The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume IV Part 7

And Love, be false! if _he_, to keep one oath, Must lose one joy, by his life's star foretold.

x.x.xVII.

Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make, Of all that strong divineness which I know For thine and thee, an image only so Formed of the sand, and fit to s.h.i.+ft and break.

It is that distant years which did not take Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow, Have forced my swimming brain to undergo Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake Thy purity of likeness and distort Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit: As if a s.h.i.+pwrecked Pagan, safe in port, His guardian sea-G.o.d to commemorate, Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort And vibrant tail, within the temple-gate.

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."

x.x.xIX.

Because thou hast the power and own'st the grace To look through and behind this mask of me (Against which years have beat thus blanchingly With their rains), and behold my soul's true face, The dim and weary witness of life's race,-- Because thou hast the faith and love to see, Through that same soul's distracting lethargy, The patient angel waiting for a place In the new Heavens,--because nor sin nor woe, Nor G.o.d's infliction, nor death's neighbourhood, Nor all which others viewing, turn to go, Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed,-- Nothing repels thee, ... Dearest, teach me so To pour out grat.i.tude, as thou dost, good!

XL.

Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!

I will not gainsay love, called love forsooth.

I have heard love talked in my early youth, And since, not so long back but that the flowers Then gathered, smell still. Mussulmans and Giaours Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and have no ruth For any weeping. Polypheme's white tooth Slips on the nut if, after frequent showers, The sh.e.l.l is over-smooth,--and not so much Will turn the thing called love, aside to hate Or else to oblivion. But thou art not such A lover, my Beloved! thou canst wait Through sorrow and sickness, to bring souls to touch, And think it soon when others cry "Too late."

XLI.

I thank all who have loved me in their hearts, With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all Who paused a little near the prison-wall To hear my music in its louder parts Ere they went onward, each one to the mart's Or temple's occupation, beyond call.

But thou, who, in my voice's sink and fall When the sob took it, thy divinest Art's Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot To hearken what I said between my tears, ...

Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot My soul's full meaning into future years, That _they_ should lend it utterance, and salute Love that endures, from Life that disappears!

XLII.

"_My future will not copy fair my past_"-- I wrote that once; and thinking at my side My ministering life-angel justified The word by his appealing look upcast To the white throne of G.o.d, I turned at last, And there, instead, saw thee, not unallied To angels in thy soul! Then I, long tried By natural ills, received the comfort fast, While budding, at thy sight, my pilgrim's staff Gave out green leaves with morning dews impearled.

I seek no copy now of life's first half: Leave here the pages with long musing curled, And write me new my future's epigraph, New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

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 candlelight.

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.

XLIV.

Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers Plucked in the garden, all the summer through And winter, and it seemed as if they grew In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.

So, in the like name of that love of ours, Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too, And which on warm and cold days I withdrew From my heart's ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue, And wait thy weeding; yet here's eglantine, Here's ivy!--take them, as I used to do Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.

Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true, And tell thy soul their roots are left in mine.

CASA GUIDI WINDOWS

A Poem, IN TWO PARTS

ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT TO THE FIRST EDITION.

This poem contains the impressions of the writer upon events in Tuscany of which she was a witness. "From a window," the critic may demur. She bows to the objection in the very t.i.tle of her work. No continuous narrative nor exposition of political philosophy is attempted by her. It is a simple story of personal impressions, whose only value is in the intensity with which they were received, as proving her warm affection for a beautiful and unfortunate country, and the sincerity with which they are related, as indicating her own good faith and freedom from partisans.h.i.+p.

Of the two parts of this poem, the first was written nearly three years ago, while the second resumes the actual situation of 1851. The discrepancy between the two parts is a sufficient guarantee to the public of the truthfulness of the writer, who, though she certainly escaped the epidemic "falling sickness" of enthusiasm for Pio Nono, takes shame upon herself that she believed, like a woman, some royal oaths, and lost sight of the probable consequences of some obvious popular defects. If the discrepancy should be painful to the reader, let him understand that to the writer it has been more so. But such discrepancies we are called upon to accept at every hour by the conditions of our nature, implying the interval between aspiration and performance, between faith and disillusion, between hope and fact.

"O trusted broken prophecy, O richest fortune sourly crost, Born for the future, to the future lost!"

Nay, not lost to the future in this case. The future of Italy shall not be disinherited.

FLORENCE, 1851.

CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.

PART I.

I heard last night a little child go singing 'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, _O bella liberta, O bella!_--stringing The same words still on notes he went in search So high for, you concluded the upspringing Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green, And that the heart of Italy must beat, While such a voice had leave to rise serene 'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street: A little child, too, who not long had been By mother's finger steadied on his feet, And still _O bella liberta_ he sang.

Then I thought, musing, of the innumerous Sweet songs which still for Italy outrang From older singers' lips who sang not thus Exultingly and purely, yet, with pang Fast sheathed in music, touched the heart of us So finely that the pity scarcely pained.

I thought how Filicaja led on others, Bewailers for their Italy enchained, And how they called her childless among mothers, Widow of empires, ay, and scarce refrained Cursing her beauty to her face, as brothers Might a shamed sister's,--"Had she been less fair She were less wretched;"--how, evoking so From congregated wrong and heaped despair Of men and women writhing under blow, Harrowed and hideous in a filthy lair, Some personating Image wherein woe Was wrapt in beauty from offending much, They called it Cybele, or Niobe, Or laid it corpse-like on a bier for such, Where all the world might drop for Italy Those cadenced tears which burn not where they touch,-- "Juliet of nations, canst thou die as we?

And was the violet crown that crowned thy head So over-large, though new buds made it rough, It slipped down and across thine eyelids dead, O sweet, fair Juliet?" Of such songs enough, Too many of such complaints! behold, instead, Void at Verona, Juliet's marble trough:[2]

As void as that is, are all images Men set between themselves and actual wrong, To catch the weight of pity, meet the stress Of conscience,--since 't is easier to gaze long On mournful masks and sad effigies Than on real, live, weak creatures crushed by strong.

For me who stand in Italy to-day Where worthier poets stood and sang before, I kiss their footsteps yet their words gainsay.

I can but muse in hope upon this sh.o.r.e Of golden Arno as it shoots away Through Florence' heart beneath her bridges four: Bent bridges, seeming to strain off like bows, And tremble while the arrowy undertide Shoots on and cleaves the marble as it goes, And strikes up palace-walls on either side, And froths the cornice out in glittering rows, With doors and windows quaintly multiplied, And terrace-sweeps, and gazers upon all, By whom if flower or kerchief were thrown out From any lattice there, the same would fall Into the river underneath, no doubt, It runs so close and fast 'twixt wall and wall.

How beautiful! the mountains from without In silence listen for the word said next.

What word will men say,--here where Giotto planted His campanile like an unperplexed Fine question Heavenward, touching the things granted A n.o.ble people who, being greatly vexed In act, in aspiration keep undaunted?

What word will G.o.d say? Michel's Night and Day And Dawn and Twilight wait in marble scorn[3]

Like dogs upon a dunghill, couched on clay From whence the Medicean stamp's outworn, The final putting off of all such sway By all such hands, and freeing of the unborn In Florence and the great world outside Florence.