COVENTRY PATMORE 
 
 COLLECTION 
 
 Gift Of 
 
 Mrs. Edward C. Donnelly 
 




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 SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, 
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I meant to have extended and developed this 
 series of Odes until they formed an integral work, 
 expressing an idea which I have long had at 
 heart; but feelings which are partly conveyed by 
 the concluding Piece have discouraged me from 
 fulfilling my intention, and I now print these 
 fragments of the proposed Poem for private dis¬ 
 tribution among the few persons who are likely to 
 care for them as they stand. 
 
 C. P., Old Lands, Uckfield, 
 April llth , 1868. 
 

 
 
I. 
 
 Ponder, ye Just, the scoffs that frequent go 
 From forth the foe: 
 
 “The holders of the Truth in Verity 
 
 Are people of a harsh and stammering tongue! 
 
 The hedge-flower hath its song; 
 
 Meadow and tree, 
 
 Water, and wandering cloud 
 Find seers who see. 
 
8 
 
 And, with, convincing music clear and loud, 
 
 Startle the adder-deafness of the crowd 
 By tones, O Love, from thee. 
 
 Views of the unveil’d heavens alone forthbring 
 Prophet that cannot sing, 
 
 Praise that in chiming numbers will not run; 
 
 At least, from David until Dante none. 
 
 And none since him. 
 
 Fish, and not swim? 
 
 They think they somehow should, and so they try; 
 But, haply ’tis they screw the pitch too high, 
 
 ’Tis still their fates 
 
 To warble tunes that nails might draw from slates. 
 Poor Seraphim ! 
 
 They mean to spoil our sleep and do, hut all their 
 gains 
 
 Are curses for their pains !” 
 
 Now, who but knows 
 
9 
 
 That truth to learn from foes 
 Is wisdom ripe. 
 
 Therefore no longer let us stretch our throats 
 
 Till hoarse as frogs 
 
 With straining after notes 
 
 Wliich but to touch would burst an organ-pipe. 
 
 Far better be dumb dogs. 
 
II. 
 
 Op infinite Heaven the rays 
 
 Piercing some eyelet in our cavern black, 
 
 Ended their viewless track, 
 
 On thee to smite, 
 
 Solely, as on a diamond stalactite, 
 
 And in mid-darkness lit a rainbow’s blaze, 
 Wherein the absolute Reason, Power, and Love, 
 That erst could move 
 
11 
 
 Mainly in me but mortal weariness. 
 Renounced their deadening might. 
 Renounced their undistinguishable stress 
 Of withering white, 
 
 And did with gladdest hues my spirit caress, 
 Nothing of Heaven in thee shewing infinite, 
 Save the delight. 
 
III. 
 
 The stony rock of death’s insensibility 
 Well’d yet awhile with honey of thy love, 
 
 And then was dry; 
 
 Nor could thy picture, nor thine empty glove, 
 Nor all thy kind, long letters, nor the band 
 Which really spann’d 
 Thy body chaste and warm, 
 
 Henceforward move 
 
13 
 
 Upon the stony rock their wearied charm. 
 
 At last, then, thou wert dead. 
 
 Yet would I not despair, 
 
 But wrought my daily task, and daily said 
 Many and many a fond, unfeeling prayer. 
 
 To keep my vows of faith to thee from harm. 
 In vain; 
 
 “ For ’tis,” I said, “ all one, 
 
 “The wilful faith, which has no joy or pain, 
 “As if Twere none.” 
 
 Then look’d I miserably round 
 
 If aught of duteous love were left undone. 
 
 And nothing found. 
 
 But, kneeling in a Church, one Easter-Day, 
 It came to me to say : 
 
 “Though there is no intelligible rest,’ 
 
 “ In Earth or Heaven, 
 
 “ For me, but on her breast. 
 
14 
 
 
 “ I yield her up, again to have her given, 
 
 “ Or not, as. Lord, thou wilt, and that for aye.” 
 And the same night, in slumber lying, 
 
 I, who had dream’d of thee, as sad and sick and 
 dying, 
 
 And only so, nightly for all one year, 
 
 Lid thee, my own most Dear, 
 
 Possess, 
 
 In gay, celestial beauty nothing coy, 
 
 And felt thy soft caress 
 
 With heretofore unknown reality of joy. 
 
 But, in our mortal air. 
 
 None thrives for long upon the happiest dream. 
 And fresh despair 
 
 Bade me seek round afresh for some extreme 
 Of unconceiv’d interior sacrifice. 
 
 Whereof the smoke might rise 
 
 To God, and ’mind him that one pray’d below. 
 
 
15 
 
 And so, 
 
 In agony, I cried : 
 
 “ My Lord, if thy strange will be this, 
 
 “ That I should crucify my heart, 
 
 “ Because my love has also been my pride, 
 
 “ I do consent, if I saw how, to bliss 
 “ Wherein She has no part.” 
 
 And I was heard, 
 
 And taken at my own remorseless word. 
 
 0, my most Dear, 
 
 Another wears thy ring upon her hand. 
 
 Was’t treason, as I fear ? 
 
 ’Twere that, and worse, to plead ’twas thy command, 
 Kissing thy babes, and murmuring in mine ear: 
 
 “ It is thy duty, and thou canst not be 
 “ Faithful to God, and faithless unto me.” 
 
 Ah; prophet kind ! 
 
 I heard, all dumb and blind 
 
 B 
 
16 
 
 With tears of protest; and I cannot see 
 But faith was broken. Yet, as I have said, 
 
 My heart was dead, 
 
 Dead of devotion and tired memory, 
 
 When a strange grace of thee 
 In a fair stranger, as I take it, bred 
 To her some tender heed. 
 
 Unmeant by me; 
 
 Unmeant by me, yet such 
 
 That the pale reflex of an alien love 
 
 So vaguely, sadly shewn, 
 
 Did her heart touch 
 Above 
 
 All that, till then, had woo’d her for its own. 
 And so the fear, which is love’s chilly dawn, 
 Flush’d faintly upon lids that droop’d like thine, 
 And made me weak, 
 
 By thy delusive likeness doubly drawn, 
 

 17 
 
 And Nature's long suspended breath of flame 
 Persuading soft, and whispering Duty's name. 
 Awhile to smile and speak 
 With this thy sister sweet, and therefore mine; 
 Thy sister sweet, 
 
 Who bade the wheels to stir 
 Of sensitive delight in the poor brain. 
 
 Dead of devotion and tired memory, 
 
 So that I lived again, 
 
 And, strange to aver, 
 
 With no relapse into the void inane. 
 
 For thee, 
 
 But (treason was't ?) for thee and also her. 
 
 I woo’d her with thy praises, and I won 
 With protestations of my love for thee; 
 
 And, by her answering kindness for the name 
 Of thee, her Rival, she became 
 Thine own. 
 
 b 2 
 
18 
 
 Less kind than she could’st thou entreat her, Dear, 
 In thy expectant sphere, 
 
 If, loving thine and mine and thee and me, 
 
 There 'twere adjudged her right with us to be ? 
 Twain is the mind of love, ev’n as the mood 
 Of stars is solitude. 
 
 And yet the learned lonely watcher views 
 A twofold, sometimes, or a triple star, 
 
 Strange in the crowd of shinings singular.— 
 
 But, oh, my Love, 
 
 No more will I amuse 
 
 My doubting heart with verse of vain excuse. 
 
 Let holy Law the theme be of all Song; 
 
 And let the seldom and excepted case. 
 
 If such it prove, 
 
 (That none, my way misquoting, travel wrong), 
 Walk silent, with veil’d face. 
 
 Contented best to be accounted base. 
 
IY. 
 
 Heroic Good, target for which the young 
 Dream in their dreams that every how is strung. 
 And, missing, sigh 
 Unfruitful, or as disbelievers die, 
 
 Thee having miss’d, I will not so revolt, 
 
 But lowlier shoot my holt, 
 
 And lowlier still, if still I may not reach, 
 
 And my proud stomach teach 
 
20 
 
 That less than highest is good and may be high. 
 An even walk in life's uneven way. 
 
 Though to have dreamt of flight and not to fly 
 Be strange and sad. 
 
 Is not a boon that's given to all who pray. 
 
 If this I had 
 I'd envy none! 
 
 Nay, trod I straight for one 
 Year, month, or week, 
 
 Should Heaven withdraw, and Satan me amerce 
 Of power and joy, still would I seek 
 Another victory with a like reverse ; 
 
 Because the good of victory does not die, 
 
 As dies the failure's curse, 
 
 And what we have to gain 
 
 Is, not one battle, but a weary life's campaign. 
 
 Yet meaner lot being sent 
 
 Should more than me content. 
 
Yea, if I lie 
 
 Among vile shards, though born for silver wings, 
 In the strong flight and feathers gold 
 Of whatsoever heavenward mounts and sings 
 I must by admiration so comply 
 That there I shall my own delight behold. 
 
 Yea, though I sin each day times seven, 
 
 And dare not lift the fearfullest eyes to Heaven, 
 Thanks must I give 
 
 Because that seven times was not eight or nine, 
 And that my darkness is all mine, 
 
 And that I live 
 
 Within this oak-shade one more minute even, 
 Hearing the winds their Maker magnify. 
 
O Pain, Love's mystery. 
 
 Close next of kin 
 
 To joy and heart's delight. 
 
 Low Pleasure's opposite, 
 
 Choice food of sanctity 
 And medicine of sin, 
 
 Angel, whom even they that will 
 Pleasure with hell's whole gust 
 
23 
 
 Find that they must 
 Perversely woo, 
 
 My lips, thy live coal touching, speak thee true. 
 Thou sear’st my flesh, O Pain, 
 
 But brand’st for arduous peace my languid brain, 
 And bright’nest my dull view, 
 
 Till I, for blessing, blessing give again, 
 
 And my roused spirit is 
 Another fire of bliss. 
 
 Wherein I learn 
 
 Feelingly how the pangful purging fire 
 
 Shall furiously burn 
 
 With joy, not only of assured desire, 
 
 But also present joy 
 
 Of seeing the life’s corruption, stain by stain. 
 Vanish in the clear heat of love irate, 
 
 And, fume by fume, the sick alloy 
 Of luxury, sloth, and hate 
 
24 
 
 Evaporate; 
 
 Leaving the man, so dark ere while, 
 
 The mirror merely of God's smile. 
 
 Herein, O Pain, abides the praise 
 For which my Song I raise ; 
 
 But even the bastard good of intermittent ease 
 How greatly doth it please ! 
 
 With what repose 
 
 The being from its bright exertion glows 
 When from thy strenuous storm the senses sweep 
 Into a little harbour deep 
 Of rest; 
 
 When thou, O Pain, 
 
 Having devour’d the nerves that thee sustain, 
 Sleep’st, till thy tender food be somewhat grown 
 again; 
 
 And how the lull 
 
 With tear-blind love is full! 
 
 
 
25 
 
 What mockery of a man am I express’ d. 
 That I should wait for thee 
 To woo ! 
 
 Nor even dare to love, till thou lov’st me. 
 How shameful, too, 
 
 Is this; 
 
 That, when thou lov’st, I am at first afraid 
 Of thy fierce kiss'; 
 
 Like a young maid; 
 
 And only trust thy charms 
 And get my courage in thy throbbing arms. 
 And, when thou partest, what a fickle mind 
 Thou leav’st behind. 
 
 That, being a little absent from mine eye. 
 
 It straight forgets thee what thou art. 
 
 And ofttimes my adulterate heart 
 Dallies with Pleasure, thy pale enemy. 
 
 0, for the learned spirit without attaint 
 
26 
 
 That does not faint. 
 
 But knows both how to have thee and to lack, 
 And ventures many a spell. 
 
 Unlawful but for them that love so well, 
 
 To call thee back. 
 
Not greatly moved with awe am I 
 
 To learn that we may spy 
 
 Four thousand firmaments beyond our own. 
 
 The little that is known 
 
 Of the heavenly bodies does them credit small. 
 View’d close, the moon’s fair ball 
 Is of ill objects worst, 
 
 A corpse in night’s highway, naked, fire-scarr’d, 
 accurst; 
 
28 
 
 And now they tell 
 
 That the sun is plainly seen to boil and burst 
 Too horribly for hell. 
 
 So, judging from these two, 
 
 As we must do. 
 
 The universe, outside our living Earth, 
 
 Devised was, in the Creator’s mirth. 
 Forecasting, at the time, Man’s spirit deep, 
 
 To make dirt cheap. 
 
 Put by the telescope ! 
 
 Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye 
 The things which near us lie. 
 
 Till Science rapturously hails. 
 
 In the minutest water-drop, 
 
 A torment of innumerable tails. 
 
 These at the least do live. 
 
 But rather give 
 A mind not much to pry 
 
29 
 
 Beyond Man's royal-fair estate 
 Betwixt these desarts blank of small and great. 
 Wonder and beauty our own courtiers are, 
 Pressing to catch our gaze. 
 
 And out of obvious ways 
 Ne'er wandering far. 
 
VII. 
 
 Love, light for me 
 
 Thy ruddiest blazing torch, 
 
 That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch 
 Of the glad Palace of Virginity, 
 
 May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see 
 For, crown’d with roses all, 
 
 ’Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival! 
 But first warn off the beatific spot 
 
31 
 
 Those, wretched, who have not 
 Even afar beheld the shining wall. 
 
 And those who, once beholding, have forgot, 
 And those, most vile, who dress 
 The charnel spectre drear 
 Of utterly dishallow'd nothingness 
 In that refulgent fame, 
 
 And cry, Lo, here ! 
 
 And name 
 
 The Lady whose smiles inflame 
 The sphere. 
 
 Bring, Love, anear. 
 
 And bid be not afraid 
 
 Young lover true, and love-foreboding maid, 
 And wedded spouse, if virginal of thought; 
 For I will sing of nought 
 Less sweet to hear 
 Than seems 
 
 c 
 
32 
 
 A music in their half-remember’d dreams. 
 
 The magnet calls the steel. 
 
 Answers the iron to the magnet’s breath, 
 
 What do they feel 
 But death ! 
 
 The clouds of summer kiss in flame and rain, 
 And are not found again; 
 
 But the heavens themselves eternal are with fire 
 Of unapproach’d desire, 
 
 By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest, 
 In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess’d. 
 
 O, spousals high! 
 
 O, doctrine blest, 
 
 Unutterable in even the happiest sigh; 
 
 This know ye all 
 Who can recall 
 
 With what a welling of indignant tears 
 Love’s simpleness first hears 
 
 
33 
 
 The meaning of his mortal covenant, 
 
 And from what pride comes down 
 To wear the crown 
 
 Of which 'twas very heaven to feel the want. 
 How envies he the ways 
 Of yonder hopeless star. 
 
 And so would laugh and yearn 
 With trembling lids eterne, 
 
 Ineffably content from infinitely far 
 Only to gaze 
 
 On his bright Mistress's responding rays, 
 That never know eclipse; 
 
 And, once in his long year, 
 
 With prseternuptial ecstacy and fear, 
 
 By the delicious law of that ellipse 
 Wherein all citizens of ether move. 
 
 With hastening pace to come 
 Nearer, though never near, 
 c 2 
 
34 
 
 His Love, 
 
 And always inaccessible sweet Home, 
 
 There on his path doubly to burn, 
 
 Kiss’d by her doubled light, 
 
 That whispers of its source, 
 
 The ardent secret ever clothed with Night; 
 Then go forth in new force 
 Towards a new return. 
 
 Rejoicing as a Bridegroom on his course ! 
 
 This know ye all; 
 
 Therefore gaze bold, 
 
 That so in you be joyful hope increased, 
 Thorough the Palace portals, and behold 
 The dainty and unsating Marriage-Feast. 
 
 O, hear 
 
 Them singing clear 
 
 “ Cor meum et caro mea ” round the “ I Am,” 
 The Husband of the Heavens, and the Lamb 
 
35 
 
 Whom they for ever follow there that kept, 
 
 Or, losing, never slept 
 
 Till they reconquer’d had, in mortal fight, 
 
 The standard white. 
 
 0, hear 
 
 From the harps they bore from Earth, five-strung, 
 what music springs, 
 
 While the glad spirits chide 
 The wondering strings ! 
 
 And how the shining sacrificial choirs. 
 
 Offering for aye their dearest heart’s desires. 
 Which to their hearts come back beatified. 
 
 Hymn, the bright aisles along. 
 
 The new and ever new to us and them 
 And nuptial song, 
 
 “ Hail, Virgin in Virginity a Spouse V 3 
 Heard first below, 
 
 Within the little house 
 
36 
 
 At Bethlehem; 
 
 Heard yet, in many a cell where Brides of Christ 
 Lie hid, emparadised, 
 
 And where, although, 
 
 By the hour, 'tis night, 
 
 There's light, 
 
 The Day still lingering in the lap of snow. 
 
 Gaze and be not afraid 
 
 Ye wedded few that honour, in sweet thought 
 And glittering will, 
 
 So freshly from the garden gather still, 
 
 The lily sacrificed; 
 
 For ye, though self-suspected here for nought, 
 
 Are highly styled 
 
 With the thousands twelve times twelve of un¬ 
 defiled. 
 
 Gaze and be not afraid 
 
 Young lover true, and love-foreboding maid. 
 
 

 37 
 
 The full noon of deific vision bright 
 Abashes nor abates 
 
 No spark minute of Nature’s keen delight. 
 
 ’Tis there your Hymen waits ! 
 
 There where in courts afar, all unconfused, they 
 crowd, 
 
 As fumes the starlight soft 
 In gulfs of cloud, 
 
 And each to the kindling other, well-content, 
 Sighs oft 
 
 “ ’Twas this we meant.” 
 
 Gaze without blame 
 
 Ye in whom living Love yet blushes for dead 
 shame. 
 
 There of pure Virgins none 
 Is fairer seen, 
 
 Save One, 
 
 Than Mary Magdalene. 
 
38 
 
 Gaze without doubt or fear 
 Ye to whom generous Love, by any name, is dear. 
 Love makes the life to be 
 A fount perpetual of virginity ; 
 
 For, lo, the Elect 
 
 Of generous Love, how named soe’er, affect 
 Nothing but God, 
 
 Or mediate or direct. 
 
 Nothing but God, 
 
 The Husband of the Heavens, 
 
 And who Him love, in potence great or small, 
 
 Are, one and all, 
 
 Heirs of the Palace glad. 
 
 And inly clad 
 
 With the bridal robes of ardour virginal. 
 
VIII. 
 
 “ Thou dost not wisely, Bard. 
 
 A double voice is Truth's, to use at will : 
 One, with the abysmal scorn of good for ill. 
 Smiting the brutish ear with doctrine hard, 
 Wherein She strives to look as near a lie 
 As can comport with her divinity ; 
 
 The other tender-soft as seem 
 
 The embraces of a dead Love in a dream. 
 
40 
 
 These thoughts, which you have sung 
 In the vernacular. 
 
 Should be, as others of the Church’s are, 
 Decently cloak’d in the Imperial Tongue. 
 
 Have you no fears 
 
 Lest, as Lord Jesus bids your sort to dread, 
 Yon acorn-munchers rend you limb from limb, 
 You, with Heaven’s liberty affronting theirs !” 
 So spoke my monitor, but I to him, 
 
 “ Alas, and is not mine a language dead ?” 
 

 IX. 
 
 In the Year of the great Crime, 
 
 When the false English nobles and their Jew, 
 
 By God demented, slew 
 
 The Trust they stood thrice pledged to keep from 
 wrong, 
 
 One said. Take up thy Song, 
 
 That breathes the mild and almost mythic time 
 Of England's prime ! 
 
42 
 
 But I, Ah, me, 
 
 The freedom of the few 
 
 That, in our free Land, were indeed the free. 
 
 Can song renew ? 
 
 Ill singing ’tis with blotting prison-bars. 
 
 How high soever, betwixt us and the stars; 
 
 Ill singing ’tis when there are none to hear; 
 
 And days are near 
 
 When England shall forget 
 
 The fading glow which, for a little while. 
 
 Illumes her yet, 
 
 The lovely smile 
 
 That grows so faint and wan, 
 
 Her people shouting in her dying ear. 
 
 Are not jays twain worth two of any swan ! 
 Harsh words and brief asks the dishonour’d Year: 
 Ye outlaw’d Best, who yet are bright 
 
 With the sunken light. 
 
43 
 
 Whose common style 
 Is Virtue at her gracious ease, 
 
 The flower of olden sanctities. 
 
 Ye haply trust by love’s benignant guile, 
 
 To lure the dark and selfish brood 
 To their own hated good; 
 
 Ye haply dream 
 
 Your lives shall still their charmful sway sustain, 
 TJnstifled by the fever’d steam 
 That rises from the plain. 
 
 Know, ’twas the force of function high, 
 
 In corporate exercise, and public awe 
 Of Nature’s, Heaven’s and England’s Law 
 That Best, though mix’d with Bad, should reign, 
 Which kept you in your sky ! 
 
 But, when the sordid Trader caught 
 
 The loose-held sceptre from your hands distraught, 
 
 And soon, to the Mechanic vain, 
 
1 
 
 44 
 
 Sold the proud toy for nought, 
 
 Your charm was sapp'd, your task was sped, 
 
 Your beauty, with your honour, dead, 
 
 And though you still are dreaming sweet 
 Of being even now no less 
 
 Than gods and goddesses, ye shall not long so cheat 
 Your hearts of their due heaviness. 
 
 Go, get you for your evil watching shriven ! 
 
 Leave to your lawful Master's itching hands 
 Your unking’d lands, 
 
 But keep, at least, the dignity 
 Of deigning not, for his smooth use, to he, 
 Yoteless, the voted delegates 
 Of his strange interests, loves, and hates. 
 
 In sackcloth, or in private strife 
 With private ill, ye may please Heaven, 
 
 And soothe the coming pangs of sinking life ; 
 
 And prayer perchance may win 
 
45 
 
 A term to God’s indignant mood. 
 
 And the orgies of the multitude. 
 
 Which now begin; 
 
 But do not hope to wave the silken rag 
 Of your unsanction’d flag, 
 
 And so to guide 
 
 The great ship, helmless on the swelling tide 
 Of that presumptuous sea. 
 
 Unlit by sun or moon, yet inly bright 
 With lights innumerable, that give no light, 
 Flames of corrupted will and scorn of right 
 Rejoicing to be free. 
 
 And now, because the dark comes on apace, 
 When none can work for fear. 
 
 And Liberty in every Land lies slain. 
 
 And the two Tyrannies, unchallenged, reign. 
 And heavy prophecies, suspended long 
 At supplication of the righteous few. 
 
46 
 
 And so discredited, to fulfilment throng, 
 Restrain'd no more by faithful prayer or tear, 
 
 And the dread baptism of blood seems near 
 That brings to tbe humbled Earth the Time of 
 Grace, 
 
 Hush'd be all song, 
 
 And let Christ's own look through 
 The darkness, suddenly increased. 
 
 To the grey secret lingering in the East. 
 

 


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