THE HOUND OF HEAVEN
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down
the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and
in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up
vistaed hopes, I sped;
And
shot, precipitated
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong
Feet that followed, followed after.
But
with unhurrying chase,
And
unperturbéd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They
beat—and a Voice beat
More
instant than the Feet—
“All things
betray thee, who betrayest Me.”
I
pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with
intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followéd,
Yet was I
sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His
approach would clash it to
Fear wist not to
evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the
gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter
on their changèd bars;
Fretted
to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.
I said to dawn: Be sudden—to eve: Be soon;
With thy young
skiey blossoms heap me over
From
this tremendous Lover!
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His
servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous
trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the
whistling mane of every wind.
But whether
they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long
savannahs of the blue;
Or
whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged
his chariot ’thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their
feet:—
Fear wist not to
evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with
unhurrying chase,
And
unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed,
majestic instancy,
Came on
the following Feet,
And a
Voice above their beat—
“Naught shelters
thee, who wilt not shelter Me.”
I sought no more that, after which I strayed,
In face of man
or maid;
But still within the little children’s eyes
Seems something,
something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning
answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
“Come then, ye other children, Nature’s—share
With me” (said I) “your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you
lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning
With our
Lady-Mother’s vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her
wind-walled palace,
Underneath her
azured daïs,
Quaffing, as
your taintless way is,
From a
chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.”
So it was
done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one—
Drew the bolt of Nature’s secrecies.
I knew all the
swift importings
On the wilful
face of skies;
knew how
the clouds arise
Spumèd of the
wild sea-snortings;
All that’s
born or dies
Rose and drooped
with—made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine—
With them joyed
and was bereaven.
I was heavy with
the even,
When she lit her
glimmering tapers
Round the day’s
dead sanctities.
I laughed in the
morning’s eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I
wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my
own to beat,
And share
commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and
I; in sound I speak—
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
Let her, if she
would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o’
her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My
thirsting mouth.
Nigh
and nigh draws the chase,
With
unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed
majestic instancy
And past those noisèd Feet
A voice
comes yet more fleet—
“Lo! naught
contents thee, who content’st not Me.”
Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And
smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless
utterly,
I slept,
methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the
pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years—
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now
even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love
indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must—
Designer
infinite!—
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower I’ the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank
thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is
to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity,
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsèd turrets slowly wash again;
But not ere him
who summoneth
I first have
seen, enwound
With grooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man’s heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest,
must Thy harvest fields
Be dunged with
rotten death?
Now of
that long pursuit
Comes on
at hand the bruit;
That Voice is
round me like a bursting sea:
“And is
thy earth so marred,
Shattered
in shard on shard?
Lo, all things
fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
“Strange,
piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught” (He said),
“And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou
merited—
Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou
knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save
only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy
harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
All which thy
child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My
hand, and come.”
Halts by
me that footfall:
Is my
gloom, after all,
Shade of His
hand, outstretched caressingly?
“Ah,
fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He
Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest
love from thee, who dravest Me.”
FRANCIS THOMPSON
EL LEBREL DEL CIELO
Le huía
noche y día
a través de
los arcos de los años,
y le huía a
porfía
por entre
los tortuosos aledaños
de mi alma,
y me cubría
con la
niebla del llanto
o con la
carcajada, como un manto.
He escalado
esperanzas,
me he
hundido en el abismo deleznable,
para huir
de los Pasos que me alcanzan:
persecución
sin prisa, imperturbable,
inminencia
prevista y sin contraste.
Los oigo
resonar... y aún más fuerte
una Voz que
me advierte:
—“Todo te
deja, porque me dejaste”.
Golpeaba
las ventanas
que ofrecen
al proscrito sus encantos
y temblando
de espanto
pensaba que
el Amor que me persigue,
si al final
me consigue,
no dejará
brillar más que su llama;
y si alguna
ventana se entreabría,
el soplo de
su acceso la cerraba.
El miedo no
alcanzaba
a huir
cuanto el Amor me perseguía.
Me evadí de
este mundo;
violé la
puerta de oro de los cielos,
pidiendo
amparo a sus sonoros velos,
y arranqué
notas dulces y un profundo
rumor de
plata al astro plateado.
Al alba
dije “Ven”; “ven”, a la tarde,
“escondedme
de aqueste Enamorado
de miedo
que me aguarde”.
Tenté a sus
servidores,
y sólo
hallé traición en su constancia.
Para Él la
fe; de mí perseguidores
con falsa
rectitud y leal falacia.
Pedí volar
a todo lo ligero,
asiéndome a
las crines del pampero,
y aunque se
deslizaba
por la azul
lejanía,
y el trueno
hacía resonar su carro,
y zapateaba
el rayo,
el miedo no
alcanzaba
a huir
cuanto el Amor me perseguía.
Persecución
sin prisa, imperturbable,
majestuosa
inminencia. En las veredas
dejan los
Pasos que la Voz me hable:
—“Nada te
hospedará si no me hospedas”.
Ya no busco
mi sueño interrogando
un rostro
de hombre o de mujer, mas quedan
los ojos de
los niños esperando:
hay algo en
ellos para mí de veras.
Y cuando mi
ansiedad se prometía
el dulce
despertar de una respuesta,
los ángeles
venían
y los
llevaban por la senda opuesta.
“Venid
(clamaba), dadme la frescura
de la
Naturaleza
que guardan
vuestros labios de pureza;
dejadme
juguetear en las alturas;
habitar el
palacio
azul de
vuestra Madre, cuyas trenzas
vagan por
el espacio,
y beber
como un llanto de ambrosía
el rocío del día”.
Y al fin lo
conseguí: fui recibido
En su dulce
amistad, y abrí el sentido
de los
matices de la faz del cielo,
de la nube
naciente entre los velos
de la
espuma del mar. Nací con ella
para morir
con todo lo escondido.
Me conformé
a sus huellas.
Supe caer
cuando la tarde cae
al encender
sus lámparas de duelo,
y reír con
la aurora de ojos suaves,
y llorar
con la lluvia de los cielos,
y hacer mi
corazón del sol gemelo.
Pero ¡qué inútilmente!
Imposible
entender lo que otro siente.
Las cosas
hablan un lenguaje arcano,
incomprensible;
es un silencio vano
para mi
inteligencia. Aunque pudiera
prenderme
de sus pechos como un niño,
seguiría mi
sed de otro cariño.
Y noche a
noche afuera
oigo los
Pasos que me dan alcance
con medida
carrera,
deliberado
avance,
majestad
inminente,
que deja
oír la Voz de la otra parte:
—“Nada
podrá llegar a contentarte
mientras no
me contentes”.
Espero el
golpe de tu amor, inerme.
Pieza a
pieza rompiste mi armadura.
De rodillas
estoy, y dudo al verme
despierto y
despojado.
La fuerza
juvenil de mi locura
sacudió las
columnas de las horas,
y mi vida
es un templo desplomado;
montón de
años, multitud de escombros
el ayer y
el ahora.
Los sueños
mismos se han evaporado,
y mis días
son polvo.
Las
fantasías con que ataba el mundo
me
abandonan : son cuerdas muy delgadas
para alzar
una tierra recargada
por el
dolor profundo.
¡ Ay! que
tu amor es hierba de dolores
que sólo
deja florecer sus flores.
¡Oh
imaginero eterno, es suficiente!
Tú quemas
el carbón con que dibujas.
Mi juventud
es fuga de burbujas;
mi corazón
la fuente
quebrada,
donde no
queda nada
del llanto
de mi mente.
¡Sea! mas
¿qué amargura
si la pulpa
es amarga, me deparan
las heces?
Lo vislumbro en la fisura
del telón
de las nubes que rasgara
el sonar de
las trompas celestiales.
Aun sin
poder reconocer sus reales,
su púrpura,
su cetro, su guarida,
le conozco
y le entiendo. Se apresura;
quiere mi
corazón, quiere mi vida,
quiere mi
podredumbre,
quiere mi
oscuridad para su lumbre.
Ya la
persecución está lograda.
Y la Voz
como un mar en torno fluye:
—“¿Crees
que la tierra gime destrozada?
Todo te
huye, porque tú me huyes”.
¡Extraña,
fútil cosa, miserable!
dime, ¿cómo
podrías ser amada?;
¿no he
hecho ya demasiado de tu nada
para
hacerte sin mérito, aceptable?
Pizca de
barro, ¿acaso tú no sabes
cuán poco
amor te cabe?
¿Quién
hallarás que te ame? Solamente
yo, que
cuanto te pido te he quitado,
para que me
lo pidas de prestado
y lo dé misericordiosamente.
Lo que tú
crees perdido está en mi casa
levántate,
toma mi mano y pasa.
Los Pasos
se han quedado junto al vano.
Acaso ¡oh
tú, tiniebla que me ofusca
seas sólo
la sombra de Su mano!
—“Oh loco,
ciego, enfermo que te abrasas,
pues buscas
el amor, a mí me buscas,
y lo
rechazas cuando me rechazas”.
Versión de Carlos A. Sáenz