What's virtue, Bianca? Have we not Agreed the word should be forgot, That ours be every dear device And all the subtleties of vice, And, in diverse imaginings, The savour of forbidden things, So only that the obvious be Too obvious for you and me, And the one vulgar final act Remain an unadmitted fact? And, surely, we were wise to waive A gift we do not lose, but save. What moment's reeling blaze of sense Were rationally recompense For all the ecstasies and all The ardours demi-virginal? Bianca, I tell you, no delights Of long, free, unforbidden nights, Have richlier filled and satisfied The eager moments as they died, Than your voluptuous pretence Of unacquainted innocence, Your clinging hands and closing lips And eyes slow sinking to eclipse And cool throat flushing to my kiss; That sterile and mysterious bliss, Mysterious, and yet to me Deeper for that dubiety. Once, but that time was long ago, I loved good women, and to know That lips my lips dared never touch Could speak, in one warm smile, so much. And it seemed infinitely sweet To worship at a woman's feet, And live on heavenly thoughts of her, Till earth itself grew heavenlier. But that rapt mood, being fed on air, Turned at the last to a despair, And, for a body and soul like mine, I found the angels' food too fine. So the mood changed, and I began To find that man is merely man, Though women might be angels; so, I let the aspirations go, And for a space I held it wise To follow after certainties. My heart forgot the ways of love, No longer now my fancy wove Into admitted ornament Its spider's web of sentiment. What my hands seized, that my hands held, I followed as the blood compelled, And finding that my brain found rest On some unanalytic breast, I was contented to discover How easy 'tis to be a lover. No sophistries to ravel out, No devious martyrdoms of doubt, Only the good firm flesh to hold, The love well worth its weight in gold, Love, sinking from the infinite, Now just enough to last one night. So the simplicity of flesh Held me a moment in its mesh, Till that too palled, and I began To find that man is mostly man In that, his will being sated, he Wills ever new variety. And then I found you, Bianca! Then I found in you, I found again That chance or will or fate had brought The curiosity I sought. Ambiguous child, whose life retires Into the pulse of those desires Of whose endured possession speaks The passionate pallor of your cheeks; Child, in whom neither good nor ill Can sway your sick and swaying will, Only the aching sense of sex Wholly controls, and does perplex, With dubious drifts scarce understood, The shaken currents of your blood; It is your ambiguity That speaks to me and conquers me, Your capturing heats of captive bliss, Under my hands, under my kiss, And your strange reticences, strange Concessions, your elusive change, The strangeness of your smile, the faint Corruption of your gaze, a saint Such as Luini loved to paint. What's virtue, Bianca? nay, indeed, What's vice? for I at last am freed, With you, of virtue and of vice: I have discovered Paradise. And Paradise is neither heaven, Where the spirits of God are seven, And the spirits of men burn pure, Nor is it hell, where souls endure An equal ecstacy of fire, In like repletion of desire; Nay, but a subtlier intense Unsatisfied appeal of sense, Ever desiring, ever near The goal of all its hope and fear, Ever a hair's-breadth from the goal. So Bianca satisfies my soul. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...EMBLEMS OF LOVE: 27. THE POWER OF ELOQUENCE IN LOVE by PHILIP AYRES OLD LADY NECESSITY by BERTON BRALEY TO MY HONOURED FRIEND MR. DRAYTON; AFFIXED TO 'POLYOLBION' by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) A VERSION OF THE OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN by GEORGE GORDON BYRON |