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Page 15
_1st Woman_.
What joys are these?
_Vashti_.
What joys?
The joys of rutting beasts, tamed to endure,
Tamed to be always swift to answer Spirit,
Yet fiercer for their taming, wilder hungers;
So that the Spirit, if he hunt them not,
Fears to be torn by them in mutiny.
Now know you woman's beauty! 'Tis these joys,
The heat of the blood's desires, changed and mastered
By the desire of spirit, trained to serve
Spirit with lust, spirit with woman enjoy'd.
_2nd Woman_.
Queen, I am beautiful, and cannot boast
Thy subtle thinking; and to one like me,
What matters whence come beauty, so I have it?
Let it be but the witless mating of beasts,
Tamed and curiously knowing itself
And cunning in its own delight: What then?
The nightingale desires his little lass,
And that brings out of his heart a radiant song;
A man desires a woman, and for song
Out of his heart comes beauty, that like flame
Reaches towards her, and covers her limbs with light.
If it so please thee, say that neither loves
Aught but his life's desire, fashioning it
Adorably to marvellous song and beauty.
What then? Enough that the wonder lights on me,
To me is paid the worship of the wonder.
_Vashti_.
O well I know how strong we are in man;
His senses have our beauty for their god,
And his delight is built about us like
Towering adoration, housing worship.--
The spirit of man may dwell in God: the world,
From the soft delicate floor of grass to those
Rafters of light and hanging cloths of stars,
Is but the honour in God's mind for man,
Wrought into glorious imagination.
But women dwell in man; our temple is
The honour of man's sensual ecstasy,
Our safety the imagined sacredness
Fashion'd about us, fashion'd of his pleasure.
Beauty hath done this for us, and so made
Woman a kind within the kind of man.
Yea, there is more than this: a mighty need
Hath man made of his woman in the world.
Now man walks through his fate in fellowship
Of two companion spirits; ay, and these
With double mastery go on with him.
The one in black disgraceful weeds is Toil;
She sows with never-ending gesture all
The path before his feet, cursing the way
She drags him on with growth of flouting crops,
Urchin thistles, and rank flourishing nettles.
But the other has a wear of woven gleam,
And with soft hand beseeches him his face
Away from the hardships of his hurt stung feet,
That with his eyes he may desire her looks:
And she is Beauty of Woman, man's dear blessing.
And if you would be wise, be well afraid
To think you have more office than to be
A sweet delicious while amid man's hours
Of worldly labour: we are too precious, so.
Yet see you not how this that Spirit hath done
Is also dangerous?--For there are mightier needs!
There's no content for Spirit in the world
Till he has striven out of bounded fate,
And sent an infinite desire forth
Into the whole eternity of things.
Yea, spirit ails with loathing secretly
The irremediable force of being;
Unless, with free expatiate desire,
He shape into the endless burning flux
Of starry world blindly adventuring
Some steady righteous destiny for Spirit:
Even as dreaming brain fashions the fume
Of life asleep to marshall'd imagery.
But we are in the way of this: and man,
The more he needs to announce upon the world,
Over him going like a storming air,
That fashioning word which utters the divine
Imagination working in him like anger;
The more he finds his virtue caught and clogged
In the fierce luxury he hath made of woman.
Thence are we sin, thence deliciously
Persuading man refuse his highest ardour.
Too easily kindled was the ecstasy
Of fleshly passion, with a joyous flame
Too readily answering the Spirit's fire!
He burns with us alone, so fragrantly
His noblest vigour swoons delighted. Yea,
Women, I tell you, not far now is man
From hating us, so passionate the joy
Of loving us, so mightily drawing down
Into the service of his pleasure here
All forces of his being. The pleasure soon
Becomes a shame, scarce to be spoken aloud;
And in best minds, either detested doting
Man's joy in woman's beauty will become;
Or a strict binding fire, holding him down
In lust of beauty where no beauty is.
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