Emblems Of Love

HE

Shall life do more than God? for hath not God

Striven with himself, when into known delight

His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth,—

This mystery of a world sign of his striving?

Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind

With labouring in the wonder of it, that here

Being—the world and we—is suffered to be!—

But, lying on thy breast one notable day,

Sudden exceeding agony of love

Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge.

I was not: yet I saw the will of God

As light unfashion’d, unendurable flame,

Interminable, not to be supposed;

And there was no more creature except light,—

The dreadful burning of the lonely God’s

Unutter’d joy. And then, past telling, came

Shuddering and division in the light:

Therein, like trembling, was desire to know

Its own perfect beauty; and it became

A cloven fire, a double flaming, each

Adorable to each; against itself

Waging a burning love, which was the world;—

A moment satisfied in that love-strife

I knew the world!—And when I fell from there,

Then knew I also what this life would do

In being twin,—in being man and woman!

For it would do even as its endless Master,

Making the world, had done; yea, with itself

Would strive, and for the strife would into sex

Be cloven, double burning, made thereby

Desirable to itself. Contrivèd joy

Is sex in life; and by no other thing

Than by a perfect sundering, could life

Change the dark stream of unappointed joy

To perfect praise of itself, the glee that loves

And worships its own Being. This is ours!

Yet only for that we have been so long

Sundered desire: thence is our life all praise.—

But we, well knowing by our strength of joy

There is no sundering more, how far we love

From those sad lives that know a half-love only,

Alone thereby knowing themselves for ever

Sealed in division of love, and therefore made

To pour their strength always into their love’s

Fierceness, as green wood bleeds its hissing sap

Into red heat of a fire! Not so do we:

The cloven anger, life, hath left to wage

Its flame against itself, here turned to one

Self-adoration.—Ah, what comes of this?

The joy falters a moment, with closed wings

Wearying in its upward journey, ere

Again it goes on high, bearing its song,

Its delight breathing and its vigour beating

The highest height of the air above the world.