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initial, dæmonic, and celestial love

i.

the initial love.

- Venus, when her son was lost,
- Cried him up and down the coast,
- In hamlets, palaces and parks,
- And told the truant by his marks,—
- Golden curls, and quiver and bow.
- This befell how long ago!
- Time and tide are strangely changed,
- Men and manners much deranged:
- None will now find Cupid latent
- By this foolish antique patent.
- He came late along the waste,
- Shod like a traveller for haste;
- With malice dared me to proclaim him
- That the maids and boys might name him.
- Boy no more, he wears all coats,
- Frocks and blouses, capes, capotes;
- He bears no bow, or quiver, or wand,
- Nor chaplet on his head or hand.
- Leave his weeds and heed his eyes,—
- All the rest he can disguise.
- In the pit of his eye's a spark
- Would bring back day if it were dark;
- And, if I tell you all my thought,
- Though I comprehend it not,
- In those unfathomable orbs
- Every function he absorbs;
- Doth eat, and drink, and fish, and shoot,
- And write, and reason, and compute,
- And ride, and run, and have, and hold,
- And whine, and flatter, and regret,
- And kiss, and couple, and beget,
- By those roving eyeballs bold.
- Undaunted are their courage,
- Right Cossacks in their forages;
- Fleeter they than any creature,—
- They are his steeds, and not his feature;
- Inquisitive, and fierce, and fasting,
- Restless, predatory, hasting;
- And they pounce on other eyes
- As lions on their prey;
- And round their circles is writ,
- Plainer than the day,
- Underneath, within, above,—
- Love—love—love—love.
- He lives in his eyes;
- There doth digest, and work, and spin,
- And buy, and sell, and lose, and win;
- He rolls them with delighted motion,
- Joy-tides swell their mimic ocean.
- Yet holds he them with tortest rein,
- That they may seize and entertain
- The glance that to their glance opposes,
- Like fiery honey sucked from roses.
- He palmistry can understand,
- Imbibing virtue by his hand
- As if it were a living root;
- The pulse of hands will make him mute;
- With all his force he gathers balms
- Into those wise, thrilling palms.
- Cupid is a casuist,
- A mystic and a cabalist,—
- Can your lurking thought surprise,
- And interpret your device.
- He is versed in occult science,
- In magic and in clairvoyance,
- Oft he keeps his fine ear strained,
- And Reason on her tiptoe pained
- For aëry intelligence,
- And for strange coincidence.
- But it touches his quick heart
- When Fate by omens takes his part,
- And chance-dropped hints from Nature's sphere
- Deeply soothe his anxious ear.
- Heralds high before him run;
- He has ushers many a one;
- He spreads his welcome where he goes,
- And touches all things with his rose.
- All things wait for and divine him,—
- How shall I dare to malign him,
- Or accuse the god of sport?
- I must end my true report,
- Painting him from head to foot,
- In as far as I took note,
- Trusting well the matchless power
- Of this young-eyed emperor
- Will clear his fame from every cloud
- With the bards and with the crowd.
- He is wilful, mutable,
- Shy, untamed, inscrutable,
- Swifter-fashioned than the fairies,
- Substance mixed of pure contraries;
- His vice some elder virtue's token,
- And his good is evil-spoken.
- Failing sometimes of his own,
- He is headstrong and alone;
- He affects the wood and wild,
- Like a flower-hunting child;
- Buries himself in summer waves,
- In trees, with beasts, in mines and caves,
- Loves nature like a horned cow,
- Bird, or deer, or caribou.
- Shun him, nymphs, on the fleet horses!
- He has a total world of wit;
- O how wise are his discourses!
- But he is the arch-hypocrite,
- And, through all science and all art,
- Seeks alone his counterpart.
- He is a Pundit of the East,
- He is an augur and a priest,
- And his soul will melt in prayer,
- But word and wisdom is a snare;
- Corrupted by the present toy
- He follows joy, and only joy.
- There is no mask but he will wear;
- He invented oaths to swear;
- He paints, he carves, he chants, he prays,
- And holds all stars in his embrace.
- He takes a sovran privilege
- Not allowed to any liege;
- For Cupid goes behind all law,
- And right into himself does draw;
- For he is sovereignly allied,—
- Heaven's oldest blood flows in his side,—
- And interchangeably at one
- With every king on every throne,
- That no god dare say him nay,
- Or see the fault, or seen betray:
- He has the Muses by the heart,
- And the stern Parcæ on his part.
- His many signs cannot be told;
- He has not one mode, but manifold,
- Many fashions and addresses,
- Piques, reproaches, hurts, caresses.
- He will preach like a friar,
- And jump like Harlequin;
- He will read like a crier,
- And fight like a Paladin.
- Boundless is his memory;
- Plans immense his term prolong;
- He is not of counted age,
- Meaning always to be young.
- And his wish is intimacy,
- Intimater intimacy,
- And a stricter privacy;
- The impossible shall yet be done,
- And, being two, shall still be one.
- As the wave breaks to foam on shelves,
- Then runs into a wave again,
- So lovers melt their sundered selves,
- Yet melted would be twain

ii.

the dæmonic love.

- Man was made of social earth,
- Child and brother from his birth,
- Tethered by a liquid cord
- Of blood through veins of kindred poured.
- Next his heart the fireside band
- Of mother, father, sister, stand;
- Names from awful childhood heard
- Throbs of a wild religion stirred;—
- Virtue, to love, to hate them, vice;
- Till dangerous Beauty came, at last,
- Till Beauty came to snap all ties;
- The maid, abolishing the past,
- With lotus wine obliterates
- Dear memory's stone-incarved traits,
- And, by herself, supplants alone
- Friends year by year more inly known.
- When her calm eyes opened bright,
- All else grew foreign in their light.
- It was ever the self-same tale,
- The first experience will not fail;
- Only two in the garden walked,
- And with snake and seraph talked.
- Close, close to men,
- Like undulating layer of air,
- Right above their heads,
- The potent plain of Dæmons spreads.
- Stands to each human soul its own,
- For watch and ward and furtherance
- In the snares of Nature's dance;
- And the lustre and the grace
- To fascinate each youthful heart,
- Beaming from its counterpart,
- Translucent through the mortal covers,
- Is the Dæmon's form and face.
- To and fro the Genius hies,—
- A gleam which plays and hovers
- Over the maiden's head,
- And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes.
- Unknown, albeit lying near,
- To men, the path to the Dæmon sphere;
- And they that swiftly come and go
- Leave no track on the heavenly snow.
- Sometimes the airy synod bends,
- And the mighty choir descends,
- And the brains of men thenceforth,
- In crowded and in still resorts,
- Teem with unwonted thoughts:
- As, when a shower of meteors
- Cross the orbit of the earth,
- And, lit by fringent air,
- Blaze near and far,
- Mortals deem the planets bright
- Have slipped their sacred bars,
- And the lone seaman all the night
- Sails, astonished, amid stars.
- Beauty of a richer vein,
- Graces of a subtler strain,
- Unto men these moonmen lend,
- And our shrinking sky extend.
- So is man's narrow path
- By strength and terror skirted;
- Also (from the song the wrath
- Of the Genii be averted!
- The Muse the truth uncolored speaking
- The Dæmons are self-seeking:
- Their fierce and limitary will
- Draws men to their likeness still.
- The erring painter made Love blind,—
- Highest Love who shines on all;
- Him, radiant, sharpest-sighted god,
- None can bewilder;
- Whose eyes pierce
- The universe,
- Path-finder, road-builder,
- Mediator, royal giver;
- Rightly seeing, rightly seen,
- Of joyful and transparent mien
- 'T is a sparkle passing
- From each to each, from thee to me,
- To and fro perpetually;
- Sharing all, daring all,
- Levelling, displacing
- Each obstruction, it unites
- Equals remote, and seeming opposites.
- And ever and forever Love
- Delights to build a road:
- Unheeded Danger near him strides,
- Love laughs, and on a lion rides.
- But Cupid wears another face,
- Born into Dæmons less divine:
- His roses bleach apace,
- His nectar smacks of wine.
- The Dæmon ever builds a wall,
- Himself encloses and includes,
- Solitude in solitudes:
- In like sort his love doth fall.
- He doth elect
- The beautiful and fortunate,
- And the sons of intellect,
- And the souls of ample fate,
- Who the Future's gates unbar,—
- Minions of the Morning Star.
- In his prowess he exults,
- And the multitude insults.
- His impatient looks devour
- Oft the humble and the poor;
- And, seeing his eye glare,
- They drop their few pale flowers,
- Gathered with hope to please,
- Along the mountain towers,—
- Lose courage, and despair.
- He will never be gainsaid,—
- Pitiless, will not be stayed;
- His hot tyranny
- Burns up every other tie.
- Therefore comes an hour from Jove
- Which his ruthless will defies,
- And the dogs of Fate unties.
- Shiver the palaces of glass;
- Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls,
- Where in bright Art each god and sibyl dwelt
- Secure as in the zodiac's belt;
- And the galleries and halls,
- Wherein every siren sung,
- Like a meteor pass.
- For this fortune wanted root
- In the core of God's abysm,—
- Was a weed of self and schism;
- And ever the Dæmonic Love
- Is the ancestor of wars
- And the parent of remorse.

iii.

the celestial love.

- But God said,
- ‘I will have a purer gift;
- There is smoke in the flame;
- New flowerets bring, new prayers uplift,
- And love without a name.
- Fond children, ye desire
- To please each other well;
- Another round, a higher,
- Ye shall climb on the heavenly stair,
- And selfish preference forbear;
- And in right deserving,
- And without a swerving
- Each from your proper state,
- Weave roses for your mate.
- ‘Deep, deep are loving eyes,
- Flowed with naphtha fiery sweet;
- And the point is paradise,
- Where their glances meet:
- Their reach shall yet be more profound,
- And a vision without bound:
- The axis of those eyes sun-clear
- Be the axis of the sphere:
- So shall the lights ye pour amain
- Go, without check or intervals,
- Through from the empyrean walls
- Unto the same again.’
- Higher far into the pure realm,
- Over sun and star,
- Over the flickering Dæmon film,
- Thou must mount for love;
- Into vision where all form
- In one only form dissolves;
- In a region where the wheel
- On which all beings ride
- Visibly revolves;
- Where the starred, eternal worm
- Girds the world with bound and term;
- Where unlike things are like;
- Where good and ill,
- And joy and moan,
- Melt into one.
- There Past, Present, Future, shoot
- Triple blossoms from one root;
- Substances at base divided,
- In their summits are united;
- There the holy essence rolls
- One through separated souls;
- And the sunny Æon sleeps
- Folding Nature in its deeps,
- And every fair and every good,
- Known in part, or known impure,
- To men below,
- In their archetypes endure.
- The race of gods,
- Or those we erring own,
- Are shadows flitting up and down
- In the still abodes.
- The circles of that sea are laws
- Which publish and which hide the cause.
- Pray for a beam
- Out of that sphere,
- Thee to guide and to redeem.
- O, what a load
- Of care and toil,
- By lying use bestowed,
- From his shoulders falls who sees
- The true astronomy,
- The period of peace.
- Counsel which the ages kept
- Shall the well-born soul accept.
- As the overhanging trees
- Fill the lake with images,—
- As garment draws the garment's hem,
- Men their fortunes bring with them.
- By right or wrong,
- Lands and goods go to the strong.
- Property will brutely draw
- Still to the proprietor;
- Silver to silver creep and wind,
- And kind to kind.
- Nor less the eternal poles
- Of tendency distribute souls.
- There need no vows to bind
- Whom not each other seek, but find.
- They give and take no pledge or oath,—
- Nature is the bond of both:
- No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns,—
- Their noble meanings are their pawns.
- Plain and cold is their address,
- Power have they for tenderness;
- And, so thoroughly is known
- Each other's counsel by his own,
- They can parley without meeting;
- Need is none of forms of greeting;
- They can well communicate
- In their innermost estate;
- When each the other shall avoid,
- Shall each by each be most enjoyed.
- Not with scarfs or perfumed gloves
- Do these celebrate their loves:
- Not by jewels, feasts and savors,
- Not by ribbons or by favors,
- But by the sun-spark on the sea,
- And the cloud-shadow on the lea,
- The soothing lapse of morn to mirk,
- And the cheerful round of work.
- Their cords of love so public are,
- They intertwine the farthest star:
- The throbbing sea, the quaking earth,
- Yield sympathy and signs of mirth;
- Is none so high, so mean is none,
- But feels and seals this union;
- Even the fell Furies are appeased,
- The good applaud, the lost are eased.
- Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond,
- Bound for the just, but not beyond;
- Not glad, as the low-loving herd,
- Of self in other still preferred,
- But they have heartily designed
- The benefit of broad mankind.
- And they serve men austerely,
- After their own genius, clearly,
- Without a false humility;
- For this is Love's nobility,—
- Not to scatter bread and gold,
- Goods and raiment bought and sold;
- But to hold fast his simple sense,
- And speak the speech of innocence.
- And with hand and body and blood,
- To make his bosom-counsel good.
- He that feeds men serveth few;
- He serves all who dares be true.

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initial, dæmonic, and celestial love - Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 9 (Poems) [1909]

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Part of: The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 12 vols. (Fireside Edition).

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