A

H heavenly joy! But who hath ever heard, Who hath seen joy, or who shall ever find Joy's language? There is neither speech nor word; Nought but itself to teach it to mankind.

Scarce in our twenty thousand painful days

We may touch something: but there lives-beyond
The best of art, or nature's kindest phase-
The hope whereof our spirit is fain and fond:

The cause of beauty given to man's desires,
Writ in the expectancy of starry skies,
The faith which gloweth in our fleeting fires,
The aim of all the good that here we prize;
Which but to love, pursue and pray for well
Maketh earth heaven, and to forget it, hell.

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. XXII

WHEN our two souls stand up erect and strong,

WHE

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 to 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.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. XXVIII

y letters! all dead paper, mute and white!

MY

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 God'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!

THE PRISONER

I

COUNT the dismal time by months and years, Since last I felt the green sward under foot, And the great breath of all things summer-mute Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres, Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature's lute Sounds on behind this door so closely shut,

A strange, wild music to the prisoner's ear,

Dilated by the distance, till the brain

Grows dim with fancies which it feels too fine,

While ever, with a visionary pain,

Past the precluded senses, sweep and shine

Streams, forests, glades,—and many a golden train Of sunlit hills, transfigured to Divine.

WE ARE FATHERLESS

I

FOUND Thee not by the starved Widow's bed,
Nor in the sick-rooms where my dear ones died;
In Cities vast I hearken'd for Thy tread,
And heard a thousand call Thee, wretched-eyed,
Worn out, and bitter. But the Heavens denied
Their melancholy Maker. From the Dead!
Assurance came, nor answer. Then I fled

Into these wastes, and raised my hands, and cried:
"The seasons pass-the sky is as a pall—
Thin wasted hands on withering hearts we press-
There is no God-in vain we plead and call,
In vain with weary eyes we search and guess-
Like children in an empty house sit all,
Cast-away children, lorn and fatherless."