Richard Church

Psyche Goes Forth to Life

What are these tears of loneliness to-night? Hark! In my neighbour's house the music swells, Joins with the wind and fills the empty skies And dies away, like echo of old age Sighing and dying in the heart that fails. Ah! the cruel beauty ... how it creeps Into my home, into my waiting heart! Who am I that I wait to-night?... Alas, Where is the old content of maidenhood, The calmness and the laughter and the song, The patient hands unshaken as the needle Plied to the gentle rhythm that my lips Murmured, untroubled girlhood at their brink? Was that but yesterday?... How long ago, How the swift moments flow along the flood. For yesterday was sweet indifference; These little drooping breasts had never known This pain that swells them out and makes them ache For Love to touch them, for the nestling lips To trouble them as a warm lifting wind Murmurs between two swelled and ripening grapes Whispering of future wines of mad delight. Ah, let me learn of this! A rapture fills My limbs, and in my womb there stirs a craving For life ... life! Oh, wonderful, the vision that glows About me in such radiance, the light, the strife Of music, hue and perfume of the rose. Oh garden of desire, where one awaits My coming with the sudden knowledge glowing Deep in my eyes, made sombre as the day Is somber in the summer noon of light. Now I perceive I am a sacred temple Long closed about the hidden flame of life, Closed with white ivories and gliding shapes Of river waves, and waves upon the sea Rising and gliding. Every magic curve Of these unheeded arms, this supple waist — So are my eyes set on the infinite — Are ministering music unto life Calling love forth to worship in my shrine, To fill this temple with the prophecy Of further, wider, deeper life to come. Hark! The music of the night is rising up! My neighbour's house is all a flame of song. I must abide until the prelude closes, Until his heart has ceased its preparation And he comes forth into the dying year, Leaves his house of inspiration empty, And with a loneliness of heart creeps forth Eagerly into the night, and gropes his way With outstretched nerveless hands unto my home, Where I wait, alone! I hear his lips Murmur again, and moan, and murmur again Tones of the broken prelude, vainly trying To call me forth, who am waiting in my home, Waiting in sweet imprisonment, the bonds Of love restraining me from running forth To greet him and to lead him to my soul. Oh the swift pain, the agony of waiting, Galled with these terrible sweet bonds of love That will not let me rise, though my cold hands Are wrung with grief ... for do I not behold Upon the outer night the rising fire, The danger and the terror of love's flight; Do I not know my lover; that his eyes Are blinded by this madness of the skies. Do I not hear him moaning in the night For one to lead him to his waiting love, To lead him to the temple of delight, To the white ivory casket where his soul Is set with lovely secrets? Do I not hear The little echoes roll, and fade, and fret About the murmuring foliage of the garden Wherein the temple lies? Do I not fear Lest in the outer glories he be lost And thwarted of his heart's desire, that flies Like a dove before his coming, and alights Within the inner courtyard of my soul Bearing such messages of him who comes That all the altars of my love are kindled To flame ere he approaches, which fades away And counterfeits the sweetest death that ever Sighed the approach of day, and left the stars More bright to be entranced of the dawn? Be patient, Oh, my heart! A little while And he shall pierce the darkness of the night That flows between my home and his. The song The youth, the early light that he has lost Are as a little strength submerged and drowned In this fierce rage that bids him seek me out And take me in the darkness of my home, And change, and fill me, as the virgin night Is changed to day, and as the moonlight sky Is emptied of her sterile ray, and filled With overflooding light that spills to earth A golden augury of later fruits And a diviner birth. Hark! Hark!... He comes He has found the temple of his soul's desire ..., Be still, Oh beating heart, be still ... be still, Lest he be troubled now his sacred fire Creeps through this temple to your inmost shrine. And I at last am his, and he is mine!

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