The Home Book of Verse Volume Ii Part 177

SONNETS From "Thysia"

II Twin songs there are, of joyance, or of pain; One of the morning lark in midmost sky, When falls to earth a mist, a silver rain, A glittering cascade of melody; And mead and wold and the wide heaven rejoice, And praise the Maker; but alone I kneel In sorrowing prayer. Then wanes the day; a voice Trembles along the dusk, till peal on peal It pierces every living heart that hears, Pierces and burns and purifies like fire; Again I kneel under the starry spheres, And all my soul seems healed, and lifted higher, Nor could that jubilant song of day prevail Like thine of tender grief, O nightingale.

III Bow down, my song, before her presence high, In that far world where you must seek her now; Say that you bring to her no sonnetry, But plain-set anguish of the breast or brow; Say that on earth I sang to her alone, But now, while in her heaven she sits divine, Turning, I tell the world my bitter moan, Bidding it share its hopes and griefs with mine, Versing not what I would, but what I must, Wail of the wind, or sobbing of the wave; Ah! say you raised my bowed head from the dust, And held me backward from a willful grave; Say this, and her sweet pity will approve, And bind yet closer her dead bond of love.

VII I watch beside you in your silent room; Without, the chill rain falls, life dies away, The dead leaves drip, and the fast-gathering gloom Closes around this brief November day, First day of holy death, of sacred rest; I kiss your brow, calm, beautiful and cold, I lay my yearning arms across your breast, I claim our darling rapture as of old; Dear heart, I linger but a little s.p.a.ce, Sweet wife, I come to your new world ere long; This lily--keep it till our next embrace, While the mute Angel makes our love more strong, While here I cling, in life's short agony, To G.o.d, and to your deathless memory.

XVI Comes the New Year; wailing the north winds blow; In her cold, lonely grave my dead love lies; Dead lies the stiffened earth beneath the snow, And blinding sleet blots out the desolate skies; I stand between the living and the dead; Hateful to me is life, hateful is death; Her life was sad, and on that narrow bed She will not turn, nor wake with human breath.

I kneel between the evil and the good; The struggle o'er, this one sweet faith have I-- Though life and death be dimly understood, She loved me; I loved her; love cannot die; Go then thy way with thine accustomed cheer, Nor heed my churlish greeting, O New Year.

XXIII Like some lone miser, dear, behold me stand, To count my treasures, and their worth extol:-- A last word penciled by that poor left hand; Two kindred names on the same gentle scroll, (I found it near your pillow,) traced below; This little scarf you made, our latest pride; The violet I digged so long ago, That nestled in your bosom till you died; But dearest to my heart, whereon it lies, Is one warm tress of your luxuriant hair, Still present to my touch, my lips, my eyes, Forever changeless, and forever fair, And even in your grave, beauteous and free From the cold grasp of mutability.

x.x.xVI So sang I in the springtime of my years-- "There's nothing we can call our own but love;"

So let me murmur now that winter nears, And even in death the deathless truth approve.

Oft have I seen the slow, the broadening river Roll its glad waters to the parent sea; Death is the call of love to love; the giver Claims his own gift for some new mystery.

In boundless love divine the heavens are spread, In wedded love is earth's divinest store, And he that liveth to himself is dead, And he that lives for love lives evermore; Only in love can life's true path be trod; Love is self-giving; therefore love is G.o.d.

x.x.xVII Hear, O Self-Giver, infinite as good; This faith, at least, my wavering heart should hold, Nor find in dark regret its daily food, But catch the gleam of glories yet untold.

Yea, even on earth, beloved, as love well knew, Brief absence brought our fond returning kiss, So let my soul to G.o.d's great world and you Look onward with sweet pain of secret bliss;-- O sunset sky and lonely gleaming star, Your beauty thrills me from the bound of s.p.a.ce, O Love, thy loveliness shows best afar, And only Heaven shall give thee perfect grace; Grant then, dear Lord, that all who love may be Heirs of Thy glorious Immortality.

XLV How shall I tell the measure of my love?

'Tis vain that I have given thee vows and tears, Or striven in verse my tenderness to prove, Or held thy hand in journeyings through the years; Vain that I follow now with hastening feet, And sing thy death, still murmuring in my song, "Only for thee I would the strain were sweet, Only for thee I would the words were strong;"

Vain even that I closed with death, and fought To hold thee longer in a world so dear, Vain that I count a weary world as naught, That I would die to bring thee back; I hear G.o.d answer me from heaven, O angel wife-- "To prove thy love, live thou a n.o.bler life."

Morton Luce [1849-

SONNETS From "Sonnets from the Portuguese"

I I thought once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, Who each one in a gracious hand appears To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware, So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair; And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,-- Guess now who holds thee?"--"Death," I said. But, there, The silver answer rang,--"Not Death, but Love."

III Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!

Unlike our uses and our destinies.

Our ministering two angels look surprise On one another, as they strike athwart Their wings in pa.s.sing. Thou, bethink thee, art A guest for queens to social pageantries, With gages from a hundred brighter eyes Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part Of chief musician. What hast thou to do With looking from the lattice-lights at me, A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?

The chrism is on thine head,--on mine, the dew,-- And Death must dig the level where these agree.

VI Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the suns.h.i.+ne as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore,-- Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue G.o.d for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

VII The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, Was caught up into love, and taught the whole Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole G.o.d gave for baptism, I am fain to drink, And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear.

The name of country, heaven, are changed away For where thou art or shalt be, there or here; And this... this lute and song... loved yesterday, (The singing angels know) are only dear, Because thy name moves right in what they say.

VIII What can I give thee back, O liberal And princely giver, who hast brought the gold And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold, And laid them on the outside of the wall For such as I to take or leave withal, In unexpected largess? Am I cold, Ungrateful, that for these most manifold High gifts, I render nothing back at all?

Not so; not cold,--but very poor instead.

Ask G.o.d who knows. For frequent tears have run The colors from my life, and left so dead And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done To give the same as pillow to thy head.

Go farther! let it serve to trample on.

IX Can it be right to give what I can give?

To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years Re-sighing on my lips renunciative Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live For all thy adjurations? O my fears, That this can scarce be right! We are not peers So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve, That givers of such gifts as mine are, must Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas!

I will not soil thy purple with my dust, Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-gla.s.s, Nor give thee any love--which were unjust.

Beloved, I only love thee! let it pa.s.s.

X Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need I love thee... mark!... I love thee--in thy sight I stand transfigured, glorified aright, With conscience of the new rays that proceed Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures Who love G.o.d, G.o.d accepts while loving so.

And what I feel, across the inferior features Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.

XII Indeed this very love which is my boast, And which, when rising up from breast to brow, Doth crown me with a ruby large enow To draw men's eyes and prove the inner cost,-- This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost, I should not love withal, unless that thou Hadst set me an example, shown me how, When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed, And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak Of love even, as a good thing of my own: Thy soul hath s.n.a.t.c.hed up mine all faint and weak, And placed it by thee on a golden throne,-- And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!) Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

XIV If thou must love me, let it be for naught Except for love's sake only. Do not say "I love her for her smile--her look--her way Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"-- For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,-- A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!

But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

XVII My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes G.o.d set between His After and Before, And strike up and strike off the general roar Of the rus.h.i.+ng worlds a melody that floats In a serene air purely. Antidotes Of medicated music, answering for Mankind's forlornest uses, thou canst pour From thence into their ears. G.o.d's will devotes Thine to such ends, and mine to wait on thine.

How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?

A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?

A shade, in which to sing--of palm or pine?

A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.

XVIII I never gave a lock of hair away To a man, Dearest, except this to thee, Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully I ring out to the full brown length and say "Take it." My day of youth went yesterday; My hair no longer bounds to my foot's glee, Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree, As girls do, any more: it only may Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears, Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside Through sorrow's trick. I thought the funeral-shears Would take this first, but Love is justified,-- Take it thou,--finding pure, from all those years, The kiss my mother left here when she died.

XXI Say over again, and yet once over again, That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated Should seem "a cuckoo-song," as thou dost treat it, Remember, never to the hill or plain, Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain, Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.

Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt's pain Cry: "Speak once more--thou lovest!" Who can fear Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll, Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?

Say thou dost love me, love me, love me,--toll The silver iterance!--only minding, Dear, To love me also in silence with thy soul.

XXII When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curved point,--what bitter wrong Can the earth do us, that we should not long Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher, The angels would press on us and aspire To drop some golden orb of perfect song Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay Rather on earth, Beloved,--where the unfit Contrarious moods of men recoil away And isolate pure spirits, and permit A place to stand and love in for a day, With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

XXVIII My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!

And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night.

This said,--he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch my hand... a simple thing, Yet I wept for it!--this,... the paper's light...

Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed, As if G.o.d's future thundered on my past.

This said, I am thine,--and so its ink has paled With lying at my heart that beat too fast.

And this... O Love, thy words have ill availed, If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

x.x.xVIII First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white, Slow to world-greetings, quick with its "Oh, list,"

When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here, plainer to my sight, Than that first kiss. The second pa.s.sed in height The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed, Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!

That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown, With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.

The third upon my lips was folded down In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed, I have been proud, and said, "My love, my own!"

XLIII How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the pa.s.sion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if G.o.d choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861]