Last she stood up to her queenly height,
But she shook like an autumn leaf,
As though the fire wherein she burned
Then left her body, and all were turned
To winter of life-long grief.

And "O James!" she said,-"My James !" she said,

"Alas for the woful thing,

That a poet true and a friend of man,

In desperate days of bale and ban,

Should needs be born a King!"

THE HOUSE OF LIFE.

A SONNET-SEQUENCE.

PART I.

YOUTH AND CHANGE

PART II.

CHANGE AND FATE

(The present full series of The House of Life consists of sonnets only. It will be evident that many among those now first added are still the work of earlier years.-1881.)

A Sonnet is a moment's monument,-
Memorial from the Soul's eternity

To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,

Of its own arduous fulness reverent :
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,

As Day or Night may rule; and let Time sce

Its flowering crest impearled and orient.

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals

The soul,-its converse, to what Power 'tis due:-Whether for tribute to the august appeals

Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,

It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.

PART I.-YOUTH AND CHANGE.

SONNET I.

LOVE ENTHRONED.

I MARKED all kindred Powers the heart finds fair:-
Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;
And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past
To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare;
And Youth, with still some single golden hair
Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last
Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;
And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.
Love's throne was not with these; but far above
All passionate wind of welcome and farewell
He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of;
Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, and Hope foretell,
And Fame be for Love's sake desirable,

And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love.

SONNET II.

BRIDAL BIRTH.

As when desire, long darkling, dawns, and first
The mother looks upon the newborn child,
Even so my Lady stood at gaze and smiled
When her soul knew at length the Love it nurs'd.
Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst

And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay
Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
Cried on him, and the bonds of birth were burst.
Now, shadowed by his wings, our faces yearn
Together, as his full-grown feet now range

The grove, and his warm hands our couch prepare:

Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn

Be born his children, when Death's nuptial change
Leaves us for light the halo of his hair.

SONNET III.

LOVE'S TESTAMENT.

O THOU who at Love's hour ecstatically
Unto my heart dost evermore present,
Clothed with his fire, thy heart his testament;
Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
The inmost incense of his sanctuary;

Who without speech hast owned him, and, intent
Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
And murmured, "I am thine, thou'rt one with me!"
O what from thee the grace, to me the prize,

And what to Love the glory,-when the whole
Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal
And weary water of the place of sighs,
And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!

SONNET IV.

LOVESIGHT.

WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize

The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,)
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

SONNET V.

HEART'S HOPE.

By what word's power, the key of paths untrod, Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,

Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore
Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?
For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,

Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
Thee from myself, neither our love from God.

Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I
Draw from one loving heart such evidence

As to all hearts all things shall signify;

Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense
As instantaneous penetrating sense,

In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.

SONNET VI.

THE KISS.

WHAT Smouldering senses in death's sick delay
Or seizure of malign vicissitude

Can rob this body of honour, or denude
This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
For lo! even now my lady's lips did play

With these my lips such consonant interlude As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.

I was a child beneath her touch,-a man

When breast to breast we clung, even I and she, A spirit when her spirit looked through me,-A god when all our life-breath met to fan Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran, Fire within fire, desire in deity.