Artemis to Actæon (1909)/Life
For works with similar titles, see Life.
LIFE
Nay, lift me to thy lips, Life, and once morePour the wild music through me—
I quivered in the reed-bed with my kind,Rooted in Lethe-bank, when at the dawnThere came a groping shape of mysteryMoving among us, that with random strokeSevered, and rapt me from my silent tribe,Pierced, fashioned, lipped me, sounding for a voice,Laughing on Lethe-bank—and in my throatI felt the wing-beat of the fledgeling notes,The bubble of godlike laughter in my throat.
Such little songs she sang,Pursing her lips to fit the tiny pipe,They trickled from me like a slender springThat strings frail wood-growths on its crystal thread,Nor dreams of glassing cities, bearing ships.She sang, and bore me through the April worldMatching the birds, doubling the insect-humIn the meadows, under the low-moving airs,And breathings of the scarce-articulate air When it makes mouths of grasses—but when the skyBurst into storm, and took great trees for pipes,She thrust me in her breast, and warm beneathHer cloudy vesture, on her terrible heart,I shook, and heard the battle.
But more oft,Those early days, we moved in charmèd woods,Where once, at dusk, she piped against a faun,And one warm dawn a tree became a nymphListening; and trembled; and Life laughed and passed.And once we came to a great stream that boreThe stars upon its bosom like a sea,And ships like stars; so to the sea we came.One wild pang through me; then refrained her hand,And whispered: "Hear—" and into my frail flanks,Into my bursting veins, the whole sea pouredIts spaces and its thunder; and I feared.
We came to cities, and Life piped on meLow calls to dreaming girls,In counting-house windows, through the chink of gold,Flung cries that fired the captive brain of youth,And made the heavy merchant at his desk Curse us for a cracked hurdy-gurdy; LifeMimicked the hurdy-gurdy, and we passed.
We climbed the slopes of solitude, and thereLife met a god, who challenged her and said:"Thy pipe against my lyre!" But "Wait!" she laughed,And in my live flank dug a finger-hole,And wrung new music from it. Ah, the pain!
We climbed and climbed, and left the god behind.We saw the earth spread vaster than the sea,With infinite surge of mountains surfed with snow,And a silence that was louder than the deep;But on the utmost pinnacle Life againHid me, and I heard the terror in her hair.
Safe in new vales, I ached for the old pang,And clamoured "Play me against a god again!""Poor Marsyas-mortal—he shall bleed thee yet,"She breathed and kissed me, stilling the dim need.But evermore it woke, and stabbed my flankWith yearnings for new music and new pain."Another note against another god!"I clamoured; and she answered: "Bide my time.Of every heart-wound I will make a stop, And drink thy life in music, pang by pang.But first thou must yield the notes I stored in theeAt dawn beside the river. Take my lips."
She kissed me like a lover, but I wept,Remembering that high song against the god,And the old songs slept in me, and I was dumb.
We came to cavernous foul places, blindWith harpy-wings, and sulphurous with the glareOf sinful furnaces—where hunger toiled,And pleasure gathered in a starveling prey,And death fed delicately on young bones.
"Now sing!" cried Life, and set her lips to me."Here are gods also. Wilt thou pipe for Dis?"My cry was drowned beneath the furnace roar,Choked by the sulphur-fumes; and beast-lipped godsLaughed down on me, and mouthed the flutes of hell.
"Now sing!" said Life, reissuing to the stars;And wrung a new note from my wounded side.
So came we to clear spaces, and the sea.And now I felt its volume in my heart, And my heart waxed with it, and Life played on meThe song of the Infinite. "Now the stars," she said.
Then from the utmost pinnacle againShe poured me on the wild sidereal stream,And I grew with her great breathings, till we sweptThe interstellar spaces like new worldsLoosed from the fiery ruin of a star.
Cold, cold we rested on black peaks again,Under black skies, under a groping wind;And life, grown old, hugged me to a numb breast,Pressing numb lips against me. SuddenlyA blade of silver severed the black peaksFrom the black sky, and earth was born again,Breathing and various, under a god's feet.A god! A god! I felt the heart of LifeLeap under me, and my cold flanks shook again.He bore no lyre, he rang no challenge out,But Life warmed to him, warming me with her,And as he neared I felt beneath her handsThe stab of a new wound that sucked my soulForth in a new song from my throbbing throat.
"His name—his name?" I whispered, but she shedThe music faster, and I grew with it, Became a part of it, while Life and IClung lip to lip, and I from her wrung songAs she from me, one song, one ecstasy,In indistinguishable union blent,Till she became the flute and I the player.And lo! the song I played on her was moreThan any she had drawn from me; it heldThe stars, the peaks, the cities, and the sea,The faun's catch, the nymph's tremor, and the heartOf dreaming girls, of toilers at the desk,Apollo's challenge on the sunrise slope,And the hiss of the night-gods mouthing flutes of hell—All, to the dawn-wind's whisper in the reeds,When Life first came, a shape of mystery,Moving among us, and with random strokeSevered, and rapt me from my silent tribe.All this I wrung from her in that deep hour,While Love stood murmuring: "Play the god, poor grass!"
Now, by that hour, I am a mate to theeForever, Life, however spent and clogged,And tossed back useless to my native mud!Yea, groping for new reeds to fashion theeNew instruments of anguish and delight,Thy hand shall leap to me, thy broken reed, Thine ear remember me, thy bosom thrillWith the old subjection, then when Love and IHeld thee, and fashioned thee, and made thee danceLike a slave-girl to her pipers—yea, thou yetShalt hear my call, and dropping all thy toysThou'lt lift me to thy lips, Life, and once morePour the wild music through me—