THE GATES OF PARADISE.
MUTUAL forgiveness of each vice,
Such are the Gates of Paradise,
Against the Accuser's chief desire,
Who walked among the stones of fire.
Jehovah's fingers wrote the Law:
He wept; then rose in zeal and awe,
And, in the midst of Sinai's heat,
Hid it beneath His Mercy-Seat.
O Christians! Christians! tell me why You rear it on your altars high !
THE caterpillar on the leaf
Reminds thee of thy mother's grief.
My Eternal Man set in repose,
The Female from his darkness rose ;
And she found me beneath a tree,
A mandrake, and in her veil hid me.
Serpent reasonings us entice
Of good and evil, virtue, vice.
Doubt self-jealous, watery folly,
Struggling through Earth's melancholy,
Naked in air, in shame, and fear,
Blind in fire, with shield and spear,
Two horrid reasoning cloven fictions,
In doubt which is self-contradiction,
A dark hermaphrodite I stood-
Rational truth, root of evil and good,
Round me, flew the flaming sword ;
Round her, snowy whirlwinds roared,
Freezing her veil, the mundane shell.
I rent the veil where the dead dwell:
When weary man enters his cave,
He meets his Saviour in the grave.
Some find a female garment there,
And some a male, woven with care,
Lest the sexual garments sweet
Should grow a devouring winding-sheet.
One dies! alas! the living and dead!
One is slain, and one is fled !
In vain-glory hatched and nursed,
By double spectres, self-accursed.
My son! my son! thou treatest me
But as I have instructed thee.
On the shadows of the moon,
Climbing through night's highest noon :
In Time's ocean falling, drowned:
In aged ignorance profound,
Holy and cold, I clipped the wings
Of all sublunary things:
And in depths of icy dungeons
Closed the father and the sons.
But, when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot die,
Through evening shades I haste away
To close the labours of my day.
The door of Death I open found,
And the worm weaving in the ground:
Thou'rt my mother, from the womb;
Wife, sister, daughter, to the tomb :
Weaving to dreams the sexual strife,
And weeping over the web of life.
HERE thou dwellest, in what grove,
Tell me, fair one, tell me, love ;
Where thou thy charming nest dost build,
O thou pride of every field!
Yonder stands a lonely tree :
There I live and mourn for thee.
Morning drinks my silent tear,
And evening winds my sorrow bear.
O thou summer's harmony,
I have lived and mourned for thee;
Each day I moan along the wood,
And night hath heard my sorrows loud.
Dost thou truly long for me?
And am I thus sweet to thee?
Sorrow now is at an end,
O my lover and my friend!
Come! on wings of joy we'll fly
To where my bower is hung on high;
Come, and make thy calm retreat
Among green leaves and blossoms sweet.
DEDICATION OF THE DESIGNS TO
66
BLAIR'S GRAVE."
HE door of Death is made of gold,
That mortal eyes cannot behold:
But, when the mortal eyes are closed,
And cold and pale the limbs reposed,
The soul awakes, and, wondering, sees
In her mild hand the golden keys.
The grave is heaven's golden gate,
And rich and poor around it wait:
O Shepherdess of England's fold,
Behold this gate of pearl and gold!
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