LOVE-SONNETS
I.
A POET'S PRAYER
O Beauty, Maiden Goddess, hear my cry!
I bow my being and before thee kneel;
From men and women I to thee appeal;
Give me the power to give thy foes the lie,
To set my teeth and front them and reply.
Thy virgin glory they from thee would steal:
Enraptured worship such men cannot feel;
They still preserve the utterance of the stye.
O Thou that dwellest in the ether, hear me,
And cover me with sunset as a shield:
Stand forth before me, Beauty, thou shalt clear me!
Grant me to utter what thou hast revealed;
Pour purity throughout me,—aid me, cheer me;
Then snatch me up into thine azure field.
1870.
II.
HEAVEN AND HELL
I woke, having dreamed that I was left alone,
And timidly outstretched a searching hand
And searching eyes,—but felt that I was fanned
By the breath of morning, and a silver tone
Came sweet to reassure me.—Ah! mine own,
What a reaction had God's genius planned!
What an uplifting from the murky land
Into green meadows softly overblown!
And then I knew the difference was this,—
Just this swift difference and nothing more,—
Between hell's horror and the silver shore
Of heaven; even that between the bliss
Of being loved and lips I thought no kiss
Would ever teach to wonder and adore.
1871.
III.
GOD'S HEART
My eyes were sweetly opened, and I knew
The mystery of Marriage:—and, behold,
God's heart I had the power to unfold
And bring its inmost chambers into view;
And treasures many beautiful and new
I found therein, and memories fair and old,—
Loves silver,—plumes and diadems of gold,—
And frosts,—and summer seasons set in blue.
But in the centre bloomed two roses,—one
Being red, the other white: and these were set
Therein for ever, lest a man forget
That in God's heart the sweet dream first begun
That we call Marriage,—and I knew that none
Of God's thoughts had surpassed this Poem yet.
1871.
IV.
SWEET DEATH
Sweet Death that hast the golden-coloured wings,
Thou art not very far from any one,—
And it may be before to-morrow's sun
New warmth to the glad laughing green earth brings,
Filling bright trees with many a throat that sings,
A calm abode of peace may be begun
For me, whereover soon shall climb and run
The robe that o'er the dead soft Nature flings.
And it may be that I shall be aware
Of some old music, some forgotten tale,
Some delicate old trembling in the air:
And it may be that I shall rise and sail
Majestic on the beats of pinions fair,
Clothed valiantly in an immortal mail.
1871.
V.
THE PERFUME OF THE SOUL
There are seasons when the fragrant soul within
Leaps, as a yearning child within the womb,
And shakes the fleshly fences of its tomb,—
Eager to mount, and rustle, and begin
A life delivered from the fangs of sin
And these slow fleshly fires that do consume:—
And then the sweet soul flings a strange perfume
From limbs that move and struggle, and we win
At times a wild intoxicating sense
Of the large life of deathland,—that shall be
One meadow of sweet ether with no fence,
One imperturbable unbounded sea
Wherein the soul shall revel, winged and free,
Exulting in a magnitude intense.
1871.
VI.
WHEN AND WHERE?
When shall we meet, my lost delight, and where?
What regions have the flowers of thy feet
Made odorous, or what hazy heights of air
Have trembled o'er thine hands in kisses sweet?
What heaven shines with gold increase of light,
What clouds are touched to music at thy tone,—
What myrmidons angelic, mailed in might,
Are humble worshippers of thee, mine own?
And dost thou sail through balmy sunset seas,
Clothed with the vapours that incarnadine
The tender outpoured ringlets of the breeze?
Ah! thou art not irrevocably mine
Till the inevitable hand of death
Blends the forlorn divisions of our breath.
1871.
VII.
LOVE AT THE SEPULCHRE
At times my songs of love return and shine
Each as a flower of individual head,
Some white, some rosy,—some blood-stained and red,—
Marshalled in one long unimpeded line.
And these, with many tears and thoughts, I twine
To bloom about that fragrant body dead,
That over her mixed petals may be shed,
And spices and sweet incense I combine
To make her beauty more surpassing yet;—
And many months of passion, and pale days,
And nights torn in unutterable ways,
Are as strange flowers with rain of weeping wet,—
Woodbine and spotted mint and mignonette
And roses and white hyacinthine sprays.
1871.
VIII.
A POET'S VISION
A poet lay beneath a tropic moon
And heard strange noises in the misty woods,
The impervious spirit-haunted solitudes,
And felt across his face a silver swoon
Stream as a veil of gauze,—and, sleeping soon,
The inner universal life revealed
Shone through him, and creation's music pealed
About him, like some all-embracing tune.
And through the trees came many figures flitting
Under the crimson candles of the night;
And voices of triumphant lovers sitting
On mossy knolls, by still pools clear and bright;
And he was one with birds and flowers unwitting,
And through his brain there beamed a wondrous light.
1871.
IX.
“THE INEVITABLE HOUR”
I wrote:—and since I wrote, my hour has come.
The blossom of the inevitable hour
When into bloom of one surpassing flower
Leaps valiantly our being,—and the sum
Of seasons vocable and seasons dumb
And months of solitary growth of power,
Through the red days of August and the sour
December darkness, when the hands are numb.
My hour has come and vanished:—as a flame
That crowns some god-begotten hero's head
For a moment,—and it flickers and is dead,
And his hair seems paler now for very shame:
Nor is there any token whence it came,
That fire that so transfigured him and fled.
1871.
X.
LOVE'S STAND-POINT
There is a point at which the burning soul
Collects; as into one tremendous flame,
Each perilous desire and every aim,
Determining to sacrifice the whole.
Then all God's voices and his thunders roll
Like gathering tides across the shaken sand
Whereon this spirit's trembling feet do stand,
And the wide earth is as a parchment scroll
Engraved with fiery letters: “Thou shalt die
And be forgotten, even as a star
That flames, and it has vanished from the sky,—
Even as a comet gleaming from afar,
Approaching, and then hastening to fly,—
But Love is as the eternal spirits are.”
1871.
XI.
A DREAM OF THE MOUNTAINS
A sense of sleeping in between dark firs
That clothe some dreamy monstrous Apennines,—
A sense of fragrance wafted from sweet pines
Across the illimitable mountain-spurs,—
And then, as the awaking mind demurs,
The soft discovery that a woman twines
Long leafy tresses,—that her splendour shines
Through sleep, and that the ambrosial breath was hers.
So dreamed I; and my spirit took its flight,
Invulnerable, o'er the mountain-tops,
On beatific pinions, softly bright
As are the golden crowns of August crops;—
Go where I will she follows me, nor stops
Drooping for the malignance of the night.
1872.
XII.
A PARTING
Once more! To summon up, in one wild minute,
All dreams, and songs, and visions past of you,
Is as a white rose with a serpent in it
Erecting crest of poisonous subtle blue.
'Tis as a forest, sweet and softly tender,—
But whose green depths, if stealthily explored,
The cottage of some fiend to sight would render
Who sways its avenues, a fetid lord.
It is as if the spring contained the winter;
All sweet and seemly visions, somewhat foul;
Bright summer waves, a floating icy splinter;
A monk, a murderer behind his cowl;—
So strange a thing it is to mingle thee
With this our parting's utter agony!
1872.
XIII.
THAT STRANGE NIGHT
I.
It was but in a room;—I had been sleeping;
The still night deepened,—and I was alone.
When on a sudden I awoke low-weeping,
And through and through me rang thy silver tone.
And then I saw thee, sweet one, far more clearly
Than I shall ever see again in life,
Not face to face, but soul to soul,—more nearly
Than mother is to son, or man to wife.
Then all the room was filled as with some essence
Ethereal, heavenly, fragrant and divine;—
God's own intoxicating gracious presence,
Mixed with the intoxicating sense of thine,
Pervaded every shadow of the gloom
With rose-hung arches and tempestuous bloom.
XIV.
THAT STRANGE NIGHT
II.
Tempestuous! for so wild the nectar seemed,
So overflowing the gold cup of joy,
It was as if a damnéd murderer dreamed
That once again he walked a happy boy.
So vast the mighty change,—so great the weeping,—
And the spirit's eaglelike gigantic bound
From the pale earth whereon it had lain sleeping
To crystal banks and pearl-strewn heavenly ground.
So wonderful a perfume sought the ceiling,
So silvery a footstep trod the floor,
That all my brain and every pulse swam,—reeling
As never mortal's pulses reeled before;
And I was swallowed up, sweet soul, in thee,
There to abide through all eternity.
1872.
XV.
SLOWLY
Slowly my song grows,—as from day to day
I add fresh flowers of ever-intenser thought;
Bright buds the calm of riper age has brought,
Soft violets, roses, red leaves,—many a spray
Rich with the flying tints of autumn gay,
Or blossoms in dense woods of summer sought:—
Blue hyacinths and crocus-petals fraught
With spring, and spikes of frost from winter grey.
Slowly my song grows: to each word a year
Of patient and of earnest thought I give,
If haply, when the world's last leaf is sere,
Thy songs may still be spring-sweet, lady dear,—
If haply in pure music meet to live
I may immortalize thy laughter clear.
1873.
XVI.
FIFTEEN
When first I saw thee, lady of my dreams,
And watched love's sunrise shed its ardent gold
O'er hill and valley and wild purple wold—
The golden light which once superbly gleams,
Then fades for ever; when, beside the streams
Of that fair Northern many-tinted sea,
Thy girlish tender presence shone on me,
But fifteen years had crowned thee with sunbeams.
And Dante's Beatrice was but fifteen!
And her sweet deathless eyes were soft sea-green,
When first she stood before him in the way;—
So wast thou girl-soft, simple and divine,
When first thy young yet timeless glance met mine,—
Green, mixed with soft sea-shadows of brown-grey.
1873.
XVII.
THE SWEET NIGHT
The sweet night reaches thee, my lady fair!
The winds caress thee, and the same stars shine
Upon thee,—thy pure heavens are also mine;
The same rich darkness mixes with thy hair,—
We breathe the same involuntary air,—
In thy soft locks the braided vapours twine,—
And all their countless scents of larch and pine
From each to each the darkling hill-sides bear.
The sweet night reaches thee;—we are not far
Apart,—the sweet night reaches thee, and falls
About thee like a mantle; every star
That lights the blue illimitable halls
Shines upon each; our faces, truly, are
Set face to face within the wide night's walls.
1873.
XVIII.
FLUSHED WITH VICTORY
O'er every common task Love casts a glow
Of pleasure, and a sacred healing calm,
As o'er the garden paths the rose-trees throw
Their petals, and their tender odorous balm:
O'er each day's common toil Love flings a light
Delicious, and a hope of fairer things,—
As in the ancients' dreams a heavenly sprite
Hovered above the good with golden wings.
When I am quite engulfed in common toil,
I faint not, lady,—but I think of thee,
And fear not lest my paltry labour soil
The silver-shining plumes of Poesy;
For thou art ever with me, sweet, to foil
Such issue, flushed with ample victory.
1873.
XIX.
AN ANGEL-SPIRIT
Those who are true to their Ideal Love
Flit down from heaven as angels with bright wings
To guard their ladies' souls from sorrow's stings,
Hovering with tender brilliance ever above
The head they worship:—to this pleasure clings
Each true soul, putting all joys else aside;
Desiring no white breast of earthly bride,
Nor crowns of violent fame, nor glory of kings.
As angel-spirits these pervade the airs,—
Some fluttering plumes that bring blue violets' breath,
Some pinions rich with reddest roses' balm.
For true and faithful lovers God prepares
Such recompence ecstatic after death,—
Fairer than saintly dreams of harp and palm.
1873.
XX.
SONG'S POWER AND PASSION
Love, grant me life until my lady's fame
Be clearly blazoned on the common air:
Grant me the songful passion to declare
The greatness and the bounty of her name!
Then will I face the hollow clay-pit's shame,
Descending into earth with bosom bare,—
Happy, in that I leave behind a fair
Memorial for my living love to claim.
Yet am I not content with this slow fate:
I brook not utter cold annihilation.
Fain would I, as a live soul, take my station
By some fair future city's golden gate,
And, listening to my own songs, add a note,
As round that far-off summer breeze they float.
1873.
XXI.
WHITBY
Ah, Whitby, what am I to say of thee!
My passionate love first ripened by thy shore:
My sweet first love-flower bloomed anear the roar
Of thine own lordly and tempestuous sea.
Thou art an endless memory unto me
Of sweet long days of early love serene,—
And sweeter evenings, when the silver queen
Of heaven rose o'er the cliff majestically.
Thy beauty and calm I never shall forget:—
Thinking of thee, my spirit is as one
Who, when his life is as a setting sun,
With tender diligence remembereth yet
The golden passion with which life begun,—
And, pondering on it, lo! his eyes are wet.
1875.
XXII.
A VISIT TO OXFORD
A week ago I sought the self-same place
Where once I wandered through the fields of spring,
Seeking my vanished love with weary wing,—
Searching for the lost likeness of her face.
Still, still, the meadows shine with opening grace
Of sweet fresh flowerets; still the glad birds sing:
The spirit of Nature is an unchanged thing:—
Still, still, the winds pursue their jocund race.
All is the same: 'tis I am changed alone.
The spirit of spring is festive in the trees;
The golden buttercups are blithely blown
Just as aforetime by an amorous breeze:
The peace of heaven is in the azure deep.—
And still the crimson clover-blossoms sleep.
May 2, 1875.
XXIII.
ONE GIRL'S BEAUTY
God gave to one to pluck the fragrant flower
And wear it: on another God bestowed,
Instead of that fair living bud that glowed
And glittered, the imperishable power
Of voice,—that, not for any paltry hour,
But through the eternity of voiceful days,
The beauty of that blossom he might praise
And round it all the fruits of yearning shower.
Which is the greatest gift and which the glory?
To hold thee in a perishable embrace,—
Or to hand down in deathless spotless story
The beauty of the roseflower of thy face,
Chanting, till even the locks of Time are hoary,
One girl's unspeakable resistless grace.
1875.
XXIV.
SIMPLE AND SWEET
Full many a pleasure through the hours of life
Hath met me,—some in byeways, some in broad
Wide-open pathways of the common road:
Full many a flower hath fallen beneath my knife,
Some gathered redly from tempestuous strife,
Some plucked in valleys that calm thought hath showed;—
With many gracious gleams my days have glowed;
With many stars my clear skies have been rife.
Yet never have I known a pleasure higher
Than when, an ardent trembling youth, I came
To lay before my lady my desire
Couched in pure rhythmic utterance, bright with flame
Of passion:—yea, the simple pleasure sweet
Of laying my first verses at her feet.
1875.
XXV.
SWEETNESS
The loves of later life are many and bold
And press their cause with overweening hands;
They smile upon us now from sundry lands,
And some bring pleasures in a cup of gold.
Passion, superb and lustrous, crowns the old
Not seldom; wreathes their foreheads in bright bands
Of flowers, and, smiling, waiteth their commands;
Not all desires at Autumn's touch wax cold.
Yet one word we reserve with holy zeal
For youth alone and first love—even “sweetness:”
This only young joy wins in its completeness;
This only passion newly-crowned can feel;
The later flowers of passion may be grand,
But sweet they are not,—though they crowd the hand.
1875.
XXVI.
ALL THE PAST
Thou dost unite the beauty of all the past
In thy one perfect face.—Was Helen fair?
Then are thine eyes more wonderful and rare,
And tenderer looks towards my look thou dost cast.
Thou hast the shades of Cleopatra's hair:—
Lo! Egypt rises on my vision fast
And the Nile gleams in lucid Southern air.
Next, Iseult bends before the Cornish blast.
I am as Antony: I mark thy wit
And dream within thy strange eyes passion-lit:—
Sworded as Tristram next I sweep the ways.
I am as Paris: Troy before me burns;—
Then, suddenly, thy supple figure turns,
And lo! thou look'st at me with Helen's gaze.
1876.
XXVII.
THE EARLY SWEETNESS
A rose was blooming as I passed along
The gentle roads of youth towards early toil:
A perfect flower it was, without a soil,
And round it all the gracious scent was strong.
To gather it thus early had been wrong,—
So, well content, I hurried on my way,
Devoting till the evening of the day
All thoughts and passionate labour to my song.
But in the evening when I thought the hour
For holy gathering of the fragrant flower
Approached,—rude other hands had robbed the stem:
Yet though these grasp the scarlet rose mature,
Her fragrance in life's morning, strangely pure,
Was given to me, thank God!—not given to them.
1876.
XXVIII.
EARTH AND HEAVEN
I. EARTH
First in fair youth I sang the love of earth:
The flowers of youth before me bright as fire
Flickered,—I cherished many a winged desire;
To eager thoughts the laughing days gave birth.
Love had not known chill sorrow, nor the dearth
Of strength:—he rested on a bed of flowers:
Sweet joy was his, and tuneable soft hours,—
Pleasure, and mutual toil, and silvery mirth.
But Love was stricken. Then the earth became
No more a bower of roses, but of snow,—
One vast deep charnel-house, one waste of woe,
Lighted at times by lurid leaping flame.
Just where the rose of earth was blushing red
One morn, at eve my rose-lipped love lay dead.
XXIX.
EARTH AND HEAVEN
II. HEAVEN
Then heaven I sought, and heaven-high designs:—
The robes of angels glittered o'er my gaze,
And at them I forgot green earthly bays,
The hills of earth, the meadows and the vines,
The blue waves laughing in tumultuous lines,
The glittering ferns that trembled o'er the ways;
Love vanished in a vast seraphic blaze
Of plumes ascending,—reddening all the pines.
The love of earth was changed to love of heaven:
The star of hope was not the star of even
But rather the pale tremulous orb of death:
I looked for lily-fragrance in dim spheres
Unknown; but 'mid vast hopes and vaster fears
Lived undecided days,—drew dubious breath.
XXX.
EARTH AND HEAVEN
III. HEAVEN ON EARTH
Now Heaven on Earth begins. The golden corn
Is bright to me as those angelic plumes
Whose lustre ravishes, and then consumes:
Now, many a great triumphant rose is born.
Along the meadows at the crimson morn
The sun flames, o'er the trembling gossamer:
My life is now at peace,—and all through her
By whom Love's seamless robe was rent and torn.
Now she is with me: heaven is in her smile
And all earth's blossomy beauty in her hands;
And all the roses of the rose-red lands
Upon her lips, and every birdlike wile
Within her speech: an angel-woman stands
Before me, snow-white,—free as flower from guile.
1876.
XXXI.
A PORTION OF BEATRICE
Ye strange fierce seas that listen to my song,
And all ye winds and mountains that rejoice
In unison with my uplifted voice,
And all ye streams that, one with me, are strong,
And all ye countless stars, a gold-crowned throng,
It is the last time, mark me, that I sing:
This summer breeze that trembles at my wing,
May eddy, unmolested, soon along.
For I am one with Beatrice: the pure
Sweet soul of her is part of me, and I
No longer, stricken into speech, endure
The lonely black abhorrence of the sky,
But into life glad, passing speech, secure,
I move: victorious now, my song may die.
1876.
XXXII.
TO STRANGE LANDS
I bear my lady unto other lands,
New spheres of thought,—through spirit-realms we fly:
As one who leads from under English sky
His bride to where dense tropic bloom expands,
Or shapes a home for her with thoughtful hands
Where through the groves Italian breezes sigh,—
Or 'neath the snowy glare of mountain high,—
Or 'mid the burning glare of Indian sands.
Yea, so, victorious, I would bear my lady,
From thought's first maiden regions, cool and shady,
Towards tropic lands of fiercer burning glee:
There not one friend shall follow her—for fear
Of thought's wide desert, silent, parched, and drear;
She shall live there alone,—alone with me.
1876.
XXXIII.
A WHITE FLOWER IN THE DESERT
And in that desert of void endless thought,
Like a white shining flower my love shall be;
A flower to bloom round and encourage me,
With tender petals marvellously wrought.
This gift, far rarer than all gifts I sought,
Shall be mine own: its utter purity
Shall make that desert like some grassy sea,
With lilies 'twixt the grass-blades twined and caught.
This one sweet flower amid the desert sands
Of hard fierce thought, a silver bloom, expands,
In token that one woman did not fear,
When all the other hearts of women failed,
Yea, shook like reeds,—yea, bent like twigs and quailed,—
To tread the desert, Love alone being near.
1876.
XXXIV.
THY TREASURE
The dewy lips of woman are not given
In any embrace of earth: so say you, friend?
They tarry for the pure desires of heaven,
For kisses soft and stainless, without end,—
For holy thoughts of love with no base leaven
Of this earth intermixed; for lovers pure
As angels whose embraces shall endure:—
Have maidens ever after such arms striven?
So say you? To this maiden then I say:
“I died, and died for ever, on the day
When thou didst grant thy sweet red mouth to him:—
To miss the sweet gift of thine earthly treasure
Is sorrow to me passing earthly measure,—
Yea, pain that fills my cup to the very rim!”
1876.
XXXV.
MY TREASURE
The earthly glory of manhood is not small,
Although the heavenly beauty may transcend
And utterly surpass it at the end:
It hath some blossoms, if it hath not all.
As we with laughing fingers downward bend
The glorious tree of youth, the great flowers fall
Around us, some so flaming that they appal
The vision,—such fierce petals they extend.
It is no slight thing thus to grasp the glory
Of fair sweet manhood,—thus to know the whole;
Not waiting for the grave head crowned and hoary,
But pressing quick lips 'gainst the fragrant bowl
Of youth; to inhale,—and in no fairy story,—
The perfume of a perfect body and soul.
1876.
XXXVI.
TIME AND I
“Time and I.”
—Cardinal Mazarin.
Yea, “Time and I;” so is it with us all.
Long patience, bitter suffering, sad defeat,
Ere victory and our triumph high we meet,—
Ere those grim towers of tribulation fall.
Yet one day with a singing soft and sweet
Shall gladness find us, bearing in her hands
For a fair crown, the praise of many lands,
And praise of lips proud conquering lips may greet.
I struggle slowly on: I wreathe my flowers
Of singing in a garland for the few
Who listen to the labour of long hours
With gentle hearts:—sharp toil I must renew,
Building the fabric of a gradual name,
Till “Time and I” becometh “I and Fame.”
1876.
