Mistress of Mistresses

And there – since else were all things else prov’d naught –

Bestower and hallower of all things: I will have Thee.

—Thee, and hawthorn time. For in that new birth though all

Change, you I will have unchang’d: even that dress,

So fall’n to your hips as lapping waves should fall:

You, cloth’d upon with your beauty’s nakedness.

The line of your flank: so lily-pure and warm:

The globéd wonder of splendid breasts made bare:

The gleam, like cymbals a-clash, when you lift your arm;

And the faun leaps out with the sweetness of red-gold hair.

My dear – my tongue is broken: I cannot see:

A sudden subtle fire beneath my skin

Runs, and an inward thunder deafens me,

Drowning mine ears: I tremble. – O unpin

Those pins of anachite diamond, and unbraid

Those strings of margery-pearls, and so let fall

Your python tresses in their deep cascade

To be your misty robe imperial—

The beating of wings, the gallop, the wild spate,

Die down. A hush resumes all Being, which you

Do with your starry presence consecrate,

And peace of moon-trod gardens and falling dew.

Two are our bodies: two are our minds, but wed.

On your dear shoulder, like a child asleep,

I let my shut lids press, while round my head

Your gracious hands their benediction keep.

Mistress of my delights; and Mistress of Peace:

O ever changing, never changing, You:

Dear pledge of our true love’s unending lease,

Since true to you means to mine own self true—

I will have gold and jewels for my delight:

Hyacinth, ruby, and smaragd, and curtains work’d in gold

With mantichores and what worse shapes of fright

Terror Antiquus spawn’d in the days of old.

Earth I will have, and the deep sky’s ornament:

Lordship, and hardship, and peril by land and sea—

And still, about cock-shut time, to pay for my banishment,

Safe in the lowe of the firelight I will have Thee.

Half blinded with tears, I read the stanzas and copied them down. All the while I was conscious of the Señorita’s presence at my side, a consciousness from which in some irrational way I seemed to derive an inexplicable support, beyond comprehension or comparisons. These were things which by all right judgement it was unpardonable that any living creature other than myself should have looked upon. Yet of the lightness of her presence (more, of its deep necessity), my sense was so lively as to pass without remark or question. When I had finished my writing, I saw that she had not moved, but remained there, very still, one hand laid lightly on the bedpost at the foot of the bed, between the ears of the great golden hippogriff. I heard her say, faint as the breath of night-flowers under the stars: ‘The fabled land of ZIMIAMVIA. Is it true, will you think, which poets tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be departed: of them that were great upon earth and did great deeds when they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and the glories of earth, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet oppressors?’

‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘Who dares say he knows?’

Then I heard her say, in her voice that was gentler than the glow-worm’s light among rose-trees in a forgotten garden between dewfall and moonrise: Be content. I have promised and I will perform.

And as my eyes rested on that strange woman’s face, it seemed to take upon itself, as she looked on Lessingham dead, that unsearchable look, of laughter-loving lips divine, half closed in a grave expectancy, of infinite pity, infinite patience, and infinite sweetness, which sits on the face of Praxiteles’s Knidian Aphrodite.

ZIMIAMVIA (#ulink_86b70eec-43e6-53b0-b764-cd19508b086f)

PRINCIPAL PERSONS

LESSINGHAM

BARGANAX

FIORINDA

ANTIOPE

I A SPRING NIGHT IN MORNAGAY (#ulink_e34d3c11-6560-5bd5-b31e-5dd9ff67d92f)

A COMMISSION OF PERIL • THE THREE KINGDOMS MASTERLESS • POLICY OF THE VICAR • THE PROMISE HEARD IN ZIMIAMVIA.