The House of the Titans and other Poems

She passed by, shadowing the shining waters, Noble and naiad-like her image, purpled Against the sunblaze. As she wandered on The old heart-sickness for beauty came upon me, Because that imagination of her I had Might shine on heaven or earth, be interlinked With those pure, grave-eyed, immortal dawn-maidens And glow unfading by them. It might be The light of some long night in time; that beauty Bowed to such sorrow that the soul beholding From its transfiguring anguish must be born Pure flame, as if it had known for itself Of cross, of passion and the martyr's pyre. And as from flowers that are invisible Fragrance is blown, so from the vanished image Fancies came thick, heart-troubling, honey-rich. And I had woven my own enchantment then And become slave to it. But remembrance came. There had been nothing seen, nothing at all But a radiant shadow in a blur of light. Was it all self-begotten fantasy? O agony of uncomprehended being That I might never know why those divine Dawn-maidens with so pure a lustre dwelt For an Instant within me. Or why I dreamed A martyrdom of innocent heroic youth; Why an heart-aching love. O did her spirit Carry in secret all its history, Its starry dynasties from heaven to earth? Was it whispered into my spirit in passing? Did I imagine all from my own depths? Is there a summit of being where the spirit, An undraped fire, flashes its fire within All other spirits, withholding nothing? Are Our secret exaltations, ecstasies, The loves more intimate than earth has given, The martyrdoms as dark as Calvary, Are they all born in that intensity Of innumerable, interlinked being? Is it because there nothing is withheld And we are made richer by dream than life, Our deepest love is given unto beauty We have never seen, to lips we have never Kissed nor heard in confession of love? O might it be that in those reveries, The moralist calls idle, there is wisdom More precious than their virtue distils for us! Our imaginations may be but flakes of fire That drift upon us from the burning clouds About a being that knows the innermost beat Of every heart. Was it from that exhaustless Secret well the soul of Shakespeare drew To give us creatures that are not of himself? O could our idleness grow to such virtue! Our lonely reverie break into multitude! How unwavering the will, how stern the heart, To receive unbroken all that revelation, The being of many risen within our own! I tremble, fearful at the first glowing of The magic-lovely, dragon-haunted air, Where all beauty is shadowed by its demon, And we are at once blessed and betrayed. O child, who set my thoughts flying so far, The ripples from thy passing feet have spread, Not dying away, but gathering power to cast Me heavenward, dizzy on their foam of light, To beat at blazing gates, to cry on the Innermost To know why I am so shaken by a shadow: Not even a face seen, no heart-troubling eyes, Only some wonder I imagined dwelling In a radiant shadow in a blur of light.