Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

If thou should'st die, my little one!—This dread
Comes ever with the look thou gav'st me now.
It flashes through my thoughts, and then my heart
Shakes with the muffled thunder, and big drops
Fall from this cloud, my brain.—If thou should'st die,
How blank to me were life! The round of life
Must ever have a centring point of love,
And thou art mine. Thou lost, I were unsphered.

I cannot form in thought thy loss, or see
How that which leaps and speaks through thy sweet frame
Should ever leave it; yet must feel it may;
Must feel that restless little bell, thy voice,
That keeps a jubilee within my heart;
Those little pattering feet that all the day

Like kittens gambol up and down the house;
And those pure eyes that open through to God,
Revealing to my gaze deep views of Heaven;
All, all that makes my little darling up,
May change and lie before me still as sleep!
Yet not with sleep's red roses on thy cheeks,
Budding all night, blooming at break of day;
Nor with the living dream within thy veins
That charms off the iconoclast, decay;
But like a pretty wreath of virgin snow
That melts the while we look, and by next morn
Is not to mortal eye.

My little one,
I harp upon this thought, and almost dream
Thou art already dead, and wear my heart
With the imagined grief. But, O deep joy!
I waken from my thought, and thou art here,
Sparkling beside me. O live on and be
The little fountain where I come at eve,
After the sweating day, to cool my brain.

Oft in the heat of strife will come the thirst
Of love upon me, and my parch'd heart sinks
Amid distasteful work. A sudden thought
Of thee, my little one, leaps in my breast,
And soon my heart is at its post again,
Slaked with this gush of love, and work is joy:
And sweet anticipations ebb and flow
Like waves within a bay, each higher up,

Until the full tide of my joy is reach'd
In clasping thee unto my flooded heart.

The homeliest soul will sicken of its home,
Seeing a wingèd cloud in the blue vault;
Or hearing through the city's maddening din
The abandon'd carol of a cagèd lark;
Or seeing primroses brought into town;
Or reading of dreamy isles in the sunny south,
Of marble palaces, Italian skies.
But when I wander and new scenes fill up
The circle of my thought, amidst them all
Comes ever and anon across my brain,
A sweep as if 'twere from a soft dove-wing;—
I pause—sweet heart! it is the thought of thee.
And then I feel, if not a present bliss,
Thou art to me the deep reservèd hope,
Which is the secret life of present bliss.

Come near, my Beautiful, and let me gaze
My soul all out into those beaming eyes,
Until I lose my being all in thee.
For is not love a losing of one's self
In that which is belov'd? Love feels no self:
For though it springs in self, yet, like a flower,
It lives not for the soil, but yields up all
Its breathing essence to the wooèd air.

It is not only grief that likes to weep
Itself out in lone tears. Sweet, I must hide

These coming drops of love, lest, wondering, thou
Should'st ask, amidst thy prattle, what they mean.
Thou could'st not know they were for love, all love,
That are to thee tell-tales of hurt alone.

There, go and play, my darling,—I would read.
Alas! my book has gone out like a fire
In which a sunbeam strikes. I see no red
Thought burning in it. Newer light from God
Has fallen on my eyes and on my book,
And dazzled them to blindness. I have look'd
Into this lovely beam until my eyes
Are kindled, and can see nought but the light
That flames in it and them.

If it should set!
Alas, if thou should'st die! And yet, sometimes
I think 'twere well for me thou didst die now,
And to the heaven of my memory
Pass with the morning dew upon thy head,
And be to me a fresh green thought for aye.
For I may lose thee quite if thou abide
To suffer living change. The hours drink out
The beauty of the morn: what charm'd us then,
We cannot find in all the after day.

I have lost many pets by living death,
And so might thee. The young of anything
Finds the most honey'd corner in my heart:
But if it stay until the streaks of dawn
Have parted from it one by one, ah then

My heart has lost its tenant, though it lives:
It has not even the ghost of that lost love
To haunt its desolate chambers, since the thing
Is still embodied and denies the ghost.
But drag it from my heart before its time,
E'en in affection's increase, with the glow
Of rising light upon it, and methinks
My heart could cease not to be haunted by
The sweet idea of the loved thing lost.

Sometimes this strange throe moves me: thou at hand,
And some suggestive weapon in my grasp,
I feel a pushing on to lift my arm
And slay thy life! I dare not fight the thought,
But drop the weapon like a coward and flee
From it and thee, chased by the hounding thought.—
If I could neither lay the thought nor flee,
But did the strange remorseful deed, O God!
What a terrific breaking up of soul
Would shake my frame! But then the drenching love!—
Like a black cloud I'd burst, nor cease to weep
Till I had rain'd myself into the grave
Beside my murder'd joy.—Dark sobbing cloud!
Wrapt up in thy own grief—all heaven around
Is blue as angel's eyes, and the glad earth
Sunny and green, save this one little spot
Made black by thee. But it too shall be green,
When thou hast water'd it with all thy tears.

My precious one, and could I wish thee dead—
Dead, that thou might'st escape the living death?
False wish!—O thou canst never die to me,
More than myself to myself: for I see much
Of that same self in thee: the lines that bank
Our beings in, have by one stream been mark'd;
And when thou liftest up those archèd brows
The light of my own soul looks out to me.—
The years can not estrange thee: though they roll
Thy budding youth all out and take thy bloom,
My heart will glory in the mellow fruit.
O thou art link'd unto me, blood and soul:
Thy change must have its parallel in me.

It is a cruel thing that love may be
On my side only; that a heart all warm
Must cleave unto another dead and cold,
And be unsightly as a growing branch
Upon a rotten tree. Pray God, my love,
That I, in life, may never die to thee;
For there the fear is most. Thou art too full
Of love's sweet essences for death to take;
And so I rest without the fear of loss.
But I am prone as ether to be lost
And disappear out of most loving hearts.

Let us maintain the integrity of love
By being true to ourselves. A leal whole heart
Is as abiding in love's firmament
As any star in heaven. Let us give

Clear vantage to the light that burns within,
And like the stars be clear unto ourselves.
They are not self-polluted—see, they shine
No dimlier for all the murky nights.
And this should be great joy—that we, each one,
Might be a world of beauty in ourselves,
Unstain'd by circumstance as stars by cloud:
For though they seem torn out of their high spheres,
Trampled beneath the plashy feet of storms,
Yet when the storm has fretted past, we see
They have been lying in unthought-of peace.

Give me thy little hand. How heavenly soft!
It has no feel of this world's hardening work,
And emblems thy young soul, which bears not yet
The hards of earth upon it.—Wherefore should
Our Innocents put off the charmèd life
Which manhood does but struggle to regain?
We cast off child-content, and then begin
A life-long struggle for a child's content.—
Soft as it is, in this small hand I read
Lines prophesying burdens and earth-strifes.—
The azure innocence drops from thine eye:
Thou reck'st not of my augur. But my past
Gives me thy future now—and would, my love,
I might fore-bear the burden of thy griefs
And leave thee all the joys. Yet God forbid
That I should rob thee of thy jewel'd sorrows!—
I could not wish the past one grief the less,
But would my griefs had been more wisely borne,

And yielded more soul-treasure. I have found
My richest jewels in the hardest rock,
But spoil'd them oft in breaking it; lost more
Through leaving much unbroken. Like a bee
I've ever tried to avoid the stony road,
And sought the lanes to nestle among flowers.
But took not duty with me like the bee:
My task sat like a beggar in the dust,
Neglected, and a busy world pass'd on.

But, ah, sweet Ignorance! thou canst not take
The meaning from my lips: thy soft brows lift,
Thine eyes give out a recognising glance,
Only at certain words, as bee and flowers,
Which fall like gleams of sunshine on thy brain,
Chased by immediate shade.—Yet is it known
The spirit has a deeper speech than words,
A hearing that receives unspoken thought.
Some presences are felt like a sweet air
Blowing upon our souls, some like hell's breath.
If either come amongst us we take on
The good or evil odour. Therefore thou
May'st thus take on the nature of my thought:
And inasmuch as these pangs of regret
Make strong my future self, so may they thee.
Doubt not the unspoken precept: it doth pass
From soul to soul as dawn upon the earth—
Not with forced light, but gently leads in day,
Which soon is all in all; and we can trace
No footmark of a struggle with the night.

But strength of me or precept thou need'st none:
They could but help to give that which thou hast—
Thy rich inheritance of child-content.—
I do but speak my overflow of love.
It does not wait my time: tide-like it comes.
It ebbs and flows between us, and each wave
Throws up its thousand pearls upon our hearts.—
The World doth hold us poor, and we ourselves
Oft join the World in feeling we are poor—
Poor! and with all this treasure in our hearts—
Wealth richlier possessed than gold could be!
To have is but to love; and he whose heart
Is fullest of the love of godliest things
Is still the richest man, whatelse he lack.—
This is the very alchymy of truth:
God keep it aye within us.—There now, love,
Go play thyself, and leave me here alone,
To open up the coffers of my heart
And count how rich I am in loving thee.