(For surging souls, no worlds can bound,
Their channel in the heart have found.)
IV.
O child, to change appointed,
Thou hadst not second sight!
What eyes the future view aright
Unless by tears anointed?
Yea, only tears themselves can show
The burning ones that have to flow.
V.
O woman, deeply loving,
Thou hadst not second sight!
The star is very high and bright,
And none can see it moving.
Love looks around, below, above,
Yet all his prophecy is — love.
VI.
The bird thy childhood’s playing
Sent onward o’er the sea,
Thy dove of hope came back to thee
Without a leaf: art laying
Its wet cold wing no sun can dry,
Still in thy bosom secretly?
VII.
Our Goethe’s friend, Bettine,
I have the second sight!
The stone upon his grave is white,
The funeral stone between ye;
And in thy mirror thou hast viewed
Some change as hardly understood.
VIII.
Where’s childhood? where is Goethe?
The tears are in thine eyes.
Nay, thou shalt yet reorganize
Thy maidenhood of beauty
In his own glory, which is smooth
Of wrinkles and sublime in youth.
IX.
The poet’s arms have wound thee,
He breathes upon thy brow,
He lifts thee upward in the glow
Of his great genius round thee, —
The childlike poet undefiled
Preserving evermore THE CHILD.
MAN AND NATURE.
A sad man on a summer day
Did look upon the earth and say —
“Purple cloud the hill-top binding;
Folded hills the valleys wind in;
Valleys with fresh streams among you;
Streams with bosky trees along you;
Trees with many birds and blossoms;
Birds with music-trembling bosoms;
Blossoms dropping dews that wreathe you
To your fellow flowers beneath you;
Flowers that constellate on earth;
Earth that shakest to the mirth
Of the merry Titan Ocean,
All his shining hair in motion!
Why am I thus the only one
Who can be dark beneath the sun?”
But when the summer day was past,
He looked to heaven and smiled at last,
Self-answered so —
“Because, O cloud,
Pressing with thy crumpled shroud
Heavily on mountain top, —
Hills that almost seem to drop
Stricken with a misty death
To the valleys underneath, —
Valleys sighing with the torrent, —
Waters streaked with branches horrent, —
Branchless trees that shake your head
Wildly o’er your blossoms spread
Where the common flowers are found, —
Flowers with foreheads to the ground, —
Ground that shriekest while the sea
With his iron smiteth thee —
I am, besides, the only one
Who can be bright without the sun.”
A SEA-SIDE WALK.
I.
We walked beside the sea
After a day which perished silently
Of its own glory — like the princess weird
Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared,
Uttered with burning breath, “Ho! victory!”
And sank adown, a heap of ashes pale:
So runs the Arab tale.
II.
The sky above us showed
A universal and unmoving cloud
On which the cliffs permitted us to see
Only the outline of their majesty,
As master-minds when gazed at by the crowd:
And shining with a gloom, the water grey
Swang in its moon-taught way.
III.
Nor moon, nor stars were out;
They did not dare to tread so soon about,
Though trembling, in the footsteps of the sun:
The light was neither night’s nor day’s, but one
Which, life-like, had a beauty in its doubt,
And silence’s impassioned breathings round
Seemed wandering into sound.
IV.
O solemn-beating heart
Of nature! I have knowledge that thou art
Bound unto man’s by cords he cannot sever;
And, what time they are slackened by him ever,
So to attest his own supernal part,
Still runneth thy vibration fast and strong
The slackened cord along:
V.
For though we never spoke
Of the grey water and the shaded rock,
Dark wave and stone unconsciously were fused
Into the plaintive speaking that we used
Of absent friends and memories unforsook;
And, had we seen each other’s face, we had
Seen haply each was sad.
THE SEA-MEW.
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO M. E. H.
I.
How joyously the young sea-mew
Lay dreaming on the waters blue
Whereon our little bark had thrown
A little shade, the only one,
But shadows ever man pursue.
II.
Familiar with the waves and free
As if their own white foam were he,
His heart upon the heart of ocean
Lay learning all its mystic motion,
And throbbing to the throbbing sea.
III.
And such a brightness in his eye
As if the ocean and the sky
Within him had lit up and nurst
A soul God gave him not at first,
To comprehend their majesty.
IV.
We were not cruel, yet did sunder
His white wing from the blue waves under,
And bound it, while his fearless eyes
Shone up to ours in calm surprise,
As deeming us some ocean wonder.
V.
We bore our ocean bird unto
A grassy place where he might view
The flowers that curtsey to the bees,
The waving of the tall green trees,
The falling of the silver dew.
VI.
But flowers of earth were pale to him
Who had seen the rainbow fishes swim;
And when earth’s dew around him lay
He thought of ocean’s winged spray,
And his eye waxed sad and dim.
VII.
The green trees round him only made
A prison with their darksome shade;
And drooped his wing, and mourned he
For his own boundless glittering sea —
Albeit he knew not they could fade.
VIII.
Then One her gladsome face did bring,
Her gentle voice’s murmuring,
In ocean’s stead his heart to move
And teach him what was human love:
He thought it a strange, mournful thing.
IX.
He lay down in his grief to die,
(First looking to the sea-like sky
That hath no waves) because, alas!
Our human touch did on him pass,
And, with our touch, our agony.
FELICIA HEMANS
TO L. E. L.,
REFERRING TO HER MONODY ON THE POETESS.
I.
Thou bay-crowned living On
e that o’er the bay-crowned Dead art bowing,
And o’er the shadeless moveless brow the vital shadow throwing,
And o’er the sighless songless lips the wail and music wedding,
And dropping o’er the tranquil eyes the tears not of their shedding! —
II.
Take music from the silent Dead whose meaning is completer,
Reserve thy tears for living brows where all such tears are meeter,
And leave the violets in the grass to brighten where thou treadest,
No flowers for her! no need of flowers, albeit “bring flowers!” thou
saidest.
III.
Yes, flowers, to crown the “cup and lute,” since both may come to
breaking,
Or flowers, to greet the “bride” — the heart’s own beating works its
aching;
Or flowers, to soothe the “captive’s” sight, from earth’s free bosom
gathered,
Reminding of his earthly hope, then withering as it withered:
IV.
But bring not near the solemn corse a type of human seeming,
Lay only dust’s stern verity upon the dust undreaming:
And while the calm perpetual stars shall look upon it solely,
Her sphered soul shall look on them with eyes more bright and holy.
V.
Nor mourn, O living One, because her part in life was mourning:
Would she have lost the poet’s fire for anguish of the burning?
The minstrel harp, for the strained string? the tripod, for the
afflated
Woe? or the vision, for those tears in which it shone dilated?
VI.
Perhaps she shuddered while the world’s cold hand her brow was
wreathing,
But never wronged that mystic breath which breathed in all her
breathing,
Which drew, from rocky earth and man, abstractions high and moving,
Beauty, if not the beautiful, and love, if not the loving.
VII.
Such visionings have paled in sight; the Saviour she descrieth,
And little recks who wreathed the brow which on His bosom lieth:
The whiteness of His innocence o’er all her garments, flowing,
There learneth she the sweet “new song” she will not mourn in knowing.
VIII.
Be happy, crowned and living One! and as thy dust decayeth
May thine own England say for thee what now for Her it sayeth —
“Albeit softly in our ears her silver song was ringing,
The foot-fall of her parting soul is softer than her singing.”
L. E. L.’S LAST QUESTION.
“Do you think of me as I think of you?”
(From her poem written during the voyage to the Cape.)
I.
“Do you think of me as I think of you,
My friends, my friends?” — She said it from the sea,
The English minstrel in her minstrelsy,
While, under brighter skies than erst she knew,
Her heart grew dark, and groped there as the blind
To reach across the waves friends left behind —
“Do you think of me as I think of you?”
II.
It seemed not much to ask— “as I of you?”
We all do ask the same; no eyelids cover
Within the meekest eyes that question over:
And little in the world the Loving do
But sit (among the rocks?) and listen for
The echo of their own love evermore —
“Do you think of me as I think of you?”
III.
Love-learned she had sung of love and love, —
And like a child that, sleeping with dropt head
Upon the fairy-book he lately read,
Whatever household noises round him move,
Hears in his dream some elfin turbulence, —
Even so suggestive to her inward sense,
All sounds of life assumed one tune of love.
IV.
And when the glory of her dream withdrew,
When knightly gestes and courtly pageantries
Were broken in her visionary eyes
By tears the solemn seas attested true, —
Forgetting that sweet lute beside her hand,
She asked not,— “Do you praise me, O my land?”
But,— “Think ye of me, friends, as I of you?”
V.
Hers was the hand that played for many a year
Love’s silver phrase for England, smooth and well.
Would God her heart’s more inward oracle
In that lone moment might confirm her dear!
For when her questioned friends in agony
Made passionate response, “We think of thee,”
Her place was in the dust, too deep to hear.
VI.
Could she not wait to catch their answering breath?
Was she content, content with ocean’s sound
Which dashed its mocking infinite around
One thirsty for a little love? — beneath
Those stars content, where last her song had gone, —
They mute and cold in radiant life, as soon
Their singer was to be, in darksome death?[8]
VII.
Bring your vain answers — cry, “We think of thee!”
How think ye of her? warm in long ago
Delights? or crowned with budding bays? Not so.
None smile and none are crowned where lieth she,
With all her visions unfulfilled save one,
Her childhood’s, of the palm-trees in the sun —
And lo! their shadow on her sepulchre!
VIII.
“Do ye think of me as I think of you?” —
O friends, O kindred, O dear brotherhood
Of all the world! what are we that we should
For covenants of long affection sue?
Why press so near each other when the touch
Is barred by graves? Not much, and yet too much
Is this “Think of me as I think of you.”
IX.
But while on mortal lips I shape anew
A sigh to mortal issues, verily
Above the unshaken stars that see us die,
A vocal pathos rolls; and HE who drew
All life from dust, and for all tasted death,
By death and life and love appealing, saith
Do you think of me as I think of you?
CROWNED AND WEDDED.
I.
When last before her people’s face her own fair face she bent,
Within the meek projection of that shade she was content
To erase the child-smile from her lips, which seemed as if it might
Be still kept holy from the world to childhood still in sight —
To erase it with a solemn vow, a princely vow — to rule;
A priestly vow — to rule by grace of God the pitiful;
A very godlike vow — to rule in right and righteousness
And with the law and for the land — so God the vower bless!
II.
The minster was alight that day, but not with fire, I ween,
And long-drawn glitterings swept adown that mighty aislèd scene;
The priests stood stolèd in their pomp, the sworded chiefs in theirs,
And so, the collared knights, and so, the civil ministers,
And so, the waiting lords and dames, and little pages best
At holding trains, and legates so, from countries east and west;
So, alien princes, native peers, and highborn ladies bright,
Along whose brows the Queen’s, now crowned, flashed coronets to light;
And so, the people at the gates with priestly hands on high
Which bring the first anointing to all legal majesty;
And so the Dead , who lie in rows beneath the minster floor,
There verily an awful state maintaining evermore:
The statesman whose clean palm will kiss no bribe whate’er it be,
The courtier who for no fair queen will rise up to his knee,
The court-dame who for no court-tire will leave her shroud behind,
The laureate who no courtlier rhyme than “dust to dust” can find,
The kings and queens who having made that vow and worn that crown,
Descended unto lower thrones and darker, deep adown:
Dieu et mon droit — what is’t to them? what meaning can it have? —
The King of kings, the right of death — God’s judgment and the grave.
And when betwixt the quick and dead the young fair queen had vowed,
The living shouted “May she live! Victoria, live!” aloud:
And as the loyal shouts went up, true spirits prayed between,
“The blessings happy monarchs have be thine, O crownèd queen!”
III.
But now before her people’s face she bendeth hers anew,
And calls them, while she vows, to be her witness thereunto.
She vowed to rule, and in that oath her childhood put away:
She doth maintain her womanhood, in vowing love to-day.
O lovely lady! let her vow! such lips become such vows,
And fairer goeth bridal wreath than crown with vernal brows.
O lovely lady! let her vow! yea, let her vow to love!
And though she be no less a queen, with purples hung above,
The pageant of a court behind, the royal kin around,
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 55