He. Even as a wind that hasteth round the world From out cold hours fill'd with shadow of earth, To pour alight against the risen sun; So unto thee adoring, out of its shadow Floweth my spirit, into the light of thee Which Beauty is, and Joy. From my own fate, From out the darkness wherein long I fared Worshipping stars and morsels of the light, Through doors of golden morning now I pass Into the great whole light and perfect day Of shining Beauty, open to me at last. Yea, into thee now do I pass, beloved: Beauty and thou are mine!

She. And I am thine! I am desirable to my desire: Thence am I clean as immortality With Beauty and Joy, the fiery power of Beauty.

He. And by my spirit made marvellous here by thee, Poured out all clear into the gold of thee, Not myself only do I know; I have Golden within me the whole fate of man: That every flesh and soul belongs to one Continual joyward ravishment, whose end Is here, in this perfection. Now I know— For all my speculation soareth up, A bird taking eternity for air,— Now being mixt with thee, in the burning midst Of Beauty for my sense and mind and soul,— That life hath highest gone which hath most joy. For like great wings forcefully smiting air And driving it along in rushing rivers, Desire of joy beats mightily pulsing forward The world's one nature, and all the loose lives therein, Carried and greatly streaming on a gale Of craving, swept fiercely along in beauty;— Like a great weather of wind and shining sun, When the airs pick up whole huge waves of sea, Crumble them in their grasp and high aloft Sow them glittering, a white watery dust, To company with light: so we are driven Onward and upward in a wind of beauty, Until man's race be wielded by its joy Into some high incomparable day, Where perfectly delight may know itself,— No longer need a strife to know itself, Only by its prevailing over pain.

She. Beloved, but no pain may strive with us.

He. No, for we are flown far ahead of life: The feet of our Spirit have wonderfully trod The dangers of the rushing fate of life, As summer-searching birds tread with their wings Mountainous surges in the air. But many, Not strongly fledge to ride the world's great rapture, Must break, down fallen into steep confusion, Where we climb easily and tower with joy. Nevertheless doth life foretell in us How it shall all make seizure at the last Upon this height of ecstasy, this fort Life like an army storms: Captains we are In the great assault; and where we stand alone Within these hours, built like establisht flames Round us, at long last all man's life shall stand At peace with joy, wearing delighted sense As meadows wear their golden pleasure of flowers. Certain my heart dwells in these builded hours, That there is no more beauty beyond thee. Thou art my utter beauty; and—behold The marvel, God in Heaven!—I am thine. Therefore we know, in this height-guarded place Whereto the speed of our desire hath brought us; Here in this safety crowning, like a fort Built upon topmost peaks, the height of beauty,— We know to be glad of life as we were gods Timelessly glad of deity; yea, to enjoy Fleshly, spiritual Being till the swift Torrent of glee (as hurled star-dust can change Dim earthly weather to a moment like the sun,) Doth startle life to self-adoring godhead,— Divine body of Power and divine Burning soul of Light and self-desire. And having given ourselves all to amazement, We are made like a prophesying song Of life all joy, a bride in the arms of God.— Yea, God shall marry his people at the last; And every man and woman who has sworn That only joy can make this Being sacred, Weaves at the wedding-garment.

She. Ah, my beloved, Feelest thou too that out of earth and time We are transgressing into Heavenly hours? Or, threading the dark worldly multitude And making lightning of its path, there comes A zeal from God posting along our lives.

He. For some eternal pulse hath chosen us, Some divine anger beats within our hearts.

She. Anger? But how far off is love from anger!

He. Nay, both belong to joy; joy's kind is twain. And close as in the pouring of sun-flame Are mingled glory of light and fury of heat, Joy utters its twin radiance, love and anger; If joy be not indeed all sacred wrath With circumstance; indignant memory Of what hath been, when the new lusts of God Exulted unimaginably, before Rigours of law fastened like creeping habit Upon their measureless wont, and forced them drive Their ranging music of delighted being Through the fixt beating tune of a circling world.— Is not love so? Amazement of an anger Against created shape and narrowness? The bound rage of the uncreated Spirit Whose striving doth impassion us and the world? A wrath that thou and I are not one being?

She. Yes, and not only words that thou and I Out of our sexes with a flame's escape Are fashioned into one. The Spirit in us Hath, like imagination in a prison, Kindled itself free of all boundary, So that it hath no room but its own joy, Ample as at the first, before it fell Into this burthenous habit of a world. What have we now to do with the world? We are Made one unworldly thing; we are past the world; Yea, and unmade: we are immortality.

He. And only fools abominably crazed, Those who will set imagination down As less in truth than their dim sensual wit, Dare doubt that, while these dreams of ours, these bodies, Still quiver in the world each with its own Delight, the great divine wrath of our love Hath stricken off from us the place of the world! Yea, as we walk in spiritual freedom Upright before the shining face of God, Behold, as it were the shadow of our stature Thrown by that light, we draw the world behind us,— That world wherein, darkly I remember, We thought we were as twain.

She. Yet, since God means That love should sunder our fixt separateness And make our married spirits leap together, As lightning out of the clouds of sexual flesh, Into one sexless undivided joy; Why hath he made us a divided flesh? We being single ecstasy, now as strange As if a shadow stained where no one stood The ground in the noon-glare, seemeth to me The long blind time wherein our lives and the world Lay stretcht out dark upon the light of heaven, Like shadow of some bulk that took the glory; While yet there stood not over it, to shade The splendour from it, our heaven-fronting love, This great new soul that our two souls have kindled. Yea, and how like, that in the world's chance-medley This our exulting destiny had been slain, Though here it lords the world as a man his shadow!

He. But the world is not chance, except to those Most feeble in desire: who needeth aught Shall have it, if he fill his soul with the need. While still our ignorant lives were drowned beneath The flooding of the earthly fate, and chance Seemed pouring mightily dark and loud between us, Unspeakable news oft visited our hearts: We knew each other by desire; yea, spake Out of the strength of darkness flowing o'er us, Across the hindering outcry of the world One to another sweet desirable things. Until at last we took such heavenly lust Of those unheard messages into our lives, We were made abler than the worldly fate. We held its random enmity as frost The storming Northern seas, and fastened it In likeness of our love's imagining; Or as a captain with his courage holds The mutinous blood of an army aghast with fear, And maketh it unwillingly dare his purpose, Our lust of love struck its commandment deep Into the froward turbulence of world That parted us. Suddenly the dark noise Cleft and went backward from us, and we stood Knowing each other in a quiet light; And like wise music made of many strings Following and adoring underneath Prevailing song, fate lived beneath our love, Under the masterful excellent silence of it, A multitudinous obedience.

She. Yea, but not this my marvel: not that we Should master with desire the sundering world, We who bore in our hearts such destiny, There was no force knew to be dangerous Against it, but must turn its malice clean Into obsequious favour worshipping us. Rather hath this astonisht me, that we Have not for ever lived in this high hour. Only to be twin elements of joy In this extravagance of Being, Love, Were our divided natures shaped in twain; And to this hour the whole world must consent. Is it not very marvellous, our lives Can only come to this out of a long Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

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 twain,—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. Contrived 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 out 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.

She. What hast thou done to me!—I would have soul, Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held By flesh. Now, inly delighted with desire, My body knows itself to be nought else But thy heart's worship of me; and my soul Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air. Nay, all my body is become a song Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song.

He. And mine is all like one rapt faculty, As it were listening to the love in thee, My whole mortality trembling to take Thy body like heard singing of thy spirit.

She. Surely by this, Beloved, we must know Our love is perfect here,—that not as holds The common dullard thought, we are things lost In an amazement that is all unware; But wonderfully knowing what we are! Lo, now that body is the song whereof Spirit is mood, knoweth not our delight? Knoweth not beautifully now our love, That Life, here to this festival bid come Clad in his splendour of worldly day and night, Filled and empower'd by heavenly lust, is all The glad imagination of the Spirit?

He. Were it not so, Love could not be at all: Nought could be, but a yearning to fulfil Desire of beauty, by vain reaching forth Of sense to hold and understand the vision Made by impassion'd body,—vision of thee! But music mixt with music are, in love, Bodily senses; and as flame hath light, Spirit this nature hath imagined round it, No way concealed therein, when love comes near, Nor in the perfect wedding of desires Suffering any hindrance.

She. Ah, but now, Now am I given love's eternal secret! Yea, thou and I who speak, are but the joy Of our for ever mated spirits; but now The wisdom of my gladness even through Spirit Looks, divinely elate. Who hath for joy Our Spirits? Who hath imagined them Round him in fashion'd radiance of desire, As into light of these exulting bodies Flaming Spirit is uttered?

He. Yea, here the end Of love's astonishment! Now know we Spirit, And Who, for ease of joy, contriveth Spirit. Now all life's loveliness and power we have Dissolved in this one moment, and our burning Carries all shining upward, till in us Life is not life, but the desire of God, Himself desiring and himself accepting. Now what was prophecy in us is made Fulfilment: we are the hour and we are the joy, We in our marvellousness of single knowledge, Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate And drawing into his light the greeting fire Of God,—God known in ecstasy of love Wedding himself to utterance of himself.