We say, "Who passes?"-they are dumb; We cannot see them go or come, Their touches fall soft, cold, as snow Upon a blind man's face.
Yet, touching so, they draw above
Our common thoughts to Heaven's unknown; Our daily joy and pain advance
To a divine significance
Our human love-O mortal love,
That light is not its own!
And sometimes horror chills our blood To be so near such mystic Things, And we wrap round us for defence Our purple manners, moods of sense-- As angels from the face of God Stand hidden in their wings.
And sometimes through life's heavy swound We grope for them, with strangled breath We stretch our hands abroad and try
To reach them in our agony;
And widen, so, the broad life-wound
Soon large enough for death.
INSUFFICIENCY.
[Poems 1850.]
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.
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.
INCLUSIONS. [Poems 1850.]
Он, 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.
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 space, Dear, lest it should wet thine own.
Oh, must thou have my soul, Dear, commingled with thy
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.
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.
[Privat gedruckt 1847; veröffentlicht in den Poems 1850.]
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."
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 passing. 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.
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 shield thee so,
That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! go.
THE face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, Was caught up into love, and taught the whole Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,
And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear. The names of country, heaven, are changed away For where thou art or shalt be, there or here;
And this... this lute and song . . loved yesterday, (The singing angels know) are only dear Because thy name moves right in what they say.
WHAT can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast brought the gold And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold, And laid them on the outside of the wall For such as I to take or leave withal, In unexpected largesse? Am I cold, Ungrateful, that for these most manifold High gifts, I render nothing back at all? Not so; not cold, but very poor instead. Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run The colours from my life, and left so dead And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done To give the same as pillow to thy head. Go farther! let it serve to trample on.
If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only. Do not say "I love her for her smile-her look--her way
Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"- For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,- A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
I NEVER gave a lock of hair away To a man, Dearest, except this to thee, Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully I ring out to the full brown length, and say "Take it." My day of youth went yesterday; My hair no longer bounds to my foot's glee, Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree, As girls do, any more: it only may
Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears, Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside Through sorrow's trick. I thought the funeral-shears Would take this first; but Love is justified,- Take it thou,-finding pure, from all those years, The kiss my mother left here when she died.
SAY over again, and yet once over again, That thou dost love me.
Though the word repeated Should seem "a cuckoo-song," as thou dost treat it, Remember, never to the hill or plain,
Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain
Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed. Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted
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