The Project Gutenberg EBook of Emblems Of Love, by Lascelles Abercrombie

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Title: Emblems Of Love

Author: Lascelles Abercrombie

Release Date: March 26, 2005 [EBook #15472]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMBLEMS OF LOVE ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, S.R. Ellison and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

EMBLEMS OF LOVE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

INTERLUDES AND POEMS

EMBLEMS OF LOVE

DESIGNED IN SEVERAL DISCOURSES BY LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

_"Wonder it is to see in diverse mindes How diversly love doth his pageaunts play"

"Ego tamquam centrum, circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiæ partes"_

TO MY WIFE

TABLE

                                  page
HYMN TO LOVE 3

PART I DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY PRELUDE 7 VASHTI 16

PART II IMPERFECTION THREE GIRLS IN LOVE: MARY: A LEGEND OF THE '45 77 JEAN 94 KATRINA 109

PART III VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION JUDITH 127 THE ETERNAL WEDDING 188

MARRIAGE SONG 200 EPILOGUE: DEDICATION 209

EMBLEMS OF LOVE

HYMN TO LOVE

We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,
    As thóu, Lóve, were the déep thóught
And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,
          Thy fires of thought out-spoken:

But burn'd not through us thy imagining
    Like fiérce móod in a sóng cáught,
We were as clamour'd words a fool may fling,
          Loose words, of meaning broken.

For what more like the brainless speech of a fool,—
    The lives travelling dark fears,
And as a boy throws pebbles in a pool
          Thrown down abysmal places?

Hazardous are the stars, yet is our birth
    And our journeying time theirs;
As words of air, life makes of starry earth
          Sweet soul-delighted faces;

As voices are we in the worldly wind;
    The great wind of the world's fate
Is turned, as air to a shapen sound, to mind
          And marvellous desires.

But not in the world as voices storm-shatter'd,
    Not borne down by the wind's weight;
The rushing time rings with our splendid word
          Like darkness filled with fires.

For Love doth use us for a sound of song,
    And Love's meaning our life wields,
Making our souls like syllables to throng
          His tunes of exultation.

Down the blind speed of a fatal world we fly,
    As rain blown along earth's fields;
Yet are we god-desiring liturgy,
          Sung joys of adoration;

Yea, made of chance and all a labouring strife,
    We go charged with a strong flame;
For as a language Love hath seized on life
          His burning heart to story.

Yea, Love, we are thine, the liturgy of thee.
    Thy thought's golden and glad name,
The mortal conscience of immortal glee,
          Love's zeal in Love's own glory.

PART I

DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY

PRELUDE

Night on bleak downs; a high grass-grown trench runs athwart the slope. The earthwork is manned by warriors clad in hides. Two warriors, BRYS and GAST, talking.

Gast.
This puts a tall heart in me, and a tune
Of great glad blood flowing brave in my flesh,
To see thee, after all these moons, returned,
My Brys. If there's no rust in thy shoulder-joints,
That battle-wrath of thine, and thy good throwing,
Will be more help for us than if the dyke
Were higher by a span.—Ha! there was howling
Down in the thicket; they come soon, for sure.

Brys. Has there been hunger in the forest long?

Gast.
I think, not only hunger makes them fierce:
They broke not long since into a village yonder,
A huge throng of them; all through the night we heard
The feasting they kept up. And that has made
The wolves blood-thirsty, I believe.

Brys.
     O fools
To keep so slack a waking on their dykes!
Now have they made a sleepless winter for us.
Every night we must look, lest the down-slope
Between us and the woods turn suddenly
To a grey onrush full of small green candles,
The charging pack with eyes flaming for flesh.
And well for us then if there's no more mist
Than the white panting of the wolfish hunger.

Gast.
They'll come to-night. Three of us hunting went
Among the trees below: not long we stayed.
All the wolves of the world are in the forest,
And man's the meat they're after.

Brys.
     Ay, it must be
Blood-thirst is in them, if they come to-night,
Such clear and starry weather.—What dost thou make,
Gast, of the stars?

Gast.
     Brother, they're horrible.
I always keep my head as much as I may
Bent so they cannot look me in the eyes.

Brys.
I never had this awe. The fear I have
Is not a load I crouch beneath, but something
Proud and wonderful, that lifteth my heart.
Yea, I look on a night of stars with fear
That comes close against glee. 'Tis like the fear
I have for the wolves, that maketh me joy-mad
To drive the yellow flint-edge through their shags.
So when I gaze on stars, they speak high fear
Into my soul; and strangely I think they mean
The fear must prompt me to some unknown war.

Gast.
Be thou well ware of this. I have not told thee
How the stars, with their perilous overlooking,
Have raught away from all his manhood Gwat,
Our fiercest strength. For when the conquering wolves
Into that village won, we in our huts
Lay hearkening to their rejoicing hunger;
But Gwat stayed out in the stars all night long.
I peered at him as much as that whipt dog,
My heart, had daring for; and he stood stiff,
With all his senses aiming at the noise.
Some strong bad eagerness kept tightly rigged
The cordage of his body, till his nerves
Loosed on a sudden. He yelled, "What do we here,
High up among bleak winds, always afraid
Of