Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  All these sounds the river telleth,

  Softened to an undertone

  Which ever and anon he swelleth

  By a burden of his own,

  In the ocean’s ear:

  Ay, and ocean seems to hear

  With an inward gentle scorn,

  Smiling to his caverns worn.

  II.

  Hearken, hearken!

  The child is shouting at his play

  Just in the tramping funeral’s way;

  The widow moans as she turns aside

  To shun the face of the blushing bride

  While, shaking the tower of the ancient church,

  The marriage bells do swing;

  And in the shadow of the porch

  An idiot sits with his lean hands full

  Of hedgerow flowers and a poet’s skull,

  Laughing loud and gibbering

  Because it is so brown a thing,

  While he sticketh the gaudy poppies red

  In and out the senseless head

  Where all sweet fancies grew instead:

  And you may hear at the self-same time.

  Another poet who reads his rhyme,

  Low as a brook in summer air,

  Save when he droppeth his voice adown

  To dream of the amaranthine crown

  His mortal brows shall wear:

  And a baby cries with a feeble sound

  ‘Neath the weary weight of the life new-found,

  And an old man groans, — with his testament

  Only half-signed, — for the life that’s spent;

  And lovers twain do softly say,

  As they sit on a grave, “For aye, for aye!”

  And foemen twain, while Earth their mother

  Looks greenly upward, curse each other:

  A school-boy drones his task, with looks

  Cast over the page to the elm-tree rooks;

  A lonely student cries aloud

  Eureka! clasping at his shroud;

  A beldame’s age-cracked voice doth sing

  To a little infant slumbering;

  A maid forgotten weeps alone,

  Muffling her sobs on the trysting-stone;

  A sick man wakes at his own mouth’s wail,

  A gossip coughs in her thrice-told tale,

  A muttering gamester shakes the dice,

  A reaper foretells goodluck from the skies,

  A monarch vows as he lifts his hand to them;

  A patriot, leaving his native land to them,

  Cries to the world against perjured state;

  A priest disserts

  Upon linen skirts,

  A sinner screams for one hope more,

  A dancer’s feet do palpitate

  A piper’s music out on the floor;

  And nigh to the awful Dead, the living

  Low speech and stealthy steps are giving,

  Because he cannot hear;

  And he who on that narrow bier

  Has room enough, is closely wound

  In a silence piercing more than sound.

  III.

  Hearken, hearken!

  God speaketh to thy soul,

  Using the sùpreme voice which doth confound

  All life with consciousness of Deity,

  All senses into one, —

  As the seer-saint of Patmos, loving John

  (For whom did backward roll

  The cloud-gate of the future) turned to see

  The Voice which spake. It speaketh now,

  Through the regular breath of the calm creation,

  Through the moan of the creature’s desolation

  Striking, and in its stroke resembling

  The memory of a solemn vow

  Which pierceth the din of a festival

  To one in the midst, — and he letteth fall

  The cup with a sudden trembling.

  IV.

  Hearken, hearken!

  God speaketh in thy soul,

  Saying, “O thou that movest

  With feeble steps across this earth of Mine,

  To break beside the fount thy golden bowl

  And spill its purple wine, —

  Look up to heaven and see how, like a scroll,

  My right hand hath thine immortality

  In an eternal grasping! thou, that lovest

  The songful birds and grasses underfoot,

  And also what change mars and tombs pollute —

  I am the end of love! give love to Me!

  O thou that sinnest, grace doth more abound

  Than all thy sin! sit still beneath My rood,

  And count the droppings of My victim-blood,

  And seek none other sound!”

  V.

  Hearken, hearken!

  Shall we hear the lapsing river

  And our brother’s sighing ever,

  And not the voice of God?

  THE LOST BOWER.

  I

  In the pleasant orchard-closes,

  “God bless all our gains,” say we,

  But “May God bless all our losses”

  Better suits with our degree.

  Listen, gentle — ay, and simple! listen, children on the knee!

  II

  Green the land is where my daily

  Steps in jocund childhood played,

  Dimpled close with hill and valley,

  Dappled very close with shade:

  Summer-snow of apple-blossoms running up from glade to glade.

  III

  There is one hill I see nearer

  In my vision of the rest;

  And a little wood seems clearer

  As it climbeth from the west,

  Sideway from the tree-locked valley, to the airy upland crest.

  IV

  Small the wood is, green with hazels,

  And, completing the ascent,

  Where the wind blows and sun dazzles,

  Thrills in leafy tremblement,

  Like a heart that after climbing beateth quickly through content.

  V

  Not a step the wood advances

  O’er the open hill-top’s bound;

  There, in green arrest, the branches

  See their image on the ground:

  You may walk beneath them smiling, glad with sight and glad with sound.

  VI

  For you hearken on your right hand,

  How the birds do leap and call

  In the greenwood, out of sight and

  Out of reach and fear of all;

  And the squirrels crack the filberts through their cheerful madrigal.

  VII

  On your left, the sheep are cropping

  The slant grass and daisies pale,

  And five apple-trees stand dropping

  Separate shadows toward the vale

  Over which, in choral silence, the hills look you their “All hail!”

  VIII

  Far out, kindled by each other,

  Shining hills on hills arise,

  Close as brother leans to brother

  When they press beneath the eyes

  Of some father praying blessings from the gifts of paradise.

  IX

  While beyond, above them mounted,

  And above their woods alsò,

  Malvern hills, for mountains counted

  Not unduly, loom a-row —

  Keepers of Piers Plowman’s visions through the sunshine and the snow.

  X

  Yet, in childhood, little prized I

  That fair walk and far survey;

  ‘Twas a straight walk unadvised by

  The least mischief worth a nay;

  Up and down — as dull as grammar on the eve of holiday.

  XI

  But the wood, all close and clenching

  Bough in bough and root in root, —

  No more sky (for overbranching)

  At your head than at your foot, —

  Oh, the wood drew me within it by a glamou
r past dispute!

  XII

  Few and broken paths showed through it,

  Where the sheep had tried to run, —

  Forced with snowy wool to strew it

  Round the thickets, when anon

  They, with silly thorn-pricked noses, bleated back into the sun.

  XIII

  But my childish heart beat stronger

  Than those thickets dared to grow:

  I could pierce them! I could longer

  Travel on, methought, than so:

  Sheep for sheep-paths! braver children climb and creep where they would go.

  XIV

  And the poets wander, said I,

  Over places all as rude:

  Bold Rinaldo’s lovely lady

  Sat to meet him in a wood:

  Rosalinda, like a fountain, laughed out pure with solitude.

  XV

  And if Chaucer had not travelled

  Through a forest by a well,

  He had never dreamt nor marvelled

  At those ladies fair and fell

  Who lived smiling without loving in their island-citadel.

  XVI

  Thus I thought of the old singers

  And took courage from their song,

  Till my little struggling fingers

  Tore asunder gyve and thong

  Of the brambles which entrapped me, and the barrier branches strong.

  XVII

  On a day, such pastime keeping,

  With a fawn’s heart debonair,

  Under-crawling, overleaping

  Thorns that prick and boughs that bear,

  I stood suddenly astonied — I was gladdened unaware.

  XVIII

  From the place I stood in, floated

  Back the covert dim and close,

  And the open ground was coated

  Carpet-smooth with grass and moss,

  And the blue-bell’s purple presence signed it worthily across.

  XIX

  Here a linden-tree stood, bright’ning

  All adown its silver rind;

  For as some trees draw the lightning,

  So this tree, unto my mind,

  Drew to earth the blessèd sunshine from the sky where it was shrined.

  XX

  Tall the linden-tree, and near it

  An old hawthorn also grew;

  And wood-ivy like a spirit

  Hovered dimly round the two,

  Shaping thence that bower of beauty which I sing of thus to you.

  XXI

  ‘Twas a bower for garden fitter

  Than for any woodland wide:

  Though a fresh and dewy glitter

  Struck it through from side to side,

  Shaped and shaven was the freshness, as by garden-cunning plied.

  XXII

  Oh, a lady might have come there,

  Hooded fairly like her hawk,

  With a book or lute in summer,

  And a hope of sweeter talk, —

  Listening less to her own music than for footsteps on the walk!

  XXIII

  But that bower appeared a marvel

  In the wildness of the place;

  With such seeming art and travail,

  Finely fixed and fitted was

  Leaf to leaf, the dark-green ivy, to the summit from the base.

  XXIV

  And the ivy veined and glossy

  Was enwrought with eglantine;

  And the wild hop fibred closely,

  And the large-leaved columbine,

  Arch of door and window-mullion, did right sylvanly entwine.

  XXV

  Rose-trees either side the door were

  Growing lithe and growing tall,

  Each one set a summer warder

  For the keeping of the hall, —

  With a red rose and a white rose, leaning, nodding at the wall.

  XXVI

  As I entered, mosses hushing

  Stole all noises from my foot;

  And a green elastic cushion,

  Clasped within the linden’s root,

  Took me in a chair of silence very rare and absolute.

  XXVII

  All the floor was paved with glory,

  Greenly, silently inlaid

  (Through quick motions made before me)

  With fair counterparts in shade

  Of the fair serrated ivy-leaves which slanted overhead.

  XXVIII

  “Is such pavement in a palace?”

  So I questioned in my thought:

  The sun, shining through the chalice

  Of the red rose hung without,

  Threw within a red libation, like an answer to my doubt.

  XXIX

  At the same time, on the linen

  Of my childish lap there fell

  Two white may-leaves, downward winning

  Through the ceiling’s miracle,

  From a blossom, like an angel, out of sight yet blessing well.

  XXX

  Down to floor and up to ceiling

  Quick I turned my childish face,

  With an innocent appealing

  For the secret of the place

  To the trees, which surely knew it in partaking of the grace.

  XXXI

  Where’s no foot of human creature

  How could reach a human hand?

  And if this be work of Nature,

  Why has Nature turned so bland,

  Breaking off from other wild-work? It was hard to understand.

  XXXII

  Was she weary of rough-doing,

  Of the bramble and the thorn?

  Did she pause in tender rueing

  Here of all her sylvan scorn?

  Or in mock of Art’s deceiving was the sudden mildness worn?

  XXXIII

  Or could this same bower (I fancied)

  Be the work of Dryad strong,

  Who, surviving all that chancèd

  In the world’s old pagan wrong,

  Lay hid, feeding in the woodland on the last true poet’s song?

  XXXIV

  Or was this the house of fairies,

  Left, because of the rough ways,

  Unassoiled by Ave Marys

  Which the passing pilgrim prays,

  And beyond St. Catherine’s chiming on the blessèd Sabbath days?

  XXXV

  So, young muser, I sat listening

  To my fancy’s wildest word:

  On a sudden, through the glistening

  Leaves around, a little stirred,

  Came a sound, a sense of music which was rather felt than heard.

  XXXVI

  Softly, finely, it inwound me;

  From the world it shut me in, —

  Like a fountain, falling round me,

  Which with silver waters thin

  Clips a little water Naiad sitting smilingly within.

  XXXVII

  Whence the music came, who knoweth?

  I know nothing: but indeed

  Pan or Faunus never bloweth

  So much sweetness from a reed

  Which has sucked the milk of waters at the oldest river-head.

  XXXVIII

  Never lark the sun can waken

  With such sweetness! when the lark,

  The high planets overtaking

  In the half-evanished Dark,

  Casts his singing to their singing, like an arrow to the mark.

  XXXIX

  Never nightingale so singeth:

  Oh, she leans on thorny tree

  And her poet-song she flingeth

  Over pain to victory!

  Yet she never sings such music, — or she sings it not to me.

  XL

  Never blackbirds, never thrushes

  Nor small finches sing as sweet,

  When the sun strikes through the bushes

  To their crimson clinging feet,

  And their pretty eyes look sideways to the summer heavens complete. />
  XLI

  If it were a bird, it seemèd

  Most like Chaucer’s, which, in sooth,

  He of green and azure dreamèd,

  While it sat in spirit-ruth

  On that bier of a crowned lady, singing nigh her silent mouth.

  XLII

  If it were a bird? — ah, sceptic,

  Give me “yea” or give me “nay” —

  Though my soul were nympholeptic

  As I heard that virèlay,

  You may stoop your pride to pardon, for my sin is far away!

  XLIII

  I rose up in exaltation

  And an inward trembling heat,

  And (it seemed) in geste of passion

  Dropped the music to my feet

  Like a garment rustling downwards — such a silence followed it!

  XLIV

  Heart and head beat through the quiet

  Full and heavily, though slower:

  In the song, I think, and by it,

  Mystic Presences of power

  Had up-snatched me to the Timeless, then returned me to the Hour.

  XLV

  In a child-abstraction lifted,

  Straightway from the bower I past,

  Foot and soul being dimly drifted

  Through the greenwood, till, at last,

  In the hill-top’s open sunshine I all consciously was cast.

  XLVI

  Face to face with the true mountains

  I stood silently and still,

  Drawing strength from fancy’s dauntings,

  From the air about the hill,

  And from Nature’s open mercies and most debonair goodwill.