The Unknown Eros. Coventry Patmore

      That Hope, so not to cease,

      Must still gaze back,

      And count, along our love’s most happy track,

      The landmarks of like inconceiv’d increase,

      Promise me this:

      If thou alone should’st win

      God’s perfect bliss,

      And I, beguiled by gracious-seeming sin,

      Say, loving too much thee,

      Love’s last goal miss,

      And any vows may then have memory,

      Never, by grief for what I bear or lack,

      To mar thy joyance of heav’n’s jubilee.

      Promise me this;

      For else I should be hurl’d,

      Beyond just doom

      And by thy deed, to Death’s interior gloom,

      From the mild borders of the banish’d world

      Wherein they dwell

      Who builded not unalterable fate

      On pride, fraud, envy, cruel lust, or hate;

      Yet loved too laxly sweetness and heart’s ease,

      And strove the creature more than God to please.

         For such as these

      Loss without measure, sadness without end!

      Yet not for this do thou disheaven’d be

      With thinking upon me.

      Though black, when scann’d from heaven’s surpassing bright,

      This might mean light,

      Foil’d with the dim days of mortality.

      For God is everywhere.

      Go down to deepest Hell, and He is there,

      And, as a true but quite estranged Friend,

      He works, ’gainst gnashing teeth of devilish ire,

      With love deep hidden lest it be blasphemed,

      If possible, to blend

      Ease with the pangs of its inveterate fire;

      Yea, in the worst

      And from His Face most wilfully accurst

      Of souls in vain redeem’d,

      He does with potions of oblivion kill

      Remorse of the lost Love that helps them still.

         Apart from these,

      Near the sky-borders of that banish’d world,

      Wander pale spirits among willow’d leas,

      Lost beyond measure, sadden’d without end,

      But since, while erring most, retaining yet

      Some ineffectual fervour of regret,

      Retaining still such weal

      As spurned Lovers feel,

      Preferring far to all the world’s delight

      Their loss so infinite,

      Or Poets, when they mark

      In the clouds dun

      A loitering flush of the long sunken sun,

      And turn away with tears into the dark.

         Know, Dear, these are not mine

      But Wisdom’s words, confirmed by divine

      Doctors and Saints, though fitly seldom heard

      Save in their own prepense-occulted word,

      Lest fools be fool’d the further by false hope,

      And wrest sweet knowledge to their own decline;

      And (to approve I speak within my scope)

      The Mistress of that dateless exile gray

      Is named in surpliced Schools Tristitia.

         But, O, my Darling, look in thy heart and see

      How unto me,

      Secured of my prime care, thy happy state,

      In the most unclean cell

      Of sordid Hell,

      And worried by the most ingenious hate,

      It never could be anything but well,

      Nor from my soul, full of thy sanctity,

      Such pleasure die

      As the poor harlot’s, in whose body stirs

      The innocent life that is and is not hers:

      Unless, alas, this fount of my relief

      By thy unheavenly grief

      Were closed.

      So, with a consecrating kiss

      And hearts made one in past all previous peace,

      And on one hope reposed,

      Promise me this!

      VII.  THE AZALEA

      VIII.  DEPARTURE