To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,— Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware, So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair; And a voice said in mastery while I strove,—
'Guess now who holds thee?'-'Death,' I said. But, there, The silver answer rang-'Not Death, but Love.'
Thou hast thy calling to some palace floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more. And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear To let thy music drop here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door? Look up and see the casement broken in, The bats and owlets builders in the roof! My cricket chirps against thy mandolin. Hush! call no echo up in further proof Of desolation! there's a voice within That weeps as thou must sing-alone, aloof.
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore,- Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.
My own beloved, who hast lifted me
From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown,
And in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown
A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully Shines out again, as all the angels see, Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own, Who camest to me when the world was gone, And I who looked for only God, found thee! I find thee; I am safe, and strong, and glad. As one who stands in dewless asphodel, Looks backward on the tedious time he had In the upper life-so I, with bosom-swell, Make witness, here, between the good and bad, That Love, as strong as Death, retrieves as well.
My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said, he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch my hand-a simple thing, Yet I wept for it! this-the paper's light- Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed As if God's future thundered on my past. This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled With lying at my heart that beat too fast : And this-O Love, thy words have ill availed, If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise ; I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith; I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,-I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!-and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
FROM 'CASA GUIDI WINDOWS.'
Then, gazing, I beheld the long-drawn street Live out, from end to end, full in the sun, With Austria's thousands; sword and bayonet, Horse, foot, artillery,-cannons rolling on
Like blind slow storm-clouds gestant with the heat Of undeveloped lightnings, each bestrode
By a single man, dust-white from head to heel, Indifferent as the dreadful thing he rode, Like sculptured Fate serene and terrible. As some smooth river which has overflowed, Will slow and silent down its current wheel A loosened forest, all the pines erect,
So swept, in mute significance of storm,
The marshalled thousands; not an eye deflects To left or right, to catch a novel form
Of Florence city adorned by architect
And carver, or of Beauties live and warm
Scared at the casements,-all, straightforward eyes And faces, held as steadfast as their swords, And cognizant of acts, not imageries.
The key, O Tuscans, too well fits the wards! Ye asked for mimes,-these bring you tragedies; For purple, these shall wear it as your lords. Ye played like children,-die like innocents. Ye mimicked lightnings with a torch,—the crack Of the actual bolt, your pastime circumvents. Ye called up ghosts, believing they were slack To follow any voice from Gilboa's tents,
Here's Samuel !—and, so, Grand-dukes come back!
What was he doing, the great God Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great God Pan, From the deep cool bed of the river: The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great God Pan, While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great God can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great God Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
'This is the way, laughed the great God Pan, (Laughed while he sat by the river,) 'The only way, since Gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.' Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river. Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great God Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great God Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man:
The true Gods sigh for the cost and pain,- For the reed which grows never more again As a reed with the reeds in the river.
THE FORCED RECRUIT. SOLFERINO, 1859.
In the ranks of the Austrian you found him, He died with his face to you all; Yet bury him here where around him You honour your bravest that fall. Venetian, fair-featured and slender,
He lies shot to death in his youth, With a smile on his lips, over-tender For any mere soldier's dead mouth. No stranger, and yet not a traitor,
Though alien the cloth on his breast, Underneath it how seldom a greater Young heart, has a shot sent to rest! By your enemy tortured and goaded
To march with them, stand in their file, His musket (see) never was loaded, He facing your guns with that smile!
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