As Vivências

The Love Æsthetic Decay Issue [4]

Lift up the chalice, and hallow the hidden formulæ that once did inhabit thy vessel, when thou wert but a fellowship-friend, steep'd in cologne's fugitive savour, a fabling wraith in the wide world's murk. Behold, a harvest-clash draweth nigh, and lo-no æsthetic keepeth his footing unshaken. They said thou wert a wanton errour, a misbirth of Fortune; yet were they not but thralls to their owne pale feare? Forsooth, though Somer be ordain'd for loving and forsoothing, thou didst, in prodigal dalliance, enthrone me as quean of thy regard. For the elder'd heart, e'en such fleeting crowning sufficeth, though it wither anon.

Yet behoveth us to speak the unsightly beast in chamber hid: Decay of Æsthetic, slow and cankerous, that creepeth through all visage and vesture-lanthorn, mirror, eyelidded sigh. To witness is to be smitten with wound incurable. No æsthetic aberrance grieveth so fell as the vulgarity of gall and bitternesse, ranker than rust, fouler than fretting moth. Overlate did I wot that truths there be sterner than love of thee: namely, the bootless spilling of my dark confessions into a hollow'd breast. To love thee is dolour; and yet dolour I embrace.

I have assay'd mine owne undoing in divers graceless guises, unravelling my soule's weft that I might finde thee waking, and pitiful enow to redeem. Better to hoodwink mine owne eyne than thine. Thou didst bequeath me lies so beauteous, lies so adazzle, that I, besotted, almost loosed the dread utteraunce-I love thee. Thou whisper'dst that libertie dwelleth not in troth but in rupture, in the gaping of San Andreas, whose mercilesse jaws unknit the very firmament.

Yet the sunne, unmoved, doth still arise for the uncall'd, though it climbeth now in perverse figure-a squarèd orb, a geometry of despair. Issuing forth my chamber, I spake to mine owne soule-Desist, thou fool! But Hope, that wanton revenaunt, returneth in tinsel'd pomp, bearing mock-roses that prick the hand. Still whispereth the phantasme: perchaunce yet abideth Love, e'en in his owne carrion. E'en through thy forfending absence, I may not onward goe.

For each pace unjointeth my limmes, each nocturnall peregrination seemeth a funerall-train through lanes ablaze with faëry-neon. I await the Gate, that it might ope and proclaime thee mine. It ope'th not. Yet thy spectre tarrieth, a canticle engrav'n on the marrow, thy countenance limn'd on the black walls of sleep. Love, when rotted, becometh a cathedral ruinous: spire shatter'd, glass shiver'd, yet in his wreck still radiant-sublime, for that he dieth.

"No dread abideth in me."