The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Yes, I am jealous of the moonlight's rays
That met thine eyes in those far mystic lands!
That moon's soft kiss that fell upon thine hands
In far-off girlish unforgotten days
This I am jealous of,—and of the lays
The stars sang to thee, shining over sands
Vast, treeless, limitless. When Love commands
The dead years answer, and open wide their ways.

O Southern stars and moon that met her eyes
In earliest girlhood, when the sweet world came
To lay upon her lips its flowers and flame
And prison in her look its light of skies—
O moon and stars that won from her replies
Tender, hath she a soul for me to claim?

214

SONNET II
THE HIGHEST LOVE

There never should be bitter words or pain
Between a lover and a loving soul.
From the first starting to the faint far goal
Dimly descried on Time's eternal plain
—The goal where white-peaked mountains soar and reign
And where the far-off mountain-thunders roll—
From love's beginning till death maketh whole
Or sundereth, there should be not one tear-stain.

It is within the reach of human hearts
To love and love, and never to bring grief.
The wild and passionate love that carries darts
Within its love and thorns on its rose-leaf
Pales out beside the love whose heart can say
“Love's last is sweeter than love's sweet first day.”

215

SONNET III
“WE CANNOT SAVE ONE ANOTHER FROM DEATH”

Nay, who knows that? Who knows what strength may be
Within the spirit of love? What untried things
Behind death's thunder-dark yet love-sweet wings?
What might of passionate singing in the sea
Of death that shall encompass you and me
When envious Time the final parting brings?
Oh that strange parting which so racks and wrings
The spirit, may join two spirits eternally.

“We cannot save from death”:—Nay, who knows aught
Of what the deathless spirit of love can do?
God who spreads out the eternal ocean's blue
And laughs as star on star surpasses thought
Hath care and love still left for me and you,
And neither star nor we shall come to nought.

216

SONNET IV
A SUDDEN PANG

It smote across me with a sudden pang,
The thought that you must die. It shall not be!
If there is soul of passion in the sea
Or in the moon whose white orb used to hang
Above the wild plains where thy spirit sang
Its girlish love-song to infinity,—
If there was love in sun or flower or tree
Or river whose soft voice beside thee rang,—
If there is love in the Unknown Power or me,—
Thou shalt live onward through the viewless years.
Oh when death calls thee, and thine eyes' bright light
Fails, send for me. If I can see for tears
I'll use my sword once more, and death shall flee,
For love that dies not can put death to flight.

217

SONNET V
GENIUS AND WOMANHOOD

Of all sweet lovely things God ever made
I think the purest sweetest loveliest thing
Was moulded when he let thought's sombre wing
Touch woman's sunlit brow with genius' shade.
It was a great thought when God, unafraid,
First gave to woman passionate arms to cling:—
But when God gave her fiery heart to sing
A greater thought the Master's will obeyed.

There is no greater thought of God than this:
That woman in her spirit should combine
Love and sweet genius,—that her hand should twine
Laurels and roses,—that her lips should kiss,
While her pure genius-hands the while design
Work that outstrips the pale eternities.

218

SONNET VI
THY NAME

Of all sweet names that sing in poets' ears
I think thy name is sweetest. Soft and new
It brought before me the broad Southern blue:
My dreams were sweetened by thy girlish years,
And hand in hand with all thy joys and fears
I wandered thine enchanted uplands through,
And saw the sunlight gild the wild “karroo,”
And saw thy lonely sweet eyes fill with tears.

I love the name,—the very sweetest name
It is that heart of poet ever sung.
I love to hear it linger on my tongue
And feel that through the word the heart I claim:
The heart so gentle, tender, and so young
And yet so full of force, and full of flame.

219

SONNET VII
“IT SEEMS SO STRANGE”

It seems so strange to me to think that thou
Dost love our England and our English song!
And yet before thee strange storms swept along
And strange sweet Southern moonlight touched thy brow.
I think of thee,—and wonder and wonder how
Through thy young spirit eager, pure, and strong
The thought of England darted, ere the throng
Of English pilot-waves around the prow
Of thy home-coming vessel danced and gleamed.
What were thy thoughts in that far wondrous land?
What flowers grew sweeter for thy loving hand?
What stars grew softer as thy star-eyes dreamed
Among them? What words whispered the white band
Of Southern clouds that through the clear blue streamed?

220

SONNET VIII
MY WINGED MESSENGERS

I'll send my messengers with airy feet
And soft ethereal plumage to explore
Those unknown regions, and from every shore
That thou hast trodden to bring whispers sweet.
That is my longing: I to-day would meet
Thy past, and open dreamland's golden door,—
Feel through the woman's lips her girlhood pour
Delight too pure for song's lips to repeat.

Can love not rival elemental things?
Can love not distance star and flower and breeze?
Can I not still the singing of the seas,
Baffle the breezes with melodious wings?
Can I not capture back from rose and pine
Thy girlish love-thoughts, love—and make each mine?

221

SONNET IX
SADNESS

That is what saddens this strange spirit of mine.
Thou wast so far, so many leagues, from me
While I was singing love-songs to the sea
In England, and the English green-browed line
Of rain-swept hills, and English eglantine:—
My songs mixed voices with each summer tree
And with the summer flowers—but not for thee
I sang. The stars that watched thee made no sign.

How could I guess that over leagues of sea
A girl's soft whisper mingled with the night,—
A girl's soft eyes with the far starry light
That fell on plains that mocked eternity
In their smooth endless undulating flight?
Thou wast alive,—and I knew not of thee!

222

SONNET X
LOVE'S MIGHT

That pains me so! To think the sunlight knew,
The blossoms knew (or how could they have bloomed!)
The sunsets knew thee, wild and crimson-plumed,
Spreading their plumage over ceaseless blue.
I was the one heart in the world untrue!
That saddens me; for now so many entombed
Sweet thoughts of thine may never be resumed.
Can Nature's hand repeat one sunset's hue?

I cannot penetrate with fiery speed
The far star-spaces,—search the silent night
For thoughts of thine that made dark spaces bright
And sowed with new stars heaven's exalted mead.
Yet love hath greater than the whole heaven's might
And love can follow where a girl's eyes lead.

223

SONNET XI
REST

O spirit, O love, canst thou bestow on me—
Me who have wandered through the sable night
For lonely ages,—who have watched the flight
Of clouds from God's hand through eternity,—
Who saw the stars when they began to be,—
Who marked the first sun launch its golden light
Upon the stormy blue,—whose weary sight
Followed the breakers on the first grey sea:—
Canst thou, O love, O spirit, on me bestow
The one thing I am most in need of—Rest?
I'd give my very soul to end the quest
Eternal, agonizing, dark with woe.
Sorrow has been my bosom's inmost guest
Since Eden laughed in its first sunset's glow.

224

SONNET XII
THE STING OF DEATH

This is the sting of death, that it includes
The fact that thou must leave me. Oh, death knows
And harps upon the sharpest of our woes!
Not the sweet silences of dim pine-woods,—
Not the bright airs of mountain-solitudes,—
Not the white flashing of the far-off snows,
Nor even the scent on June-nights of the rose
Nor skies whereo'er the royal sunset broods—
To leave these things is agonizing pain,
But worse than all the pain of all these things
And filled with sharper and more poisonous stings
Is the black thought that I may still remain
In this same world, yet never through all springs
Mix thought with fiery thought of thine again.

225

SONNET XIII
“LOVE ALONE”

Through life on weary life I seem to have passed,
Seeking for thee.—Now weariness supreme
Holds me. My lives' long battles like a dream
Melt from me, ghostlike to the very last.
My sword, all notched and blunted, lo! I cast
Into the eddies of death's silent stream,
Whereover floats full many a wan moonbeam:
I meet the stream's pale outlook, weird and vast.

Then lo! thy face burns on me, and thy heart
Turns meward. First for joy's own sake I weep;
And then a pang strikes through me wild and deep,—
A deathly wintry pallid icy dart:
For I can give thee nought but love, my own;
Love, love,—and love again,—and love alone.

226

SONNET XIV
LOVE AND SYMPATHY

Is not love sweeter in that we have dared
To look upon the very face of death?
That we have trembled at his icy breath
Yet have not faltered, but have bravely shared
With him the chaplets laughing love prepared
When life was like one ever-fragrant wreath?—
Is love not sweeter in that underneath
Lurks the grim eyeless terror, serpent-haired?

Is love not sweeter when two souls have said,
“Yes: let us know the worst that can be known.”
Oh, if love cannot hurl death from his throne
Still love can pluck his crown from off his head.
Unloved, unloving,—thus to join the dead—
This turns the passionate human heart to stone.

227

SONNET XV
“THE GREY DAWN”

And yet if thou dost meet it not alone,
That weird grey morning over mountains blue
May be more sweet than thy soul ever knew
Or dreamed,—and lovelier than has yet been shown
To heart of poet which with pang and groan
Has struggled from old pain to suffering new.
When that last awful “grey dawn” thrills us through
Shall love not speak with mastering trumpet-tone?

Shall love not turn the “grey dawn” into gold
And touch the mountain-summits as with fire,
Uplifting from each peak and rocky spire
The vestments of the morning, fold by fold?
May not death's tide of pure delight flow higher
Than living heart hath dreamed or tongue hath told?

228

SONNET XVI
“PERHAPS ONE LOVE UNITES ALL”

Yes: there are many loves.—The love that dreams
Of flowers and songs, and weaves within its hair
Leaves fresh from dalliance with youth's mountain-air
And blossoms dainty from the morning's streams.
Love too that mixes with the pale moonbeams
Its mystic tresses. Passion swift and rare:
Love even than the rose's kiss more fair;
Love whose young heart with wildest fancy teems.

But fairer and more beautiful than these
Is just the love that by its very soul
Swears that from starting till the final goal
Shines like white marble through the cypress trees
There shall be sympathy divine and deep,
From love's first waking,—till love falls asleep.

229

SONNET XVII
“AND NOW THE SAD THOUGHT”

And now the sad thought fills my heart with tears
And stills my very singing for awhile.—
When love is born, the farthest white clouds smile
And fragrance wafted from remotest years
Greets us, and all June's chanting fills our ears.
We linger, as one lingers on a stile
'Tween meadow and meadow. Flowers so fair beguile
Our fancy that it hath no room for fears.

When love is born, the farthest star-lips sing
And music fills the temples of the sky.
Who dreams of Winter when the green-clad Spring
With white hand full of primroses is nigh?
Dear heart, when love's hand strikes his first harp-string
How can we bear to think that love must die!

230

SONNET XVIII
“IF I DIE FIRST”

If I die first, I would unbar the tomb
And fill its gateways full of flowers for thee
If such a gift in mortal love might be:
I'd make for thee the iron meadows bloom
And scatter with my wingéd songs the gloom
That now pervades and chills eternity.
I'd touch to blue the sable-crested sea
Whose waves through night's dark arches peer and loom.

But if no longing may give love the power
To ope death's gateways for another soul
I would leave with thee these few songs in flower
That, when my feet have passed the songless goal,
Death who would rush with harsh tread through thy bower
Destroying part, may not destroy the whole.

231

SONNET XIX
“JUST ONE STAR”

I would give of my being unto thee,
As God gave of himself with love supreme
And filled the bright world with his every dream
And made his thought incarnate in the sea
And in the blossom of the red may-tree
And in the tropic mystic white moon-gleam
And in the lily floating on the stream
And in the passions of humanity.

So I would in my humbler measure bring:
Not having all the suns and stars to take
Wherewith thy spirit's fiery thirst to slake
As slakes creation's thirst creation's king—
But having just the power to love and sing
And just one star to bring thee for love's sake.

232

SONNET XX
“REST AT LAST”

Renew me with thy being.—I would take
Thy young sweet soul and press it close to mine.
I would make all my stormy yearning thine
And in thine heart mine endless longing slake;
Just as the mountain in the mountain-lake
Sees its own thunder-crowned fierce image shine
And in the blue depth doth itself outline,
And ceases then with lonely pain to ache.

Give me thyself.—Do I not sorely need
—I who have fought for years amid the dust
Of trampling hoofs, and parried stroke and thrust,
And snapped the spear of sorrow like a reed—
Do I not need thee sorely? Strife is past.
Love me, and loving, give me rest at last.

233

THE DEEP LOVE

One has to count the cost.—One cannot win love's sweetness,
One cannot grasp fair love in absolute completeness
Without the pain as well.
The sweetest flowers are those which grow not on the mountains
But at the solemn edge, and sprinkled by the fountains,
Of pain's dim red unfathomable hell.

Oh, not the common love is sweetest, but the passion
Which bindeth soul to soul in mystic sacred fashion
In spite of adverse things.
Without pursuit could love exult in priceless capture?
No soul can know love's deep immeasurable rapture
And yet forego the pain the deep love brings.

Feb. 25, 1884.

234

WITHOUT AND WITHIN

SONNET

Iron outside.—To face the world and fate
Strength as of finely-woven subtle steel.
Strength which can conquer time and never kneel
Till the last foe has passed outside the gate.
Strength as of iron to encounter hate
And snap the arrows of the world piecemeal.
A strong brave heart that in no wise doth feel
The shock of spears that strike the blue breast-plate.

Beneath the breast-plate? Silk and tender folds.—
Beneath the tender folds? A most white gleam.
A heart that follows after dream on dream
Of love, and measureless pure sweetness holds.—
Iron outside,—to meet the world. Within?
The sweetest living soul for love to win.

Jan. 24, 1884.