The Charnel Rose: A Symphony: Part IV by Conrad Aiken Lyrics
1
Through the deep night, the night of forgetfulness,
Men ran with streaming torches,
Pale mouths shouted,
Bright fires were bristling backward on the wind;
And he heard fanatic feet
Ring echoing into darkness down the street.
Into the night they sank. Bubbles of sound,
Dilating greenly upward through the darkness,
Showed him where men had drowned.
What towers above him trembled? Up them swarmed
Thick smoke of leaves, a fire of bursting roses,
Licking the sky.
The towers were smothered; they crumbled in roar of flame;
They crashed and spouted. And when they showered before him,
Strange things rushed out of them; and whistled by.
These men with bristling torches,
Filling the darkness with cries and fire,
Falling and turning and sinking into the night,--
These were himself, rising in rage against him;
The sky hung red and bright;
And above the crash of walls he heard a cry,
'The hour has come! Now let the tyrant die!'
To shape this world of leaderless ghostly passions,--
Or else be mobbed by it--there was the riddle.
Gaunt leaves above him whispered the slow question;
Black ripples on the pool chuckled of passions.
And between the uneasy shoulders of two trees,
Huge, against impalpable breath of blue,
A golden star slipped down to leafy seas,
A star he somehow knew.
Now came the final hour:
Clear music, silver horns and muted strings,
Seduced from temporal air his willing feet.
Below him sang in vain that scarlet darkness.
Now should the infinite soul be made complete.
2
I bring seven candles of scented wax,
Seven candles of peacock flame:
Black webs of smoke above them weave:
And I, I shake with shame.
For though your face, in the altar-light,
Is a vision I should not see,
I would have you leave your jewelled frame
And break your heart for me.
No priest forbids--step down, I pray!
Now darkness floods the air,
And I have taken your ringless hand,
And loosed your seven-starred hair:
And then unclasp the supple clasp
To let your mantle fall
That night may know your naked side
And love consume you all.
God-haunted eyes and holy mouth!
No wings now fold you in:
The mystic marriage is blessed with feast,
The sacrament with sin:
Invisible veins of lightning run
Like hot gold through the night,
The sacred kiss beneath my kiss
Is open to my delight.
Seven eyes of peacock flame I bring,
Seven candles of scented flame:
Black webs of smoke above them tremble:
I tremble, too, with shame.
3
Rain seethed upon him,--with black streaks through the day,
With white streaks through the night.
Around a lantern undulant through the darkness
He saw old pale leaves fall.
Silent, he saw them swarming over the light.
Deep darkness drowned them all.
Some edge there is in love--at the beginning,--
That flashes and dims. And so with all things sought.
If rain dropped upward through the grass, he thought,--
And fell to the clouds--and beyond the clouds to sun. . .
Might love find consummation?
Let us invert the world:
Let us delude ourselves that dust may rise,
That earth relents at last.
Red lilies, rapidly growing, bloom in darkness.
A pebble, dropped, is flung down soundless skies.
4
He turned in the dusk, and saw none coming behind him;
He listened, and heard no sound.
'I am Christ!' he cried. His words were lost in the silence.
Three scarlet leaves of a maple fell to the ground.
But he felt beneath his sandals the pushing of roses,
And did not dare to move.
He turned in the night, and saw no shadow behind him;
He listened and heard no voice.
'I am Christ!' he cried. A whisper of leaves denied him.
'And while I live, no more shall man rejoice.'
The moon rose, huge and cold, behind a hill:
The trees shook silver; the night grew chill.
Why was the world so mute, the world his body?
He smiled, to think it slept.
The leaves above him quivered along black branches;
Dew dropped beneath white stars.
'It is the third day. I have risen,' he said.
Among the dead leaves, whispers crept.
'How did I know it was time? Perhaps I dreamed.
The dusk of the third day came.
I lay upon the stones. A shaft of the low sun gleamed
Through a single crack, and a cobweb sang like flame.
Petals of blood had purpled those grey sands.
But the great rock was as nothing before my hands.
'But all this happened before, somewhere' he said--
'In this same twilight I strove from this same tomb:
Lifting with dusty hands a great white rock.
My eyes were dazzled with sun. They were used to gloom.
I saw that hill, black, on a sky bright red.
'But where, then, are my disciples?' He looked behind him;
And the blue night lay still.
'I saw black bats, as I had seen them before,--
In the sharp twilight. They twittered against the sky.
But it seemed to me that I stood on a pathless shore
Invisible waves before me surged to die. . .
To die? There is no death. No death!' he said.
A thick bough guarded the moonlight from his head.
Disembodied, he flowed with the flow of night;
Caught up with stars and wind.
The moon with an army of red clouds hurried before him,
In silent tremendous haste.
Seas clashed together beneath him; they roared and showered;
Earth shook beneath his feet.
And he stood at the end of an infinite lamplit street.
He rang a bell in the street; lifting his voice,
Beneath the lamp at every corner he cried
'I am Christ returned, from the dead!
It was I you wounded, I that you crucified,
It was I who wept and bled.
Did I not prophesy, three days ago?
You sealed a great white rock above my head.
And I come to tell you the things you do not know.'
Laughter rushed round him; they spat upon his face;
They struck him and beat him down.
Thinking him dead, they left him in that place:
Lying against an old wall, crushed and bleeding,
With lamplight on his face.
And children mocked at him; and he could not answer;
For how could the dead explain
That all was predetermined, all immortal?
How could he make it clear,
To children, who came to kick him, and to jeer,
(With the blood so slowly struggling through his brain,)
That man's salvation rose through pain?
Remote this was, and strange. A lamp grew dim,
Drawn to a thin swift streak along the sky.
A sinister planet poised to revolve on him.
He was a soundless motion. He could not cry.
And dark things whistled beneath him. And a cold shade,
Bottomless, gulfed him down. And he was afraid.
And he tossed in the darkness, as one who in fever dreams
Of bathing at last in the fullness of cold streams,
Bright, beneath leaves, by sand.
Roses, cover my body! I am tired of struggle.
Old twilight, take my hand!
He saw a green hill, clear, in the evening sky.
Night came. Three crosses fell.
5
To muse in teh afternoon by a convent wall,--
Here, at the bottom of a vast blue well of sun;
To watch the lizard breathe and crawl,
And know yourself the world and lizard in one:
Let us lose ourselves, and all we meditate,
To melt, through dream, in the timeless dream of fate.
The infinite mind uncloses like a lotus,--
And we are the heart of it. Come,--take my hand!
And drift with the drift of wind.
You a note, and I a note,
In a sea of music we tremble and fall and float.
That spinning world is an old, old recollection:
It dissolves in darkness. But the mind is not dismayed.
We were confused, a while, in loves and hatreds,--
We fought for light or shade.
Now all is changed: we climb the solid air;
This azure light is a pinnacled carven stair.
Now what you muse already is on my tongue:
You smile, and utter the secrets of my heart.
Somewhere, long since, there was a pebble flung:
From that drowned cry we start.
Somewhere I blossom. Somewhere my brown leaves fall.
Somewhere I cry, somewhere I sing.
Yet, we are musing by a convent wall.
In a depth of sun. . .on an afternoon in spring.
We must escape this temporal flesh and place,--
Step freely away in dream. . .though lizards creep,
Rustling the vines, and a cool air chills the face,
A pulse of menace trembling beneath our sleep. . .
There is no vine, no lizard! We draw no breath.
We are the soundless ecstasy of death.
I have seen bees, poised in the quiet sun,
Winnowing, with rapid invisible wings,
Judas petals, littered upon a path.
I must forget them. I must forget them all.
I must forget this sun,--myself,--this wall.
Here, then, at last, grown weary of long pursuing,
We find the perfect darkness!
The infinite spreads before us, and shrinks to nothing.
Or must we remember, always, that sound of voices,
Our little cave of dusk?
Dancers arose: he had not seen them:
Hissing cymbals clashed.
The great rose blossomed with a clang of light
And withered in silent fire.
He was a part of the maniac laughter of chaos;
Rebellious chaos of unfulfilled desire.
Twilight: a cold green sky.
Low massed clouds, with dazzling sinister edges,
And a sea gull, falling in high pale sunlight.
Dusk,--the encroachment of poisonous shadows,
The leisurely lighting of lamps;
And a gradual silence of restless trees.
Mist of twilight in my heart:
I who was always catching at fire.
Mould of black leaves under my feet;
I, whose star was desire.
Earth spins in her shadow. Let us turn and go back
To the first of our loves--
The one who was moonlight and the fall of white roses!
We are struck down. We hear no music.
The moisture of night is in our hands.
Time takes us. We are eternal.
Through the deep night, the night of forgetfulness,
Men ran with streaming torches,
Pale mouths shouted,
Bright fires were bristling backward on the wind;
And he heard fanatic feet
Ring echoing into darkness down the street.
Into the night they sank. Bubbles of sound,
Dilating greenly upward through the darkness,
Showed him where men had drowned.
What towers above him trembled? Up them swarmed
Thick smoke of leaves, a fire of bursting roses,
Licking the sky.
The towers were smothered; they crumbled in roar of flame;
They crashed and spouted. And when they showered before him,
Strange things rushed out of them; and whistled by.
These men with bristling torches,
Filling the darkness with cries and fire,
Falling and turning and sinking into the night,--
These were himself, rising in rage against him;
The sky hung red and bright;
And above the crash of walls he heard a cry,
'The hour has come! Now let the tyrant die!'
To shape this world of leaderless ghostly passions,--
Or else be mobbed by it--there was the riddle.
Gaunt leaves above him whispered the slow question;
Black ripples on the pool chuckled of passions.
And between the uneasy shoulders of two trees,
Huge, against impalpable breath of blue,
A golden star slipped down to leafy seas,
A star he somehow knew.
Now came the final hour:
Clear music, silver horns and muted strings,
Seduced from temporal air his willing feet.
Below him sang in vain that scarlet darkness.
Now should the infinite soul be made complete.
2
I bring seven candles of scented wax,
Seven candles of peacock flame:
Black webs of smoke above them weave:
And I, I shake with shame.
For though your face, in the altar-light,
Is a vision I should not see,
I would have you leave your jewelled frame
And break your heart for me.
No priest forbids--step down, I pray!
Now darkness floods the air,
And I have taken your ringless hand,
And loosed your seven-starred hair:
And then unclasp the supple clasp
To let your mantle fall
That night may know your naked side
And love consume you all.
God-haunted eyes and holy mouth!
No wings now fold you in:
The mystic marriage is blessed with feast,
The sacrament with sin:
Invisible veins of lightning run
Like hot gold through the night,
The sacred kiss beneath my kiss
Is open to my delight.
Seven eyes of peacock flame I bring,
Seven candles of scented flame:
Black webs of smoke above them tremble:
I tremble, too, with shame.
3
Rain seethed upon him,--with black streaks through the day,
With white streaks through the night.
Around a lantern undulant through the darkness
He saw old pale leaves fall.
Silent, he saw them swarming over the light.
Deep darkness drowned them all.
Some edge there is in love--at the beginning,--
That flashes and dims. And so with all things sought.
If rain dropped upward through the grass, he thought,--
And fell to the clouds--and beyond the clouds to sun. . .
Might love find consummation?
Let us invert the world:
Let us delude ourselves that dust may rise,
That earth relents at last.
Red lilies, rapidly growing, bloom in darkness.
A pebble, dropped, is flung down soundless skies.
4
He turned in the dusk, and saw none coming behind him;
He listened, and heard no sound.
'I am Christ!' he cried. His words were lost in the silence.
Three scarlet leaves of a maple fell to the ground.
But he felt beneath his sandals the pushing of roses,
And did not dare to move.
He turned in the night, and saw no shadow behind him;
He listened and heard no voice.
'I am Christ!' he cried. A whisper of leaves denied him.
'And while I live, no more shall man rejoice.'
The moon rose, huge and cold, behind a hill:
The trees shook silver; the night grew chill.
Why was the world so mute, the world his body?
He smiled, to think it slept.
The leaves above him quivered along black branches;
Dew dropped beneath white stars.
'It is the third day. I have risen,' he said.
Among the dead leaves, whispers crept.
'How did I know it was time? Perhaps I dreamed.
The dusk of the third day came.
I lay upon the stones. A shaft of the low sun gleamed
Through a single crack, and a cobweb sang like flame.
Petals of blood had purpled those grey sands.
But the great rock was as nothing before my hands.
'But all this happened before, somewhere' he said--
'In this same twilight I strove from this same tomb:
Lifting with dusty hands a great white rock.
My eyes were dazzled with sun. They were used to gloom.
I saw that hill, black, on a sky bright red.
'But where, then, are my disciples?' He looked behind him;
And the blue night lay still.
'I saw black bats, as I had seen them before,--
In the sharp twilight. They twittered against the sky.
But it seemed to me that I stood on a pathless shore
Invisible waves before me surged to die. . .
To die? There is no death. No death!' he said.
A thick bough guarded the moonlight from his head.
Disembodied, he flowed with the flow of night;
Caught up with stars and wind.
The moon with an army of red clouds hurried before him,
In silent tremendous haste.
Seas clashed together beneath him; they roared and showered;
Earth shook beneath his feet.
And he stood at the end of an infinite lamplit street.
He rang a bell in the street; lifting his voice,
Beneath the lamp at every corner he cried
'I am Christ returned, from the dead!
It was I you wounded, I that you crucified,
It was I who wept and bled.
Did I not prophesy, three days ago?
You sealed a great white rock above my head.
And I come to tell you the things you do not know.'
Laughter rushed round him; they spat upon his face;
They struck him and beat him down.
Thinking him dead, they left him in that place:
Lying against an old wall, crushed and bleeding,
With lamplight on his face.
And children mocked at him; and he could not answer;
For how could the dead explain
That all was predetermined, all immortal?
How could he make it clear,
To children, who came to kick him, and to jeer,
(With the blood so slowly struggling through his brain,)
That man's salvation rose through pain?
Remote this was, and strange. A lamp grew dim,
Drawn to a thin swift streak along the sky.
A sinister planet poised to revolve on him.
He was a soundless motion. He could not cry.
And dark things whistled beneath him. And a cold shade,
Bottomless, gulfed him down. And he was afraid.
And he tossed in the darkness, as one who in fever dreams
Of bathing at last in the fullness of cold streams,
Bright, beneath leaves, by sand.
Roses, cover my body! I am tired of struggle.
Old twilight, take my hand!
He saw a green hill, clear, in the evening sky.
Night came. Three crosses fell.
5
To muse in teh afternoon by a convent wall,--
Here, at the bottom of a vast blue well of sun;
To watch the lizard breathe and crawl,
And know yourself the world and lizard in one:
Let us lose ourselves, and all we meditate,
To melt, through dream, in the timeless dream of fate.
The infinite mind uncloses like a lotus,--
And we are the heart of it. Come,--take my hand!
And drift with the drift of wind.
You a note, and I a note,
In a sea of music we tremble and fall and float.
That spinning world is an old, old recollection:
It dissolves in darkness. But the mind is not dismayed.
We were confused, a while, in loves and hatreds,--
We fought for light or shade.
Now all is changed: we climb the solid air;
This azure light is a pinnacled carven stair.
Now what you muse already is on my tongue:
You smile, and utter the secrets of my heart.
Somewhere, long since, there was a pebble flung:
From that drowned cry we start.
Somewhere I blossom. Somewhere my brown leaves fall.
Somewhere I cry, somewhere I sing.
Yet, we are musing by a convent wall.
In a depth of sun. . .on an afternoon in spring.
We must escape this temporal flesh and place,--
Step freely away in dream. . .though lizards creep,
Rustling the vines, and a cool air chills the face,
A pulse of menace trembling beneath our sleep. . .
There is no vine, no lizard! We draw no breath.
We are the soundless ecstasy of death.
I have seen bees, poised in the quiet sun,
Winnowing, with rapid invisible wings,
Judas petals, littered upon a path.
I must forget them. I must forget them all.
I must forget this sun,--myself,--this wall.
Here, then, at last, grown weary of long pursuing,
We find the perfect darkness!
The infinite spreads before us, and shrinks to nothing.
Or must we remember, always, that sound of voices,
Our little cave of dusk?
Dancers arose: he had not seen them:
Hissing cymbals clashed.
The great rose blossomed with a clang of light
And withered in silent fire.
He was a part of the maniac laughter of chaos;
Rebellious chaos of unfulfilled desire.
Twilight: a cold green sky.
Low massed clouds, with dazzling sinister edges,
And a sea gull, falling in high pale sunlight.
Dusk,--the encroachment of poisonous shadows,
The leisurely lighting of lamps;
And a gradual silence of restless trees.
Mist of twilight in my heart:
I who was always catching at fire.
Mould of black leaves under my feet;
I, whose star was desire.
Earth spins in her shadow. Let us turn and go back
To the first of our loves--
The one who was moonlight and the fall of white roses!
We are struck down. We hear no music.
The moisture of night is in our hands.
Time takes us. We are eternal.