2.4: Selection from The House of Life by Dante Gabriel Rosetti

This chapter contains a selection from The House of Life by Dante Gabriel Rosetti. The entire text can be viewed on Project Gutenberg.

PART II. CHANGE AND FATE

TRANSFIGURED LIFE

  As growth of form or momentary glance
  In a child's features will recall to mind
  The father's with the mother's face combin'd,—
  Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
  And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance,
  The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
  Till in the blended likeness now we find
  A separate man's or woman's countenance:—

  So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
  Its very parents, evermore expand
  To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain,
  By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd;
  And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
  There comes the sound as of abundant rain.

THE SONG-THROE

  By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
  O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
  Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
  Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
  Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
  Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
  Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh,
  That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.

  The Song-god—He the Sun-god—is no slave
  Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
  Fledges his shaft: to no august control
  Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
  But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
  The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.

THE SOUL'S SPHERE

  Come prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,—
  Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre
  Blazed with momentous memorable fire;—
  Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these?
  Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease
  Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight
  Conjectured in the lamentable night?…
  Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images!

  What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast
  The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
  Of Love's unquestioning unreveale'd span,—
  Visions of golden futures: or that last
  Wild pageant of the accumulated past
  That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.

INCLUSIVENESS

  The changing guests, each in a different mood,
  Sit at the roadside table and arise:
  And every life among them in likewise
  Is a soul's board set daily with new food.
  What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood
  How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
  Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
  Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?

  May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell
  In separate living souls for joy or pain?
  Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
  Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
  And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
  Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.

ARDOUR AND MEMORY

  The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring;
  The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows
  Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;
  The summer clouds that visit every wing
  With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;
  The furtive flickering streams to light re-born
  'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn,
  While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:—

  These ardour loves, and memory: and when flown
  All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight
  The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,
  Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone
  Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone;
  With ditties and with dirges infinite.

KNOWN IN VAIN

  As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
  Knows suddenly, with music high and soft,
  The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd
  Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
  With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope;
  Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they
  In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft
  Together, within hopeless sight of hope
  For hours are silent:—So it happeneth
  When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
  After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
  Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
  Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
  Follow the desultory feet of Death?

HEART OF THE NIGHT

  From child to youth; from youth to arduous man;
  From lethargy to fever of the heart;
  From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;
  From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban;—
  Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran
  Till now. Alas, the soul!—how soon must she
  Accept her primal immortality,—
  The flesh resume its dust whence it began?

  O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
  O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
  Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath:
  That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
  The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
  This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!

THE LANDMARK

  Was that the landmark? What,—the foolish well
  Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink,
  But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink
  In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell,
  (And mine own image, had I noted well!)
  Was that my point of turning?—I had thought
  The stations of my course should rise unsought,
  As altar-stone or ensigned citadel.

  But lo! the path is missed, I must go back,
  And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring
  Which once I stained, which since may have grown black.
  Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing
  As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening,
  That the same goal is still on the same track.

A DARK DAY

  The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs
  Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow
  Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now
  Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
  Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,
  Or hath but memory of the day whose plough
  Sowed hunger once,—the night at length when thou,
  O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?

  How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,
  Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
  Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe!
  Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead
  Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,
  Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.

AUTUMN IDLENESS

  This sunlight shames November where he grieves
  In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun
  The day, though bough with bough be over-run.
  But with a blessing every glade receives
  High salutation; while from hillock-eaves
  The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun,
  As if, being foresters of old, the sun
  Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves.

  Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic glass;
  Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the dew;
  Till eve bring rest when other good things pass.
  And here the lost hours the lost hours renew
  While I still lead my shadow o'er the grass,
  Nor know, for longing, that which I should do.

THE HILL SUMMIT

  This feast-day of the sun, his altar there
  In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
  And I have loitered in the vale too long
  And gaze now a belated worshipper.
  Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
  So journeying, of his face at intervals
  Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,—
  A fiery bush with coruscating hair.

  And now that I have climbed and won this height,
  I must tread downward through the sloping shade
  And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
  Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
  And see the gold air and the silver fade
  And the last bird fly into the last light.

THE CHOICE

I

  Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.
  Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
  Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
  Thy sultry hair up from my face that I
  May pour for thee this yellow wine, brim-high,
  Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
  We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours toil'd,
  Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.

  Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
  My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase
  Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way
  Through many days they toil; then comes a day
  They die not,—never having lived,—but cease;
  And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.

II

  Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die.
  Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
  Is not the day which God's word promiseth
  To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
  Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
  Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
  Even at the moment haply quickeneth
  The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
  Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.

  And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?
  Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
  Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
  Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
  Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.

  Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die.
  Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore,
  Thou say'st: 'Man's measured path is all gone o'er:
  Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
  Man clomb* until he touched the truth; and I,
  Even I, am he whom it was destined for.'
  How should this be? Art thou then so much more
  Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?

  Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
  Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
  Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
  Miles and miles distant though the grey line be,
  And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
  Still, leagues beyond those leagues there is more sea.

*[sic]

OLD AND NEW ART

I. ST. LUKE THE PAINTER

  Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
  For he it was (the aged legends say)
  Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
  Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
  Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
  How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
  Are symbols also in some deeper way,
  She looked through these to God and was God's priest.

  And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
  And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
  To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,
  Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
  Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
  Ere the night cometh and she may not work.

II. NOT AS THESE

  'I am not as these are,' the poet saith
  In youth's pride, and the painter, among men
  At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen,
  And shut about with his own frozen breath.
  To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith
  As poets,—only paint as painters,—then
  He turns in the cold silence; and again
  Shrinking, 'I am not as these are,' he saith.

  And say that this is so, what follows it?
  For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head,
  Such words were well; but they see on, and far.
  Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit
  Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead,—
  Say thou instead 'I am not as these are.'

III. THE HUSBANDMEN

  Though God, as one that is an householder,
  Called these to labour in his vine-yard first,
  Before the husk of darkness was well burst
  Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
  (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, 'Sir,
  Unto each man a penny:') though the worst
  Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst:
  Though God hath since found none such as these were
  To do their work like them:—Because of this
  Stand not ye idle in the market-place.
  Which of ye knoweth he is not that last
  Who may be first by faith and will?—yea, his
  The hand which after the appointed days
  And hours shall give a Future to their Past?

SOUL'S BEAUTY

  Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
  Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
  Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,
  I drew it in as simply as my breath.
  Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,
  The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw,
  By sea or sky or woman, to one law,
  The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.

  This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise
  Thy voice and hand shake still,—long known to thee
  By flying hair and fluttering hem,—the beat
  Following her daily of thy heart and feet,
  How passionately and irretrievably,
  In what fond flight, how many ways and days!

BODY'S BEAUTY

  Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
  (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
  That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,
  And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
  And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
  And, subtly of herself contemplative,
  Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
  Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

  The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
  Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
  And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
  Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
  Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
  And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

THE MONOCHORD

  Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound
  That is Life's self and draws my life from me,
  And by instinct ineffable decree
  Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?
  Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd,
  That 'mid the tide of all emergency
  Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
  Its difficult eddies labour in the ground?

  Oh! what is this that knows the road I came,
  The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,
  The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?—
  That draws round me at last this wind-warm space,
  And in regenerate rapture turns my face
  Upon the devious coverts of dismay?

FROM DAWN TO NOON

  As the child knows not if his mother's face
  Be fair; nor of his elders yet can deem
  What each most is; but as of hill or stream
  At dawn, all glimmering life surrounds his place:
  Who yet, tow'rd noon of his half-weary race,
  Pausing awhile beneath the high sun-beam
  And gazing steadily back,—as through a dream,
  In things long past new features now can trace:—

  Even so the thought that is at length fullgrown
  Turns back to note the sun-smit paths, all grey
  And marvellous once, where first it walked alone;
  And haply doubts, amid the unblenching day,
  Which most or least impelled its onward way,—
  Those unknown things or these things overknown.

MEMORIAL THRESHOLDS

  What place so strange,—though unrevealed snow
  With unimaginable fires arise
  At the earth's end,—what passion of surprise
  Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago?
  Lo! this is none but I this hour; and lo!
  This is the very place which to mine eyes
  Those mortal hours in vain immortalize,
  'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know.

  City, of thine a single simple door,
  By some new Power reduplicate, must be
  Even yet my life-porch in eternity,
  Even with one presence filled, as once of yore
  Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor
  Thee and thy years and these my words and me.

HOARDED JOY

  I said: 'Nay, pluck not,—let the first fruit be:
  Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red,
  But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head
  Sees in the stream its own fecundity
  And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we
  At the sun's hour that day possess the shade,
  And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade,
  And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?'

  I say: 'Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun
  Too long,—'tis fallen and floats adown the stream.
  Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one,
  And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam
  Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free,
  And the woods wail like echoes from the sea.'

BARREN SPRING

  So now the changed year's turning wheel returns
  And as a girl sails balanced in the wind,
  And now before and now again behind
  Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns,—
  So Spring comes merry towards me now, but earns
  No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
  With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
  And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns.

  Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
  This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
  To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
  Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
  Nor gaze till on the year's last lily-stem
  The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.

FAREWELL TO THE GLEN

  Sweet stream-fed glen, why say 'farewell' to thee
  Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth
  The brow of Time where man may read no ruth?
  Nay, do thou rather say 'farewell' to me,
  Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy
  Than erst was mine where other shade might soothe
  By other streams, what while in fragrant youth
  The bliss of being sad made melancholy.

  And yet, farewell! For better shalt thou fare
  When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow
  And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there
  In hours to come, than when an hour ago
  Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear
  And thy trees whispered what he feared to know.

VAIN VIRTUES

  What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
  None of the sins,—but this and that fair deed
  Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.
  These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell
  Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
  Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves
  Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom leaves
  Their refuse maidenhood abominable.

  Night sucks them down, the garbage of the pit,
  Whose names, half entered in the book of Life,
  Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair
  And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit
  To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife,
  The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.

LOST DAYS

  The lost days of my life until to-day,
  What were they, could I see them on the street
  Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
  Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
  Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
  Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
  Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
  The throats of men in Hell, who thirst alway?

  I do not see them here; but after death
  God knows I know the faces I shall see,
  Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
  'I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?'
  'And I—and I—thyself,' (lo! each one saith,)
  'And thou thyself to all eternity!'

DEATH'S SONGSTERS

  When first that horse, within whose populous womb
  The birth was death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate,
  Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
  Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home:
  She whispered, 'Friends, I am alone; come, come!'
  Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
  And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid
  His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.

  The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
  There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves,
  Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd,
  Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves…
  Say, soul,—are songs of Death no heaven to thee,
  Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?

HERO'S LAMP*

  That lamp thou fill'st in Eros name to-night,
  O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take
  To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake
  To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight.
  Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light
  On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break;
  While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake,
  Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.

  That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine
  Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree)
  Till some one man the happy issue see
  Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine:
  Which still may rest unfir'd; for, theirs or thine,
  O brother, what brought love to them or thee?

*After the deaths of Leander and Hero, the signal-lamp was dedicated to Anteros, with the edict that no man should light it unless his love had proved fortunate.

THE TREES OF THE GARDEN

  Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye
  Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
  And still stand silent:—is it all a show,
  A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
  Of some inexorable supremacy
  Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
  From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
  Sphinx-faced with unabashed augury?

  Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
  The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day
  Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
  Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
  Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall wage
  Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age.

'RETRO ME, SATHANA!'

  Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled,
  Stooping against the wind, a charioteer
  Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair,
  So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled
  Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world:
  Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air,
  It shall be sought and not found anywhere.
  Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled,
  Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath
  Much mightiness of men to win thee praise.
  Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways.
  Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path,
  Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath
  For certain years, for certain months and days.

LOST ON BOTH SIDES

  As when two men have loved a woman well,
  Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit;
  Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet
  And the long pauses of this wedding bell;
  Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
  At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
  Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
  The two lives left that most of her can tell:—

  So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
  The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
  And Peace before their faces perished since:
  So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
  They roam together now, and wind among
  Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.

THE SUN'S SHAME

I

  Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught
  From life; and mocking pulses that remain
  When the soul's death of bodily death is fain;
  Honour unknown, and honour known unsought;
  And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought
  On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
  And longed-for woman longing all in vain
  For lonely man with love's desire distraught;
  And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleasantness,
  Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,
  None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:—
  Beholding these things, I behold no less
  The blushing morn and blushing eve confess
  The shame that loads the intolerable day.

  As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress
  Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth
  May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth,
  'Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess,
  Such blessing of mine all coming years should bless;'—
  Then sends one sigh forth to the unknown goal,
  And bitterly feels breathe against his soul
  The hour swift-winged of nearer nothingness:—

  Even so the World's grey Soul to the green World
  Perchance one hour must cry: 'Woe's me, for whom
  Inveteracy of ill portends the doom,—
  Whose heart's old fire in shadow of shame is furl'd:
  While thou even as of yore art journeying,
  All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!'

MICHELANGELO'S KISS

  Great Michelangelo, with age grown bleak
  And uttermost labours, having once o'ersaid
  All grievous memories on his long life shed,
  This worst regret to one true heart could speak:—
  That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek,
  He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed,
  His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed,
  Her hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek.

  O Buonarruoti,—good at Art's fire-wheels
  To urge her chariot!—even thus the Soul,
  Touching at length some sorely-chastened goal,
  Earns oftenest but a little: her appeals
  Were deep and mute,—lowly her claim. Let be:
  What holds for her Death's garner? And for thee?

THE VASE OF LIFE

  Around the vase of Life at your slow pace
  He has not crept, but turned it with his hands,
  And all its sides already understands.
  There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race;
  Whose road runs far by sands and fruitful space;
  Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has pass'd;
  Who weeps, nor stays for weeping; who at last,
  A youth, stands somewhere crowned, with silent face.

  And he has filled this vase with wine for blood,
  With blood for tears, with spice for burning vow,
  With watered flowers for buried love most fit;
  And would have cast it shattered to the flood,
  Yet in Fate's name has kept it whole; which now
  Stands empty till his ashes fall in it.

LIFE THE BELOVED

  As thy friend's face, with shadow of soul o'erspread,
  Somewhile unto thy sight perchance hath been
  Ghastly and strange, yet never so is seen
  In thought, but to all fortunate favour wed;
  As thy love's death-bound features never dead
  To memory's glass return, but contravene
  Frail fugitive days, and always keep, I ween
  Than all new life a livelier lovelihead:—

  So Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love,
  Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger
  Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify;
  Though pale she lay when in the winter grove
  Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her
  And the red wings of frost-fire rent the sky.

A SUPERSCRIPTION

  Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
  I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
  Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
  Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
  Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
  Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
  Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
  Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.

  Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
  One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
  Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,
  Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
  Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart
  Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.

HE AND I

  Whence came his feet into my field, and why?
  How is it that he sees it all so drear?
  How do I see his seeing, and how hear
  The name his bitter silence knows it by?
  This was the little fold of separate sky
  Whose pasturing clouds in the soul's atmosphere
  Drew living light from one continual year:
  How should he find it lifeless? He, or I?

  Lo! this new Self now wanders round my field,
  With plaints for every flower, and for each tree
  A moan, the sighing wind's auxiliary:
  And o'er sweet waters of my life, that yield
  Unto his lips no draught but tears unseal'd,
  Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he.

NEWBORN DEATH

I

  To-day Death seems to me an infant child
  Which her worn mother Life upon my knee
  Has set to grow my friend and play with me;
  If haply so my heart might be beguil'd
  To find no terrors in a face so mild,—
  If haply so my weary heart might be
  Unto the newborn milky eyes of thee,
  O Death, before resentment reconcil'd.

  How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart
  Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand
  Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart,
  What time with thee indeed I reach the strand
  Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art,
  And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?

II

  And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss,
  With whom, when our first heart beat full and fast,
  I wandered till the haunts of men were pass'd,
  And in fair places found all bowers amiss
  Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss,
  While to the winds all thought of Death we cast:
  Ah, Life! and must I have from thee at last
  No smile to greet me and no babe but this?

  Lo! Love, the child once ours; and Song, whose hair
  Blew like a flame and blossomed like a wreath;
  And Art, whose eyes were worlds by God found fair;
  These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath
  With neck-twined arms, as oft we watched them there:
  And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death?

THE ONE HOPE

  When all desire at last and all regret
  Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain,
  What shall assuage the unforgotten pain
  And teach the unforgetful to forget?
  Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet,—
  Or may the soul at once in a green plain
  Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain
  And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet?

  Ah! when the wan soul in that golden air
  Between the scriptured petals softly blown
  Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown,
  Ah! let none other written spell soe'er
  But only the one Hope's one name be there,—
  Not less nor more, but even that word alone.

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