University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.

I.
TO ---.

Vainly my heart had with thy sorceries striven:
It had no refuge from thy love,—no Heaven
But in thy fatal presence;—from afar
It owned thy power and trembled like a star
O'erfraught with light and splendor. Could I deem
How dark a shadow should obscure its beam?—
Could I believe that pain could ever dwell
Where thy bright presence cast its blissful spell?
Thou wert my proud palladium;—could I fear
The avenging Destinies when thou wert near?—
Thou wert my Destiny;—thy song, thy fame,
The wild enchantments clustering round thy name,
Were my soul's heritage, its royal dower;
Its glory and its kingdom and its power!

[II. When first I looked into thy glorious eyes]

When first I looked into thy glorious eyes,
And saw, with their unearthly beauty pained,
Heaven deepening within heaven, like the skies
Of autumn nights without a shadow stained,
I stood as one whom some strange dream enthralls;
For, far away, in some lost life divine,
Some land which every glorious dream recalls,
A spirit looked on me with eyes like thine.
E'en now, though death has veiled their starry light,
And closed their lids in his relentless night—
As some strange dream, remembered in a dream,
Again I see, in sleep, their tender beam;
Unfading hopes their cloudless azure fill,
Heaven deepening within heaven, serene and still.

[III. Oft since thine earthly eyes have closed on mine]

Oft since thine earthly eyes have closed on mine,
Our souls, dim-wandering in the hall of dreams,
Hold mystic converse on the life divine,
By the still music of immortal streams;
And oft thy spirit tells how souls, affied
By sovran destinies, no more can part,—
How death and hell are powerless to divide
Souls whose deep lives lie folded heart in heart.
And if, at times, some lingering shadow lies
Heavy upon my path, some haunting dread,
Then do I point thee to the harmonies
Of those calm heights whereto our souls arise
Through suffering,—the faith that doth approve
In death the deathless power and divine life of love.

[IV. We met beneath September's gorgeous beams]

We met beneath September's gorgeous beams:
Long in my house of life thy star had reigned;
Its mournful splendor trembled through my dreams,
Nor with the night's phantasmal glories waned.
We wandered thoughtfully o'er golden meads
To a lone woodland, lit by starry flowers,
Where a wild, solitary pathway leads
Through mouldering sepulchres and cypress bowers.
A dreamy sadness filled the autumnal air;—
By a low, nameless grave I stood beside thee,
My heart according to thy murmured prayer
The full, sweet answers that my lips denied thee.
O mournful faith, on that dread altar sealed—
Sad dawn of love in realms of death revealed!

[V. On our lone pathway bloomed no earthly hopes]

On our lone pathway bloomed no earthly hopes;—
Sorrow and death were near us, as we stood
Where the dim forest, from the upland slopes,
Swept darkly to the sea. The enchanted wood
Thrilled, as by some foreboding terror stirred;
And as the waves broke on the lonely shore,
In their low monotone, methought I heard
A solemn voice that sighed, “Ye meet no more.”
There, while the level sunbeams seemed to burn
Through the long aisles of red, autumnal gloom,—
Where stately, storied cenotaphs inurn
Sweet human hopes, too fair on Earth to bloom,—
Was the bud reaped, whose petals, pure and cold,
Sleep on my heart till Heaven the flower unfold.

[VI. If thy sad heart, pining for human love]

If thy sad heart, pining for human love,
In its earth solitude grew dark with fear,
Lest the high Sun of Heaven itself should prove
Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere
Wherein thy spirit wandered—if the flowers
That pressed around thy feet, seemed but to bloom
In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours,
When all, who loved, had left thee to thy doom:—
Oh, yet believe, that, in that hollow vale,
Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain
So much of Heaven's sweet grace as shall avail
To lift its burden of remorseful pain,—
My soul shall meet thee and its Heaven forego
Till God's great love, on both, one hope, one Heaven bestow.