University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.—THE CAPRICE OF THE SENSIBILITIES.

[I. True,—love hath its perils and denials—takes]

True,—love hath its perils and denials—takes
Its color from the cloud; and, with a will,
Born of capricious fancy, sometimes aches
With its own raptures, wild and wilful still;—
Is pleased to grieve o'er griefs that may not rise,
And finds a tempest in serenest skies;—
Suspects where it should worship, and grows cold
When most the mutual fire is warm and bright,—
And is, self-doom'd, a stranger to delight,
When most the entwining arms of truth would fold
The estranged one in the happiest heart-embrace!
But these are natural aspects in the strife
Of nature, worn by all of mortal race,
And prove far less of suffering than of life.

[II. It is, indeed, the nature that acquires]

It is, indeed, the nature that acquires,
Even from these changing aspects, a new birth;
Caprice is but the sleep of the desires,
As sadness is the sweet repose of mirth;—
And all the dear variety of earth
Is so much fuel to renew her fires!
The eye that saddens now, unknowing why,
To-morrow, with as little consciousness,
Will blaze with freshest lustres,—as the sky,
Late sorrowing with a cloudy, cold distress,
Anon, in all her bright of blue appears!—
Love puts on strangest aspects, that confess
A nature, not a will; and in her tears
The very hope is born whose birth alone can bless!

[III. Not such are love's true sorrows;—in her fate]

Not such are love's true sorrows;—in her fate
Lie deeper perils—dooms more desolate!—
Hers are the worst of fortune, since they grow
From the excessive exquisite in life,
She perils in the field of human strife;—
The sensibilities—the hopes that flow
From those superior fountains of the soul,
Where all is but a dying and a birth,
A resurrection and a sacrifice;
Which, though it happen on the lowliest hearth,
Is yet the breaking of a golden bowl,
Still destined to renewal,—for new ties
And other sunderings,—and that mortal pain,
To know that death and birth alike are vain!

[IV. That stroke which shatters the devoted heart]

That stroke which shatters the devoted heart,
Its faith in the beloved one—the sweet trust,
That felt him genial and believed him just,
And rudely rends the linkéd souls apart,
Denied the old communion—is the blow
Most mortal, that the mortal meets below!
The death of the affections—the true life
That from humanity pluck'd the cruel sting,
Which, born of its first faltering, doom'd the strife
Heal'd only by the true heart's minist'ring!—
There is no other sorrow, born of love,
Which love itself can heal not;—and for this,
'Twere idle any ministry to prove,—
Since love, in loss of faith, hath lost all right to bliss!

[V. Thus is it that the heart which other woe]

Thus is it that the heart which other woe
But strengthens with new tendrils,—when it shakes,
Doom'd to the lightning terrors of this blow,
Sinks, shivering with the bolt, and sudden breaks.
Fibres knit close as tendrils of the vine,
Lock'd fast and clinging to the upholding pine,—
Even as the faith is rent, which was the tree,
Fix'd steadfast and high-towering o'er all,
To which the affections clung, nor fear'd to fall,—
So perish all the hopes and sympathies:—
A thousand veins, and ruptured arteries
Lie sunder'd at the stroke, all bleeding free;
Wasting their precious streams upon the roots
Of the great tree that never more bears fruits!

[VI. No fruits, no life!—what matter if the tree]

No fruits, no life!—what matter if the tree
Still lifts a brow erect against the sky,
Great shaft and mighty branches,—if there be
No blossom, in his season, for the eye—
No green of leaf, no gorgeous pageantry,
Wooing the prolific and embracing air
To harbor in the noontide, and to brood
Still murmuring music in his slumberous mood,
While birds sit swinging with their young ones there;
Their life a summer day or less—not long,
But still a life of blossom and of song,—
The blossom and the song being each a birth,
Born only of the fruit, and born of earth,
For earth, that still love's promise might be fair!