T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Liber Amoris
By Arthur Symons (18651945)(Bianca, X. From London Nights, 1895) |
WHAT’S virtue, Bianca? Have we not | |
Agreed the word should be forgot, | |
That ours be every dear device | |
And all the subtleties of vice, | |
And, in diverse imaginings, | 5 |
The savour of forbidden things, | |
So only that the obvious be | |
Too obvious for you and me, | |
And the one vulgar final act | |
Remain an unadmitted fact? | 10 |
And, surely, we were wise to waive | |
A gift we do not lose, but save. | |
What moment’s reeling blaze of sense | |
Were rationally recompense | |
For all the ecstasies and all | 15 |
The ardours demi-virginal? | |
Bianca, I tell you, no delights | |
Of long, free, unforbidden nights, | |
Have richlier filled and satisfied | |
The eager moments as they died, | 20 |
That your voluptuous pretence | |
Of unacquainted innocence, | |
Your clinging hands and closing lips | |
And eyes slow sinking to eclipse | |
And cool throat flushing to my kiss; | 25 |
That sterile and mysterious bliss, | |
Mysterious, and yet to me | |
Deeper for that dubiety. | |
Once, but that time was long ago, | |
I loved good women, and to know | 30 |
That lips my lips dared never touch | |
Could speak, in one warm smile, so much. | |
And it seemed infinitely sweet | |
To worship at a woman’s feet, | |
And live on heavenly thoughts of her, | 35 |
Till earth itself grew heavenlier. | |
But that rapt mood, being fed on air, | |
Turned at the last to a despair, | |
And, for a body and soul like mine, | |
I found the angel’s food too fine. | 40 |
So the mood changed, and I began | |
To find that man is merely man, | |
Though women might be angels; so, | |
I let the aspirations go, | |
And for a space I held it wise | 45 |
To follow after certainties. | |
My heart forgot the ways of love, | |
No longer now my fancy wove | |
Into admitted ornament | |
In spider’s web of sentiment. | 50 |
What my hands seized, that my hands held, | |
I followed as the blood compelled, | |
And finding that my brain found rest | |
On some unanalytic breast, | |
I was contented to discover | 55 |
How easy ’tis to be a lover. | |
No sophistries to ravel out, | |
No devious maytyrdoms of doubt, | |
Only the good firm flesh to hold, | |
The love well worth its weight in gold, | 60 |
Love, sinking from the infinite, | |
Now just enough to last one night. | |
So the simplicity of flesh | |
Held me a moment in its mesh, | |
Till that too palled, and I began | 65 |
To find that man is mostly man | |
In that, his will being sated, he | |
Wills ever new variety. | |
And then I found you, Bianca! Then | |
I found in you, I found again | 70 |
That chance or will or fate had brought | |
The curiosity I sought. | |
Ambiguous child, whose life retires | |
Into the pulse of those desires | |
Of whose endured possession speaks | 75 |
The passionate pallor of your cheeks; | |
Child, in whom neither good nor ill | |
Can sway your sick and swaying will, | |
Only the aching sense of sex | |
Wholly controls, and does perplex, | 80 |
With dubious drifts scarce understood, | |
The shaken currents of your blood; | |
It is your ambiguity | |
That speaks to me and conquers me, | |
Your capturing heats of captive bliss, | 85 |
Under my hands, under my kiss, | |
And your strange reticences, strange | |
Concessions, your elusive change, | |
The strangeness of your smile, the faint | |
Corruption of your gaze, a saint | 90 |
Such as Luini loved to paint. | |
What’s virtue, Bianca? nay, indeed, | |
What’s vice? for I at last am freed, | |
With you, of virtue and of vice: | |
I have discovered Paradise. | 95 |
And Paradise is neither heaven, | |
Where the spirits of God are seven, | |
And the spirits of men burn pure, | |
Nor is it hell, where souls endure | |
An equal ecstasy of fire, | 100 |
In like repletion of desire; | |
Nay, but a subtlier intense | |
Unsatisfied appeal of sense, | |
Ever desiring, ever near | |
The goal of all its hope and fear, | 105 |
Ever a hair’s-breadth from the goal. | |
So Bianca satisfies my soul. | |