Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Page 62
Have they loved back thy love, and when strangers approached thee with blame,
Have they covered thy fault with their kisses, and loved thee the same?
But she shrunk and said
“God, over my head,
Must sweep in the wrath of His judgment-seas,
If He shall deal with me sinning, but only indeed the same
And no gentler than these.”
LOVED ONCE.
I
I classed , appraising once,
Earth’s lamentable sounds, — the welladay,
The jarring yea and nay,
The fall of kisses on unanswering clay,
The sobbed farewell, the welcome mournfuller, —
But all did leaven the air
With a less bitter leaven of sure despair
Than these words— “I loved once .”
II
And who saith “I loved once “?
Not angels, — whose clear eyes, love, love foresee,
Love, through eternity,
And by To Love do apprehend To Be.
Not God, called Love , His noble crown-name casting,
A light too broad for blasting:
The great God, changing not from everlasting,
Saith never “I loved once .”
III
Oh, never is “Loved once “
Thy word, Thou Victim-Christ, misprizèd friend!
Thy cross and curse may rend,
But having loved Thou lovest to the end.
This is man’s saying — man’s: too weak to move
One spherèd star above,
Man desecrates the eternal God-word Love
By his No More, and Once.
IV
How say ye “We loved once,”
Blasphemers? Is your earth not cold enow,
Mourners, without that snow?
Ah friends, and would ye wrong each other so?
And could ye say of some whose love is known,
Whose prayers have met your own,
Whose tears have fallen for you, whose smiles have shone
So long,— “We loved them once “?
V
Could ye “We loved her once”
Say calm of me, sweet friends, when out of sight?
When hearts of better right
Stand in between me and your happy light?
Or when, as flowers kept too long in the shade,
Ye find my colours fade,
And all that is not love in me decayed?
Such words — Ye loved me once!
VI
Could ye “We loved her once”
Say cold of me when further put away
In earth’s sepulchral clay,
When mute the lips which deprecate today?
Not so! not then — least then! When life is shriven
And death’s full joy is given, —
Of those who sit and love you up in heaven
Say not “We loved them once.”
VII
Say never ye loved once :
God is too near above, the grave beneath,
And all our moments breathe
Too quick in mysteries of life and death,
For such a word. The eternities avenge
Affections light of range.
There comes no change to justify that change,
Whatever comes — Loved once!
VIII
And yet that same word once
Is humanly acceptive. Kings have said,
Shaking a discrowned head,
“We ruled once,” — dotards, “We once taught and led,”
Cripples once danced i’ the vines, and bards approved,
Were once by scornings moved:
But love strikes one hour — love! Those never loved
Who dream that they loved once .
THE HOUSE OF CLOUDS.
I
I would build a cloudy House
For my thoughts to live in,
When for earth too fancy-loose,
And too low for heaven:
Hush! I talk my dream aloud,
I build it bright to see, —
I build it on the moonlit cloud
To which I looked with thee .
II
Cloud-walls of the morning’s grey,
Faced with amber column,
Crowned with crimson cupola
From a sunset solemn:
May-mists, for the casements, fetch,
Pale and glimmering,
With a sunbeam hid in each
And a smell of spring.
III
Build the entrance high and proud,
Darkening and then brightening,
Of a riven thunder-cloud,
Veinèd by the lightning:
Use one with an iris-stain
For the door so thin,
Turning to a sound like rain
As I enter in.
IV
Build a spacious hall thereby
Boldly, never fearing;
Use the blue place of the sky
Which the wind is clearing:
Branched with corridors sublime,
Flecked with winding stairs,
Such as children wish to climb
Following their own prayers.
V
In the mutest of the house
I will have my chamber;
Silence at the door shall use
Evening’s light of amber,
Solemnising every mood,
Softening in degree,
Turning sadness into good
As I turn the key.
VI
Be my chamber tapestried
With the showers of summer,
Close, but soundless, glorified
When the sunbeams come here —
Wandering harpers, harping on
Waters stringed for such,
Drawing colour, for a tune,
With a vibrant touch.
VII
Bring a shadow green and still
From the chestnut-forest,
Bring a purple from the hill,
When the heat is sorest;
Spread them out from wall to wall,
Carpet-wove around,
Whereupon the foot shall fall
In light instead of sound.
VIII
Bring fantastic cloudlets home
From the noontide zenith,
Ranged for sculptures round the room,
Named as Fancy weeneth;
Some be Junos, without eyes,
Naiads, without sources,
Some be birds of paradise,
Some, Olympian horses.
IX
Bring the dews the birds shake off
Waking in the hedges, —
Those too perfumed, for a proof,
From the lilies’ edges:
From our England’s field and moor,
Bring them calm and white in,
Whence to form a mirror pure
For Love’s self-delighting.
X
Bring a grey cloud from the east
Where the lark is singing,
(Something of the song at least
Unlost in the bringing):
That shall be a morning-chair,
Poet-dream may sit in
When it leans out on the air,
Unrhymed and unwritten.
XI
Bring the red cloud from the sun,
While he sinketh catch it;
That shall be a couch, — with one
Sidelong star to watch it, —
Fit for poet’s finest thought
At the curfew-sounding;
Things unseen being nearer brought
Than the seen, around him.
XII
Poet’s thought, — not poet’s sigh.
‘Las, they come together!
Cloudy walls divide and fly
As in April weather.
Cupola and column proud,
Structure bright to see,
Gone! except that moonlit cloud
To which I looked with thee .
XIII
Let them! Wipe such visionings
From the fancy’s cartel:
Love secures some fairer things,
Dowered with his immortal.
The sun may darken, heaven be bowed,
But still unchanged shall be, —
Here, in my soul, — that moonlit cloud
To which I looked with thee!
A SABBATH MORNING AT SEA.
I
The ship went on with solemn face;
To meet the darkness on the deep,
The solemn ship went onward:
I bowed down weary in the place,
For parting tears and present sleep
Had weighed mine eyelids downward.
II
Thick sleep which shut all dreams from me,
And kept my inner self apart
And quiet from emotion,
Then brake away and left me free,
Made conscious of a human heart
Betwixt the heaven and ocean.
III
The new sight, the new wondrous sight!
The waters round me, turbulent,
The skies impassive o’er me,
Calm in a moonless, sunless light,
Half glorified by that intent
Of holding the day-glory!
IV
Two pale thin clouds did stand upon
The meeting line of sea and sky,
With aspect still and mystic:
I think they did foresee the sun,
And rested on their prophecy
In quietude majestic,
V
Then flushed to radiance where they stood,
Like statues by the open tomb
Of shining saints half risen.
The sun! — he came up to be viewed,
And sky and sea made mighty room
To inaugurate the vision.
VI
I oft had seen the dawnlight run
As red wine through the hills, and break
Through many a mist’s inurning;
But, here, no earth profaned the sun:
Heaven, ocean, did alone partake
The sacrament of morning.
VII
Away with thoughts fantastical!
I would be humble to my worth,
Self-guarded as self-doubted:
Though here no earthly shadows fall,
I, joying, grieving without earth,
May desecrate without it.
VIII
God’s sabbath morning sweeps the waves;
I would not praise the pageant high
Yet miss the dedicature:
I, carried toward the sunless graves
By force of natural things, — should I
Exult in only Nature?
IX
And could I bear to sit alone
‘Mid Nature’s fixed benignities,
While my warm pulse was moving?
Too dark thou art, O glittering sun,
Too strait ye are, capacious seas,
To satisfy the loving!
X
It seems a better lot than so,
To sit with friends beneath the beech,
And feel them dear and dearer;
Or follow children as they go
In pretty pairs, with softened speech,
As the church-bells ring nearer.
XI
Love me, sweet friends, this sabbath day!
The sea sings round me while ye roll
Afar the hymn unaltered,
And kneel, where once I knelt to pray,
And bless me deeper in the soul,
Because the voice has faltered.
XII
And though this sabbath comes to me
Without the stolèd minister
Or chanting congregation,
God’s Spirit brings communion,
He
Who brooded soft on waters drear,
Creator on creation.
XIII
Himself, I think, shall draw me higher
Where keep the saints with harp and song
An endless sabbath morning,
And on that sea commixed with fire
Oft drop their eyelids, raised too long
To the full Godhead’s burning.
A FLOWER IN A LETTER.
I
My lonely chamber next the sea
Is full of many flowers set free
By summer’s earliest duty:
Dear friends upon the garden-walk
Might stop amid their fondest talk
To pull the least in beauty.
II
A thousand flowers, each seeming one
That learnt by gazing on the sun
To counterfeit his shining;
Within whose leaves the holy dew
That falls from heaven has won anew
A glory, in declining.
III
Red roses, used to praises long,
Contented with the poet’s song,
The nightingale’s being over;
And lilies white, prepared to touch
The whitest thought, nor soil it much,
Of dreamer turned to lover.
IV
Deep violets, you liken to
The kindest eyes that look on you,
Without a thought disloyal;
And cactuses a queen might don
If weary of a golden crown,
And still appear as royal.
V
Pansies for ladies all, — I wis
That none who wear such brooches miss
A jewel in the mirror;
And tulips, children love to stretch
Their fingers down, to feel in each
Its beauty’s secret nearer.
VI
Love’s language may be talked with these;
To work out choicest sentences,
No blossoms can be meeter;
And, such being used in Eastern bowers,
Young maids may wonder if the flowers
Or meanings be the sweeter.
VII
And such being strewn before a bride,
Her little foot may turn aside,
Their longer bloom decreeing,
Unless some voice’s whispered sound
Should make her gaze upon the ground
Too earnestly for seeing.
VIII
And such being scattered on a grave,
Whoever mourneth there may have
A type which seemeth worthy
Of that fair body hid below,
Which bloomed on earth a time ago,
Then perished as the earthy.
IX
And such being wreathed for worldly feast,
Across the brimming cup some guest
Their rainbow colours viewing
May feel them, with a silent start,
The covenant, his childish heart
With nature made, renewing.
X
No flowers our gardened England hath
To match with these, in bloom and breath,
Which from the world are hiding
In sunny Devon moist with rills, —
A nunnery of cloistered hills,
The elements presiding.
XI
By Loddon’s stream the flowers are fair
That meet one gifted lady’s care
With prodigal rewarding:
(For Beauty is too used to run
To Mitford’s bower — to want the sun
To light her through the garden).
XII
But here, all summers are comprised,
The nightly frosts shrink exorcised
Before the priestly moonshine;
And every wind with stolèd feet
I
n wandering down the alleys sweet
Steps lightly on the sunshine.
XIII
And (having promised Harpocrate
Among the nodding roses that
No harm shall touch his daughters)
Gives quite away the rushing sound
He dares not use upon such ground
To ever-trickling waters.
XIV
Yet, sun and wind! what can ye do
But make the leaves more brightly show
In posies newly gathered?
I look away from all your best
To one poor flower unlike the rest,
A little flower half-withered.
XV
I do not think it ever was
A pretty flower, — to make the grass
Look greener where it reddened;
And now it seems ashamed to be
Alone, in all this company,
Of aspect shrunk and saddened.
XVI
A chamber-window was the spot
It grew in, from a garden-pot,
Among the city shadows:
If any, tending it, might seem
To smile, ‘twas only in a dream
Of nature in the meadows.
XVII
How coldly on its head did fall
The sunshine, from the city wall
In pale refraction driven!
How sadly plashed upon its leaves
The raindrops, losing in the eaves
The first sweet news of heaven!
XVIII
And those who planted, gathered it
In gamesome or in loving fit,