But to see and hear and touch Woman
Breaks our shell 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 Hell 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 glass 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 God'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.
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