Lionel Johnson (1867 – 1902)
English poet, essayist and critic.
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Dark Angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!
Ill times may be; she hath no thought of time:
She reigns beside the waters yet in pride.
Rude voices cry: but in her ears the chime
Of full, sad bells brings back her old springtide.
Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so,
Dark Angel! triumph over me:
Lonely, unto the Lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity. ?
Which are more full of fate:
The stars; or those sad eyes?
Which are more still and great:
Those brows; or the dark skies?
Our wearier spirit faints,
Vexed in the world‘s employ:
His soul was of the saints;
And art to him was joy.
Imageries of dreams reveal a gracious age:
Black armour, falling lace, and altar lights at morn.
The courtesy of saints, their gentleness and scorn,
Lights on an earth more fair, than shone from Plato's page:
The courtesy of knights, fair calm and sacred rage:
The courtesy of love, sorrow for love's sake borne.
Vanished, those high conceits! Desolate and forlorn,
We hunger against hope for the lost heritage.
Alone he rides, alone,
The fair and fatal king:
Dark night is all his own,
That strange and solemn thing.
Through thee, the gracious Muses turn,
To Furies, O mine Enemy!
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.
Vanquished in life, his death
By beauty made amends:
The passing of his breath
Won his defeated ends.
The winds are sometimes sad to me,
The starry spaces, full of fear;
Mine is the sorrow on the sea,
And mine the sigh of places drear.
King, tried in fires of woe!
Men hunger for thy grace:
And through the night I go,
Loving thy mournful face.
What comes now? The earth awaits
What fierce wonder from the skies?
Thunder, trampling through the night?
Morning, with illustrious eyes?
Morning, from the springs of light:
Thunder, round Heaven's opening gates.
Now from the broken tower, what solemn bell still tolls,
Mourning what piteous death? Answer, O saddened souls!
Who mourn the death of beauty and the death of grace.
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