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Who art dearer, better! rather instantly
Renew thy presence. As a strong tree should,
Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare,
And let these bands of greenery which insphere
thee

Drop heavily down, . . . burst, shattered every-
where!

Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee
And breathe within thy shadow a new air,
I do not think of thee-I am too near thee.

XXX.

I SEE thine image through my tears to-night,
And yet to-day I saw thee smiling. How
Refer the cause ?-Beloved, is it thou,
Or I? who makes me sad? The acolyte
Amid the chanted joy and thankful rite,
May so fall flat, with pale insensate brow,
On the altar-stair. I hear thy voice and vow
Perplexed, uncertain, since thou art out of sight,
As he, in his swooning ears, the choir's amen.
Beloved, dost thou love? or did I see all
The glory as I dreamed, and fainted when
Too vehement light dilated my ideal,
For my soul's eyes? Will that light come again,
As now these tears come. . . falling hot and
real?

XXXI.

THOU Comest! all is said without a word.
I sit beneath thy looks, as children do
In the noon-sun, with souls that tremble through
Their happy eyelids from an unaverred
Yet prodigal inward joy. Behold, I erred
In that last doubt! and yet I cannot rue
The sin most, but the occasion. . . that we two
Should for a moment stand unministered

By a mutual presence. Ah, keep near and close,
Thou dovelike help! and, when my fears would
rise,

With thy broad heart serenely interpose.
Brood down with thy divine sufficiencies

With the look of its eyes. I miss the clear
Fond voices, which, being drawn and reconciled
Into the music of Heaven's undefiled,
Call me no longer. Silence on the bier,
While I call God. . . call God!-So let thy
mouth

Be heir to those who are now exanimate.
Gather the north flowers to complete the south,
And catch the early love up in the late.
Yes, call me by that name-and I, in truth,
With the same heart, will answer, and not wait.

XXXIV.

WITH the same heart, I said, I'll answer thee
As those, when thou shalt call me by my name-
Lo, the vain promise! is the same, the same,
Perplexed and ruffled by life's strategy?
When called before, I told how hastily

I dropped my flowers or brake off from a game,
To run and answer with the smile that came
At play last moment, and went on with me
Through my obedience. When I answer now,
I drop a grave thought-break from solitude;—
Yet still my heart goes to thee . . . ponder
how

Not as to a single good, but all my good!
Lay thy hand on it, best one, and allow
That no child's foot could run fast as this blood.

XXXV.

IF I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange

And be all to me? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss
That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange
When I look up, to drop on a new range
Of walls and floors . . . another home than this?
Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
Filled by dead eyes too tender to know change?
That's hardest. If to conquer love, has tried,
To conquer grief, tries more . . . as all things
prove;

These thoughts which tremble when bereft of For grief indeed is love and grief beside.

those,

Like callow birds left desert to the skies.

XXXII.

THE first time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon
And quickly tied to make a lasting troth.
Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly
loathe.

And, looking on myself, I seemed not one
For such man's love!-more like an out of tune
Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth
To spoil his song with, and which, snatched in
haste,

Is laid down with the first ill-sounding note.
I did not wrong myself so, but I placed

A wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float
'Neath master-hands from instruments defaced-
And great souls, at one stroke, may do and doat.

XXXIII.

YES, call me by my pet-name! let me hear
The name I used to run at, when a child,
From innocent play, and leave the cowslips piled,
To glance up in some face that proved me dear

Alas! I have grieved so I am hard to love.
Yet love me-wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,
And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.

XXXVI.

WHEN We met first and loved, I did not build
Upon the event with marble. Could it mean
To last, a love set pendulous between
Sorrow and sorrow? Nay, I rather thrilled,
Distrusting every light that seemed to gild
The onward path, and feared to overlean
A finger even. And, though I have grown serene
And strong since then, I think that God has
willed

A still renewable fear. . . O love, O troth. .
Lest these enclasped hands should never hold,
This mutual kiss drop down between us both
As an unowned thing, once the lips being cold.
And Love, be false! if he, to keep one oath,
Must lose one joy, by his life's star foretold.

XXXVII.

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 shift and break.

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

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 shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port,
His guardian sea-god to commemorate,
Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort
And vibrant tail, within the temple-gate.

XXXVIII.

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 passed 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."

XXXIX.

XLI.

227

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!

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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 God, 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 im-
pearled.

I seek no copy now of life's first half;
Leave here the pages with long musing curled,

BECAUSE thou hast the power and own'st the And write me new my future's epigraph,

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 God's infliction, nor death's neighborhood,
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 gratitude as thou dost, good.

XL.

On, 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 shell 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 Belovèd! thou canst wait
Through sorrow and sickness, to bring souls to
touch,

And think it soon when others cry, "Too
late."

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 every-day'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 passion 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 God 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 colors true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

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LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP.

"I invite you, Mister Bertram, to no scene for wordly speeches

Sir, I scarce should dare-but only where God asked the thrushes first

And if you will sing beside them, in the covert of my beeches,

I will thank you for the woodlands, . . . for the human world, at worst."

Then she smiled around right childly, then she gazed around right queenly,

And I bowed-I could not answer; alternated light and gloom

While as one who quells the lions, with a steady eye serenely,

She, with level fronting eyelids, passed out stately from the room.

Oh, the blessed woods of Sussex, I can hear them still around me,

With their leafy tide of greenery still rippling up the wind.

Oh, the cursed woods of Sussex! where the hunter's arrow found me,

When a fair face and a tender voice had made me mad and blind!

In that ancient hall of Wycombe, thronged the numerous guests invited,

And the lovely London ladies trod the floors with gliding feet;

229

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Thus she drew me the first morning, out across into the garden,

And I walked among her noble friends and could not keep behind, [the warden

And their voices low with fashion, not with feel- Spake she unto all and unto me-"Behold, I am Of the song-birds in these lindens, which are

ing, softly freighted

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cages to their mind.

"But within this swarded circle, into which the lime-walk brings us,

Whence the beeches, rounded greenly, stand away in reverent fear,

I will let no music enter, saving what the fountain sings us,

Which the lilies round the basin may seem pure enough to hear.

"The live air that waves the lilies, waves the slender jet of water

Like a holy thought sent feebly up from soul of fasting saint.

Whereby lies a marble Silence, sleeping! (Lough the sculptor wrought her), So asleep she is forgetting to say Hush!—a fancy quaint.

"Mark how heavy white her eyelids! not a dream between them lingers.

And the left hand's index droppeth from the lips upon the cheek;

While the right hand-with the symbol rose held slack within the fingersHas fallen backward in the basin-yet this Silence will not speak!

"That the essential meaning growing may exceed the special symbol,

Is the thought as I conceive it: it applies more high and low.

Our true noblemen will often through right nobleness grow humble,

And assert an inward honor by denying outward show."

"Nay, your Silence," said I, "truly, holds her symbol rose but slackly,

Yet she holds it-or would scarcely be a Silence to our ken.

And your nobles wear their ermine on the outside, or walk blackly [men. In the presence of the social law as mere ignoble

"Let the poets dream such dreaming! madam, in these British islands,

'Tis the substance that wanes ever, 'tis the symbol that exceeds.

Soon we shall have naught but symbol! and, for statues like this Silence,

Shall accept the rose's image-in another case, the weed's."

"Not so quickly," she retorted-"I confess, where'er you go, you

Find for things, names-shows for actions, and pure gold for honor clear.

But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you

The world's book which now reads dryly, and sit down with Silence here."

Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation;

Friends who listened, laughed her words off, while her lovers deemed her fair.

A fair woman, flushed with feeling, in her noblelighted station

Near the statue's white reposing-and both bathed in sunny air!

With the trees round, not so distant but you heard their vernal murmur,

And beheld in light and shadow the leaves in and outward move,

And the little fountain leaping toward the sunheart to be warmer,

There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems

Made to Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of our own;

Read the pastoral parts of Spenser-or the subtile interflowings

Found in Petrarch's sonnets-here's the bookthe leaf is folded down!

Or at times a modern volume-Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyl,

Howitt's ballad-verse, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie

Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which,
If cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined
humanity.

Or at times I read there, hoarsely, some new poem of my making.

Poets ever fail in reading their own verses to their worth

For the echo in you breaks upon the words which you are speaking,

And the chariot-wheels jar in the gate through which you drive them forth.

After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence round us flinging

A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast,

She would break out, on a sudden, in a gush of woodland singing, [of rest. Like a child's emotion in a god-a naiad tired

Oh, to see or hear her singing! scarce I know which is divinest

For her looks sing too-she modulates her gestures on the tune;

And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and when the notes are finest,

Then recoiling in a tremble from the too much 'Tis the eyes that shoot out vocal light and seem light above.

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to swell them on.

Then we talked-oh, how we talked! her voice, so cadenced in the talking, Made another singing-of the soul! a music without bars.

While the leafy sounds of woodlands-humming round where we were walking, Brought interposition worthy-sweet-as skies about the stars.

And she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought them;

She had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on branch,

Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them,

Or to teach the hill-side echo some sweet Tuscan In the

in a song.

Ay, for sometimes on the hill-side, while we sate down in the gowans,

With the forest green behind us, and its shadow cast before,

And the river running under, and across it from the rowans

A brown partridge whirring near us, till we felt the air it bore

birchen-wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange.

In her utmost lightness there is truth-and often she speaks lightly,

Has a grace in being gay, which even mournful souls approve,

For the root of some grave earnest thought is understruck so rightly

As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.

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