The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 24

She looked up quickly to the sky And spake: "The moon's regality Will hear no praise; She is as I.

"She is in heaven, and I on earth; This is my kingdom: I come forth To crown all poets to their worth."

He brake in with a voice that mourned; "To their worth, lady? They are scorned By men they sing for, till inurned.

"To their worth? Beauty in the mind Leaves the hearth cold, and love-refined Ambitions make the world unkind.

"The boor who ploughs the daisy down, The chief whose mortgage of renown, Fixed upon graves, has bought a crown--

"Both these are happier, more approved Than poets!--why should I be moved In saying, both are more beloved?"

"The south can judge not of the north,"

She resumed calmly; "I come forth To crown all poets to their worth.

"Yea, verily, to anoint them all With blessed oils which surely shall Smell sweeter as the ages fall."

"As sweet," the poet said, and rung A low sad laugh, "as flowers are, sprung Out of their graves when they die young;

"As sweet as window-eglantine, Some bough of which, as they decline, The hired nurse gathers at their sign:

"As sweet, in short, as perfumed shroud Which the gay Roman maidens sewed For English Keats, singing aloud."

The lady answered, "Yea, as sweet!

The things thou namest being complete In fragrance, as I measure it.

"Since sweet the death-clothes and the knell Of him who having lived, dies well; And wholly sweet the asphodel

"Stirred softly by that foot of his, When he treads brave on all that is, Into the world of souls, from this.

"Since sweet the tears, dropped at the door Of tearless Death, and even before: Sweet, consecrated evermore.

"What, dost thou judge it a strange thing That poets, crowned for vanquis.h.i.+ng, Should bear some dust from out the ring?

"Come on with me, come on with me, And learn in coming: let me free Thy spirit into verity."

She ceased: her palfrey's paces sent No separate noises as she went; 'Twas a bee's hum, a little spent.

And while the poet seemed to tread Along the drowsy noise so made, The forest heaved up overhead

Its billowy foliage through the air, And the calm stars did far and spare O'erswim the ma.s.ses everywhere

Save when the overtopping pines Did bar their tremulous light with lines All fixed and black. Now the moon s.h.i.+nes

A broader glory. You may see The trees grow rarer presently; The air blows up more fresh and free:

Until they come from dark to light, And from the forest to the sight Of the large heaven-heart, bare with night,

A fiery throb in every star, Those burning arteries that are The conduits of G.o.d's life afar,--

A wild brown moorland underneath, And four pools breaking up the heath With white low gleamings, blank as death.

Beside the first pool, near the wood, A dead tree in set horror stood, Peeled and disjointed, stark as rood;

Since thunder-stricken, years ago, Fixed in the spectral strain and throe Wherewith it struggled from the blow:

A monumental tree, alone, That will not bend in storms, nor groan, But break off sudden like a stone.

Its lifeless shadow lies oblique Upon the pool where, javelin-like, The star-rays quiver while they strike.

"Drink," said the lady, very still-- "Be holy and cold." He did her will And drank the starry water chill.

The next pool they came near unto Was bare of trees; there, only grew Straight flags, and lilies just a few

Which sullen on the water sate And leant their faces on the flat, As weary of the starlight-state.

"Drink," said the lady, grave and slow-- "_World's use_ behoveth thee to know."

He drank the bitter wave below.

The third pool, girt with th.o.r.n.y bushes And flaunting weeds and reeds and rushes That winds sang through in mournful gushes,

Was whitely smeared in many a round By a slow slime; the starlight swound Over the ghastly light it found.

"Drink," said the lady, sad and slow-- "_World's love_ behoveth thee to know."

He looked to her commanding so;

Her brow was troubled, but her eye Struck clear to his soul. For all reply He drank the water suddenly,--

Then, with a deathly sickness, pa.s.sed Beside the fourth pool and the last, Where weights of shadow were downcast

From yew and alder and rank trails Of nightshade clasping the trunk-scales And flung across the intervals

From yew to yew: who dares to stoop Where those dank branches overdroop, Into his heart the chill strikes up,

He hears a silent gliding coil, The snakes strain hard against the soil, His foot slips in their slimy oil,

And toads seem crawling on his hand, And clinging bats but dimly scanned Full in his face their wings expand.

A paleness took the poet's cheek: "Must I drink _here_?" he seemed to seek The lady's will with utterance meek:

"Ay, ay," she said, "it so must be;"

(And this time she spake cheerfully) "Behoves thee know _World's cruelty_."

He bowed his forehead till his mouth Curved in the wave, and drank unloth As if from rivers of the south;

His lips sobbed through the water rank, His heart paused in him while he drank, His brain beat heart-like, rose and sank,

And he swooned backward to a dream Wherein he lay 'twixt gloom and gleam, With Death and Life at each extreme: