Poem by Arthur William Symons

Divisions on a Ground

I

Beloved, there is a sorrow in the world
Too aged to remember its own birth,
A grey, old, weary, and immortal sorrow.
The sorrow of our love is as a breath
Sighed heavily by a sleeper in a dream;
But this great sorrow of the world endures.
Sleepless, the alternation of the Stars,
Beholding death, and crying upon death,
Sad with old age, and weary of the sun,
And deathless; and shall not be wearier
When time has rusted your bright hair's fine gold.
Think what a little sorrow have we had
Who have seen beauty with the eyes of love,
Who have seen knowledge, wisdom, evil and good,
With the eyes of beauty, having felt the flame
Cleanse, sacrifice, illuminate us with joy!
Think on all lovers who have never met.
Wandering in the exile of the world,
Remembering they know not what, some voice,
Unheard and yet remembered, some dear face
Which shines beyond a cloud and waits for them.
Think then how little sorrow we have had!
All the uncomely evil of the earth
Has passed us by; sorrow has been no clown
Forcing our gates with riotous mirth, but grave
As the unwilling herald of a king,
And we, have we not willed that this should be,
Somewhere, when naked soul by naked soul
The fashioner of the world arraigns his work,
Bidding each living thing behold, and choose,
Beholding, his own lot; have we not willed
That all this should be thus, willing our fate?
blind, old, weary sorrow of the world,
Receive my pity, though from this day forth
I have said farewell to joy! I have within
A memory which is more than happiness;
I have seen the glory, and am henceforth blind
That I may feasl: on sight. Alas for those
On whom no unendurable glory shone,
Blind from the birth, who labour and behold
No shining on the sea or in the sky
When the long day is over, but endure
The weight of that old sorrow of the world
Which beauty cannot lift from tired men.

II

The sorrowful, who have loved, I pity not;
But those, not having loved, who do rejoice
To have escaped the cruelty of love,
I pity, as I pity the unborn.
Love is, indeed, as life is, full of care,
The tyrant of the soul, the death of peace,
Rash father and blind parricide of joy;
And it were better never to have been,
If slothful ease, calm hours, are all of life,
Than to have chosen such a bedfellow.
Yet, if not rest, but rapture, and to attain
The wisdom that is silence in the Stars
When the great morning-song is quieted,
Be more of life than these, and worth the pain
Of living, then choose love, although he bring
Mountainous griefs, griefs that have made men mad.
Be sorrowful, all ye that have not loved,
Bow down, be sorrowful exceedingly,
Cover your heads from the embracing air,
And from the eye of the sun lest: ye be shamed;
Earth would be naked of you; ye have known
Only to hide from living; life rejects
The burden of your uncornpanioned days.
This is of all things saddest in the world,
Not that men love, not that men die for love,
But that they dare be cowards of their joy,
Even unto death; who, dying without love,
Drop into narrow graves to shiver there
Among the winds of time, till time's last wind
Cleanse off the poor, lonely, and finite dust
From earth made ready for eternity.

III

Let me hear music, for I am not sad,
But half in love with sadness. To dream so,
And dream, and so forget the dream, and so
Dream I am dreaming! This old little voice,
Which pants and flutters in the clavichord,
Has the bird's wings in it, and women's tears,
The dust has drunken long ago, and sighs
As of a voiceless crying of old love
That died and never spoke; and then the soul
Of one who sought for wisdom; and these cry
Out of the disappointment of the grave.
And something, in the old and little voice,
Calls from so farther off than far away,
I tremble, hearing it, lest it draw me forth,
This flickering self, desiring to be gone
Into the boundless and abrupt abyss
Whereat begins infinity; and there
This flickering self wander eternally
Among the soulless, uncreated winds
Which Storm against the barriers of the world.
But most I hear the pleading and sad voice
Of beauty, sad because it cannot speak
Out of harsh Stones and out of evil noise,
And out of thwarted faces, and the gleam
Of things corrupted, and all ruinous things.
This is the voice that cries, and would be heard,
And can but speak in music. Venerable
And ageless Beauty of the world, whose breath
Is life in all things, I have seen thy form
In cloud, and grass, and wave, and glory of man,
Flawless, but I have heard thy very voice
Here only, here only human, and here sad
Only of all thy voices upon earth.

IV

Who shall deliver us from too much love?
There is an evil thing within the world,
Mother of hatred, mother of cruelties,
The sunderer of hearts; and this is love.
I, if mine enemy hunger, give him food,
And, if mine enemy thirst give him to drink;
This is a little and an easy thing.
But, if I heap the dish with only love,
In any charity, for love's sake alone
Fate shall not hold me guiltless of that deed.
For sorrow goes with it, and bitter joy,
And memory, and the desire of love,
And aching of remembering hearts remembered.
There is an evil thing within the heart:
Grief shall not master it nor any fear,
Nor any knowledge, nor desire of right;
Love in the heart shall shine within the eyes,
Giving Itself in gift, withholding nothing;
And where the man gives shall the woman take,
And where the woman gives the man shall take,
Not counting gifts, giving and taking all,
Ruinously, a plague upon the earth,
O giver of this love, give man to see
The glory of thine intolerable gift,
Or snatch again out of his passionate hands,
Out of his passionate and childish hands,
That beautiful and sharp and fragile thing,
Love, that he makes so deadly and his toy!

V

There is a woman whom I love and hate:
There is no other woman in the world:
Not in her life shall I have any peace.
There is a woman whom I love and hate:
I have not praised her: she is beautiful:
Others have praised her: she has seen my heart:
She looked, and laughed, and looked, and went away.
There is a woman whom I hate and love:
This is my sorrow: she has bound my neck
Within the noose of her long hairs, and bound
My soul within the halter of her dreams,
And fastened down my heart into one place,
Like a rat nailed upon a granary door;
And she has gone a farther way than death.
There is a woman whom I love and hate:
Not in her life shall I have any peace:
Death, hear me not, when I desire her death!

1. Apology
2. Body’s Blood
3. Time and Beauty
4. Night
5. Sponsa Dei

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