Radclyffe Hall: Verses about Fire

Moth to the flame !
Fool that you be,
Life 's but a game,
Love is the same,
Better go free !

Moth to the fire !
Madness your' fate ;
Burnt of desire,
If you expire,
Joy comes too late.

Moth to the kiss
Bringing you death !
'Gladly for this
Agonized bliss,
With my last breath
Will I adore
As ne'er before!'
Foolish Moth saith.

If not from Phaon I must hope for ease,
Ah ! let me seek it from the raging seas :
To raging seas unpitied I'll remove;
And either cease to live or cease to love.
Ovid's Heroic Epistle, XV.


Immortal Lesbian! canst thou still behold
From some far sphere wherein thy soul doth sing
This earth, that once was thine, while glimmered gold
The joyous beams of youth's forgotten spring?

Can thine unfathomed eyes embrace this sea,
Whose ebb and flow once echoed in thy brain ?
Whose tides bear record of thine ecstasy
And thy despair, that in its arms hath lain?

Those love-burnt lips! Can death have quenched their fire?
Whose words oft stir our senses to unrest?
Whose eager ardour caught and held desire,
A searing flame against thy living breast?

Passion-wan Lesbian, in that awful place
Where spirits wander lost without a name
Thou still art Sappho, and thine ardent face
Lights up the gloom with love's enduring flame.

Oh! Goddess, woman, lover, all divine
And yet divinely mortal, where thou art
Comes not as cadence from some song of thine
Each throbbing beat that stirs the human heart ?

Canst thou forget us who are still thy friends,
Thy lovers, o'er the cloudy gulf of years?
Who live, and love, and dying make amends
For life's short pleasures thro' death's endless fears ?

Once thou didst seek the solace of thy kind,
The madness of a kiss was more to thee
Than Heaven or Hell, the greatness of thy mind
Could not conceive more potent ecstasy !

Life was thy slave, and gave thee of her store
Rich gifts and many, yet with all the pain
Of hopeless longing made thy spirit sore,
E'en thou didst yearn, and couldest not attain.

Oh ! Sappho, sister, by that agony
Of soul and body hast thou gained a place
Within each age that shines majestie'ly
Across the world from out the dusk of space.

Not thy deep pleasures, nor thy swiftest joys,
Have made thee thus, immortal and yet dear
To mortal hearts, but that which naught destroys,
The sacred image of thy falling tear.

Beloved Lesbian ! we would dare to claim
By that same tear fond union with thy lot;
Yet 'tis enough, if when we breathe thy name
Thy soul but listens, and forgets us not.

To-day the still, deep mind of the Earth
Has steeped in longing her wistful eyes,
A sense of wonder and glad surprise
Thrills thro' her heart with a thought of birth.

The grave All-Mother looks up and smiles,
Her breath comes balmy from sunlit mouth,
Her bosom bare to the ardent south
Is fanned by perfume from fruitful miles.

All winter long has the dear Earth slept
In drifts of snow, 'neath the bane of frost,
Her children sought for the Mother lost,
Yet found her not, and in anguish wept.

All winter long have my senses cried
For warmth of sun, and the blue of sky,
The hard north answered to mock my sigh,
And all the glory of life denied.

The cold mists drifting on land and sea,
Like ghosts of passions burnt out and chill,
Smote heart and soul with the fear of ill,
That cast its awfulness over me.

The dank gray sails, and the dank gray shore,
They melted each in the other's face,
With clammy kiss, in a wan embrace
That left them colder than e'en before.

And thro' the boughs of the moss-grown trees
The sap flowed sluggish, or not at all,
While here and there would a dead leaf fall,
Like thought of harrowing memories.

Then from the heart of the Universe
There rose a wail of unending woe,
An anguished prayer from the deeps below:
' Oh ! Mother, lift from our souls the curse!'

'Oh! Mother, quicken thy sacred womb,
With fire that throbs in the veins of Spring,
Behold the numbness of everything,
And only thou can avert the doom.'

' Oh ! Mother, hear us !' But silent still
The Earth slept on, as it were in death.
Her ice-bound bosom stirred not with breath,
So fast she lay 'neath the winter's will.

I joined my prayer to the wind and trees,
I joined my cry to the striving soil,
I said, 'Oh ! Mother, our endless toil
Has made us sicken with miseries.

' Rise up ! and help us again to live,
Rise up ! uncover thy fruitful breast,
We faint in winter's unrestful rest,
We burn with longings to love and give.'

And as I spoke came a voice more strong
Than all creation's, o'er land and sea
It called our Mother to ecstasy,
And lo ! she stirred, who had slept so long.

She stirred, she opened her drowsy eyes,
And bending down from the dome above,
Beheld the form of embodied Love,
As Spring stepped Earthward from Paradise.

Ring on! Oh endless vesper bell!
What can you know of that deep Hell
Upon this Earth, where men may dwell.

Ring on ! Your calling is in vain,
What holy rite can lull the pain
Of mortal Sin's Immortal stain.
* * * *
It was the heavy hour of noon,
When Nature still as in a swoon
Reclines beneath the spell of June.

I left the Monastery gate,
And sought the forest shade, to wait
For even hour, and meditate.

Upon the beads hung from my side
A silver Christus crucified.
God mocked, and scourged, and denied !

My missal in my hand I took,
And read within the Holy Book
How vain the joys a monk forsook.

I thought of Heaven, and all therein
I hoped by penitence to win;
My heart was free from mortal sin.

When lo ! as of enchanted spheres
A languid music smote my ears,
With vast delight, and vaster fears.

It was as if all deadly wrong
Grown honied sweet in magic song
Caressed my senses, deep and long.

My eyes upon the missal bent
Sprang upward, and in ravishment
Beheld a gaze on me intent.

The figure of a tender maid,
Within the larches' trembling glade
Clothed in sunlight and in shade—

Was bending o'er me, and her breast
Full worthy of a King's behest
She offered, that my head might rest.

She was most pale, and frail, and white,
Like moonlit mist on Summer's night,
Like memory of wan delight.

And thro' the tendrils of her hair
There blew a breath of scented air,
Of all sweet things from everywhere.

A limpid magic were her eyes,
Two mountain lakes, where sunlight lies
Enamoured, and of passion dies.

From out her lips proceeded words
More soft than distant pipe of herds,
More tender than the song of birds.

I know not what the tongue she spake,
But all my senses leapt to ache
With longing, for her asking's sake.

As in a dream I rose and pressed
Her bending slimness to my breast:
With eager kiss my mouth caressed

The flaming redness of her own,
All else on earth had nothing grown,
Save that we two were there alone.

Within my ears the rush of streams,
My vision shot with lurid gleams,
My spirit bathed in burning dreams!

A vital fragrance round her clung,
As if from earth's deep veins was wrung
The sap of springs for ever young.

It turned my blood to living fire,
The universe immense, entire,
Was bound in me, and my desire.

No mortal man was I, while still
I kissed and wreaked my ardent will
Upon that form of tender ill.

She cast her magic over me,
Her spell of Immortality,
That lost my soul Eternity.

The sunlight faded, and the day
As one affrighted fled away,
Suddenly tremulous and gray.

An icy wind sprang up, and blew
A shuddering breath along the dew,
It chilled my body thro' and thro'.

I sought the shelter of her hair,
But lo ! my sinful breast was bare,
My arms outstretched to empty air.

I wept aloud, in anguish cried,
The echoes hastened to deride !
She came no longer to my side.

And in her stead, with agony
Of dumb regret, most bitterly
My soul came forth, and looked on me !
* * * *
Within the forest's depth a bird
Began to twitter, and I heard
Trees stirring at its tender word.

I woke as from a searing dream,
Beside my feet a little stream
Grew rosy with a sunset beam.

The earth gave forth her fragrant store;
Obedient to Eternal law,
All things were even as before,

All things save I, who moaned, and stood
A stranger, in the tranquil wood.
My spirit shrank away, nor could

Refresh itself at Nature's breast,
Its lips were burnt, denied, caressed
Of sin, unholy and unblessed !

I knew it then ! fulfilled desires
Are in themselves Hell's deepest fires,
And man when highest he aspires

The more may fall beneath his lust.
And yet, ah ! Heaven, the while I thrust
My sense in penitential dust

I knew that thro' my misery
A tremor stole persistently,
Of rapture at her memory.

Shall I confess with spirit bent
That hour of awful ravishment?
Dear God, but slwuld I not repent'?

'Twere better that we two should die
A thousand deaths, my soul and I,
Than live an everlasting lie !

Oh soul ! What would you have me say,
To Him whose hand shall never stay-
Its vengeance on this woeful day !
* * * *
Ring on ! oh endless vesper bell !
What can you know of that deep Hell
Upon this earth where men may dwell,
And God, does He know? Who can tell