, Belongeth most on earth to Heaven; Hath the whitest wind of flame To burn his soul clean of the world, Clean of mortal imaginings, And back to the Beauty whence he came.

Now you hear the glory of the king of kings, That he knows Vashti, that he lives In this pleasure always.

Ah, could you see her! But perhaps she is Too fearful in her beauty for most men.

I think she would dismay you, and unhitch The sinews from their purchase on your bones, And have you spelled as a wizard spells his ghosts.

Yet 'twould be mercy so to harm your sense.

The truth does not more wonderfully walk, Whose gestures are the stars, than in her ways This queen's body sways.