Saturday, October 5, 2013

My whole mortality trembling to take thy body









from "The Eternal Wedding"

She:  What hast thou done to me! -- I would have soul,
Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held 
By flesh. Now, inly delighted with desire, 
My body knows itself to be nought else 
But thy heart’s worship of me; and my soul 
Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air. 
Nay, all my body is become a song 
Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song. 

He:  And mine is all like one rapt faculty,
As it were listening to the love in thee, 
My whole mortality trembling to take 
Thy body like heard singing of thy spirit. 

She:  Surely by this, Beloved, we must know
Our love is perfect here,—that not as holds 
The common dullard thought, we are things lost 
In an amazement that is all unware; 
But wonderfully knowing what we are! 
Lo, now that body is the song whereof 
Spirit is mood, knoweth not our delight? 
Knoweth not beautifully now our love, 
That Life, here to this festival bid come 
Clad in his splendour of worldly day and night, 
Filled and empower’d by heavenly lust, is all 
The glad imagination of the Spirit? 


He:  Were it not so, Love could not be at all:
Nought could be, but a yearning to fullfil 
Desire of beauty, by vain reaching forth 
Of sense to hold and understand the vision 
Made by impassion’d body,—vision of thee! 
But music mixt with music are, in love, 
Bodily senses; and as flame hath light, 
Spirit this nature hath imagined round it, 
No way concealed therein, when love comes near, 
Nor in the perfect wedding of desires 
Suffering any hindrance. 


She:  Ah, but now,
Now am I given love’s eternal secret! 
Yea, thou and I who speak, are but the joy 
Of our for ever mated spirits; but now 
The wisdom of my gladness even through Spirit 
Looks, divinely elate. Who hath for joy 
Our Spirits? Who hath imagined them 
Round him in fashion’d radiance of desire, 
As into light of these exulting bodies 
Flaming Spirit is uttered? 


He:  Yea, here the end
Of love’s astonishment! Now know we Spirit, 
And Who, for ease of joy, contriveth Spirit. 
Now all life’s loveliness and power we have 
Dissolved in this one moment, and our burning 
Carries all shining upward, till in us 
Life is not life, but the desire of God, 
Himself desiring and himself accepting. 
Now what was prophecy in us is made 
Fulfilment: we are the hour and we are the joy, 
We in our marvellousness of single knowledge, 
Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate 
And drawing into his light the greeting fire 
Of God,—God known in ecstasy of love 
Wedding himself to utterance of himself 


Lascelles Abercrombie
Emblems of Love





4 comments:

  1. the title and the photograph are enough needles to unknit me and so that I too blow away on the wind. (i feel as though i have seen you naked here in this photograph. i feel as though i am naked here. we all are.)

    if there is any accomplishment on earth it is to relinquish the self by giving over and over through love. i aim to the accomplishment of giving all away in threat of getting nothing in return.

    the title, mmmm, the title)))))

    and these lines:

    till in us
    Life is not life, but the desire of God,
    Himself desiring and himself accepting.


    what church do we need find? which other success might we seek?

    i love you)))))

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  2. i don't know what to say, except that i am dissolving, pure joy, into this image~~~

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  3. I had to update this dialog a scoatch to understand it:

    She: My body is only your desire, making me know that my soul is not separate and distinct from anything.

    He: My purpose on earth is only to take and appreciate your body.

    She: Doesn't this show that our love is spirit clad in flesh?

    He: Yes.

    She: We two burn into one spirit, but for what purpose?

    He: For God to experience Himself, in the giving and receiving.

    I would modernize this last bit even further as:

    For us to experience God in the giving and receiving.

    or, even more current:

    For us to teach ourselves things we already know but want to have fun re-experiencing.

    Still, there is an "old energy" feel to this - the needing a mediator, a deus ex machina, for articulation. Immortality, in fact, in found in the unity of two into one.

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  4. is for me like a dream or like the impossible said in an image,and i'm trembling like every time when i want to be to a weeding with the air, and with the silk,with that incredible frailty that say sometimes beauty is a hostage for everything...

    ReplyDelete