The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume IV Part 4

QUESTION AND ANSWER.

I.

Love you seek for, presupposes Summer heat and sunny glow.

Tell me, do you find moss-roses Budding, blooming in the snow?

Snow might kill the rose-tree's root-- Shake it quickly from your foot, Lest it harm you as you go.

II.

From the ivy where it dapples A grey ruin, stone by stone, Do you look for grapes or apples, Or for sad green leaves alone?

Pluck the leaves off, two or three-- Keep them for morality When you shall be safe and gone.

INCLUSIONS.

I.

Oh, wilt thou have my hand, Dear, to lie along in thine?

As a little stone in a running stream, it seems to lie and pine.

Now drop the poor pale hand, Dear, unfit to plight with thine.

II.

Oh, wilt thou have my cheek, Dear, drawn closer to thine own?

My cheek is white, my cheek is worn, by many a tear run down.

Now leave a little s.p.a.ce, Dear, lest it should wet thine own.

III.

Oh, must thou have my soul, Dear, commingled with thy soul?-- Red grows the cheek, and warm the hand; the part is in the whole: Nor hands nor cheeks keep separate, when soul is joined to soul.

INSUFFICIENCY.

I.

There is no one beside thee and no one above thee, Thou standest alone as the nightingale sings!

And my words that would praise thee are impotent things, For none can express thee though all should approve thee.

I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.

II.

Say, what can I do for thee? weary thee, grieve thee?

Lean on thy shoulder, new burdens to add?

Weep my tears over thee, making thee sad?

Oh, hold me not--love me not! let me retrieve thee.

I love thee so, Dear, that I only can leave thee.

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."

II.

But only three in all G.o.d's universe Have heard this word thou hast said,--Himself, beside Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied One of us ... _that_ was G.o.d, ... and laid the curse So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce My sight from seeing thee,--that if I had died, The deathweights, placed there, would have signified Less absolute exclusion. "Nay" is worse From G.o.d than from all others, O my friend!

Men could not part us with their worldly jars, Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend; Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars: And, heaven being rolled between us at the end, We should but vow the faster for the stars.

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.

IV.

Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing, from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.

And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear To let thy music drop here unaware In folds of golden fulness at my door?

Look up and see the cas.e.m.e.nt broken in, The bats and owlets builders in the roof!

My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.

Hush, call no echo up in further proof Of desolation! there's a voice within That weeps ... as thou must sing ... alone, aloof.

V.

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly, As once Electra her sepulchral urn, And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see What a great heap of grief lay hid in me, And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn Through the ashen greyness. If thy foot in scorn Could tread them out to darkness utterly, It might be well perhaps. But if instead Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow The grey dust up, ... those laurels on thine head, O my Beloved, will not s.h.i.+eld thee so, That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred The hair beneath. Stand further off then! go.

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.