The Mortal Lease

by Edith Wharton

　　BECAUSE the currents of our love are poured

　　Through the slow welter of the primal flood

　　From some blind source of monster-haunted mud,

　　And flung together by random forces stored

　　Ere the vast void with rushing worlds was scored--

　　Because we know ourselves but the dim scud

　　Tossed from their heedless keels, the sea-blown bud

　　That wastes and scatters ere the wave has roared--

　　Because we have this knowledge in our veins,

　　Shall we deny the journey's gathered lore--

　　The great refusals and the long disdains,

　　The stubborn questing for a phantom shore,

　　The sleepless hopes and memorable pains,

　　And all mortality's immortal gains?

　　II

　　Because our kiss is as the moon to draw

　　The mounting waters of that red-lit sea

　　That circles brain with sense, and bids us be

　　The playthings of an elemental law,

　　Shall we forego the deeper touch of awe

　　On love's extremest pinnacle, where we,

　　Winging the vistas of infinity,

　　Gigantic on the mist our shadows saw?

　　Shall kinship with the dim first-moving clod

　　Not draw the folded pinion from the soul,

　　And shall we not, by spirals vision-trod,

　　Reach upward to some still-retreating goal,

　　As earth, escaping from the night's control,

　　Drinks at the founts of morning like a god?

　　III

　　All, all is sweet in that commingled draught

　　Mysterious, that life pours for lovers' thirst,

　　And I would meet your passion as the first

　　Wild woodland woman met her captor's craft,

　　Or as the Greek whose fearless beauty laughed

　　And doffed her raiment by the Attic flood;

　　But in the streams of my belated blood

　　Flow all the warring potions love has quaffed.

　　How can I be to you the nymph who danced

　　Smooth by Ilissus as the plane-tree's bole,

　　Or how the Nereid whose drenched lashes glanced

　　Like sea-flowers through the summer sea's long roll--

　　I that have also been the nun entranced

　　Who night-long held her Bridegroom in her soul?

　　IV

　　"Sad Immortality is dead," you say,

　　"And all her grey brood banished from the soul;

　　Life, like the earth, is now a rounded whole,

　　The orb of man's dominion. Live to-day."

　　And every sense in me leapt to obey,

　　Seeing the routed phantoms backward roll;

　　But from their waning throng a whisper stole,

　　And touched the morning splendour with decay.

　　"Sad Immortality is dead; and we

　　The funeral train that bear her to her grave.

　　Yet hath she left a two-faced progeny

　　In hearts of men, and some will always see

　　The skull beneath the wreath, yet always crave

　　In every kiss the folded kiss to be."

　　V

　　Yet for one rounded moment I will be

　　No more to you than what my lips may give,

　　And in the circle of your kisses live

　　As in some island of a storm-blown sea,

　　Where the cold surges of infinity

　　Upon the outward reefs unheeded grieve,

　　And the loud murmur of our blood shall weave

　　Primeval silences round you and me.

　　If in that moment we are all we are

　　We live enough. Let this for all requite.

　　Do I not know, some winged things from far

　　Are borne along illimitable night

　　To dance their lives out in a single flight

　　Between the moonrise and the setting star?

　　VI

　　The Moment came, with sacramental cup

　　Lifted--and all the vault of life grew bright

　　With tides of incommensurable light--

　　But tremblingly I turned and covered up

　　My face before the wonder. Down the slope

　　I heard her feet in irretrievable flight,

　　And when I looked again, my stricken sight

　　Saw night and rain in a dead world agrope.

　　Now walks her ghost beside me, whispering

　　With lips derisive: "Thou that wouldst forego--

　　What god assured thee that the cup I bring

　　Globes not in every drop the cosmic show,

　　All that the insatiate heart of man can wring

　　From life's long vintage?--Now thou shalt not know."

　　VII

　　Shall I not know? I, that could always catch

　　The sunrise in one beam along the wall,

　　The nests of June in April's mating call,

　　And ruinous autumn in the wind's first snatch

　　At summer's green impenetrable thatch--

　　That always knew far off the secret fall

　　Of a god's feet across the city's brawl,

　　The touch of silent fingers on my latch?

　　Not thou, vain Moment! Something more than thou

　　Shall write the score of what mine eyes have wept,

　　The touch of kisses that have missed my brow,

　　The murmur of wings that brushed me while I slept,

　　And some mute angel in the breast even now

　　Measures my loss by all that I have kept.

　　VIII

　　Strive we no more. Some hearts are like the bright

　　Tree-chequered spaces, flecked with sun and shade,

　　Where gathered in old days the youth and maid

　　To woo, and weave their dances: with the night

　　They cease their flutings, and the next day's light

　　Finds the smooth green unconscious of their tread,

　　And ready its velvet pliancies to spread

　　Under fresh feet, till these in turn take flight.

　　But other hearts a long long road doth span,

　　From some far region of old works and wars,

　　And the weary armies of the thoughts of man

　　Have trampled it, and furrowed it with scars,

　　And sometimes, husht, a sacred caravan

　　Moves over it alone, beneath the stars.