Chapter II

Can, then, my twofold nature find content In vain conceits of airy blandishment? Ask I no more? Since yesterday I task My storm-strewn thoughts to tell me what I ask: Faint premonitions of mutation strange Steal o’er my perfect orb, and, with the change, Myself am changed; the shadow of my earth Darkens the disc of that celestial worth Which only yesterday could still suffice Upwards to waft my thoughts in sacrifice; My heightened fancy with its touches warm Moulds to a woman’s that ideal form; Nor yet a woman’s wholly, but divine With awe her purer essence bred in mine. Was it long brooding on their own surmise, Which, of the eyes engendered, fools the eyes, Or have I seen through that translucent air A Presence shaped in its seclusions bare, My Goddess looking on me from above As look our russet maidens when they love, But high-uplifted o’er our human heat And passion-paths too rough for her pearl feet?

Slowly the Shape took outline as I gazed At her full-orbed or crescent, till, bedazed With wonder-working light that subtly wrought My brain to its own substance, steeping thought In trances such as poppies give, I saw Things shut from vision by sight’s sober law, Amorphous, changeful, but defined at last Into the peerless Shape mine eyes hold fast. This, too, at first I worshipt: soon, like wine, Her eyes, in mine poured, frenzy-philtred mine; Passion put Worship’s priestly raiment on And to the woman knelt, the Goddess gone. Was I, then, more than mortal made? or she Less than divine that she might mate with me? If mortal merely, could my nature cope With such o’ermastery of maddening hope? If Goddess, could she feel the blissful woe That women in their self-surrender know?