Emblems Of Love

Vashti. My lord requires me here.

Ahasuerus.

Does Heaven see this?

Dare I have this one humble unto me?

Was it not enough, Stars, to have given me

This marriage? but you must persuade your God

To have me as well the greatest king beneath you!

Look you now if men grow not insolent

Because of me, a man so throned, so wived.

Yea, and in me insolent groweth my love;

For if the wheels of the careering world

Brake, felley and spoke, that, pitching on the road,

It spilt the driving godhead from his seat,

And the unreined team of hours riskily dragg'd

Their crippled duty,-if in that lurching world

Like jarred glass my power shattered about me,

And I were a head unking'd, 'twere but a game,

So I were left possessing thee, and that

Escape from Heaven, the beauty that goes with thee.

Here is an insolence! Hast thou not wonder'd,

Vashti, what gave thee into such a love,

That in the brain of me, the chosen king,

It is so loud, so insolent, thy love?

O this shrill sweet heart-mastering love!

Vashti.

Alas,

Do I deserve that love?-But yes, I wonder;

For what am I that the king loveth me?

Lo, I am woman, thou art man, the lord;

Out of mere bounty are we loved of you,

And not for our deserving. We are to sit

In a high calm, and not go down and help

Among the toil, and choosing, chosen, find

Companionship therein. For thou, for man

Has such a treasure in his heart of love,

It must be squandered out in charity,

Not used as a gentle money to repay

Worth (as a woman spends her love). A trick

Of posture in a girl, and see the alms

Of generous love man will enrich her with!

Might there not be sometimes too much of alms

About his love? But we will blink at that.

Yet sometimes we are liked ashamed, to be

Taking so much love from you, all for naught.

Now therefore tell me, Man, my king, my master:

Lovest thou me, or dost thou rather love

The pleasure thou hast in me? This is not nice,

Believe me. They're more sundered, these two loves,

Than if all the braving seas marcht between them.

Ahasuerus.

What, shrinking from thine own delightsomeness?

Hear then. Nature, so ordered from the God,

Has given strength to man and work to do,

But to woman gave that she should be delight

For man, else like an overdriven ox

Heart-broke. The world was made for man, but made

Wisely a steep difficulty to be climbed,

That he, so labouring the stubborn slant,

May step from off the world with a well-used courage,

All slouch disgrace fought out of him, a man

Well worthy of a Heaven. And this great part

Has woman in the work; that man, fordone

And wearied, may find lodging out of the noise

Upon her breast, and looking in her eyes

May wash in pools of kindness, fresh as Heaven,

The soil of sweat and trouble from his limbs;

And turning aside into this pleasant inn

Called woman, there is entertainment kept

For man, such that for cheating craftily

The stabled palter'd heart that it can pass

Through the world's grillage and be large as fate,

The sweet anxiety of reeded pipes

Is a mere thing to it. Like Heaven street

When the steel of God's army surges through it,

Bright anger burning on an errand of swords,

So is the sense of man when woman-joy

Pours through his flesh a throng of deity,

White clamorous flame; yea, desire of woman

Maketh the mind of more room for amazement

Than that blue loft hath for the light, more charged

With spiritual joy that goes in stress

As far as tears, with this more throbbingly charged

Than the starr'd night wept full of silver fires,-

Dangerously endured, labours of joy!

Is it not virtuous, not powerful, this?

Wouldst thou have more? Man knows he can possess

Than woman's beauty nought more treasurable.

And high above our loud activities

We keep, pure as the dawn, the house of love,

Woman, wherein we entering leave outside

Our rank sweat-drenchèd weeds of toil, and there

Enjoy ourselves, out of the world, awhile.

Vashti (aside). O yes, I know. Filthiness! Filthiness!

Ahasuerus.

Now here have I been toiling under press

Of glory. Should I not stumble in my gait,

Were there no Vashti, and with her a welcome

I do not need to buy, since all she wants

Is that I love her? Going in unto her

I may unstrap my burdenous pack of kingship,

Shift me of reign, and escape my splendour.

Yea, and strange largeness in this power of love

For men too much limited! Now I am sick

Of knowing my greatness, now I want to be

Placed where my soul can feel vast room about me,

To be contained. Outside, among the men,

I am the room of the world; I and my rule

Contain the world; and I am sick thereof.

Vashti can remedy this; for here thy beauty

More spacious is for my senses to be in,

Than his own golden kingdom for the sun.

Vashti. Thine eyes are glad with me? I please the King?

Ahasuerus.

Eyes? But there is no nerve thou takest not,

No way of my life thronging not with thee,

And my blood sounds at the story of thy beauty.

What thing shall be held up to woman's beauty?

Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all

The world, but an awning scaffolded amid

The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge

This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty?

The East and West kneel down to thee, the North

And South, and all for thee their shoulders bear

The load of fourfold place. As yellow morn

Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea,

Thy feet are on the griefs and joys of men

That sheen to be thy causey. Out of tears,

Indeed, and blitheness, murder and lust and love,

Whatever has been passionate in clay,

Thy flesh was tempered. Behold in thy body

The yearnings of all men measured and told,

Insatiate endless agonies of desire

Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape!

What beauty is there, but thou makest it?

How is earth good to look on, woods and fields

The seasons' garden, and the courageous hills,

All this green raft of earth moored in the seas?

The manner of the sun to ride the air,

The stars God has imagined for the night?

What's this behind them, that we cannot near,

Secret still on the point of being blabbed,

The ghost in the world that flies from being named?

Where do they get their beauty from, all these?

They do but glaze a lantern lit for man,

And woman's beauty is the flame therein

Feeding on sacred oil, man's desire,

A golden flame possessing all the earth.

Or as a queen upon an embassage

From out some mountain-guarded far renown,

Brings caravans stockt from her slavish mines,

Her looms and forges, with a precious friendship;

So comest thou from the chambers of the stars

On thy famed visit unto man the king;

So bringing from the mints and shops of Heaven,

Where thou didst own labours of all the fates,

A shining traffic, all that man calls beauty:

There is no holding out for the heart of man

Against thee and such custom. O hard to be borne,

Often hard to be borne is woman's beauty!-

And well I guess it does but cover up

Enmity, hanging falseness between our souls,

And buy at a dishonest price the mouth

True nature hath for thee, to speak thee fair.

Were not man's thought so gilded with thy beauty,

Woman, and caught in the desire of thee,

O, there'ld be hatred in his use of thee.

You should be thankful for your pleasantness!

Vashti.

Yes, I am thankful. For I hope, my lord,

We women know our style. Ay, we are fooled

Sometimes with heady tampering thoughts, that come

To bother our submission, I confess.

We to ourselves have said, that when God took

The fierce beginning of the unwrought world

From out his fiery passion, and, breathing cool,

Tamed the wild molten being, with his hands

Fashion'd and workt the hot clay into world,

Then with green mercy quieted the land

And claspt it with the summer of blue seas,

With brooches of white spray along the shores,-

It was to be an equal dwelling-place

For humans that he did it, into sex

Unknowably dividing human kind.

But wickedly we say this. God made man

For his delight and praise, and then made woman

For man's delight and praise, submiss to man.

Else wherefore sex? And it is better thus,

To be man's pleasure. What noble work is ours,

To have our bodies proper for your love,

The means of your delight! Ay, and minds too,

Sometimes; we think, we women think we know

What shape of mind pleases our masters best,

And that we build up in us. A tender shyness,

A coy reluctancy,-we use these well.

Man is our master; it is best for us

Persuading him line our captivity

With wool-soft love, lest it be bitter iron.

Ahasuerus.

This is the marvel's head, that thou, so fair,

And loved by me, should keep so good a mind.

-They shall not see thee, when I display at large

The riches and the honour; I've enough

Possession, without thee, to stupify

The assembly of my men, my herd of kings.

I mean there shall not be a hint of doubt

About whose world this is. So I have bid,

From all the utter regions of my land,

The kings whom I allow to rule, who breathe

My air, to feast with me and for a while

Flatter their trivial lives with a brief relish

Of being king of the world's kings in Shushan.

Yea, and I will dismay their wits with splendour;

No noise shall be against me in the world.

I am more open, kinder than Lord God,

Who never shows how much he has of thunder;

Wherefore against him men presume, and go

Often out of his ways extravagant.

But all the fear I keep obedient by me

Now to the gather'd world I openly shew.

So God is spoken against, I am never,

And I have a better terror in the world;

And chiefly for the happiness built round me

Divinely firm. O all the kings, my men,

Shall fear this terrible happiness of mine!

But thee I will not shew; I'll have some wealth

Not public. I'll have no adulteries,

No eyes but mine enjoying thee. To me

The sight of thee, all as the touch of thee,

Belongeth, only my pleasure thou art:

None but my senses shall come unto thee,

And I will keep my pleasure pure as Heaven.

Happy art thou, Vashti, to have wedded

One who so dearly rates possession of thee.

Better it is to spend my heart on thee

Than on any of the women that I have.