IN PRAISE OF LOVE

And thy coming like the dawn on tfae far-off mountains;

Not because thou comest^th the danoe and the song, and because the flashing of thy feet is like the winds of Spring;

Nor because thou art sweetly perfumed.

Do I praise thee.

Not because thy dwèUing is among knights and ladies — afar £rom aXL that is common or gross ;

Not because thou delayest to the sound of playing f ountains on marble terraces.

And white hands caress thee and clip thy wing-feathers»

And meek thoughts and blameless conversation attend thee;

Not because thy place is among the flowers and the winecups in spacious halls.

And because the sight of Death appals thee ;

Nor because, love, thou art a child ;

But because as on me now, fuU-grown giantesque out of the ground out of the common earth arising,

Very awful and terrible in heaven thou appearest ;

Because as thou comest to me in thy majesty sweeping over the world with lightnings and black darkness,

I am as a leaf borne, as a fragrance exhaled before thee.

As a bird crying singed by the prairie-fire ;

Because Thou rulest, O glorious, and before thee ail else fails.

And at thy dread new command — at thy new word Democracy — the children of the earth and the sea and the sky ûnd their voices, and the despised things come forth and rejoice ;

Because in thy arms, O strong one, I laugh Death to scom — nay, I go forth to meet him with gladness ;

Ay, because thou takest away from me ail strength but thine own,

Because thou takest ail doubt and power of résistance.

184 THE TREMENDOUS LOVER

' Becanaeoutof disallowedand unaooeptedthinga — and always out of thèse— fuU-armed and terrifie,

Thou arisest —

Therefore, O love O flame wherein I buming die and am consumed, carried aloft to the stars a disembodied voice —

O dread Creator and Destroyer,

Do I praise Thee.^

It is characteristic of Carpenter, and in keeping with his fundamental idea, to see Love not only as the gentle companion of the hearth, but also atmosphered in the awe and splendeur of royalty and divinity, imperious, majestical. Francis Thompson speaks of God as the " tremendous Lover," and there is a passage in Carpenter's poem, " Eternal Hunger," which, by literary coincidence, contains the same idea as " The Hound of Heaven," though written, of course, long before that superlatively splendid ode.

O love greater than ail,

Over the mountains the forests and the seas,

Over the black chasm of death, in spectral haste

Thou ridest, and the hungry winds and waves

Are but Thy hounds ; Thou the eternal huntsman ! *

We hâve now to consider the difficult and délicate questions of Sex and Marriage ; and it must be remembered that in ail he says about thèse matters, Carpenter is seeking to render service to Love Mdth a single-eyed and unswerving dévotion. That Love may be enhanced and

1 T, Z>., p. 169. » Ibid., p. 159.