EMBLEMS OF LOVE ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, S.R. Ellison and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
EMBLEMS OF LOVE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
INTERLUDES AND POEMS
EMBLEMS OF LOVE
DESIGNED IN SEVERAL DISCOURSES BY LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
_"Wonder it is to see in diverse mindes How diversly love doth his pageaunts play"
"Ego tamquam centrum, circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiæ partes"_
TO MY WIFE
TABLE
page HYMN TO LOVE 3
PART I DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY PRELUDE 7 VASHTI 16
PART II IMPERFECTION THREE GIRLS IN LOVE: MARY: A LEGEND OF THE '45 77 JEAN 94 KATRINA 109
PART III VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION JUDITH 127 THE ETERNAL WEDDING 188
MARRIAGE SONG 200 EPILOGUE: DEDICATION 209
EMBLEMS OF LOVE
HYMN TO LOVE
We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee, As thóu, Lóve, were the déep thóught And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we, Thy fires of thought out-spoken:
But burn'd not through us thy imagining Like fiérce móod in a sóng cáught, We were as clamour'd words a fool may fling, Loose words, of meaning broken.
For what more like the brainless speech of a fool,-- The lives travelling dark fears, And as a boy throws pebbles in a pool Thrown down abysmal places?
Hazardous are the stars, yet is our birth And our journeying time theirs; As words of air, life makes of starry earth Sweet soul-delighted faces;
As voices are we in the worldly wind; The great wind of the world's fate Is turned, as air to a shapen sound, to mind And marvellous desires.
But not in the world as voices storm-shatter'd, Not borne down by the wind's weight; The rushing time rings with our splendid word Like darkness filled with fires.
For Love doth use us for a sound of song, And Love's meaning our life wields, Making our souls like syllables to throng His tunes of exultation.
Down the blind speed of a fatal world we fly, As rain blown along earth's fields; Yet are we god-desiring liturgy, Sung joys of adoration;
Yea, made of chance and all a labouring strife, We go charged with a strong flame; For as a language Love hath seized on life His burning heart to story.
Yea, Love, we are thine, the liturgy of thee. Thy thought's golden and glad name, The mortal conscience of immortal glee, Love's zeal in Love's own glory.
PART I
DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY
PRELUDE
_Night on bleak downs; a high grass-grown trench runs athwart the slope. The earthwork is manned by warriors clad in hides. Two warriors, BRYS and GAST, talking_.
_Gast_. This puts a tall heart in me, and a tune Of great glad blood flowing brave in my flesh, To see thee, after all these moons, returned, My Brys. If there's no rust in thy shoulder-joints, That battle-wrath of thine, and thy good throwing, Will be more help for us than if the dyke Were higher by a span.--Ha! there was howling Down in the thicket; they come soon, for sure.
