Antinous: A Poem

It rained outside right into Hadrian's soul.     The boy lay dead     On the low couch, on whose denuded whole,     To Hadrian's eyes, that at their seeing bled,     The shadowy light of Death's eclipse was shed.     The boy lay dead and the day seemed a night     Outside. The rain fell like a sick affright     Of Nature at her work in killing him.     Through the mind's galleries of their past delight     The very light of memory was dim.     O hands that clasped erewhile Hadrian's warm hands,     That now found them but cold!     O hair bound erstwhile with the pressing bands!     O eyes too diffidently bold!     O bare female male-body like     A god that dawns into humanity!     O lips whose opening redness erst could strike     Lust's seats with a soiled art's variety!     O fingers skilled in things not to be named!     O tongue which, counter-tongued, the throbbed brows flamed!     O glory of a wrong lust pillowed on     Raged conciousness's spilled suspension!     These things are things that now must be no more.     The rain is silent, and the Emperor     Sinks by the couch. His grief is like a rage,     For the gods take away the life they give     And spoil the beauty they made live.     He weeps and knows that every future age     Is staring at him out of the to-be.     His love is on a universal stage.     A thousand unborn eyes weep with his misery.     Antinous is dead, is dead forever,     Is dead forever and the loves lament.     Venus herself, that was Adonis' lover,     Seeing him again, having lived, dead again,     Lends her great skyey grief now to be blent     With Hadrian's pain.     Now is Apollo sad because the stealer     Of his white body is forever cold.     In vain shall kisses on that nippled point     Covering his heart-beats' silent place implore     His life again to ope his eyes and feel her     Presence along his veins this fortress hold     Of love. Now no caressing hands anoint     With growing joy that body's lusting lore.     The rain falls, and he lies like one who hath     Forgotten all the gestures of his love     And lies awake waiting their hot return.     But all his vices' art is now with Death:     He lies with her, whose sex cannot him move,     Whose hand, were't not cold, still ne'er his could burn.     Lilies were on his cheeks and roses too.     His eyes were sad in joy sometimes. He said     Oft in his close abandonments, that woo     Love to be more love than love can be, Kiss     My eyelids till my closed eyes seem to guess     The kiss they feel laid in my heart's breast-bed.     O Hadrian, what shall now thy cold life be?     What boots it to be emperor over all?     His absence o'er thy visible empery     Throws a dim pall.     Now are thy nights widowed of love and kisses,     Now are thy days robbed of the night's awaiting,     Now are thy lips purposeless and thy blisses     No longer of the size of thy life, mating     Thy empire with thy love's bold tendernesses.     Now are thy doors closed upon beauty and joy.     Throw ashes on thy head!     Lo, lift thine eyes and see the lovely boy!     Naked he lies upon that memoried bed;     By thine own hand he lies uncovered.     There was he wont thy dangling sense to cloy,     And uncloy with more cloying, and annoy     With newer uncloying till thy senses bled.     His hand and mouth knew gamuts musical     Of vices thy worn spine was hurt to follow.     Sometimes it seemed to thee that all was hollow     In sense in each new straining of sucked lust.     Then still new crimes of fancy would he call     To thy shaken flesh, and thou wouldst tremble and fall     Back on thy cushions with thy mind's sense hushed.     Beautiful was my love, yet melancholy.     He had that art, of love's arts most unholy,     Of being lithely sad among lust's rages.     Now the Nile gave him up, the eternal Nile.     Under his wet locks Death's blue paleness wages     Now war upon our pity with sad smile.     Even as he thinks, the lust that is no more     Than a memory of lust revives and takes     His senses by the hand, and his flesh quakes     Till all becomes again what 'twas before.     The dead body on the bed gets up and lives     Along his every nerve ripped up and twanged,     And a love-o'er-wise and invisible hand     At every body-entrance to his lust     Utters caresses which flit off, yet just     Remain enough to bleed his last nerve's strand,     O sweet and cruel Parthian fugitives!     He rises, mad, and looks upon his lover,     That now can love nothing but what none know.     Then his cold lips run all the body over--     His lips that scarce remember their warmth, now     So blent with feeling the death they behold;     And so ice-senseless are his lips that, lo!,     He scarce tastes death from the dead body's cold,     But it seems both are dead or living both     And love is still the Presence and the Mover.     Then his lips cease on the other lips' cold sloth.     But there the wanting breath reminds his lips     That between him and his boy-love the mist     That comes out of the gods has crept. The tips     Of his fingers, still idly tickling, list     To some flesh-response to their purple mood.     But their love-orison is not understood.     The god is dead whose cult was to be kissed!     He lifts his hand up to where heaven should be     And cries on the mute gods to know his pain.     Lo, list!, o divine watchers of our glee     And sorrow!, list!, he will yield up his reign.     He will live in the deserts and be parched     On the hot sands, he will be beggar and slave;     But give again the boy to be arm-reached!     Forego that space ye meant to be his grave!     Take all the female beauties of the earth!     Take all afar and rend them if ye will!     But, by sweet Ganymede, that Jove found worth     And above Hebe did elect to fill     His cup at his high festivals, and spill     His fairer vice wherefrom comes newer birth--,     The clod of female embraces resolve     To dust, o father of the gods!, but spare     This boy and his white body and golden hair.     Maybe thy newer Ganymede thou meanst     That he should be, and out of jealous care     From Hadrian's arms to thine his beauty steal'st.     He was a kitten playing with lust, playing     With his own and with Hadrian's, sometimes one     And sometimes two, now splitting, now one grown,     Now leaving lust, now lust's high lusts delaying,     Now eyeing lust not wide, but from askance     Jumping round on lust's half-unexpectance;     Then softly gripping, then with fury holding,     Now playfully playing, now seriously, now lying     By the side of lust looking at it, now spying     Which way to take lust in his lust's withholding.     Thus did the hours slide from their tangled hands     And from their mixed limbs the moments slip.     Now were his arms dead leaves, now iron bands,     Now were his lips cups, now the things that sip,     Now were his eyes too closed, and now too open,     Now were his ways such as none thought might happen,     Now were his arts a feather and now a whip.     That love they lived as a religion     Offered to gods that do to presence bend.     Sometimes he was adorned and made to don     Half-costumes, now a posing nudity     That imitates some god's eternity     Of body statue-known to craving men.     Now was he Venus, risen from the seas;     And now was he Apollo, white and golden;     Now as Jove sate he in mock-judgment over     The presence at his feet of his slaved lover;     Now was he an acted rite, by one beholden,     In ever-repositioned mysteries.     Now he is something anyone can be.     O white negation of the thing it is!     O golden-haired moon-cold loveliness!     Too cold! too cold! and love as cold as he.     Love wanders through the memories of his vice     As through a labyrinth, in sad madness glad,     And now calls on his name and bids him rise,     And now is smiling at his imaged coming     That is i'th'heart like faces in the gloaming--     Mere shining shadows of the forms they had.     The rain again like a vague pain arose     And put the sense of wetness in the air.     Suddenly did the Emperor suppose     He saw this room and all in it from far.     He saw the couch, the boy and his own frame     Cast down against the couch, and he became     A clearer presence to himself, and said     These words unuttered, save to his soul's dread:     I shall build thee a statue that will be     To the astonished future evidence     Of my love and thy beauty and the sense     That beauty giveth of infinity,     Though death with subtle uncovering hands remove     The apparel of life and empire from our love,     Yet its nude statue-soul of lust made spirit     All future times, whether they will't or not,     Shall, like a curse-seeming god's boon earth-brought,     Inevitably inherit.     Ay, this thy statue shall I build, and set     Upon the pinnacle of being-thine. Let Time     By its subtle dim crime     Eat it from life, or with men's violence fret     To pieces out of unity and presence.     Ay, let that be! Our love shall stand so great     In thy statue of us, like a god's fate,     Our love's incarnate and discarnate essence,     That, like a trumpet reaching over seas     And going from continent to continent,     Our love shall speak its joy and woe, death-blent,     Over infinities and eternities!     The memory of our love shall bridge the ages.     It shall loom white out of the past and be     Eternal, like a Grecian victory,     In every heart the future shall give rages     Of not being our love's contemporary.     Yet oh that this were needed not, and thou     Wert the red flower perfuming my life,     The garland on the brows of my delight,     The living flame on altars of my soul!     Would all this were a thing thou mightest now     Smile at from under thy death-mocking lids     And wonder that I should so put a strife     Twixt me and gods for thy lost presence bright;     Were there nought in this but my empty dole     And thy awakening smile half to condole     With what my dreaming pain to hope forbids.     Thus went he, like a lover who is waiting,     From place to place in his dim doubting mind.     Now was his hope a great bulk of will fating     Its wish to being, now felt he he was blind     In some point of his seen wish undefined.     When love meets death we know not what to feel.     When death foils love we know not what to know.     Now did his doubt hope, now did his hope doubt.     Now what his wish dreamed the dream's sense did flout     And to a sullen emptiness congeal.     Then again the gods fanned love's darkening glow.     Thy death has given me a newer lust--     A flesh-lust raging for eternity.     On my imperial will I put my trust     That the high gods, that made me emperor be,     Will not annul from a more real life     My wish that thou shouldst live for e'er and stand     A fleshly presence on their better land,     More beautiful and as beautiful, for there     No things impossible our wishes mar     Nor pain our hearts with change and time and strife.     Love, love, my love! thou art already a god.     This thought of mine, which I a wish believe,     Is no wish, but a sight, to me allowed     By the great gods, that love love and can give     To mortal hearts, under the shape of wishes--     Of wishes strong, having imperial reaches--     A vision of the real things beyond     Our life-imprisoned life, our sense-bound sense.     Ay, what I will thee to be thou art now     Already. Already on Olympic ground     Thou walkest and art perfect, yet art thou,     For thou needst no excess of thee to don     To perfect be, being perfection.     My heart is singing like a morning bird.     A great hope from the gods comes down to me     And bids my heart to subtler sense be stirred     And think not that strange evil of thee     That to think thee mortal would be.     My love, my love! My god-love! Let me kiss     On thy cold lips thy hot lips now immortal,     Greeting thee at Death's portal's happiness,     For to the gods Death's portal is Life's portal.     Thus is the memory of thee a god     Already, already a statue made of me--     Of that part of me that, like a great sea,     Girds in me a great red empire more broad     Than all the lands and peoples that are in     My power's reach. Thus art thou myself made     In that great stretch Olympic that betrays     The true-wholed gods present in river and glade     And hours eternal in its different days.     So strong my love is that it is thyself,     Thy body as it was ere death was it,     Towering above the silence infinite     That girds round life and its unduring pelf.     Even as thou wert in life, thy corporal shade     Is in the presence of the gods. My love     Permits not that its carnal being fade     Or one whit false to fleshly presence prove.     Creeds may arise and pass, and passions change,     Other ways may be born out of Time's dream,     But this our love, made but thy body, 'll range     On deathless meads from happy stream to stream.     Were there no Olympus for thee, my love     Would make thee one, where thou sole god mightst prove,     And I thy sole adorer, glad to be     Thy sole adorer through infinity.     That were a divine universe enough     For love and me and what to me thou art.     To have thee is a thing made of gods' stuff     And to look on thee eternity's best part.     O love, my love! Awake with my strong will     Of loving to Olympus and be there     The latest god, whose honey-coloured hair     Takes divine eyes! As thou wert on earth, still     In heaven bodifully be and roam,     A prisoner of that happiness of home,     With elder gods, while I on earth do make     A statue for thy deathlessness' seen sake.     That deathless statue of thee I shall build     Will be no stone thing, but my great regret     By which our love's eternity is willed.     My sorrow shall make thee its god, and set     Thy naked presence on the parapet     That looks over the seas of future times.     Some shall say all our love was vice and crimes.     Others against our names, as stones, shall whet     The knife of their glad hate of beauty, and make     Our name a pillory, a scaffold and a stake     Whereon to burn our brothers yet unborn.     Yet shall our presence, like eternal morn,     Ever return at Beauty's hour, and shine     Out of the East of Love, and be the shrine     Of future gods that nothing human scorn.     My love for thee is part of what thou wert     And shall be part of what thy statue will be.     Our double presence unified in thee     Shall make to beat many a future heart.     Ay, were't a statue to be broken and missed,     Yet its stone-perfect memory     Would, still more perfect, on Time's shoulders borne,     Overlook the great Morn     From an eternal East.     Thy statue is of thyself and of me.     Our dual presence has its unity     In that perfection of body, which my love,     In loving it, did out of mortal life     Raise into godness, set above the strife     Of times and changing passions far above.     The end of days, when Jove is born again,     And Ganymede again pour at his feast,     Shall see our dual soul from death released     And recreated unto love, joy, pain,     Life--all the beauty and the vice and lust,     All the diviner side of flesh, flesh-staged.     And, if our very memory wore to dust,     By the giant race of the end of ages must     Our dual presence once again be raised.     It rained still. But slow-treading night came in     Closing the weary eyelids of each sense.     The very consciousness of self and soul     Grew, like a landscape through dim raining, dim.     The Emperor lay still, so still that now     He half forgot where now he lay, or whence     The sorrow that was still salt on his lips.     All had been something very far, a scroll     Rolled up. The things he felt were like the rim     That haloes round the moon when the night weeps.     His head was bowed into his arms, and they     On the low couch, foreign to his sense, lay.     His closed eyes seemed open to him and seeing     The naked floor, dark, cold, sad and unmeaning.     His hurting breath was all his sense could know.     Out of the falling darkness the wind rose     And fell. A voice swooned in the courts below.     And the Emperor slept.                                                     The gods came now     And bore something away, no sense knows how,     On unseen arms of power and repose.     LISBON, 1915.