Mistress of mistresses (58 page)

 
the high between the worlds:

The
moon is set, and set are

The
Pleiades; and midnight

Soon;
so, and the hour departing:

And
I, on my bed,—alone.

Motionless
She sat: Her gaze downward: upper lids level and still: eyes still and wide.
There was no sound now save in changeless ceaseless rhythm, through the open
window of the Duke's great .bedchamber and the open door that led there, the
land-wash of the sea.

Seeing
that Her thoughts are higher than our thoughts, it were the part of a fool to
think to comprehend them, or set them down. And yet, very because that they are
higher, it sorts not to man to let them go by: rather note such looks and such
casts which, upon such nights, have ere this shadowed the outward seeming of
Her divinity; as if that impossible were possible, and His hand had failed
wherein Her weak perfections lie trembling; or as if the thunder of His power
were turned an insensate thing, and His eyes
seeled up, and love
found but a school-name, and She (for all that nought else is of worth or of
verity) found not worth much at last. And as if, under the imagination of such
thoughts in Her,—Who of Her vernal mere unquestioned I AM recreates and sets
Him on high, the patent of Whose omnipotency is but to tender and serve
Her,—the very heart of the world should be closed with anguish.

As
the glory, so now this agony passed, resumed so, with that glory, into Her
pavilion of Night.

E.R.E.