Madonna della Vita

WHOSO will let him cast off the robe of his faith
And the crown of his hope and the sceptre of love,
And lie at the feet of the Lady of Death,
Enwrapt in the slumber no trouble of breath,
No tempest of joy or of sorrow can move.
Not thine be such rest, O my brother, my knight,
Who ownest the mighty ones' sinews and thews :
Not theirs and not thine to despair and refuse
The forefront of battle, the thickest of fight.

I charge thee by all thou esteemest of worth
Around thee and in thee, below and above,
By the hintings of heaven from the lips of the earth
As she smiles in the clasp of the infinite love;
By that infinite love which around us lies light
As the ether, or grips like a stark fate austere ;
By the light and the darkness, the veiled and the clear;
By the mystical glories of red and of white ;

By the little we guess and the much we shall know
Of the meaning of things that bewilder us here
With fairness, and foulness, and gladness, and woe :
I charge thee to stand, though bedewed with the sweat
That is blood, armour hacked, and upon thee the stains
Of travail and conflict, and over thee pain's
Broad banner of dim, heavy purple, and wet
With the floods thou hast past through to come to this place :
For the foe is alive yet, and nothing of grace

Must he have at thy hands till thou smite him to death;
Thy foe who has vowed to fordo her whose breath
In the world's nostrils breathed made it quicken, and lol
No longer red clay, but a glory and glow,
And a flame, which is God, whosoever gainsaith.
She stood in her splendour of beauty and grace
By Socrates' side, and she breathed on his soul
Till it would not be foiled by the strange satyr-face,
The mask of the clay that was fain to control.

By Gautama stood she and kindled desire
For the fairer than fair, and her love was the fire
The radiant, the lustral, that touched him and caught
The heart of the prince till it flamed up one red
In that light and its passion, and self lay all dead
To rise never more, for the man was of those
To whom hunger or fulness, or toil or repose,
Or glory or shame, seeing God, matters nought.

Her hand held the Christ's from the womb to the grave,
Through the flowerland of childhood that smiled as he stept,
On, on, through the wilds where the heather scarce kept
One touch of God's purple, hoar hill, and lone cave ;
On, on, to the heights that in sheer steepness frowned,
Jagged cliffs, black for awe of the elements' strife,
She led him unswerving, until he had found
The terrible cruciform portal of life.

Thou didst pledge her, unknowing, when speechless thou lay'st,
In the milk of thy mother ; and, later, in wine
Of the world's life that thrilled through the young veins of thine,
In the splendid excess that knew nothing of waste ;
Thou didst pledge her, 'mid horror and darkness, in brine
Of the terrible waters that swept over thee
Bedrenching and beating : then, 'scaped from the flood,
Didst thou stand by thy lady and look on that sea,
And pledge her again, and the cup was thy blood.

Thy lady ! thou know'st her : her eyes are the light
Of the world, and her heart is the fountain of joy,
And her lips are light -curved to a smile, never coy
But quickening and calming : and grand is her height
And stately her going, and wondrous the white
Of her brows; and her name— She hath many a name,
As Love, Truth, Life, Sorrow; and whom she doth claim
By the pledge he unshrinking redeems, he alone
(Oh, pride for dishonour ! oh, glory for blame !)
Shall know by which name she delights to be known.