By Algernon Charles Swinburne
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an
hour;
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
Red mouth like a venomous
flower;
When these are gone by with their glories,
What shall rest of thee
then, what remain,
O mystic and sombre Dolores,
Our Lady of
Pain?
Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin;
But thy sins, which
are seventy times seven,
Seven ages would fail thee to purge in,
And then
they would haunt thee in heaven:
Fierce midnights and famishing
morrows,
And the loves that complete and control
All the joys of the
flesh, all the sorrows
That wear out the soul.
O garment not golden
but gilded,
O garden where all men may dwell,
O tower not of ivory, but
builded
By hands that reach heaven from hell;
O mystical rose of the
mire,
O house not of gold but of gain,
O house of unquenchable
fire,
Our Lady of Pain!
O lips full of lust and of laughter,
Curled
snakes that are fed from my breast,
Bite hard, lest remembrance come
after
And press with new lips where you pressed.
For my heart too springs
up at the pressure,
Mine eyelids too moisten and burn;
Ah, feed me and
fill me with pleasure,
Ere pain come in turn.
In yesterday's reach and
to-morrow's,
Out of sight though they lie of to-day,
There have been and
there yet shall be sorrows
That smite not and bite not in play.
The life
and the love thou despisest,
These hurt us indeed, and in vain,
O wise
among women, and wisest,
Our Lady of Pain.
Who gave thee thy wisdom?
what stories
That stung thee, what visions that smote?
Wert thou pure and
a maiden, Dolores,
When desire took thee first by the throat?
What bud was
the shell of the blossom
That all men may smell to and pluck?
What milk
fed thee first at what bosom?
What sins gave thee suck?
We shift and
bedeck and bedrape us,
Thou art noble and nude and antique;
Libitina thy
mother, Priapus
Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek.
We play with light loves
in the portal,
And wince and relent and refrain;
Loves die, and we know
thee immortal,
Our Lady of Pain.
Fruits fail and love dies and time
ranges;
Thou art fed with perpetual breath,
And alive after infinite
changes,
And fresh from the kisses of death;
Of languours rekindled and
rallied,
Of barren delights and unclean,
Things monstrous and fruitless, a
pallid
And poisonous queen.
Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I
hurt you?
Men touch them, and change in a trice
The lilies and languours
of virtue
For the raptures and roses of vice;
Those lie where thy foot on
the floor is,
These crown and caress thee and chain,
O splendid and
sterile Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain.
There are sins it may be to
discover,
There are deeds it may be to delight.
What new work wilt thou
find for thy lover,
What new passions for daytime or night?
What spells
that they know not a word of
Whose lives are as leaves overblown?
What
tortures undreamt of, unheard of,
Unwritten, unknown?
Ah beautiful
passionate body
That never has ached with a heart!
On thy mouth though the
kisses are bloody,
Though they sting till it shudder and smart,
More kind
than the love we adore is,
They hurt not the heart or the brain,
O bitter
and tender Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain.
As our kisses relax and
redouble,
From the lips and the foam and the fangs
Shall no new sin be
born for men's trouble,
No dream of impossible pangs?
With the sweet of
the sins of old ages
Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore?
Too sweet is
the rind, say the sages,
Too bitter the core.
Hast thou told all thy
secrets the last time,
And bared all thy beauties to one?
Ah, where shall
we go then for pastime,
If the worst that can be has been done?
But sweet
as the rind was the core is;
We are fain of thee still, we are fain,
O
sanguine and subtle Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain.
By the hunger of change
and emotion
By the thirst of unbearable things,
By despair, the twin-born
of devotion
By the pleasure that winces and stings,
The delight that
consumes the desire,
The desire that outruns the delight,
By the cruelty
deaf as a fire
And blind as the night,
By the ravenous teeth that have
smitten
Through the kisses that blossom and bud,
By the lips intertwisted
and bitten
Till the foam has a savour of blood,
By the pulse as it rises
and falters,
By the hands as they slacken and strain,
I adjure thee,
respond from thine altars,
Our Lady of Pain.
Wilt thou smile as a
woman disdaining
The light fire in the veins of a boy?
But he comes to
thee sad, without feigning,
Who has wearied of sorrow and joy;
Less
careful of labour and glory
Than the elders whose hair has uncurled;
And
young, but with fancies as hoary
And grey as the world.
I have passed
from the outermost portal
To the shrine where a sin is a prayer;
What care
though the service be mortal?
O our Lady of Torture, what care?
All thine
the last wine that I pour is,
The last in the chalice we drain,
O fierce
and luxurious Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain.
All thine the new wine of
desire,
The fruit of four lips as they clung
Till the hair and the eyelids
took fire,
The foam of a serpentine tongue,
The froth of the serpents of
pleasure,
More salt than the foam of the sea,
Now felt as a flame, now at
leisure
As wine shed for me.
Ah thy people, thy children, thy
chosen,
Marked cross from the womb and perverse!
They have found out the
secret to cozen
The gods that constrain us and curse;
They alone, they are
wise, and no other;
Give me place, even me, in their train,
O my sister,
my spouse, and my mother,
Our Lady of Pain.
For the crown of our life
as it closes
Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust;
No thorns go as deep as
a rose's,
And love is more cruel than lust.
Time turns the old days to
derision,
Our loves into corpses or wives;
And marriage and death and
division
Make barren our lives.
And pale from the past we draw nigh
thee,
And satiate with comfortless hours;
And we know thee, how all men
belie thee,
And we gather the fruit of thy flowers;
The passion that slays
and recovers,
The pangs and the kisses that rain
On the lips and the limbs
of thy lovers,
Our Lady of Pain.
The desire of thy furious
embraces
Is more than the wisdom of years,
On the blossom though blood lie
in traces,
Though the foliage be sodden with tears.
For the lords in whose
keeping the door is
That opens to all who draw breath
Gave the cypress to
love, my Dolores,
The myrtle to death.
And they laughed, changing
hands in the measure,
And they mixed and made peace after strife;
Pain
melted in tears, and was pleasure;
Death mingled with blood, and was
life.
Like lovers they melted and tingled,
In the dusk of thine innermost
fane;
In the darkness they murmured and mingled,
Our Lady of
Pain.
In a twilight where virtues are vices,
In thy chapels, unknown
of the sun,
To a tune that enthralls and entices,
They were wed, and the
twain were as one.
For the tune from thine altar hath sounded
Since God
bade the world's work begin,
And the fume of thine incense abounded,
To
sweeten the sin.
Love listens, and paler than ashes,
Through his curls
as the crown on them slips,
Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes,
And
laughs with insatiable lips.
Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses,
With
music that scares the profane;
Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy
tresses,
Our Lady of Pain.
Thou shalt bind his bright eyes though he
wrestle,
Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive;
In his lips
all thy serpents shall nestle,
In his hands all thy cruelties thrive.
In
the daytime thy voice shall go through him,
In his dreams he shall feel thee
and ache;
Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him
Asleep and
awake.
Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses
With juice not of
fruit nor of bud;
When the sense in the spirit reposes,
Thou shalt quicken
the soul through the blood.
Thine, thine the one grace we implore is,
Who
would live and not languish or feign,
O sleepless and deadly Dolores,
Our
Lady of Pain.
Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber,
In a lull of
the fires of thy life,
Of the days without name, without number,
When thy
will stung the world into strife;
When, a goddess, the pulse of thy
passion
Smote kings as they revelled in Rome;
And they hailed thee
re-risen, O Thalassian,
Foam-white, from the foam?
When thy lips had
such lovers to flatter;
When the city lay red from thy rods,
And thine
hands were as arrows to scatter
The children of change and their
gods;
When the blood of thy foemen made fervent
A sand never moist from
the main,
As one smote thm, their lord and thy servant,
Our Lady of
Pain.
On sands by the storm never shaken,
Nor wet from the washing of
tides;
Nor by foam of the waves overtaken,
Nor winds that the thunder
bestrides;
But red from the print of thy paces,
Made smooth for the world
and its lords,
Ringed round with a flame of fair faces,
And splendid with
swords.
There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,
Drew bitter and
perilous breath;
There torments laid hold on the treasure
Of limbs too
delicious for death;
When the gardens were lit with live torches;
When the
world was a steed for thy rein;
When the nations lay prone in thy
porches,
Our Lady of Pain.
When, with flame all around him
aspirant,
Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands,
The implacable beautiful
tyrant,
Rose-crowned, having death in his hands;
And a sound as the sound
of loud water
Smote far through the flight of the fires,
And mixed with
the lightning of slaughter
A thunder of lyres.
Dost thou dream of what
was and no more is,
The old kingdoms of earth and the kings?
Dost thou
hunger for these things, Dolores,
For these, in a new world of things?
But
thy bosom no fasts could emaciate,
No hunger compel to complain
Those lips
that no bloodshed could satiate,
Our Lady of Pain.
As of old when the
world's heart was lighter,
Through thy garments the grace of thee
glows,
The white wealth of thy body made whiter
By the blushes of amorous
blows,
And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,
And branded by
kisses that bruise;
When all shall be gone that now lingers,
Ah, what
shall we lose?
Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion,
And thy
limbs are as melodies yet,
And move to the music of passion,
With lithe
and lascivious regret.
What ailed us, O gods, to desert you
For creeds
that refuse and restrain?
Come down and redeem us from virtue,
Our Lady of
Pain.
All shrines that were Vestal are flameless,
But the flame has
not fallen from this;
Though obscure be the god, and though nameless
The
eyes and the hair that wqe kiss;
Low fires that love sits by and
forges
Fresh heads for his arrows and thine;
Hair loosened and soiled in
mid orgies
With kisses and wine.
Thy skin changes country and
colour,
And shrivels or swells to a snake's.
Let it brighten and bloat and
grow duller,
We know it, the flames and the flakes,
Red brands on it
smitten and bitten,
Round skies where a star is a stain,
And the leaves
with thy litanies written,
Our Lady of Pain.
On thy bosom though many
a kiss be,
There are none such as knew it of old.
Was it Alciphron once or
Arisbe,
Male ringlets or feminine gold,
That thy lips met with under the
statue,
Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves
From the eyes of the
garden-god at you
Across the fig-leaves?
Then still, through dry
seasons and moister,
One god had a wreath to his shrine;
Then love was the
pearl of his oyster,
And Venus rose red out of wine,
We have all done
amiss, choosing rather
Such loves as the wise gods disdain;
Intercede for
us thou with thy father,
Our Lady of Pain.
In spring he had crowns of
his garden,
Red corn in the heat of the year,
Then hoary green olives that
harden
When the grape-blossom freezes with fear;
And milk-budded myrtles
with Venus
And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod;
And ye said, "We have
seen, he hath seen us,
A visible God."
What broke off the garlands
that girt you?
What sundered you spirit and clay?
Weak sins yet alive are
as virtue
To the strength of the sins of that day.
For dried is the blood
of thy lover,
Ipsithilla, contracted the vein;
Cry aloud, "Will he rise
and recover,
Our Lady of Pain?"
Cry aloud; for the old world is
broken;
Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest,
And rears not the bountiful
token
And spreads not the fatherly feast.
From the midmost of Ida, from
shady
Recesses that murmur at morn,
They have brought and baptized her,
Our Lady,
A goddess new-born.
And the chaplets of old are above
us,
And the oyster-bed teems out of reach;
Old poets outsing and outlove
us,
And Catullus makes mouths at our speech.
Who shall kiss, in thy
father's own city,
With such lips as he sang with, again?
Intercede for us
all of thy pity,
Our Lady of Pain.
Out of Dindymus heavily
laden
Her lions draw bound and unfed
A mother, a mortal, a maiden,
A
queen over death and the dead.
She is cold, and her habit is lowly,
Her
temple of branches and sods;
Most fruitful and virginal, holy,
A mother of
gods.
She hath wasted with fire thine high places,
She hath hidden and
marred and made sad
The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces
Of gods
that were goodly and glad.
She slays, and her hands are not bloody;
She
moves as a moon in the wane,
White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,
Our
Lady of Pain.
They shall pass and their places be taken,
The gods and
the priests that are pure,
They shall pass, and shalt thou not be
shaken?
They shall perish, and shalt thou endure?
Death laughs, breathing
close and relentless
In the nostrils and eyelids of lust,
With a pinch in
his fingers of scentless
And delicate dust.
But the worm shall revive
thee with kisses;
Thou shalt change and transmute as a god,
As the rod to
a serpent that hisses,
Asd the serpent again to a rod.
Thy life shall not
cease though thou doff it;
Thou shalt live until evil be slain,
And the
good shall die first, said thy prophet,
Our Lady of Pain.
Did he lie?
did he laugh? does he know it,
Now he lies out of reach, out of
breath,
Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet,
Sin's child by incestuous
Death?
Did he find out in fire at his waking,
Or discern as his eyelids
lost light,#
When the bands of his body were breaking
And all came in
sight?
Who has known all the evil before us,
Or the tyrannous secrets
of time?
Though we match not the dead men that bore us
At a song, at a
kiss, at a crime -
Though the heathen outface and outlive us,
And our
lives and our longings are twain -
Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive
us,
Our Lady of Pain.
Who are we that embalm and embrace thee
With
spices and savours of song?
What is time, that his children should face
thee?
What am I, that my lips do thee wrong?
I could hurt thee - but pain
would delight thee;
Or caress thee - but love would repel;
And the lovers
whose lips would excite thee
Are serpents in hell.
Who now shall
content thee as they did,
Thy lovers, when temples were built
And the hair
of the sacrifice braided
And the blood of the sacrifice spilt,
In
Lampsacus fervent with faces,
In Aphaca red from thy reign,
Who embraced
thee with awful embraces,
Our Lady of Pain?
Where are they, Cotytto or
Venus,
Astarte or Ashtaroth, where?
Do their hands as we touch come
between us?
Is the breath of them hot in thy hair?
From their lips have
thy lips taken fever,
With the blood of their bodies grown red?
Hast thou
left upon earth a believer
If these men are dead?
They were purple of
raiment and golden,
Filled full of thee, fiery with wine,
Thy lovers, in
haunts unbeholden,
In marvellous chambers of thine.
They are fled, and
their footprints escape us,
Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain,
O
daughter of Death and Priapus,
Our Lady of Pain.
What ails us to fear
overmeasure,
To praise thee with timorous breath,
O mistress and mother of
pleasure,
The one thing as certain as death?
We shall change as the things
that we cherish,
Shall fade as they faded before,
As foam upon water shall
perish,
As sand upon shore.
We shall know what the darkness
discovers,
If the grave-pit be shallow or deep;
And our fathers of old,
and our lovers,
We shall know if they sleep not or sleep.
We shall see
whether hell be not heaven,
Find out whether tares be not grain,
And the
joys of the seventy times seven,
Our Lady of Pain.