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Arthur Symons - The Dance Of The Seven Sins
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THE BODY 
Call in the dancers. 

THE SOUL 
All is vain. 
We live, and living is the pain 
We die of while we live. The earth 
Was made in some celestial mirth. 
Not for our pleasure. I, who seem 
To have some memory of a dream, 
I know not when, I know not where, 
Dream not, remember, and despair. 

THE BODY 
Dream always, and remember not. 
I, if I dreamed, have yet forgot 
Even the sleep. This hour I hold 
A sand-glass dropping sands of gold. 
Call in the dancers, for they give 
Bonds to the moment fugitive, 
Wings to the moment slow to pass; 
I shake the hours in the hour-glass, 
Bid the hours dance with you to-night, 
My dancers, spirits of delight I

LUST 
I give to man, who is the dust, 
Life, and his breath: he calls me lust 
I am Love`s elder; Love was born 
To be the world`s delight and scorn, 
That man might veil, his sight being dim, 
My own infinity in him. 
Yet without me, that swiftly move, 
In all things, the indwelling love 
Were as a song without a voice; 
By me the inmost heavens rejoice 
At the achievement, in pure fire, 
Of their own uttermost desire. 
I am in man that flame of flames 
He names by God`s most sacred names, 
Being creation, and from thence 
A sleepless, vast omnipotence, 
And an eternal fatherhood. 
Without me nothing is seen good, 
Nothing seen great, nor is there gained 
The hope of aught to be attained, 
Nor that fine, fiery speed of thought 
By which the ends of the world are brought 
Together in a wish, I give 
More than life holds to all who live 
Being that desire which grants men Strength 
To endure with joy the utmost length 
Of an intolerable way. 
Night follows night, day follows day. 
And, if I lead, hope flies with me 
Across the white hills of the sea, 
Across the wavering green lands. 
I hold within my subtle hands 
The promise of all worlds; there come 
To conquest and to martyrdom 
At my indifferent, swift feet 
All lovers, who astonished meet: 
The pale saint, famishing for God, 
The pallid virgin who has trod 
The way not of virginity 
Unto some alien ecstasy; 
A shepherd with his shepherdess; 
Kings, who have loved the purple less 
Than some grey rags about the hem 
Of a beggar-maid that passed by them; 
Tortured and torturer, the smile 
Still gasping in their lips the while 
Their fingers quiver; and the proud 
Lover whom love`s hard bond allowed 
Not even the release of speech. 
I, to all these, am all in each, 
Though most deny me, few receive 
The half of all I have to give. 
Aspire unto my Calvary; 
Few are there that have come thereby. 
These are my saints, my own, my sons, 
Chosen among my chosen ones 
To be my priests serving the fire 
Which on mine altars is desire 
Of the impossible, the breath 
Of a seven times renascent death
Of those delights ineffable, 
Which, beyond utmost heaven, are hell 
Come neat: these things are mysteries: 
Come near, who with the spirit`s eyes 
Dare to behold, and can refine 
Your senses to that crystalline 
Ardour of the pure fire of love, 
Where, beyond hell enjoyed, above 
Heaven`s ample, utmost lack forgiven, 
Heaven over heaven, there is yet heaven. 
It was the lust of God, fulfilled 
With joys enjoyed, that bade him build 
The wanton palace of the earth. 
And of that memorable mirth 
Which shook the Stars upon that day 
Some broken echoes drift our way 
In any laughter of the grape. 
How can infinity escape 
The horror of infinity, 
If not by lust that there shall be 
Some new, untried, most finite thing 
Enjoyed without remembering 
That all things else, being enjoyed, 
Have perfectly filled full that void 
Which is infinity possessed? 
So, for those seven days, God had rest, 
In that seven times delightful toil, 
Creation, from the serpent`s coil 
Of his own wisdom binding him. 
Have I not been God`s seraphim?

SLOTH 
These garlands tire me: I am Sloth. 
See, in my hair these roses, both 
The bracelets heavy on my wrists, 
The languor of these amethysts 
Chained to my ears with chains of gold, 
The Tyrian webs whose downy fold 
Droops on my bosom like dull sleep. 
Let me but slumber: for I keep 
The keys of that unwavering realm 
Whose gates not Time shall overwhelm, 
Whose shadowy temples no God may, 
Though younger born, behold decay. 
Come near, O sons of men, come near, 
Come without hope, come without fear, 
I am that happiness you dread; 
Within the curtains of my bed 
A twilight moves with happy sighs, 
And dreams shall cover your closed eyes 
Softer than darkness; plumy wings 
Swifter than thoughts of hapless things, 
And fragrant with the breath of peace. 
Come, let these subtle hands release 
Your foreheads tightened with the cords 
Of wrinkled wisdom; O grey lords 
Of Time`s inherited disgrace, 
Come, make this heart your dwelling-place, 
My lips are warm, because I drowse 
All day within a pleasant house; 
Wandering odours come and go,
They are the souls of flowers that grow 
Too faint with ecstasy to live; 
And sounds more frail and fugitive 
Than rose-leaf dropping rainy tears 
On rose-leaf, fill with delicate fears 
The silence listening found my feet. 
To me this moment is more sweet 
Than any moment I have tired 
My soul with having once desired, 
Or any moment yet to be, 
Delight being infinity. 
I have no will to be more wise, 
To be more comely in men`s eyes, 
To be more loved of one who may 
Love more than he who loves to-day, 
Or to love more than now I love. 
I cross my folded arms above 
A heart that in remembering 
Remembers no unquiet thing; 
A heart fulfilled with the intense 
Acceptance of that indolence 
Which God the seventh day understood, 
Proclaiming all things very good, 
Love me, and I am satisfied 
To be the soul`s delighted bride, 
To all love`s ardours virginal. 
Love me, or love me not at all, 
And I am well content at heart 
To sleep in some soft place apart, 
Lonely as in a garden-close 
Slumbers the solitary rose.
I am the wine within the cup, 
Body and soul have I drained up, 
Unbounded, unconsumed, and void, 
Myself within myself enjoyed, 
Being myself that loneliness 
Which is the pain of beauty, less 
Than beauty`s vast, presumptuous mirth 
Shaken like a flag above the earth. 

AVARICE 
I hoard the moments love lets slip, 
The dregs that any fearer`s lip 
Rejects within the cup of life, 
The shadows of the fleeting Strife 
Of colours, and the echoing 
Of every half-muttered thing; 
The faint dust shaken from the feet 
Of Joy`s forerunners in the street, 
The knowledge dropt, some heedless day, 
By Wisdom passing on her way, 
The vows that lovers in a kiss 
Have perjured: I am Avarice. 
Always I walk with downcast eyes, 
Lest, looking at the empty skies, 
Wherein no treasure may be found, 
I pass some poor thing on the ground. 
My robes are ample, fold on fold, 
That I may gather in, and hold, 
And let not one escape from me, 
All treasures of earth`s treasury.
Also I walk with lingering pace, 
Since, when mine eyes behold the grace 
And glory whereof earth is full, 
And how the world is beautiful, 
Infinitely, and everywhere. 
Then my desire is as the air 
Embracing all things that exist. 
All kisses that all lips have kissed 
My lips are covetous that none 
Escape them; fondly, one by one, 
My heart remembers every word 
Of love that ever lover heard, 
And hearkening I shall hoard away 
All words that lovers shall yet say, 
Saying to myself: All these are mine. 
Gold too I love: two things divine 
Among all delicate things I hold, 
Gold even as love, love even as gold, 
Neither of them the fairer thing. 
But always, in my bargaining, 
I would fain buy, and never sell. 
It irks me, howsoever well 
I bargain, to make bargain of 
A pale and timid word of love 
For any jewel of pure gold; 
The little timid word may hold 
(Who knows?) in its infinity 
The small dust that may haply be 
dust of imperishable earth. 
I think, within the whole world`s girth, 
There is no beauty I can pass, 
For anything that ever was 
May yet be mine: but for that thought 
All beauty were to me as nought. 
I love to follow, Stride for Stride, 
The footsteps of my sister Pride, 
For Pride with both hands flings away 
Unhandled treasures. On her way 
I follow Anger also: she 
With one hand scatters heedlessly 
The gifts that all her lovers give, 
But spoilt and broken. I shall live 
To old age, for my both hands cling 
To Life for all her hurrying. 
Only one thing on earth I dread, 
The grave; for in that narrow bed 
But little treasure-room afford 
The gaps `twixt board and coffin-board. 
I shall go down into that pit 
Despoiled, for at the door of it, 
Life, Standing up against the sun, 
Shall take my treasures one by one, 
Leaving me only, for my part, 
A little love within my heart, 
A little wisdom in my brain: 
The worms of these shall have their gain; 
When these have had their gain of me 
Where then shall all my treasures be? 

GLUTTONY 
My robes were coloured in the lees 
Of those first Roman vintages
That crushed the whole world`s glory up 
Into one imperial cup, 
The later heavens with dew empearled, 
I drink the glory of the world. 
As an ox drains a small pool dry: 
So passes the world`s glory by. 
And as an ox makes haste to eat 
The meadow-grass beneath his feet, 
I eat the glory that may pass 
With the world`s life and death of grass. 
All flesh is grass: shall I assuage 
My hunger with the pasturage 
Of all earth`s valleys, or my thirst 
With every rock-born Stream that burst 
Each cloud-barred, Starry mountain-gate? 
Surely the valleys shall not sate 
My hunger, nor the rainy hills 
The thirst that like the salt sea fills 
My longing to its hollow shore. 
I thirst immortally for more 
Than mortal fruits; if I could take 
The world as a ripe fruit, and slake 
All thirsts at once, have I not dreamed 
Of other, unknown fruits that seemed 
More delicate than this gross fruit 
Whereof the graveyards know the root? 
O fruit of dreams, my teeth have met, 
Only in dreams, in your red, wet, 
Martyred, and ever bleeding heart! 
When shall I find you, and what part 
Of your bewildering ecstasy 
Possess? and what, possessing me. 
Shall wholly from my sight remove 
The intolerable fruit of love? 
This is the fruit that God, in wrath, 
Planted upon a garden-path 
Where man and woman walked in peace; 
And of this fruit the sad increase 
Shall end not till the whole world end; 
For with the apple did God send 
The hot desire of it, and then 
The cold rejection, and again 
Search, and entreaty, and despair; 
This apple hovers in the air 
Before the lips of all that live; 
I have desired it, and would give 
Desire of every earthly wine 
That has, in any hour, been mine, 
For this that has and has not been. 
Often the apple will be green, 
Often it will be yellowing 
Unto a late, sad, rotten thing; 
And always, as it was before, 
It will be bitter at the core, 
And bitter in the skin. Yet, taste 
This fruit of Eden in the waste 
Of a spoilt world that but for It 
Would have been wholly exquisite, 
O priceless and forbidden joy, 
That is the loved and loathed alloy 
In every cup of earth; can those 
Enchanted fruits of dream compose
A subtler flavour even in dreams? 
Grapes of an ecstasy which seems 
The ecstasy that souls may have 
In some wild heaven beyond the grave, 
Is yours a subtler wine than this 
Of earth`s poor vineyard, wine that is 
So sweet to taste, so good to give 
The intoxicating lust to live, 
And, its so brief desire being had, 
Leaves the delighted flesh so sad? 

ANGER 
My robes are red with blood; my name 
Is Anger. The delicious flame 
Which burns within me shall not die 
Till the last lover has put by 
The last kiss; for it is the fire 
Of love, which with extreme desire 
Burns out the heart that love has lit 
With the extreme desire of it. 
I love so ardently, I know 
Not love from hate, not joy from woe. 
ly when I love, am wroth awhile 
With love`s delight, if that can smile, 
With love`s desire, that can abate, 
With this most pure and passionate 
Moment of moments, if that last 
Less than to measure all the past 
And all the future. I am sad 
Only for this, that I have had
No other hatred so intense 
In justice and magnificence 
As that self-hatred which I press 
Against my own unworthiness. 
Could I so dear a hatred prove, 
That rapture would out-rapture love. 
I walk on many a steep path, 
Yet without weariness; my wrath, 
That strives against all mortal strife, 
Is as a well-spring of new life. 
I sharpen in the lover`s heart 
Desire, and when the pointed dart 
Has flown, and quivers, turn afresh 
The barb in the delighted flesh: 
The flesh cries out and thanks me. I 
In hearts am also jealousy, 
Which is love`s anger against love 
For love`s sake. It is I who move 
The hearts of men that they refuse 
Sought gifts, and women, that they choose 
What they desire not. Love becomes 
Without me, as a rich man`s crumbs 
Unto a poor man; Love with me 
Is the rich man`s satiety 
Of his spread feast. I am in these 
Mother of madness, the disease 
That proud men die of; and in those 
Mother of wisdom. There arose 
Many, by me, that have gone far, 
And, for a perilous pilgrim Star, 
Have left their hamlets in the vale,
And have found kingdoms. Mine the tale 
Of those who, having overturned 
Kingdoms, and unto ruins burned 
Strong cities, have sat down thereon, 
Forgetting to lay Stone on tone 
That they might build, and wall about, 
Mightier cities. I cry out, 
In glory, on the topmost towers 
Of the world, exulting that the hours 
Of the world are numbered; and my voice 
Is louder than the confluent noise 
Of the four winds that, hurry forth 
From South and East and West and North. 
Come hither, all that are the slaves 
Of any bondage: of the graves 
Wherein the dead bury their dead, 
Or of youth`s bubbling fountain-head; 
Come hither, bondslaves of content, 
You, bondslaves of that indolent 
Languor of love too satisfied; 
Drink of the spirit of my pride. 
And I will free you of your chains, 
Yea, I will light within your veins 
An inextinguishable fire 
Which shall consume even that desire 
Of bondage. Who shall set me free, 
Lastly, of mine own slavery? 

PRIDE 
I wear the purple: I am Pride, 
By me Love sits at God`s right side, 
Equal with God; by me Love comes 
Unto the many martyrdoms 
Of fierce and unforgiven desire. 
My spirit in Satan was that fire 
Which lit the flaming brand he hurled 
Into the darkness of the world, 
Where men groped dimly after God; 
By me the beggar in the road, 
Loving and being loved again, 
Laughs in his rags against the rain, 
Crying: is it a little thing 
To be the equal of a king; 
Can I have more than all I want? 
I teach the little reed to vaunt 
Its rippling, twilit, secret voice, 
The wind`s breath and the water`s noise, 
Against the oak`s great voice that forms 
The eternal battle-cry of Storms. 
I teach the oak, being great and old, 
To scorn, and as a moth`s flight hold, 
The wandering kingdoms of the clouds. 
I hide from kings` eyes their own shrouds, 
Whispering: Though the beggar die, 
Kings have their immortality I 
I teach the dreamer to despise 
Thrones for their brief mortalities. 
I am that voice which is the faint, 
first, far-off sin within the saint, 
When of his humbleness he first 
Takes thought; and I become that thirst 
Which makes him drunken with his own 
Humbleness, and so casts him down 
From the last painful Stair that waits 
His triumphing feet at heaven`s gates. 
I am the only tempter heard 
By Chastity; I speak the word 
Which in her confident heart she hears, 
A whisper in her guarded ears: 
For others let temptation be 
Temptation, not for Chastity! 
By me all lovers make their boast, 
Contemning the eternal host 
Of glories that have filled the earth 
Since the first conqueror had birth, 
And that eternity of peace 
Which the assembled heavens release 
To angels that have conquered it. 
Beside the one brief infinite 
Moment of earth and heaven`s eclipse 
When in that silence they join lips, 
Closing their eyes. I too have sought, 
In other`s eyes, some grace unthought, 
Only to see, as in a glass, 
Mine own unchanging image pass; 
I have seen no one yet more fair, 
Greater or subtler anywhere, 
Than I am. When I love, being Pride, 
I raise my lover to my side, 
And I have never loved in vain. 
Who loves me never loves again, 
Nor have I, being Pride, forgot 
A lover. Praise delights me not, 
Nor mine own mirror: I am I. 
To know me is to satisfy 
Knowledge; to love me is to know 
Wisdom. Far off, dreams come and go; 
But I, that seek upon the earth 
Nothing that had not mortal birth, 
That bow not, on the ways of sin, 
To aught I have not found within, 
Dream never: we must kneel to dreams. 
These are, if that be true which seems 
To have been written on their wings, 
The messengers of foreign kings. 

LYING 
I speak all tongues; also I speak 
The learning all the ages seek, 
Some capture, and all leave behind; 
But I have cast out of my mind 
Wisdom, and out of my heart love. 
I lust not, nor sloth-heavy move, 
Not covetous, no wine-bibber, 
Nor is my tongue hasty to Stir, 
Nor mine eyes proud; but I am wise 
As the snake`s tongue, the woman`s eyes. 
All men believe me; me alone 
All men believe; to each his own 
Desire I speak, in his own way. 
To him who loves but love, I say: 
I love you; to the vain: in truth, 
I find you beautiful, O youth; 
And to the timid: You are strong.
Behold these jewels, how the long 
Slow silken raiment folds and drifts: 
These gems, this raiment, are the gifts 
Of all my lovers and my friends. 
When at God`s feet the sinner bends, 
Saying, I repent; I am his thought, 
His speech, although he knows it not. 
And when at the beloved`s feet 
The lover sighs: I love you, sweet, 
I never loved, not ever may, 
Love any one but you; I say, 
Word before word, each word for both. 
When lust says: I am life; when Sloth: 
I am content; when Avarice: 
I seek where any beauty is; 
When Gluttony: My mortal thirst 
Upon immortal fruit was nursed; 
When Anger: I refine like fire; 
When Pride: No Praise do I desire; 
`Tis I who speak in each, `tis I 
Through whom these lordly voices lie, 
Since (lest men know me and condemn) 
I speak my will to him through them. 
Who is there that shall say for me 
That all things are but vanity? 

THE BODY 
I am the bondslave of these slaves. 

THE SINS 
O tyrant of the many graves, 
It is to you that we are bound! 
For you, for you, all we have found 
New service, bondage ever new; 
We have brought all our gifts to you, 
We have made pleasure of our pains, 
And you have made these many chains 
Upon our hands, our feet, our souls. 
But for this bondage that controls 
Our will with that omnipotence 
Which not our spirits, though intense 
In their own ardour, can revoke, 
We had been free; and as sweet smoke 
Had not our liberal glories gone 
Up to the borders of God`s throne, 
Pure as the savour of his breath, 
But for you, Body of our death? 

THE SOUL 
Why do you crucify me afresh? 

THE SINS 
O tyrant, sorer than the flesh, 
Whose tyranny outlives the morn 
Of resurrection, we have borne 
From you a heavier slavery, 
From you, by whom we might be free! 
You gave us spiritual eyes 
That we might sin, and be more wise 
In sinning; thought, that we might find
A subtler draft -within the mind; 
Wings, that we might be Strong to bear 
Our burdens through the accomplice air, 
Not tiring of them; sense of good, 
That virtue, being understood, 
Might be our yoke-fellow; the sight 
Of beauty, that at last we might, 
For you, O Soul, bring both within 
Your domination, to be sin! 

THE BODY 
Dancers, I tire of you. I tire 
Of all desire save one desire: 
That I were free of you. My brows 
Are weary of this golden house, 
My brain is weary of your feet, 
That loiter where they once were fleet, 
Yet cease not. Cease! for I behold 
No beauty, as I did of old, 
In any of your posturing: 
You are as some forgotten thing. 
And yet I saw you long ago 
As those brave joys that come and go 
In youth`s rebellion of delight 
Against old custom; in my sight 
You were the spirits made perfect of 
Virtues that sinned from love of love 
Immortal was each countenance 
Your dance was as the Starry dance 
Of the seven planets. Now I see 
A wheel turned on an axle-tree, 
A beggar`s cloak that the wind shook; 
Your painted faces are a book 
Scrawled by the fingers of a child; 
How is it I was so beguiled, 
What was it that I loved you for, 
false ones, whom I now abhor 
Even as I did adore you once? 
I would I could put back the sun`s 
Dark hand upon the dial I Alas, 
It is too late, and I must pass 
The interval, until all ends, 
With you, whom I have chosen for friends, 
Chosen for my friends I know not how. 
Would that the dance were over now! 

THE SOUL 
Dancers, I tire of you. I tire 
Of all desire save one desire: 
That I were free of you. Mine eyes 
Are heavy with the mockeries 
Of your eternal vanity; 
Your motions know not melody, 
As your souls know not. You advance 
As waves do, and your tangled dance 
Scatters as leaves blown down the wind. 
I find no grace in you, I find 
Vanity, your illusions vain; 
And though I have thus long been fain 
To endure you for the Body`s sake,
And seeking from myself to make 
Some moment`s folly of escape, 
Yet Have I seen each soft-veiled shape 
In its ungirded nakedness, 
Each painted face a white distress 
Under the smile; astray, the beat 
Of hurrying and unanswering feet, 
And that you know not why you go 
Your wandering ways: but who shall know 
Save one that silent in the wings 
Stands, and beholds your wanderings, 
Who set the measure that you mar? 
Have I not seen you as you are 
Always, and have I once admired 
Your beauty? I am very tired, 
Dancers, I am more tired than you. 
When shall the dance be all danced through? 
I see the lights grow dimmer; one 
By one the lights go out; the sun 
Will meet the darkness on its way. 
Is it near morning? 

THE STAGE-MANAGER 
It is day. 

THE SOUL 
Would it were that last day of days! 

THE STAGE-MANAGER 
It is. Each morning that decays 
To midnight ends the world as well, 
For the world`s day, as that farewell 
When, at the ultimate judgment-Stroke, 
Heaven too shall vanish in pale smoke.
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