University of Virginia Library

SONNETS TO ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

[I. Fair Sibyl, sitting in thy House of Clouds]

Fair Sibyl, sitting in thy “House of Clouds,”
Shrined, like some solitary star, above
The dull, cold shadow that our earth enshrouds,
How oft my spirit looks to thee in love!
To thy “Lost Bower” how oft in dreams returning,
I see thee standing in the sylvan room,—
See the red sun-light in the rose-cups burning,
And the sweet blue-bells nodding through the gloom:
Again I hear thy grand and solemn dirges
To the dim “Gods of Hellas,” like the breeze
O'er lone savannas sighing, or the surges
That wash the sands of solitary seas;
Then, in calm waves of glory, swells the strain,
“Christ from the dead hath risen and shall reign!”

[II. Sometimes I see thee, pale with scorn and sorrow]

Sometimes I see thee, pale with scorn and sorrow,
At a great palace window, looking forth,
To-day on plumèd Florentines,—to-morrow
Upon the hireling legions of the North:
Sometimes o'er little children bending lowly,
To hear their cry, in the dark factories drowned;
Ah, then thy pitying brow grows sweet and holy,
With a saint's aureole of sorrow crowned!
But most I love thee when that mystic glory—
Kindling at horrors that abhor the day—
Sheds a wild, stormy splendor o'er the story
Of the dark fugitive, who turned away
To death's cold threshold, calm in death's disdain,
From the “White Pilgrim's Rock,” beside the western main.

[III. Ay, most I love thee when thy starry song]

Ay, most I love thee when thy starry song
Stoops to the plague-spot that we dare not name,
And bares with burning breath the envenomed wrong—
Our country's dark inheritance of shame.
When our blaspheming synods look thereon,
Stifling God's law and Nature's noble ires
With the cold ashes of dead council-fires,
That Gorgon terror chills them into stone.
Yet while they cringe and palter, thy true heart,
Serene in love's own light and woman's ruth,
Loyal to God and to God's living truth,
Hath uttered words whose fulgent rays shall dart
Like sunbeams through our land's Tartarean gloom,
Till freedom's holy law its Stygian depths illume.