The Unknown Eros

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Title: The Unknown Eros
Author: Coventry Patmore
Release Date: October 7, 2004 [eBook #13672]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNKNOWN EROS***
This eBook was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
THE UNKNOWN EROS?by Coventry Patmore.
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.
To this edition of "The Unknown Eros" are added all the other poems I have written, in what I venture--because it has no other name--to call "catalectic verse." Nearly all English metres owe their existence as metres to "catalexis," or pause, for the time of one or more feet, and, as a rule, the position and amount of catalexis are fixed. But the verse in which this volume is written is catalectic par excellence, employing the pause (as it does the rhyme) with freedom only limited by the exigencies of poetic passion. From the time of Drummond of Hawthornden to our own, some of the noblest flights of English poetry have been taken on the wings of this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive of its character.
Some persons, unlearned in the subject of metre, have objected to this kind of verse that it is "lawless." But it has its laws as truly as any other. In its highest order, the lyric or "ode," it is a tetrameter, the line having the time of eight iambics. When it descends to narrative, or the expression of a less-exalted strain of thought, it becomes a trimeter, having the time of six iambics, or even a dimeter, with the time of four; and it is allowable to vary the tetrameter "ode" by the occasional introduction of passages in either or both of these inferior measures, but not, I think, by the use of any other. The license to rhyme at indefinite intervals is counterbalanced, in the writing of all poets who have employed this metre successfully, by unusual frequency in the recurrence of the same rhyme. For information on the generally overlooked but primarily important function of catalexis in English verse I refer such readers as may be curious about the subject to the Essay printed as an appendix to the later editions of my collected poems.
I do not pretend to have done more than very moderate justice to the exceeding grace and dignity and the inexhaustible expressiveness of which this kind of metre is capable; but I can say that I have never attempted to write in it in the absence of that one justification of and prime qualification for its use, namely, the impulse of some thought that "voluntary moved harmonious numbers."
COVENTRY PATMORE.?HASTINGS, 1890.
CONTENTS
TO THE UNKNOWN EROS, ETC.
PROEM.
BOOK I.
I. SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY?II. WIND AND WAVE?III. WINTER?IV. BEATA?V. THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW?VI. TRISTITIA?VII. THE AZALEA?VIII. DEPARTURE?IX. EURYDICE?X. THE TOYS?XI. TIRED MEMORY?XII. MAGNA EST VERITAS?XIII. 1867?XIV. 'IF I WERE DEAD'?XV. PEACE?XVI. A FAREWELL?XVII. 1880-85.?XVIII. THE TWO DESERTS?XIX. CREST AND GULF?XX. 'LET BE!'?XXI. 'FAINT YET PURSUING'?XXII. VICTORY IN DEFEAT?XVIII. REMEMBERED GRACE?XXIV. VESICA PISCIS
BOOK II.
I. TO THE UNKNOWN EROS?II. THE CONTRACT?III. ARBOR VITAE?IV. THE STANDARDS?V. SPONSA DEI?VI. LEGEM TUAM DILEXI?VII. TO THE BODY?VIII. 'SING US ONE OF THE SONGS OF SION'?IX. DELICIAE SAPIENTIAE DE AMORE?X. THE CRY AT MIDNIGHT?XI. AURAS OF DELIGHT?XII. EROS AND PSYCHE?XIII. DE NATURA DEORUM?XIV. PSYCHE'S DISCONTENT?XV. PAIN?XVI. PROPHETS WHO CANNOT SING?XVII. THE CHILD'S PURCHASE?XVIII. DEAD LANGUAGE
AMELIA, ETC.
AMELIA?L'ALLEGRO?REGINA COELI?THE OPEN SECRET?VENUS AND DEATH?MIGNONNE?ALEXANDER AND LYCON?SEMELE
THE UNKNOWN EROS
"Deliciae meae esse cum filiis hominum."?PROV. VIII. 31.
PROEM.
'Many speak wisely, some inerrably:?Witness the beast who talk'd that should have bray'd,?And Caiaphas that said?Expedient 'twas for all that One should die;?But what avails?When Love's right accent from their wisdom fails,?And the Truth-criers know not what they cry!?Say, wherefore thou,?As under bondage of some bitter vow,?Warblest no word,?When all the rest are shouting to be heard??Why leave the fervid running just when Fame?'Gan whispering of thy name?Amongst the hard-pleased Judges of the Course??Parch'd is thy crystal-flowing source??Pierce, then, with thought's steel probe, the trodden ground, Till passion's buried floods be found;?Intend thine eye?Into the dim and undiscover'd sky?Whose lustres are the pulsings of the heart,?And promptly, as thy trade is, watch to chart?The lonely suns, the mystic hazes and throng'd sparkles bright That, named and number'd right?In sweet, transpicuous words, shall glow alway?With Love's three-stranded ray,?Red wrath, compassion golden, lazuline delight.'
Thus, in