[BNP/E3, 78 – 1-7]

Delirium.

To a Hand.

Give me thy hand. With my wounded eyes

I would see what this hand contains:

Ah, what a world of hopes here lies!

What a world of feelings and doubts and pains!

Oh to think that this hand in itself contains

The mystery of mysteries.

This hand has a meaning thou dost not know,

A meaning deeper than human fears;

This hand perchance in times long ago

Wiped off strange and unnatural tears;

Perhaps its gesture was full of sneers

Perchance its clenching was full of woe.

There is that in thy hand my soul doth dream

And the shades that haunt my mind;

The howl of the wind and the flow of the stream,

The flow of the stream and the howl of the wind,

All that is horrible and undefined

Of the things that are in the things that seem.

As I look at thy hand my mind is rife

Of thoughts and memories deeper than rhyme;

Thy hand is a part of my soul's deep life,

[2^r]

To a Hand – 2.

And I knew thy hand ere the birth of time,

And in ages past it led me to crime,

In dim praying |ages| of [dark it] |costed| strife

A world of woes and of fears and sighs

And love that better had been hate,

And crimes and wars and victories,

And the painful fall of many a state -

All these and more that the heart abate

My raving soul in thy hand descries.

No painter mad, not a fetichist

O'er thy hand would be thus held blind.

At mere blank thought of its being kissed

But my lips I thrill with a fear none find

In the waking thoughts of a human mind

Save when reason by its own self is missèd.

Thy hand has a meaning thou dost not know,

A meaning deeper than human fears;

It has aught of the sea and of the sun's glow

And the seasons too and the months and years,

And the colour hidden in human tears

And the form and number in human woe.

[3^r]

To a Hand – 3.

Thy hand was a lofty and empty home,

A collar of pearls and a castle keep;

Thy hand knows well all the thoughts that roam,

Thy hand is the music eternal and deep

That long ere birth held my soul asleep

In a palace quaint with a curious dome.

How finely made is this hand of thine

With its fingers tapering and white.

Soft and palely warm and fine;

There is something in it of day and night.

Ah, dearest child, could I read aright

The text before me deep and divine.

|There's a kind of Fact that persists and hangs|

O'er thy hand, as on a scratched scroll:

'Tis as if some thought had buried its fangs

In an unknown part of my soul.

In a land far in me a bell doth toll,

And my heart aches wild as it shrinks or clangs.

There is aught of new and wild and unreal

In thy hand where my look is pained:

‘Tis as if thy hand in itself could see all –

[4^r]

To a Hand – 4.

Horrible thought, where fear is gained

By a drollness mad and dimly sustained

As of some wide hint out of the Ideal.

There is aught of Personal, of It, of Such

In thy hand and o'er me there steals

A sense of dread like a murderer's[1] clutch;

I know not how, my hand in thine feels

An eternal thing and my mad brain reels

As if eternity we could touch.

I see that hand not a hand, but whence

This horrible Fact that creeps in me?

|Ah, I have of thy hand the seeing intense|

But aught more than hand in that place I see

That abrupt elision did make to be

Between thought of things and what we call sense.

My thought doth look at thy hand direct

Without eyes or sense or aught of this,

And my reason at such a thing is wrecked

Into such a fear that both pain and bliss

Are plunged in conscious unconsciousness

For that is no hand that my dreams detect.

[5^r]

To a Hand – 5.

And I gaze yet more and I shake from me

The dream of time and the dream of space,

And as a drowner who sinks in the sea

I dream of the wonders of all we trace

In everything and I plunge full‑face

In the sense of what more than seems to be.

There is aught of lovely, wild and unbrute

In thy hand, and I love it well;

In fearing more than pain thoughts of hell

By a sudden portal in the Visible

I have a glimpse of the Absolute.

The sight of thy hand of a horrible heaven

The portals mute throws open again

Thy hand is like music, in it I gain

Passing a wild fear and a bitter pain

|Weird things more weird than the sense of Seven.|

All things stare mystery at my mind,

But thy hand most, to oblivion conn'd

Thrilled with a mute life not all defined,

[6^r]

To a Hand – 6.

What is thy hand in itself beyond

The scope of sense where the heart is fond,

The realm of thought where the soul is blind?

Where is the soul that thy hand reveals

In its own there‑self till its thought affrights?

What bells are those that say HAND in peals

That traverse impossible infinites?

What fills with lightnings of hands the nights

Where the sense of dread into thoughts congeals?

Take thy hand away; for I now shall dream

Of strange and grotesque and unnatural lands

Watered by many a painful stream

Whose waves are hands, whose banks of hands

Of gardens with trees whose leaves are hands

And a white stiff hand covering the sun’s gleam.

|And troops of hands all in sight scent and sound[2]|

|In their touch but felt to[3] the visual mind|

Dance and howl and mix interwound

In mere visual wise

Yet never shut, always stiff, defined

Howe’er fast they move in their tragic round.

[7^r]

To a Hand – 7.

Then, on horror worst, they begin to live

With a vital life, and to grasp and clutch,

And to twitch and squirm till my thoughts unweave,

And like worms and snails that my throat should touch

My soul qualms and retches at horror such

At fear's transcendent superlative.

And what more doth follow I cannot say,

But it seems that madly I traverse, lone,

Tracts of hells where a hand doth stay

In such a manner that if a groan

Of a madman could in its soul be known

It would be to it as to night is day.

And my thoughts drag on in their weary strain;

Wild and grotesque, or quick or slow,

Uncouth and unseemly they reel in my brain,

Startingly mad as they go,

As a sudden laugh in the midst of woe

Or a clown in a funeral train.

January, 1906.

Alexander Search.

[1] a murderer's ^{/an unseen\}

[2] sound ^{/― no sound―\}

[3] to ^/in\