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 ■V. 
 
 THE DE VINNE PRESS 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction, by Richard Watson 
 Gilder 
 
 Poems by Mrs. Browning 
 
 Sonnets from the Portuguese . . 3 
 
 Life and Love 93 
 
 A Denial 95 
 
 Proof and Disproof 100 
 
 Question and Answer 104 
 
 Inclusions - .... 105 
 
 Insufficiency 107 
 
 Poems by Robert Browning 
 
 One Word More in 
 
 Prospice 131 
 
 "O Lyric Love," from "The Ring 
 
 and the Book " 134 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I 
 
 In the very heart and center of 
 our modern world of the nine- 
 teenth century there was en- 
 acted and immortally sung one 
 of the most exquisite love-his- 
 tories of which the world has 
 knowledge. The marriage of 
 Robert Browning and Eliza- 
 beth Barrett has been well 
 named " the most perfect ex- 
 ample of wedded happiness in 
 the history of literature — per- 
 fect in the inner life and perfect 
 in its poetical expression." 1 
 
 1 The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Brown- 
 ing. Edited with Biographical Additions 
 by Frederic G. Kenyon. 
 
Robert Browning, the bril- 
 liant author of " Bells and 
 Pomegranates," and Elizabeth 
 Barrett, 1 the popular and be- 
 loved poet, but also the se- 
 cluded invalid, had friends in 
 common. One of them was 
 Robert Hengist Home, the 
 author of " Orion." In the 
 preparation of a work of liter- 
 ary criticism, " A New Spirit 
 of the Age," he had the help of 
 friends, his " powerful and most 
 valuable " coadjutor being Miss 
 Barrett. Home afterward made 
 public "the fact that the mot- 
 toes, which are singularly happy 
 and appropriate, were for the 
 most part supplied by Miss 
 Barrett and Robert Browning, 
 then unknown to each other." 2 
 
 1 Robert Browning was born in the parish 
 of St. Giles, Camberwell, London, May 7, 
 1812, and died in Venice, December 12, 1889. 
 Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett was born 
 at Coxhoe Hall, near Durham, March 6, 1806, 
 and died in Florence, June 29, 1861. 
 
 2 Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
 
In April, 1842, Miss Barrett 
 pleases her blind mentor, Mr. 
 Boyd, by telling him, at his re- 
 quest, the names of those who 
 have liked her articles in 
 the " Athenaeum " on the Greek 
 poets. " Mr. Home, the poet, 
 and Mr. Browning were not 
 behind in appreciation," she 
 says ; and " Mr. Browning is 
 said to be learned in Greek, 
 especially in the dramatists." 
 In the next April she is writing 
 to Mr. Cornelius Matthews in 
 America, and again looms the 
 name of Browning. " I do as- 
 sure you," she says, " I never 
 saw him in my life— do not 
 know him even by correspon- 
 dence — and yet, whether 
 through fellow-feeling for Eleu- 
 sinian mysteries, or whether 
 through the more generous 
 motive of appreciation of his 
 
 Addressed to Robert Hengist Home, with 
 Comments on Contemporaries. Edited by 
 S. R. Townshend Mayer. 
 
act more fateful, to bring to her 
 the poet himself. " Kenyon 
 the magnificent," Browning 
 called him, as Bayard Taylor 
 tells us ; and it was to this 
 " dear friend and relative " that 
 Mrs. Browning inscribed her 
 lyric "The Dead Pan." Mr. 
 Kenyon, says Mrs. Orr, had 
 often spoken to the Browning 
 family of his invalid cousin, 
 and had given them copies of 
 her works. As early as 1841, 
 indeed, Kenyon had tried to 
 bring about a meeting between 
 the poets, but Miss Barrett had 
 shrunk from it. But when the 
 poet returned to England, late 
 in 1844, he saw the volume 
 containing " Lady Geraldine's 
 Courtship," which had ap- 
 peared during his absence, and 
 which Kenyon had sent to 
 Miss Browning. " On hearing 
 him express his admiration of 
 it, Kenyon begged him to write 
 
to Miss Barrett, and himself 
 tell her how the poems had im- 
 pressed him ; ' for,' he added, 
 'my cousin is a great invalid, 
 and sees no one; but great 
 souls jump at sympathy.' " 1 
 
 At this time, be it remem- 
 bered, Elizabeth Barrett was an 
 accepted poet in both England 
 and America, while Robert 
 Browning was slowly approach- 
 ing, through both critical de- 
 preciation and approval, the 
 assured fame of his after years. 
 When, therefore, the young 
 Browning read in " Lady Ger- 
 aldine's Courtship " words of 
 high recognition, his keen ap- 
 preciation of the writer's genius, 
 and his natural desire for a 
 wider audience, gave the lines 
 to him a very special impor- 
 tance. How familiar now to 
 
 1 Life and Letters of Robert Browning, 
 by Mrs. Sutherland Orr. For Browning's 
 own account of this see his lettter to E. B. B., 
 postmarked November 17, 1845. 
 
the world the stanza is, with its 
 large associations : 
 
 Or at times a modern volume, 
 Wordsworth's solemn-thought- 
 ed idyl, 
 
 Howitt's ballad-verse, or Tennyson's 
 enchanted reverie, — 
 
 Or from Browning some " Pome- 
 granate," which, if cut deep 
 down the middle, 
 
 Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, 
 of a veined humanity. 
 
 The correspondence that be- 
 gan with Browning's letter to 
 Elizabeth Barrett of January 
 10, 1845, and the meeting 
 which took place on May 20th 
 of the same year, led quickly to 
 a great love — amply and ex- 
 quisitely expressed in the mem- 
 orable correspondence before 
 marriage ; uniquely and with 
 splendid art, in the poetry of 
 both. To her friends, mean- 
 time, as the friendship budded 
 and blossomed, Elizabeth, while 
 
keeping her secret, did not re- 
 frain from conveying her ad- 
 miration for her poet acquaint- 
 ance, and her joy in knowing 
 him. As we read her early 
 correspondence and catch the 
 name of Browning again and 
 again, we seem to hear the 
 footstep of fate : we are, as 
 the later Kenyon says, "like 
 the spectators at a Greek trag- 
 edy who watch the develop- 
 ment of a drama of which the 
 denouement is already known 
 to them." 
 
 Early in her year of miracle, 
 1845, she writes to Mrs. 
 Martin: "I had a letter from 
 Browning the poet last night, 
 which threw me into ecstasies 
 — Browning, the author of 
 ' Paracelsus,' and king of the 
 mystics"; and once more: 
 " I am getting deeper and 
 deeperinto correspondence with 
 Robert Browning, poet and 
 
mystic, and we are growing 
 to be the truest of friends." 
 To Mr. Westwood, in April, 
 1845, she expresses her delight 
 in his appreciation of this 
 poet's " high power — very high, 
 according to my view — very 
 high, and various." In May 
 she writes to an acquaintance 
 in America that Mr. Browning 
 "is a poet for posterity. I have 
 a full faith in him as poet and 
 prophet." To Poe she writes : 
 " Our great poet, Mr. Browning, 
 is enthusiastic in his admiration 
 of the rhythm" of "The Raven." 1 
 To Mr. Westwood, again, she 
 writes, asking him to tell her 
 honestly if he discovers in her 
 "anything like the Sphinxine- 
 ness of Browning." As for 
 Browning, she says, " the fault 
 is certainly great," but she 
 finds that " the depth and 
 
 1 John H. Ingram's Life of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing. 
 
 xiv 
 
power of the significance (when 
 it is apprehended) glorifies the 
 puzzle." In May of this year 
 she returns to the inescapable 
 subject in writing to Mr. West- 
 wood, telling him that when he 
 has read " Sordello " he must 
 "read for relaxation and rec- 
 ompense . . . ' Colombe's Birth- 
 day,' which is exquisite," 
 though it is " Pippa Passes " 
 that she " kneels to with deep- 
 est reverence." Later, she 
 praises, to Mrs. Martin, Lan- 
 dor's verses to him whom she 
 calls "my friend and England's 
 poet, Mr. Browning." Early 
 in 1846 she tells Mrs. Martin 
 that a friend, " one of the 
 greatest poets in England, too," 
 has brought her flowers. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett's love- 
 poems can now be read in the 
 light of her love-letters, with 
 which they exquisitely inter- 
 blend. These love-letters give 
 
her chief prose version of their 
 courtship. But there is a letter 
 of hers to Mrs. Martin, written 
 from Pisa in October of 1846, 
 which with great explicitness 
 and moving eloquence reviews 
 the circumstances of her ac- 
 quaintance with Browning, and 
 of her marriage without the 
 consent or knowledge of the 
 strangest father in the annals 
 of literature. Mr. Barrett's 
 treatment of the three children 
 who dared to marry, and above 
 all of a daughter who was 
 no less dutiful and affectionate 
 than she was splendid and 
 world-renowned in talents, was 
 so astoundingly hard and unre- 
 lenting that one is appalled 
 into reticence of censure, and 
 into wondering contemplation 
 of the psychological peculiari- 
 ties that could bring about such 
 hideously unpaternal conduct, 
 — questioning, as one must, 
 
whether it could have been 
 this gross stubbornness in him 
 that turned to mental and moral 
 force in the frail and wonder- 
 ful being who was his child. 
 The marriage took place on 
 September 12, 1846. They 
 flew at once to that " warm 
 climate " which had been wisely 
 prescribed for Elizabeth, but 
 which her father had forbidden 
 her, and where comparatively 
 good health and undreamed-of 
 happiness awaited her. 
 
 But the whole story is com- 
 passed, in brief, in this one let- 
 ter to Mrs. Martin : how she 
 had been, after what broke her 
 heart at Torquay,— her bro- 
 ther's death, — as dead as if she 
 had her face against a grave ; 
 how five years before Mr. Ken- 
 yon had wished to bring Robert 
 Browning to see her, but she 
 had refused, in her blind dislike 
 to seeing strangers ; how, after 
 
the publication of her last vol- 
 umes, he wrote to her; how 
 their correspondence led to her 
 agreeing to see him as she never 
 had received any other man. 
 He wrote, she said, the most 
 exquisite letters possible, hav- 
 ing a way of putting things, 
 and she consented — against her 
 will. Then began his attach- 
 ment, "infatuation call it," re- 
 sisting the various denials 
 which were her plain duty at 
 the beginning, and persisting 
 past them all. She began, she 
 said, with a grave assurance 
 that she was in an exceptional 
 position, and saw him just in 
 consequence of it, and that he 
 must not recur to " that sub- 
 ject." He was for a while si- 
 lent, but meantime the letters 
 and the visits "rained down 
 more and more." She tried to 
 show him he was throwing into 
 the ashes his best affections; 
 
but he said he loved her, and 
 should, to his last hour. He 
 would wait twenty years, if she 
 pleased. He preferred to be 
 allowed to sit only an hour a 
 day at her side, to the fulfilment 
 of the brightest dream that 
 should exclude her, in any pos- 
 sible world. Then she tells 
 how the doctor had said that 
 all she needed was a " warm 
 climate and air," and her fa- 
 ther was no help to her in this. 
 He was not in favor of Italy ; 
 his attitude " involved a disap- 
 pointment in the affections." 
 She tries, in her letter, to palliate 
 the attitude of her father, and 
 explains with pathetic elabora- 
 tion why a secret marriage and 
 a flight to Italy were necessary 
 to her life and her happiness, 
 as well as a measure due to her 
 faithful and unselfish lover. 
 Then comes the praise of their 
 six happy weeks together, and, 
 
above all, her praise of him of 
 whom she says that " his genius 
 and all but miraculous attain- 
 ments are the least things in 
 him, the moral nature being of 
 the very noblest, as all who 
 ever knew him admit." 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett's chief po- 
 etic version of this courtship 
 has long been known to the 
 world in her so-called "Son- 
 nets from the Portuguese," of 
 which it has been said that they 
 are "the most beautiful love- 
 poems ever written by woman 
 to man," 1 and that they are 
 " unequalled by any English 
 sonnet-series except Shake- 
 speare's own." 2 Mrs. Ritchie 
 says truly of these " Sonnets " : 
 " There is a quality in them 
 which is beyond words ; an 
 echo from afar which belongs 
 
 1 A Selection from Mrs. Browning's Poems, 
 by Heloise E. Hersey. 
 
 2 Victorian Poets, by Edmund Clarence 
 Stedman. 
 
to the highesthuman expression 
 of feeling." 1 The complete 
 story of their composition, and 
 of their revelation to him who 
 was their inspiration, has only 
 been put forth since the death 
 of Robert Browning. 
 
 It was during their residence 
 in Pisa, early in 1847, that 
 Browning first saw the " Son- 
 nets from the Portuguese," as 
 the poet Edmund Gosse has 
 told by authority of Browning 
 himself. 2 "Their custom was, 
 
 1 Dictionary of National Biography. 
 
 - Critical Kit-Kats, by Edmund Gosse. 
 Mr. Gosse, by his paper on the Sonnets from 
 ihe Portuguese, and in his account of 
 Browning's Early Career, first published 
 in the Century Magazine and reprinted in 
 Robert Browning — Personalia, has placed 
 all readers of the Brownings under perma- 
 nent obligations. It is interesting to recall 
 that this latter article was prepared for the 
 Century Magazine with Browning's con- 
 sent and cooperation, and that, opposed as 
 was Browning to contribute to periodicals, he 
 allowed two pieces of verse of his to appear 
 in the Century — the lines written in Miss 
 Edith Bronson's album in explanation of his 
 " Touch him ne'er so lightly " (the Century 
 for November, 1882), and the Rawdon Brown 
 sonnet, written at Mrs. Bronson's request 
 
Mr. Browning said, to write 
 alone, and not to show each 
 other what they had written. 
 This was a rule which he some- 
 times broke through, but she 
 never. He had the habit of 
 working in a down-stairs room, 
 where their meals were spread, 
 while Mrs. Browning studied in 
 a room on the floor above. One 
 day, early in 1847, their break- 
 fast being over, Mrs. Browning 
 went up-stairs, whileherhusband 
 stood at the window watching 
 the street till the table should 
 be cleared. He was presently 
 aware of some one behind him, 
 although the servant was gone. 
 It was Mrs. Browning, who held 
 him by the shoulder to prevent 
 his turning to look at her, and 
 
 (the Century for February, 1884). Here also, 
 after his death, were published Mrs. Bron- 
 son's two papers of recollections of the poet. 
 Thus were continued the Brownings' tra- 
 ditional relations with America. See, also, 
 The Brownings and America, by Elizabeth 
 Porter Gould. 
 
 xxii 
 
at the same time pushed a 
 packet of papers into the pocket 
 of his coat. She told him to 
 read that, and to tear it up if he 
 did not like it ; and then she 
 fled again to her own room." 
 All this was in fulfilment of 
 prophecy ; for had she not said 
 in her letter of July 22, 1846, 
 as much as this about the "Son- 
 nets" : " You shall see some day 
 at Pisa what I will not show 
 you now. Does not Solomon 
 say that ' there is a time to read 
 what is written'? If he doesn't, 
 he ought." 
 
 Browning, notwithstanding 
 his intense love of privacy, 
 took the right ground concern- 
 ing these works of inimitable 
 art. " I dared not reserve to my- 
 self," he said, " the finest sonnets 
 written in any language since 
 Shakespeare's." Mrs. Browning 
 finally consented to their being 
 printed, under Miss Mitford's 
 
care, as " Sonnets | by | E. B. 
 B. | Reading | Not for Publi- 
 cation | 1847," and in the edi- 
 tion of her poems brought out 
 in 1850 they were actually pub- 
 lished, with their present title, 
 which was suggested by her 
 husband. The author's sug- 
 gestion had been " Sonnets 
 translated from the Bosnian " ; 
 but Browning, who called the 
 author of " Catarina to Carao- 
 ens " his " own little Portu- 
 guese," named the title that 
 prevailed. 1 
 
 Every one of the forty-four 
 " Sonnets from the Portuguese " 
 follows the Italian method 
 rather than the English or 
 Shaksperian sonnet form. With- 
 in the form chosen they have 
 an interesting mingling of reg- 
 
 1 Professor Dowden speaks of " the unex- 
 pected and wonderful gift " of the Son- 
 nets to her husband at Pisa, as "the high- 
 est evidence of his wife's powers as a poet." 
 Robert Browning, by' Edward Dowden. 
 
ularity with irregularity. In 
 only seven of the sonnets (Son- 
 nets IV, VIII, XIII, XVI, XXVII, 
 
 xxxv, and xliii) is there a 
 full pause at the end of the oc- 
 tave. Otherwise there is great 
 regularity, the whole forty-four 
 poems having the same scheme 
 of rhymes, there being uniformly 
 but two rhymes in the octave 
 and two in t"he sestet (ar- 
 ranged thus: 1,2,2,1; 1,2,2, 
 1 i 3,4,3,4,3,4)- In the seven 
 sonnets where there is a full 
 pause at the end of the octave, 
 six of these are true pauses, but 
 in one (Sonnet xliii) there 
 are other pauses which break 
 the effect of the octave. Again, 
 in only three of these seven 
 (Sonnets iv, xm, and xliii) 
 are the quatrains of the octave 
 marked. Speaking technically, 
 then, Sonnets iv and xm 
 are the nearest perfection, 
 though as poems they rank no 
 
higher than others in the se- 
 ries. In this series, though there 
 are such rhymes as " burn " and 
 "scorn," " desert" and " heart," 
 "south" and "truth," the 
 writer has fortunately not ven- 
 tured upon such extreme exper- 
 iments in rhyming as earlier 
 she conscientiously pursued. 1 
 It may be further noted that in 
 fourteen of her other group of 
 forty-four sonnets, all in the 
 Italian form, she rhymes differ- 
 ently in the sestet. 
 
 In the body of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's poetry, — as artistic as it 
 often is, and as lofty in spirit 
 as it always is,— the judicious 
 
 1 For a competent discussion of Mrs. 
 Browning's earlier theory and practice in 
 the matter of rhyme see Fernand Henry's 
 Les Sonnets Portugais (1905), which con- 
 tains the third French translation of the 
 Sonnets from the Portuguese, along with 
 a sympathetic life of the author and a just 
 appreciation of her writings. M. Henry is 
 struck, as must be all critical readers, by 
 the fact that Mrs. Browning's prose — her 
 published correspondence — is not marred 
 by the faults apparent in much of her verse. 
 
have again and again to grieve 
 at a touch of incongruity, a 
 strained note which vitiates the 
 art. Even in these " Sonnets " 
 that note is not absent ; but it is 
 rare here, and it is quickly for- 
 gotten in the rush of noble pas- 
 sion outpoured in tones seraphic. 
 No technical analysis can 
 discover the elements of end- 
 less attraction and power of in- 
 spiration contained in these 
 poems. It would seem as if 
 the breaking down of the bar- 
 rier between octave and ses- 
 tet, in this case, was by in- 
 stinctive and fortunate choice, 
 and in accordance with the pe- 
 culiar and individual flow of 
 thought and diction. This 
 thought and this diction are in- 
 deed intensely individual ; they 
 are tinctured with the artistic 
 habit and the singular experi- 
 ence of this one woman, — an 
 invalid, familiar with the thought 
 
of death, and a scholarly and 
 accomplished poet,— loved, as 
 it seemed to her miraculously, 
 by a strong man and a great 
 poet. Her education and her 
 life-history were different from 
 other women's ; her lover was 
 infinitely different from other 
 men. Nevertheless, these ac- 
 cidents of circumstance offer no 
 interference to the universality 
 of the appeal of her inspired 
 song; and the lyric passion of 
 these "Sonnets" will remain for- 
 ever a unique, vital, and typical 
 expression of the awakening 
 and consecration of love in the 
 heart of woman. 
 
 Indeed, these " Sonnets," in 
 their profound vision ; their 
 flaming sincerity, the eloquence 
 with which they express the 
 utter self-abnegation no less 
 than the self-assertion of gen- 
 uine love, transcend the distinc- 
 tions of sex and proclaim au- 
 
thenticallynot only the woman's 
 part, but, also, that which is 
 common, in the master passion, 
 to both woman and man. 
 
 But the artistic language of 
 her love-experience was not 
 confined to this great poem- 
 series. It was framed also in 
 other exquisite and noble verse, 
 namely, in the six poems, " Life 
 and Love," " A Denial," "Proof 
 and Disproof," " Question and 
 Answer," " Inclusions," and 
 "Insufficiency," which are 
 printed in Mrs. Browning's 
 works just before the " Son- 
 nets from the Portuguese." 1 
 
 Her poem-series of " Casa 
 Guidi Windows " gives us de- 
 lightful glimpses of their com- 
 mon joy— in later, peaceful, 
 married years— in those Italian 
 scenes which were to each a 
 passion : 
 
 1 See the Coxhoe edition ; also The Let- 
 ters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Mr. 
 Gosse's Essay. 
 
And Vallombrosa, we two went to 
 see 
 Last June, beloved companion, — 
 where sublime 
 The mountains live in holy families, 
 And the slow pine woods ever 
 climb and climb 
 Half up their breasts. 
 
 How oft, indeed, 
 We 've sent our souls out from the 
 rigid north, 
 On bare white feet which would not 
 print nor bleed, 
 To climb the Alpine passes and look 
 forth, 
 Where booming low the Lombard 
 rivers lead - 
 To gardens, vineyards, all a dream 
 is worth, — 
 Sights, thou and I, Love, have 
 seen afterward 
 From Tuscan Bellosguardo, wide 
 awake, 
 When, standing on the actual 
 blessed sward 
 Where Galileo stood at nights to take 
 The vision of the stars, we have 
 found it hard, 
 Gazing upon the earth and heaven, 
 to make 
 A choice of beauty. 
 
 XXX 
 
II 
 
 It is extremely interesting to 
 find not only that Browning did 
 not know that his friend was 
 constantly expressing her inti- 
 mate thought of him in verse, 
 but that he gave a reason for 
 the fact that he did not express 
 his own affection for her in po- 
 etic form. In the April of 1845, 
 three weeks before their meet- 
 ing, he wrote : " I think I will 
 really write verse to you some 
 day." And a year later, April 
 14, 1846, he says he will see 
 her the next day, adding : "I 
 will tell you many things, it 
 seems to me now, but when I 
 am with you they always float 
 out of mind. The feelings must 
 
remain unwritten— unsung too, 
 I fear. I very often fancy that 
 if I had never before resorted 
 to that mode of expression, to 
 singing, — poetry — now I should 
 resort to it, discover it ! Where- 
 as now — my very use and ex- 
 perience of it deters me — if one 
 phrase of mine should seem 
 ' poetical ' in Mrs. Procter's 
 sense — a conscious exaggera- 
 tion, — put in for effect ! only 
 seem, I say! So I dare not try 
 yet — but one day!" 
 
 The above words are the very 
 precursor and proem of "One 
 Word More": 
 
 What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's 
 picture? 
 
 This : no artist lives and loves, that 
 longs not 
 
 Once, and only once, and for one 
 only, 
 
 (Ah, the prize!) to find his love a 
 language 
 
 Fit and fair and simple and suffi- 
 cient — 
 
Using nature that 's an art to others, 
 Not, this one time, art that 's turned 
 
 his nature. 
 Ay, of all the artists living, loving, 
 None but would forego his proper 
 
 dowry, — 
 Does he paint? he fain would write 
 
 a poem,— 
 Does he write? he fain would paint 
 
 a picture, 
 Put to proof art alien to the artist's, 
 Once, and only once, and for one 
 
 only, 
 So to be the man and leave the artist, 
 Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's 
 
 sorrow. 
 
 I shall never, in the years remaining, 
 
 Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you 
 statues, 
 
 Make you music that should all- 
 express me ; 
 
 So it seems: I stand on my attain- 
 ment. 
 
 This of verse alone, one life allows 
 me ; 
 
 Verse and nothing else have I to 
 give you. 
 
 Other heights in other lives, God 
 willing : 
 
 All the gifts from all the heights, 
 your own, Love! 
 xxxiii 
 
So little need was there in their 
 life together for expression in 
 art of their feeling for each 
 other that Browning's " one 
 day" did not come till nine 
 years after his letter of 1846 
 promising a poem to her. "One 
 Word More " was written in 
 September, 1855, at T 3 Dorset 
 Street, London, while Mr. and 
 Mrs. Browning were staying 
 there with Miss Browning. 
 Professor Dowden says truly 
 that " the year 1855 was a for- 
 tunate year for English poetry." 
 The book of Browning's " Men 
 and Women " was published in 
 the autumn, with its " beautiful 
 epilogue, addressed to E. B. B." 
 A few months before had ap- 
 peared Tennyson's " Maud." 
 It was one memorable night 
 during this autumn, by the way, 
 that occurred the reading of the 
 whole of " Maud " by its au- 
 thor, with the Brownings and 
 
Rossettis as audience, of which 
 Dante Rossetti's sketch is a 
 well-known relic. It will be 
 remembered that the reading of 
 " Maud " by the author was fol- 
 lowed by " Fra Lippo Lippi " 
 read by Browning. 
 
 " One Word More " is the 
 only poem written during his 
 wife's lifetime that is openly 
 addressed to her by Browning. 1 
 How much of his wife, and of 
 his experience as her lifelong 
 lover, went into his poetry it 
 would be impossible accurately 
 to detect and measure. So elu- 
 sive are the workings of the 
 artist's mind, so replete with 
 suggestions and analogies are 
 the poet's dreams, so full of 
 meaning within meaning may 
 be the images and symbols of 
 
 1 Mr. George Willis Cooke, in A Guide 
 Book to the Poetic and Dramatic Works of 
 Robert Browning, quotes from W. M. Ros- 
 setti's article in the Academy concerning 
 certain inaccurate references of Browning 
 to Dante in. this poem. 
 
 XXXV 
 
poetry, it would be idle to en- 
 deavor to determine where in- 
 vention ends, and exact de- 
 scription and autobiographical 
 confession begin. Of this we 
 may be sure, that the imagina- 
 tion of Browning was immea- 
 surably enriched and deeply 
 and permanently colored by his 
 relation to his wife, and by her 
 personality and her art, as in 
 like manner was her imagina- 
 tion by him; and that in one 
 poem, his longest, "The Ring 
 and the Book," her influence 
 was direct and dominating. As 
 "One Word More" was the 
 only poem publicly addressed to 
 Mrs. Browning by her husband 
 during her life, so the references 
 to her in the Pacchiarotto " Epi- 
 logue," and in " The Ring and 
 the Book" and the last three 
 lines of " Prospice " seem to be 
 the only open references to her 
 in his poetry after her death. 
 
As she referred directly to her 
 husband in " Casa Guidi Win- 
 dows," so there are minor ref- 
 erences in his poems which 
 point to his living wife, as in 
 " By the Fireside " : 
 
 I will speak now, 
 No longer watch you as you sit 
 Reading by fire-light, that great brow 
 And the spirit-small hand propping 
 it, 
 Mutely, my heart knows how — 
 
 When, if I think but deep enough, 
 You are wont to answer, prompt 
 as rhyme ; 
 
 and in " The Guardian Angel, 
 a Picture of Fano," where they 
 had been together : 
 
 We were at Fano, and three times 
 we went 
 To sit and see him in his chapel 
 there, 
 And drink his beauty to our soul's 
 content 
 — My angel with me too : 
 c xxxvii 
 
Again in the last stanza : 
 
 My love is here. 
 
 William Sharp, in his " Life of 
 Browning," says he has been 
 told that "'Two in the Cam- 
 pagna ' was as actually personal 
 as ' The Guardian Angel,' " 
 though " too universally true to 
 be merely personal." "A Face," 
 which has been thought to be, 
 possibly, a portrait of Mrs. 
 Browning, really describes Em- 
 ily Patmore, daughter of the 
 poet, Coventry Patmore. 1 
 
 The lyric, " My Star," has 
 been held, according to the 
 Riverside Edition, and other 
 authorities, to refer pointedly 
 to the poet's wife : 
 
 MY STAR 
 
 All I know 
 
 Of a certain star 
 Is, it can throw 
 
 (Like the angled spar) 
 
 1 Robert Browning, by Professor Dowden. 
 xxxviii 
 
Now a dart of red, 
 
 Now a dart of blue ; 
 Till my friends have said 
 
 They would fain see, too, 
 My star that dartles the red, and the 
 
 blue! 
 Then it stops like a bird ; like a 
 flower, hangs furled : 
 They must solace themselves with 
 the Saturn above it. 
 What matter to me if their star is a 
 world ? 
 Mine has opened its soul to me; 
 therefore I love it. 
 
 On the question as to whether 
 it is, in fact, Mrs. Browning 
 who is here imaged I am per- 
 mitted to quote from private let- 
 ters of Miss Charlotte Porter, 
 who says : " There is, I think, 
 no ' absolutely authentic proof ' 
 that ' My Star ' is addressed to 
 Mrs. Browning. There is a 
 tradition that it is. I have al- 
 ways found ' It is said ' echoed 
 as to ' My Star,' just as it is in the 
 Riverside note and in notes 
 preceding that. And it is so 
 
long established a hearsay that 
 I shall not be surprised if some 
 one is found to say that 
 ' Browning told me so.' As you 
 know, the place given it by 
 Browning in the 'Selected 
 Poems/ first in Vol. I, may be 
 significant ; but, on the other 
 hand, it appeared for the first 
 time in ' Men and Women ' 
 (1855), without distinctive 
 place, namely, thirteenth, be- 
 tween ' A Serenade ' and ' In- 
 stans Tyrannus.' I think I 
 must add that, personally, I do 
 not believe, for ' exquisite rea- 
 sons ' of my own, that ' My 
 Star ' was written in any pecu- 
 liar sense to Mrs. Browning, 
 while I think scarcely any love- 
 lyric he published after they 
 met does not taste of her ' as the 
 wine must taste of its own 
 grapes.' There are things, like 
 this, that are imaginatively 
 dramatized out of— out and 
 
away from — some section of 
 a mood inspired by her." 
 
 I must add that some who 
 were close to Browning write 
 to me from Italy that they do 
 not think "My Star" referred 
 to her, because he so often used 
 it in deference to requests for 
 autographs. That she was his 
 " Star," in a sense, we have his 
 own authority for saying — in his 
 letter to her postmarked No- 
 vember 10,1845. "I believed," 
 he says, ' ' in your glorious genius 
 and knew it for a true star from 
 the moment I sawit; longbefore 
 I had the blessing of knowing it 
 was my star, with my fortune 
 and futurity in it." 1 
 
 But we must not be con- 
 fused by resemblances. A poet 
 friend of mine thinks the ap- 
 parent acknowledgment of in- 
 feriority in the "star" of the 
 poem precludes the belief that 
 
 1 The capitals are Browning's. 
 xli 
 
the symbol is literally applica- 
 ble to the poet's wife, though it 
 may have been that the thought 
 of her as a star had to do with 
 its origin. 
 
 The discussion as to this 
 lyric has an interest outside of 
 its immediate subject, and I am 
 fortunately able to share with 
 my readers a letter from an- 
 other poet friend, Mr. Edmund 
 Gosse, of date April 17, 1905. 
 "I cannot," he says, "for a 
 moment consent to believe that 
 ' My Star ' refers to E. B. B. 
 What is the analysis of the 
 symbol ? Somebody or some- 
 thing is like spar — an object 
 hiding in a dark place, abso- 
 lutely invisible to the ordinary 
 gazer, but flashing (to the poet, 
 — who stands or moves at a 
 particular angle— ) ' now a dart 
 of red, now a dart of blue.' 
 The poet has discovered this 
 'star,' and has praised it so 
 
 xlii 
 
loudly and so long that his 
 friends cluster round and 'would 
 fain see it too . . .' But he can- 
 not show it. It is invisible to 
 any eye but his, and they must 
 solace themselves with the pub- 
 licity of Saturn. All this is in- 
 compatible with the idea of E. 
 B. B., who was a famous poet, 
 extremely before the public, 
 herself a ' Saturn ' long before 
 R. B. knew her. 
 
 " My own conviction," adds 
 Mr. Gosse, "has always been 
 that R. B. did not indicate a 
 person at all by ' My Star.' I 
 think he meant a certain pe- 
 culiarly individual quality of 
 beauty in verse, or something- 
 analogous. He was sure that 
 it flashed its red and blue at 
 him, was a bird to him and a 
 flower, but he despaired (this 
 is quite an early poem) of mak- 
 ing his contemporaries see it. 
 They must solace themselves 
 
 xliii 
 
with Wordsworth, or with Ten- 
 nyson, or with the famous and 
 popular E. B. B., or with the 
 recognized and hieratic forms 
 of aesthetic beauty. Some years 
 ago, I came across by accident 
 a phrase of the French sculptor 
 Preault. He said : ' L'art, c'est 
 cette etoile : je la vois et vous 
 ne la voyez pas.' Was not R. B. 
 thinking of this ? Preault was 
 by a few years his senior. I 
 have never made use of this, 
 but I give it to you as (I think) 
 important. That the Star had 
 nothing whatever to do with 
 E. B. B. I regard as absolutely 
 certain." 
 
 Long after her death, in the 
 first stanza of the " Epilogue " 
 to the " Pacchiarotto " volume, 
 we have these words : 
 
 "The poets pour us wine—" 
 Said the dearest poet I ever knew, 
 Dearest and greatest and best to 
 me. 
 
 xliv 
 
The personal note in "Pro- 
 spice " is open and evident, as 
 also are the references to his 
 wife in " The Ring and the 
 Book." As to " Prospice," — 
 written in the autumn following 
 his wife's death, — no nobler, 
 more courageous trumpet-note 
 of conviction and aspiration 
 was ever uttered : no ambiguity 
 here, no grotesquery of thought 
 or phrase, nothing for com- 
 mentator to clarify or explain. 
 The height of feeling in Brown- 
 ing means the height of clear 
 and adequate expression. The 
 passage in " The Ring and the 
 Book" beginning 
 
 O lyric Love, half angel and half bird, 
 
 is there in all the writings of 
 Browning a strain of more sat- 
 isfying and exalted beauty ? If 
 Keats should come again and 
 a lover of Browning and of 
 xlv 
 
Keats should wish to convince 
 at a stroke the bright revenant 
 of the high genius and imagi- 
 nation of the later poet, what 
 poem or passage would he be 
 more likely to select ? And how 
 exquisitely fitting it is that this 
 should be so! Is it too much 
 to say that nothing endears 
 Browning to his readers quite 
 so strongly as this one lyric 
 burst of celestialpassion, spoken 
 not dramatically, but with full 
 and spontaneous personality? 
 And here, too, is the fulfilment 
 of prophecy! For in her let- 
 ter to him of May 26, 1846, his 
 future wife, while praising his 
 dramatic art and saying that 
 all are agreed that " there is 
 none so great faculty as the dra- 
 matic," yet is conscious of 
 wishing him " to take the other 
 crown besides." She desires 
 him, after having made "his 
 own creatures speak in clear 
 
 xlvi 
 
human voices," to speak him- 
 self " out of that personality 
 which God made, and with 
 the voice which he tuned into 
 such power and sweetness of 
 speech." " With an inferior 
 power," she pleads, " you might 
 have taken yourself closer to 
 the hearts and lives of men, 
 and made yourself dearer, 
 though being less great. There- 
 fore I do want you to do this 
 with your surpassing power. 
 It will be so easy to you to 
 speak, and so noble when 
 spoken." Noble, indeed, are 
 the poems in which he speaks 
 thus straightforthly and with- 
 out dramatic indirection, as 
 in this "lyric Love" invoca- 
 tion, in " One Word More," 
 in " Prospice," and (with 
 many other poems) in his 
 swan-song of the " Epilogue " 
 to "Asplando" — this last a 
 twin utterance to " Prospice," 
 
 xlvii 
 
and a shout in the face of 
 death. 1 
 
 The " lyric Love " passage 
 in "The Ring and the Book" 
 recalls the poignant personal 
 note in the invocation to Light 
 at the beginning of the third 
 book of "Paradise Lost." The 
 lost and unreturning Light of 
 the blind Milton, which, in his 
 invocation, he desired should 
 be replaced by the inward Ce- 
 lestial Light, and Browning's 
 lost companion, " half angel 
 and half bird," the benediction 
 of whose spirit he rapturously 
 craved — these are the occasions 
 of the noblest passages in the 
 chief poems of the early and 
 the later bard. 
 
 The closing lines of "The 
 Ring and the Book " take up 
 the figure of the ring again, 
 
 1 How characteristic that Browning's 
 swan-song was a shout of defiance in the 
 face of death, while Tennyson's (in Crossing 
 the Bar) was one of his most musical chants. 
 
 xlviii 
 
from the first book, and recur 
 to the personal note— the 
 " lyric Love " : 
 
 If the rough ore be rounded to a ring! 
 
 Render all duty which good ring 
 should do, 
 
 And failing grace, succeed in guar- 
 dianship, — 
 
 Might mine but lie outside thine, 
 Lyric Love, 
 
 Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet 
 praised) 
 
 Linking our England to his Italy. 
 
 This " ring of verse " was that 
 referred to by the Italian poet 
 Tommaseo in the inscription 
 placed by the city of Florence 
 on the walls of Casa Guidi, 
 which in translation is : " Here 
 wrote and died E. B. Browning, 
 who . . . made with her golden 
 verse a ring linking Italy to 
 England." 1 
 
 But there is more of his lost 
 
 1 The Camberwell edition of Robert 
 Browning : Charlotte Porter and Helen A. 
 Clarke, editors. 
 
 xlix 
 
wife in " The Ring and the 
 Book" than the direct refer- 
 ences of the poet, as is shown 
 by one of the most interesting 
 passages of Mrs. Orr's " Life," 
 where she gives her reasons for 
 believing that Mrs. Browning's 
 spiritual presence with the au- 
 thor was " more than a presid- 
 ing memory of the heart ; that 
 it entered largely into the con- 
 ception of Pompilia, and, so far 
 as this depended on it, the 
 character of the whole book." 
 
 A poet has said that " as for 
 Browning's love for his wife, 
 nothing more tender and chival- 
 rous has ever been told of ideal 
 lovers in an ideal romance. It 
 is so beautiful a story that one 
 often prefers it to the sweetest 
 or loftiest poem that came from 
 the lips of either." 1 True ; yet 
 the lives of the two as poets 
 make the story what it is. 
 
 1 William Sharp's Life of Browning. 
 
 1 
 
Their lives, indeed, were poems, 
 as Milton said poets' lives 
 should be, and their poetry was 
 their life, as Mrs. Browning 
 said should also be true of poets. 
 The world could spare neither 
 the lives nor the poems, and 
 especially would it be poor with- 
 out those poems in which each 
 sang of the other. Take these 
 together, was there ever, in all 
 the treasury of the world's lit- 
 erature, so angelical an anti- 
 phony of love, anthemed by 
 the two radiant and immortal 
 lovers themselves? 
 
 R. W. G. 
 
SONNETS FROM THE 
 PORTUGUESE 
 
SONNETS FROM THE 
 PORTUGUESE 
 
 I thought once how Theocritus 
 
 had sung 
 Of the sweet years, the dear and 
 
 wished-for years, 
 Who each one in a gracious hand 
 
 appears 
 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 melan- 
 choly years, 
 3 
 
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." 
 
But only three in all God's universe 
 Have heard this word thou hast 
 
 said, — Himself, beside 
 Thee speaking, and me listening! 
 
 and replied 
 One of us . . . that was God, . . . 
 
 and laid the curse 
 So darkly on my eyelids, as to 
 
 amerce 
 My sight from seeing thee, — that if 
 
 I had died, 
 The deadweights, placed there, 
 
 would have signified 
 Less absolute exclusion. " Nay " 
 
 is worse 
 
 5 
 
From God than from all others, O 
 
 my friend! 
 Men could not part us with their 
 
 worldly jars, 
 Nor the seas change us, nor the 
 
 tempests bend ; 
 Our hands would touch for all the 
 
 mountain-bars : 
 And, heaven being rolled between 
 
 us at the end, 
 We should but vow the faster for 
 
 the stars. 
 
Ill 
 
 Unlike are we, unlike, O princely 
 
 Heart! 
 Unlike our uses and our destinies. 
 Our ministering two angels look 
 
 surprise 
 On one another, as they strike 
 
 athwart 
 Their wings in passing. Thou, 
 
 bethink thee, art 
 A guest for queens to social 
 
 pageantries, 
 With gages from a hundred brighter 
 
 eyes 
 Than tears even can make mine, to 
 
 play thy part 
 
Of chief musician. What hast 
 
 thou to do 
 With looking from the lattice-lights 
 
 at me, 
 A poor, tired, wandering singer, 
 
 singing through 
 The dark, and leaning up a cypress 
 
 tree? 
 The chrism is on thine head, — on 
 
 mine, the dew, — 
 And Death must dig the level 
 
 where these agree. 
 
IV 
 
 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 un- 
 aware 
 
 9 
 
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 man- 
 dolin. 
 Hush, call no echo up in further 
 
 proof 
 Of desolation! there 's a voice 
 
 within 
 That weeps ... as thou must sin£ 
 
 . . . alone, aloof. 
 
I lift my heavy heart up solemnly, 
 
 As once Electra her sepulchral urn, 
 
 And, looking in thine eyes, I over- 
 turn 
 
 The ashes at thy feet. Behold 
 and see 
 
 What a great heap of grief lay hid 
 in me, 
 
 And how the red wild sparkles 
 dimly burn 
 
 Through the ashen greyness. If 
 thy foot in scorn 
 
 Could tread them out to darkness 
 utterly, 
 
It might be well perhaps. But if 
 
 instead 
 Thou wait beside me for the wind 
 
 to blow 
 The grey dust up, . . . those laurels 
 
 on thine head, 
 O my Beloved, will not shield thee 
 
 so, 
 That none of all the fires shall 
 
 scorch and shred 
 The hair beneath. Stand farther 
 
 off then! go. 
 
VI 
 
 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 
 
 13 * 
 
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. 
 
VII 
 
 The face of all the world is changed, 
 
 I think, 
 Since first I heard the footsteps of 
 
 thy soul 
 Move still, oh, still, beside me, as 
 
 they stole 
 Betwixt me and the dreadful outer 
 
 brink 
 Of obvious death, where I, who 
 
 thought to sink, 
 Was caught up into love, and 
 
 taught the whole 
 Of life in a new rhythm. The cup 
 
 of dole 
 God gave for baptism, I am fain 
 
 to drink, 
 
 is 
 
And praise its sweetness, Sweet, 
 
 with thee anear. 
 The names of country, heaven, are 
 
 changed away 
 For where thou art or shalt be, 
 
 there or here ; 
 And this . . . this lute and song . . . 
 
 loved yesterday, 
 (The singing angels know) are only 
 
 dear 
 Because thy name moves right in 
 
 what they say. 
 
 16 
 
VIII 
 
 What can I give thee back, O 
 
 liberal 
 And princely giver, who hast 
 
 brought the gold 
 And purple of thine heart, un- 
 stained, untold, 
 And laid them on the outside of 
 
 the wall 
 For such as I to take or leave 
 
 withal, 
 In unexpected largesse? am I cold, 
 Ungrateful, that for these most 
 
 manifold 
 High gifts, I render nothing back 
 
 at all? 
 2 i 7 
 
Not so ; not cold,— but very poor 
 
 instead. 
 Ask God who knows. For frequent 
 
 tears have run 
 The colours from my life, and left so 
 
 dead 
 And pale a stuff, it were not fitly 
 
 done 
 To give the same as pillow to thy 
 
 head. 
 Go farther! let it serve to trample 
 
 18 
 
IX 
 
 Can it be right to give what I can 
 
 give? 
 To let thee sit beneath the fall of 
 
 tears 
 As salt as mine, and hear the sigh- 
 ing years 
 Re-sighing on my lips renunciative 
 Through those infrequent smiles 
 
 which fail to live 
 For all thy adjurations? O my 
 
 fears, 
 That this can scarce be right! We 
 
 are not peers, 
 So to be lovers ; and I own, and 
 
 grieve, 
 
 19 
 
That givers of such gifts as mine 
 
 are, must 
 Be counted with the ungenerous. 
 
 Out, alas! 
 I will not soil thy purple with my 
 
 dust, 
 Nor breathe my poison on thy 
 
 Venice-glass, 
 Nor give thee any love — which 
 
 were unjust. 
 Beloved, I only love thee ! let it 
 
 pass. 
 
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful 
 
 indeed 
 And worthy of acceptation. Fire 
 
 is bright, 
 Let temple burn, or flax ; an equal 
 
 light 
 Leaps in the flame from cedar- 
 plank or weed : 
 And love is fire. And when I say 
 
 at need 
 / love thee . . . mark \ . . . I love 
 
 thee — in thy sight 
 I stand transfigured, glorified aright, 
 With conscience of the new rays 
 
 that proceed 
 
Out of my face toward thine. 
 There 's nothing low 
 
 In love, when love the lowest: 
 meanest creatures 
 
 Who love God, God accepts while 
 loving so. 
 
 And what I feel, across the inferior 
 features 
 
 Of what I am, doth flash itself, and 
 show 
 
 How that great work of Love en- 
 hances Nature's. 
 
XI 
 
 And therefore if to love can be 
 
 desert, 
 I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as 
 
 pale 
 As these you see, and trembling 
 
 knees that fail 
 To bear the burden of a heavy 
 
 heart, — 
 This weary minstrel-life that once 
 
 was girt 
 To climb Aornus, and can scarce 
 
 avail 
 To pipe now 'gainst the valley 
 
 nightingale 
 A melancholy music, — why advert 
 2 3 
 
To these things? O Beloved, it is 
 plain 
 
 I am not of thy worth nor for thy 
 place ! 
 
 And yet, because I love thee, I 
 obtain 
 
 From that same love this vindicat- 
 ing grace, 
 
 To live on still in love, and yet in 
 vain, — 
 
 To bless thee, yet renounce thee . 
 to thy face. 
 
 24 
 
XII 
 
 Indeed this very love which is my 
 
 boast, 
 And which, when rising up from 
 
 breast to brow, 
 Doth crown me with a ruby large 
 
 enow 
 To draw men's eyes and prove the 
 
 inner cost, — 
 This love even, all my worth, to 
 
 the uttermost, 
 I should not love withal, unless 
 
 that thou 
 Hadst set me an example, shown 
 
 me how, 
 When first thine earnest eyes with 
 
 mine were crossed, 
 25 
 
And love called love. And thus, I 
 
 cannot speak 
 Of love even, as a good thing of 
 
 my own : 
 Thy soul hath snatched up mine 
 
 all faint and weak, 
 And placed it by thee on a golden 
 
 throne, — 
 And that I love (O soul, we must 
 
 be meek ! ) 
 Is by thee only, whom I love alone. 
 
 26 
 
XIII 
 
 And wilt thou have me fashion 
 
 into speech 
 The love I bear thee, finding words 
 
 enough, 
 And hold the torch out, while the 
 
 winds are rough, 
 Between our faces, to cast light on 
 
 each? — 
 I drop it at thy feet. I cannot 
 
 teach 
 My hand to hold my spirit so far 
 
 off 
 From myself— me— that I should 
 
 bring thee proof 
 In words, of love hid in me out of 
 
 reach. 
 
 27 
 
Nay, let the silence of my woman- 
 hood 
 
 Commend my woman-love to thy 
 belief,— 
 
 Seeing that I stand unwon, how- 
 ever wooed, 
 
 And rend the garment of my life, 
 in brief, 
 
 By a most dauntless, voiceless for- 
 titude, 
 
 Lest one touch of this heart convey 
 its grief. 
 
 28 
 
XIV 
 
 If thou must love me, let it be for 
 
 nought 
 Except for love's sake only. Do 
 
 not say 
 1 1 love her for her smile — her look 
 
 —her way 
 Of speaking gently, — for a trick of 
 
 thought 
 That falls in well with mine, and 
 
 certes brought 
 A sense of pleasant ease on such a 
 
 day" — 
 For these things in themselves, 
 
 Beloved, may 
 Be changed, or change for thee,— 
 
 and love, so wrought, 
 29 
 
May be unwrought so. Neither 
 
 love me for 
 Thine own dear pity's wiping my 
 
 cheeks dry,— 
 A creature might forget to weep, 
 
 who bore 
 Thy comfort long, and lose thy 
 
 love thereby! 
 But love me for love's sake, that 
 
 evermore 
 Thou may'st love on, through love's 
 
 eternity. 
 
 30 
 
XV 
 
 Accuse me not, beseech thee, that 
 
 I wear 
 Too calm and sad a face in front 
 
 of thine ; 
 For we two look two ways, and 
 
 cannot shine 
 With the same sunlight on our brow 
 
 and hair. 
 On me thou lookest with no doubt- 
 ing care, 
 As on a bee shut in a crystalline ; 
 Since sorrow hath shut me safe in 
 
 love's divine, 
 And to spread wing and fly in the 
 
 outer air 
 
 31 
 
Were most impossible failure, if I 
 
 strove 
 To fail so. But I look on thee — 
 
 on thee — 
 Beholding, besides love, the end of 
 
 love, 
 Hearing oblivion beyond memory ; 
 As one who sits and gazes from 
 
 above, 
 Over the rivers to the bitter sea. 
 
 3 2 
 
XVI 
 
 And yet, because thou overcomest 
 
 so, 
 Because thou art more noble and 
 
 like a king, 
 Thou canst prevail against my fears 
 
 and fling 
 Thy purple round me, till my heart 
 
 shall grow 
 Too close against thine heart 
 
 henceforth to know 
 How it shook when alone. Why, 
 
 conquering 
 May prove as lordly and complete 
 
 a thing 
 In lifting upward, as in crushing 
 
 low! 
 3 33 
 
And as a vanquished soldier yields 
 his sword 
 
 To one who lifts him from the 
 bloody earth, 
 
 Even so, Beloved, I at last record, 
 
 Here ends my strife. If thou in- 
 vite me forth, 
 
 I rise above abasement at the 
 word. 
 
 Make thy love larger to enlarge my 
 worth. 
 
 34 
 
XVII 
 
 My poet, thou canst touch on all 
 
 the notes 
 God set between His Ajfter and 
 
 Before, 
 And strike up and strike off the 
 
 general roar 
 Of the rushing worlds a melody 
 
 that floats 
 In a serene air purely. Antidotes 
 Of medicated music, answering for 
 Mankind's forlornest uses-, thou 
 
 canst pour 
 From thence into their ears. God's 
 
 will devotes 
 
 35 
 
Thine to such ends, and mine to 
 wait on thine. 
 
 How, Dearest, wilt thou have me 
 for most use? 
 
 A hope, to sing by gladly? or a 
 fine 
 
 Sad memory, with thy songs to in- 
 terfuse? 
 
 A shade, in which to sing — of palm 
 or pine? 
 
 A grave, on which to rest from 
 singing? Choose. 
 
XVIII 
 
 I never gave a lock of hair away 
 
 To a man, Dearest, except this to 
 thee, 
 
 Which now upon my fingers 
 thoughtfully, 
 
 I ring out to the full brown length 
 and say 
 u Take it." My day of youth went 
 yesterday ; 
 
 My hair no longer bounds to my 
 foot's glee, 
 
 Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle- 
 tree, 
 
 As girls do, any more : it only may 
 
 37 
 
Now shade on two pale cheeks the 
 
 mark of tears, 
 Taught drooping from the head 
 
 that hangs aside 
 Through sorrow's trick. I thought 
 
 the funeral-shears 
 Would take this first, but Love is 
 
 justified, — 
 Take it thou, — finding pure, from 
 
 all those years, 
 The kiss my mother left here when 
 
 she died. 
 
 33 
 
XIX 
 
 The soul's Rialto hath its merchan- 
 dise ; 
 I barter curl for curl upon that 
 
 mart, 
 And from my poet's forehead to 
 
 my heart 
 Receive this lock which outweighs 
 
 argosies, — 
 As purply black, as erst to Pindar's 
 
 eyes 
 The dim purpureal tresses gloomed 
 
 athwart 
 The nine white Muse-brows. For 
 
 this counterpart, . . . 
 The bay-crown's shade, Beloved, I 
 
 surmise, 
 
 39 
 
Still lingers on thy curl, it is so 
 
 black! 
 Thus, with a fillet of smooth-kissing 
 
 breath, 
 I tie the shadows safe from gliding 
 
 back, 
 And lay the gift where nothing hin- 
 
 dereth ; 
 Here on my heart, as on thy brow, 
 
 to lack 
 No natural heat till mine grows 
 
 cold in death. 
 
 40 
 
XX 
 
 Beloved, my Beloved, when I 
 
 think 
 That thou wast in the world a year 
 
 ago, 
 What time I sat alone here in the 
 
 snow 
 And saw no footprint, heard the 
 
 silence sink 
 No moment at thy voice, but, link 
 
 by link, 
 Went counting all my chains as if 
 
 that so 
 They never could fall off at any 
 
 blow 
 Struck by thy possible hand, — why, 
 
 thus I drink 
 41 
 
Of life's great cup of wonder! 
 
 Wonderful, 
 Never to feel thee thrill the day or 
 
 night 
 With personal act or speech, — nor 
 
 ever cull 
 Some prescience of thee with the 
 
 blossoms white 
 Thou sawest growing! Atheists 
 
 are as dull, 
 Who cannot guess God's presence 
 
 out of sight. 
 
 42 
 
XXI 
 
 Say over again, and yet once over 
 
 again, 
 That thou dost love me. Though 
 
 the word repeated 
 Should seem "a cuckoo-song," as 
 
 thou dost treat it, 
 Remember, never to the hill or 
 
 plain, 
 Valley and wood, without her 
 
 cuckoo-strain 
 Comes the fresh Spring in all her 
 
 green completed. 
 Beloved, I, amid the darkness 
 
 greeted 
 By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that 
 
 doubt's pain 
 43 
 
Cry, "Speak once more — thou 
 lovest!" Who can fear 
 
 Too many stars, though each in 
 heaven shall roll, 
 
 Too many flowers, though each 
 shall crown the year? 
 
 Say thou dost love me, love me, 
 love me— toll 
 
 The silver iterance! — only mind- 
 ing, Dear, 
 
 To love me also in silence with thy 
 soul. 
 
 44 
 
XXII 
 
 When our two souls stand up erect 
 and strong, 
 
 Face to face, silent, drawing nigh 
 and nigher, 
 
 Until the lengthening wings break 
 into fire 
 
 At either curved point,— what bit- 
 ter wrong 
 
 Can the earth do to us, that we 
 should not long 
 
 Be here contented? Think. In 
 mounting higher, 
 
 The angels would press on us and 
 aspire 
 
 To drop some golden orb of per- 
 fect song 
 
 45 
 
Into our deep, dear silence. Let 
 
 us stay- 
 Rather on earth, Beloved, — where 
 
 the unfit 
 Contrarious moods of men recoil 
 
 away 
 And isolate pure spirits, and permit 
 A place to stand and love in for a 
 
 day, 
 With darkness and the death-hour 
 
 rounding it. 
 
 46 
 
XXIII 
 
 Is it indeed so? If I lay here 
 
 dead, 
 Wouldst thou miss any life in losing 
 
 mine? 
 And would the sun for thee more 
 
 coldly shine 
 Because of grave-damps falling 
 
 round my head? 
 I marvelled, my Beloved, when I 
 
 read 
 Thy thought so in the letter. I am 
 
 thine — 
 But . . . so much to thee? Can I 
 
 pour thy wine 
 While my hands tremble? Then 
 
 my soul, instead 
 
 47 
 
Of dreams of death, resumes life's 
 lower range. 
 
 Then, love me, Love! Look on 
 me— breathe on me! 
 
 As brighter ladies do not count it 
 strange, 
 
 For love, to give up acres and de- 
 gree, 
 
 I yield the grave for thy sake, and 
 exchange 
 
 My near sweet view of Heaven, for 
 earth with thee! 
 
 4 s 
 
XXIV 
 
 Let the world's sharpness, like a 
 
 clasping knife, 
 Shut in upon itself and do no harm 
 In this close hand of Love, now 
 
 soft and warm, 
 And let us hear no sound of human 
 
 strife 
 After the click of the shutting. 
 
 Life to life — 
 I lean upon thee, Dear, without 
 
 alarm, 
 And feel as safe as guarded by a 
 
 charm 
 
 Against the stab of worldlings, who 
 
 if rife 
 4 49 
 
Are weak to injure. Very whitely 
 
 still 
 The lilies of our lives may reassure 
 Their blossoms from their roots, 
 
 accessible 
 Alone to heavenly dews that drop 
 
 not fewer ; 
 Growing straight, out of man's 
 
 reach, on the hill. 
 God only, who made us rich, can 
 
 make us poor. 
 
 50 
 
XXV 
 
 A heavy heart, Beloved, have I 
 
 borne 
 From year to year until I saw thy 
 
 face, 
 And sorrow after sorrow took the 
 
 place 
 Of all those natural joys as lightly 
 
 worn 
 As the stringed pearls, each lifted 
 
 in its turn 
 By a beating heart at dance-time. 
 
 Hopes apace 
 Were changed to long despairs, till 
 
 God's own grace 
 Could scarcely lift above the world 
 
 forlorn 
 
 5i 
 
My heavy heart. Then thou didst 
 bid me bring 
 
 And let it drop adown thy calmly 
 great 
 
 Deep being! Fast it sinketh, as a 
 thing 
 
 Which its own nature doth precipi- 
 tate, 
 
 While thine doth close above it, 
 mediating 
 
 Betwixt the stars and the unaccom- 
 plished fate. 
 
 52 
 
XXVI 
 
 I lived with visions for my com- 
 pany 
 Instead of men and women, years 
 
 ago, 
 And found them gentle mates, nor 
 
 thought to know 
 A sweeter music than they played 
 
 to me. 
 But soon their trailing purple was 
 
 not free 
 Of this world's dust, their lutes did 
 
 silent grow, 
 And I myself grew faint and blind 
 
 below 
 Their vanishing eyes. Then thou 
 
 didst come— to be, 
 53 
 
Beloved, what they seemed. Their 
 shining fronts, 
 
 Their songs, their splendours (bet- 
 ter, yet the same, 
 
 As river-water hallowed into fonts), 
 
 Met in thee, and from out thee 
 overcame 
 
 My soul with satisfaction of all 
 wants : 
 
 Because God's gifts put man's best 
 dreams to shame. 
 
 54 
 
XXVII 
 
 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 hope- 
 fully 
 Shines out again, as all the angels 
 
 see, 
 Before thy saving kiss! My own, 
 
 my own, 
 Who earnest to me when the world 
 
 was gone, 
 And I who looked for only God, 
 
 found thee / 
 
 55 
 
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, re- 
 trieves as well. 
 
 56 
 
XXVIII 
 
 My letters! all dead paper, mute 
 
 and white! 
 And yet they seem alive and quiv- 
 ering 
 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 . . . 
 57 
 
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! 
 
 58 
 
XXIX 
 
 I think of thee! —my thoughts do 
 
 twine and bud 
 About thee, as wild vines, about a 
 
 tree, 
 Put out broad leaves, and soon 
 
 there 's nought to see 
 Except the straggling green which 
 
 hides the wood. 
 Yet, O my palm-tree, be it under- 
 stood 
 I will not have my thoughts instead 
 
 of thee 
 Who art dearer, better! Rather, 
 
 instantly 
 ReneV thy presence ; as a strong 
 
 tree should, 
 59 
 
Rustle thy boughs and set thy 
 trunk all bare, 
 
 And let these bands of greenery 
 which insphere thee 
 
 Drop heavily down,— burst, shat- 
 tered, everywhere! 
 
 Because, in this deep joy to see 
 and hear thee 
 
 And breathe within thy shadow a 
 new air, 
 
 I do not think of thee— I am too 
 near thee. 
 
 hO 
 
XXX 
 
 I see thine image through my tears 
 
 to-night, 
 And yet to-day I saw thee smiling. 
 
 How 
 Refer the cause? — Beloved, is it 
 
 thou 
 Or I, who makes me sad? The 
 
 acolyte 
 Amid the chanted joy and thankful 
 
 rite 
 May so fall flat, with pale insensate 
 
 brow 
 On the altar-stair. I hear thy 
 
 voice and vow, 
 Perplexed, uncertain, since thou art 
 
 out of sight, 
 61 
 
As he, in his swooning ears, the 
 
 choir's amen. 
 Beloved, dost thou love? or did I 
 
 see all 
 The glory as I dreamed, and fainted 
 
 when 
 Too vehement light dilated my 
 
 ideal, 
 For my soul's eyes? Will that 
 
 light come again, 
 As now these tears come — falling 
 
 hot and real? 
 
 62 
 
XXXI 
 
 Thou comest ! all is said without 
 
 a word. 
 I sit beneath thy looks, as children 
 
 do' 
 In the noon-sun, with souls that 
 
 tremble through 
 Their happy eyelids from an un- 
 
 averred 
 Yet prodigal inward joy. Behold, 
 
 I erred 
 In that last doubt ! and yet I can- 
 not rue 
 The sin most, but the occasion — 
 
 that we two 
 Should for a moment stand unmin- 
 
 istered 
 
 63 
 
By a mutual presence. Ah, keep 
 near and close, 
 
 Thou dovelike help ! and, when 
 my fears would rise, 
 
 With thy broad heart serenely in- 
 terpose : 
 
 Brood down with thy divine suf- 
 ficiencies 
 
 These thoughts which tremble 
 when bereft of those, 
 
 Like callow birds left desert to the 
 skies. 
 
 64 
 
XXXII 
 
 The first time that the sun rose on 
 
 thine oath 
 To love me, I looked forward to 
 
 the moon 
 To slacken all those bonds which 
 
 seemed too soon 
 And quickly tied to make a lasting 
 
 troth. 
 Quick-loving hearts, I thought, 
 
 may quickly loathe ; 
 And, looking on myself, I seemed 
 
 not one 
 For such man's love! — more like 
 
 an out-of-tune 
 Worn viol, a good singer would be 
 
 wroth 
 5 65 
 
To spoil his song with, and which, 
 snatched in haste, 
 
 Is laid down at the first ill-sounding 
 note. 
 
 I did not wrong myself so, but I 
 placed 
 
 A wrong on thee. For perfect 
 strains may float 
 
 'Neath master-hands, from instru- 
 ments defaced, — 
 
 And great souls, at one stroke, may 
 do and doat. 
 
 
 66 
 
XXXIII 
 
 Yes, call me by my pet-name ! 
 
 let me hear 
 The name I used to run at, when 
 
 a child, 
 From innocent play, and leave the 
 
 cowslips piled, 
 To glance up in some face that 
 
 proved me dear 
 With the look of its eyes. I miss 
 
 the clear 
 Fond voices which, being drawn 
 
 and reconciled 
 Into the music of Heaven's unde- 
 nted, 
 Call me no longer. Silence on the 
 
 bier, 
 
 6 7 
 
While I call God— call God ! —So 
 let thy mouth 
 
 Be heir to those who are now ex- 
 animate. 
 
 Gather the north flowers to com- 
 plete the south, 
 
 And catch the early love up in the 
 late. 
 
 Yes, call me by that name, — and I, 
 in truth, 
 
 With the same heart, will answer 
 and not wait. 
 
 63 
 
XXXIV 
 
 With the same heart, I said, I '11 
 
 answer thee 
 As those, when thou shalt call me 
 
 by my name— 
 Lo, the vain promise ! is the same, 
 
 the same, 
 Perplexed and ruffled by life's 
 
 strategy ? 
 When called before, I told how 
 
 hastily 
 I dropped my flowers or brake off 
 
 from a game, 
 To run and answer with the smile 
 
 that came 
 At play last moment, and went on 
 
 with me 
 
 69 
 
Through my obedience. When I 
 
 answer now, 
 I drop a grave thought, break from 
 
 solitude ; 
 Yet still my heart goes to thee— 
 
 ponder how — 
 Not as to a single good, but all my 
 
 good ! 
 Lay thy hand on it, best one, and 
 
 allow 
 That no child's foot could run fast 
 
 as this blood. 
 
 7 o 
 
XXXV 
 
 If I leave all for thee, wilt thou 
 
 exchange 
 And be all to me? Shall I never 
 
 miss 
 Home-talk and blessing and the 
 
 common kiss 
 That comes to each in turn, nor 
 
 count it strange, 
 When I look up, to drop on a new 
 
 range 
 Of walls and floors, another home 
 
 than this? 
 Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me 
 
 which is 
 Filled by dead eyes too tender to 
 
 know change? 
 71 
 
That 's hardest. If to conquer love, 
 
 has tried, 
 To conquer grief, tries more, as all 
 
 things prove ; 
 For grief indeed is love and grief 
 
 beside. 
 Alas, I have grieved so I am hard 
 
 to love. 
 Yet love me — wilt thou? Open 
 
 thine heart wide, 
 And fold within the wet wings of 
 
 thy dove. 
 
 7- 
 
XXXVI 
 
 When we met first and loved, I did 
 
 not build 
 Upon the event with marble. Could 
 
 it mean 
 To last, a love set pendulous be- 
 tween 
 Sorrow and sorrow ? Nay, I rather 
 
 thrilled, 
 Distrusting every light that seemed 
 
 to gild 
 The onward path, and feared to 
 
 overlean 
 A finger even. And, though I have 
 
 grown serene 
 And strong since then, I think that 
 
 God has willed 
 73 
 
A still renewable fear . . . O love, 
 O troth . . . 
 
 Lest these enclasped hands should 
 never hold, 
 
 This mutual kiss drop down be- 
 tween us both 
 
 As an unowned thing, once the lips 
 being cold. 
 
 And Love, be false ! if he, to keep 
 one oath, 
 
 Must lose one joy, by his life's star 
 foretold. 
 
 74 
 
XXXVII 
 
 Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul 
 
 should make, 
 Of all that strong divineness which 
 
 I know 
 For thine and thee, an image only 
 
 so 
 Formed of the sand, and fit to shift 
 
 and break. 
 It is that distant years which did 
 
 not take 
 Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow, 
 Have forced my swimming brain 
 
 to undergo 
 Their doubt and dread, and blindly 
 
 to forsake 
 
 75 
 
Thy purity of likeness and distort 
 
 Thy worthiest love to a worthless 
 counterfeit : 
 
 As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in 
 port, 
 
 His guardian sea-god to commem- 
 orate, 
 
 Should set a sculptured porpoise, 
 gills a-snort 
 
 And vibrant tail, within the temple- 
 gate. 
 
XXXVIII 
 
 First time he kissed me, he but 
 
 only kissed 
 The fingers of this hand wherewith 
 
 I write ; 
 And ever since, it grew more clean 
 
 and white, 
 Slow to world-greetings, quick with 
 
 its " Oh, list," 
 When the angels speak. A ring of 
 
 amethyst 
 I could not wear here, plainer to 
 
 my sight, 
 Than that first kiss. The second 
 
 passed in height 
 The first, and sought the forehead, 
 
 and half missed, 
 77 
 
Half falling on the hair. O beyond 
 
 meed ! 
 That was the chrism of love, which 
 
 love's own crown, 
 With sanctifying sweetness, did 
 
 precede. 
 The third upon my lips was folded 
 
 down 
 In perfect, purple state ; since when, 
 
 indeed, 
 I have been proud and said, " My 
 
 love, my own." 
 
 73 
 
XXXIX 
 
 Because thou hast the power and 
 
 own'st the grace 
 To look through and behind this 
 
 mask of me 
 (Against which years have beat 
 
 thus blanchingly 
 With their rains), and behold my 
 
 soul's true face, 
 The dim and weary witness of life's 
 
 race, — 
 Because thou hast the faith and 
 
 love to see, 
 Through that same soul's distract- 
 ing lethargy, 
 The patient angel waiting for a 
 
 place 
 
 79 
 
In the new Heavens, — because nor 
 
 sin nor woe, 
 Nor God's infliction, nor death's 
 
 neighbourhood, 
 Nor all which others viewing, turn 
 
 to go, 
 Nor all which makes me tired of 
 
 all, self-viewed, — 
 Nothing repels thee, . . . Dearest, 
 
 teach me so 
 To pour out gratitude, as thou 
 
 dost, good ! 
 
 80 
 
XL 
 
 Oh, yes ! they love through all this 
 
 world of ours ! 
 I will not gainsay love, called love 
 
 forsooth. 
 I have heard love talked in my 
 
 early youth, 
 And since, not so long back but 
 
 that the flowers 
 Then gathered, smell still. Mus- 
 sulmans and Giaours 
 Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and 
 
 have no ruth 
 For any weeping. Polypheme's 
 
 white tooth 
 Slips on the nut if, after frequent 
 
 showers, 
 6 81 
 
The shell is over-smooth,— and not 
 
 so much 
 Will turn the thing called love, 
 
 aside to hate 
 Or else to oblivion. But thou art 
 
 not such 
 A lover, my Beloved ! thou canst 
 
 wait 
 Through sorrow and sickness, to 
 
 bring souls to touch, 
 And think it soon when others cry 
 
 "Too late." 
 
XLI 
 
 I thank all who have loved me in 
 
 their hearts, 
 With thanks and love from mine. 
 
 Deep thanks to all 
 Who paused a little near the prison- 
 wall 
 To hear my music in its louder 
 
 parts 
 Ere they went onward, each one 
 
 to the mart's 
 Or temple's occupation, beyond 
 
 call. 
 But thou, who, in my voice's sink 
 
 and fall 
 When the sob took it, thy divinest 
 
 Art's 
 
 83 
 
Own instrument didst drop down 
 
 at thy foot 
 To hearken what I said between 
 
 my tears, . . . 
 Instruct me how to thank thee ! 
 
 Oh, to shoot 
 My soul's full meaning into future 
 
 years, 
 That they should lend it utterance, 
 
 and salute 
 Love that endures, from Life that 
 
 disappears ! 
 
 S4 
 
XLII 
 
 :< My future will not copy fair my 
 
 past" — 
 I wrote that once ; and thinking at 
 
 my side 
 My ministering life-angel justified 
 The word by his appealing look 
 
 upcast 
 To the white throne of God, I 
 
 turned at last, 
 And there, instead, saw thee, not 
 
 unallied 
 To angels in thy soul ! Then I, 
 
 long tried 
 By natural ills, received the com- 
 fort fast, 
 
 85 
 
While budding, at thy sight, my 
 pilgrim's staff 
 
 Gave out green leaves with morn- 
 ing dews impearled. 
 
 I seek no copy now of life's first 
 half: 
 
 Leave here the pages with long 
 musing curled, 
 
 And write me new my future's epi- 
 graph, 
 
 New angel mine, unhoped for in 
 the world ! 
 
 86 
 
XLIII 
 
 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 candle- 
 light. 
 I love thee freely, as men strive for 
 
 Right ; 
 I love thee purely, as they turn 
 
 from Praise. 
 87 
 
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. 
 
 83 
 
XLIV 
 
 Beloved, thou hast brought me 
 
 many flowers 
 Plucked in the garden, all the sum- 
 mer through 
 And winter, and it seemed as if 
 
 they grew 
 In this close room, nor missed the 
 
 sun and showers. 
 So, in the like name of that love of 
 
 ours, 
 Take back these thoughts which 
 
 here unfolded too, 
 And which on warm and cold days 
 
 I withdrew 
 From my heart's ground. Indeed, 
 
 those beds and bowers 
 8 9 
 
Be overgrown with bitter weeds 
 
 and rue, 
 And wait thy weeding ; yet here 's 
 
 eglantine, 
 Here 's ivy ! — take them, as I used 
 
 to do 
 Thy flowers, and keep them where 
 
 they shall not pine. 
 Instruct thine eyes to keep their 
 
 colours true, 
 And tell thy soul, their roots are left 
 
 in mine. 
 
 9 o 
 
SIX LYRICS 
 
LIFE AND LOVE 
 
 Fast this Life of mine was dying, 
 Blind already and calm as 
 death, 
 
 Snowflakes on her bosom lying 
 Scarcely heaving with her breath. 
 
 Love came by, and having known 
 
 her 
 
 In a dream of fabled lands, 
 
 Gently stooped, and laid upon her 
 
 Mystic chrism of holy hands ; 
 
 93 
 
Ill 
 
 Drew his smile across her folded 
 Eyelids, as the swallow dips ; 
 
 Breathed as finely as the cold did, 
 Through the locking of her lips. 
 
 IV 
 
 So, when Life looked upward, 
 being 
 Warmed and breathed on from 
 above, 
 What sight could she have for 
 seeing, 
 Evermore . . . but only Love ? 
 
 94 
 
A DENIAL 
 
 i 
 
 We have met late — it is too late 
 to meet, 
 friend, not more than friend! 
 Death's forecome shroud is tangled 
 
 round my feet, 
 And if I step or stir, I touch the 
 end. 
 In this last jeopardy 
 Can I approach thee, I, who can- 
 not move ? 
 How shall I answer thy request for 
 love ? 
 Look in my face and see. 
 
 95 
 
II 
 I love thee not, I dare not love 
 thee ! go 
 In silence ; drop my hand. 
 If thou seek roses, seek them 
 
 where they blow 
 In garden-alleys, not in desert-sand. 
 
 Can life and death agree, 
 That thou shouldst stoop thy song 
 
 to my complaint ? 
 I cannot love thee. If the word 
 is faint, 
 Look in my face and see. 
 
 in 
 I might have loved thee in some 
 former days. 
 Oh, then, my spirits had leapt 
 As now they sink, at hearing thy 
 
 love-praise! 
 Before these faded cheeks were 
 overwept, 
 
 96 
 
Had this been asked of me, 
 To love thee with my whole stroiij 
 
 heart and head, — 
 I should have said still . . . yes, 
 
 but smiled and said, 
 " Look in my face and see ! " 
 
 IV 
 
 But now . . . God sees me, God, 
 
 who took my heart 
 And drowned it in life's surge. 
 In all your wide warm earth I 
 
 have no part — 
 A light song overcomes me like a 
 
 dirge. 
 Could Love's great harmony 
 The saints keep step to when their 
 
 bonds are loose, 
 Not weigh me down ? am / a 
 
 wife to choose ? 
 
 Look in my face and see — 
 7 97 
 
V 
 
 While I behold, as plain as one 
 who dreams, 
 Some woman of full worth, 
 Whose voice, as cadenced as a 
 
 silver stream's, 
 Shall prove the fountain-soul which 
 sends it forth ; 
 One younger, more thought-free 
 And fair and gay, than I, thou 
 
 must forget, 
 With brighter eyes than these . . . 
 which are not wet . . . 
 Look in my face and see! 
 
 VI 
 
 So farewell thou, whom I have 
 known too late 
 To let thee come so near. 
 Be counted happy while men call 
 
 thee great, 
 And one beloved woman feels thee 
 dear! — 
 
 98 
 
Not I! — that cannot be. 
 I am lost, I am changed, — I must 
 
 go farther, where 
 The change shall take me worse, 
 and no one dare 
 Look in my face and see. 
 
 VII 
 
 Meantime I bless thee. By these 
 thoughts of mine 
 I bless thee from all such! 
 I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to 
 
 wine, 
 Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an 
 equal touch 
 Of loyal troth. For me, 
 I love thee not, I love thee not! — 
 
 away! 
 Here 's no more courage in my 
 
 soul to say 
 " Look in my face and see." 
 
 99 
 
 LefC. 
 
PROOF AND DISPROOF 
 
 Dost thou love me, my Beloved? 
 
 Who shall answer yes or no? 
 What is proved or disproved 
 
 When my soul inquireth so, 
 Dost thou love me, my Beloved? 
 
 I have seen thy heart to-day, 
 Never open to the crowd, 
 
 While to love me aye and aye 
 Was the vow as it was vowed 
 
 By thine eyes of steadfast grey. 
 
Ill 
 
 Now I sit alone, alone— 
 
 And the hot tears break and burn. 
 Now, Beloved, thou art gone, 
 
 Doubt and terror have their turn. 
 Is it love that I have known? 
 
 IV 
 
 I have known some bitter things,— 
 Anguish, anger, solitude. 
 
 Year by year an evil brings, 
 Year by year denies a good ; 
 
 March winds violate my springs. 
 
 I have known how sickness bends, 
 I have known how sorrow 
 breaks, — 
 
 How quick hopes have sudden ends, 
 How the heart thinks till it aches 
 
 Of the smile of buried friends. 
 
VI 
 
 Last, I have known thee, my brave 
 Noble thinker, lover, doer ! 
 
 The best knowledge last I have. 
 But thou comest as the thrower 
 
 Of fresh flowers upon a grave. 
 
 VII 
 
 Count what feelings used to move 
 me ! 
 
 Can this love assort with those? 
 Thou, who art so far above me, 
 
 Wilt thou stoop so, for repose? 
 Is it true that thou canst love me? 
 
 VIII 
 
 Do not blame me if I doubt thee. 
 
 I can call love by its name 
 When thine arm is wrapt about me ; 
 
 But even love seems not the same, 
 When I sit alone, without thee. 
 
 I02 
 
IX 
 
 In thy clear eyes I descried 
 Many a proof of love, to-day ; 
 
 But to-night, those unbelied 
 
 Speechful eyes being gone away, 
 
 There 's the proof to seek, beside. 
 
 Dost thou love me, my Beloved? 
 
 Only thou canst answer yes ! 
 And, thou gone, the proof 's dis- 
 proved, 
 
 And the cry rings answerless — 
 Dost thbu love me, my Beloved? 
 
 103 
 
QUESTION AND ANSWER 
 
 Love you seek for, presupposes 
 
 Summer heat and sunny glow. 
 Tell me, do you find moss-roses 
 
 Budding, blooming in the snow? 
 Snow might kill the rose-tree's 
 
 root- 
 Shake it quickly from your foot, 
 Lest it harm you as you go. 
 
 ii 
 
 From the ivy where it dapples 
 A grey ruin, stone by stone, 
 
 Do you look for grapes or apples, 
 Or for sad green leaves alone? 
 
 Pluck the leaves off, two or three — 
 
 Keep them for morality 
 
 When you shall be safe and gone. 
 104 
 
INCLUSIONS 
 
 Oh, wilt thou have my hand, Dear, 
 
 to lie along in thine? 
 As a little stone in a running stream, 
 
 it seems to lie and pine. 
 Now drop the poor pale hand, Dear, 
 
 unfit to plight with thine. 
 
 Oh, wilt thou have my cheek, Dear, 
 drawn closer to thine own? 
 
 My cheek is white, my cheek is worn, 
 by many a tear run down. 
 
 Now leave a little space, Dear, lest 
 
 it should wet thine own. 
 
 105 
 
Ill 
 
 Oh, must thou have my soul, Dear, 
 commingled with thy soul? — 
 
 Red grows the cheek, and warm the 
 hand ; the part is in the whole : 
 
 Nor hands nor cheeks keep separate, 
 when soul is joined to soul. 
 
 106 
 
INSUFFICIENCY 
 
 i 
 
 There is no one beside thee and 
 no one above thee, 
 Thou standest alone as the 
 
 nightingale sings ! 
 And my words that would praise 
 thee are impotent things, 
 For none can express thee though 
 all should approve thee. 
 I love thee so, Dear, that I only 
 can love thee. 
 107 
 
Say, what can I do for thee? weary 
 thee, grieve thee? 
 Lean on thy shoulder, new bur- 
 dens to add? 
 Weep my tears over thee, making 
 thee sad? 
 Oh, hold me not — love me not ! let 
 me retrieve thee. 
 I love thee so, Dear, that I only 
 can leave thee. 
 
 108 
 
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ONE WORD MORE 
 
 PROSPICE 
 "O LYRIC LOVE" 
 
 BY 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
ONE WORD MORE 
 
 To E. B. B. 
 
 London, September, iSjj 
 
 There they are, my fifty men and 
 
 women 
 Naming me the fifty poems -finished ! 
 Take them, Love, the book and me 
 
 together : 
 Where the heart lies, let the brain 
 
 lie also. 
 
 ii 
 
 Rafael made a century of sonnets, 
 Made and wrote them in a certain 
 volume 
 
 in 
 
Dinted with the silver-pointed 
 pencil 
 
 Else he only used to draw Ma- 
 donnas : 
 
 These, the world might view — but 
 one, the volume. 
 
 Who that one, you ask? Your 
 heart instructs you. 
 
 Did she live and love it all her 
 lifetime? 
 
 Did she drop, his lady of the son- 
 nets, 
 
 Die, and Jet it drop beside her 
 pillow 
 
 Where it lay in place of Rafael's 
 glory, 
 
 Rafael's cheek so duteous and so 
 
 loving- 
 Cheek, the world was wont to hail 
 a painter's, 
 
 Rafael's cheek, her love had turned 
 a poet's? 
 
Ill 
 
 You and I would rather read that 
 
 volume, 
 (Taken to his beating bosom by it) 
 Lean and list the bosom-beats of 
 
 Rafael, 
 Would we not? than wonder at 
 
 Madonnas — 
 Her, San Sisto names, and Her, 
 
 Foligno, 
 Her, that visits Florence in a vision. 
 Her, that 's left with lilies in the 
 
 Louvre — 
 Seen by us and all the world in 
 
 circle. 
 
 IV 
 
 You and I will never read that 
 
 volume. 
 Guido Reni, like his own eye's 
 
 apple 
 
 8 113 
 
Guarded long the treasure-book 
 
 and loved it. 
 Guido Reni dying, all Bologna 
 Cried, and the world cried too, 
 
 " Ours, the treasure ! " 
 Suddenly, as rare things will, it 
 
 vanished. 
 
 Dante once prepared to paint an 
 
 angel : 
 Whom to please? You whisper 
 
 " Beatrice." 
 While he mused and traced it and 
 
 retraced it, 
 (Perad venture with a pen corroded 
 Still by drops of that hot ink he 
 
 dipped for, 
 When, his left-hand i' the hair o' 
 
 the wicked, 
 Back he held the brow and pricked 
 
 its stigma, 
 
 114 
 
Bit into the live man's flesh for 
 parchment, 
 
 Loosed him, laughed to see the 
 writing rankle, 
 
 Let the wretch go festering 
 through Florence) — 
 
 Dante, who loved well because he 
 hated, 
 
 Hated wickedness that hinders 
 loving, 
 
 Dante standing, studying his 
 angel,— 
 
 In there broke the folk of his 
 Inferno. 
 
 Says he — " Certain people of im- 
 portance " 
 
 (Such he gave his daily dreadful 
 line to) 
 
 Entered and would seize, for- 
 sooth, the poet." 
 
 Says the poet— "Then I stopped 
 my painting." 
 "5 
 
VI 
 
 You and I would rather see that 
 
 angel, 
 Painted by the tenderness of 
 
 Dante, 
 Would we not ?— than read a fresh 
 
 Inferno. 
 
 VII 
 
 You and I will never see that pic- 
 ture. 
 
 While he mused on love and Bea- 
 trice, 
 
 While he softened o'er his outlined 
 angel, 
 
 In they broke, those " people of 
 importance :" 
 
 We and Bice bear the loss forever. 
 
 VIII 
 
 What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's 
 picture ? 
 
 116 
 
This : no artist lives and loves, that 
 
 longs not 
 Once, and only once, and for one 
 
 only, 
 (Ah, the prize! ) to find his love a 
 
 language 
 Fit and fair and simple and suffi- 
 cient- 
 Using nature that 's an art to 
 
 others, 
 Not, this one time, art that 's 
 
 turned his nature. 
 Ay, of all the artists living, loving, 
 None but would forego his proper 
 
 dowry, — 
 Does he paint ? he fain would 
 
 write a poem, — 
 Does he write ? he fain would 
 
 paint a picture, 
 Put to proof art alien to the artist's, 
 Once, and only once, and for one 
 
 only, 
 
 117 
 
So to be the man and leave the 
 artist, 
 
 Gain the man's joy, miss the ar- 
 tist's sorrow. 
 
 IX 
 
 Wherefore ? Heaven's gift 
 takes earth's abatement! 
 
 He who smites the rock and 
 spreads the water, 
 
 Bidding drink and live a crowd 
 beneath him, 
 
 Even he, the minute makes immor- 
 tal, 
 
 Proves, perchance, but mortal in 
 the minute, 
 
 Desecrates, belike, the deed in 
 doing. 
 
 While he smites, how can he but 
 remember, 
 
 So he smote before, in such a 
 peril, 
 
 118 
 
When they stood and mocked — 
 
 " Shall smiting help us ? " 
 When they drank and sneered — 
 
 " A stroke is easy ! " 
 When they wiped their mouths and 
 
 went their journey, 
 Throwing him for thanks — "But 
 
 drought was pleasant." 
 Thus old memories mar the actual 
 
 triumph ; 
 Thus the doing savours of dis- 
 relish ; 
 Thus achievement lacks a gracious 
 
 somewhat ; 
 O'er-importuned brows becloud 
 
 the mandate, 
 Carelessness or consciousness — the 
 
 gesture. 
 For he bears an ancient wrong 
 
 about him, 
 Sees and knows again those pha- 
 
 lanxed faces, 
 119 
 
Hears, yet one time more, the 'cus- 
 tomed prelude — 
 " How shouldst thou, of all men, 
 smite, and save us ? " 
 Guesses what is like to prove the 
 sequel — 
 "Egypt's flesh-pots— nay, the 
 drought was better." 
 
 Oh, the crowd must have emphatic 
 
 warrant ! 
 Theirs, the Sinai-forehead's cloven 
 
 brilliance, 
 Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's 
 
 imperial fiat. 
 Never dares the man put off the 
 
 prophet. 
 
 XI 
 
 Did he love one face from out the 
 
 thousands, 
 
 1 20 
 
(Were she Jethro's daughter, white 
 
 and wifely, 
 Were she but the Ethiopian 
 
 bondslave,) 
 He would envy you dumb patient 
 
 camel, 
 Keeping a reserve of scanty water 
 Meant to save his own life in the 
 
 desert ; 
 Ready in the desert to deliver 
 (Kneeling down to let his breast 
 
 be opened) 
 Hoard and life together for his 
 
 mistress. 
 
 XII 
 
 I shall never, in the years remain- 
 ing, 
 
 Paint you pictures, no, nor carve 
 you statues, 
 
 Make you music that should all- 
 express me ; 
 
So it seems : I stand on my attain- 
 ment. 
 
 This of verse alone, one life allows 
 me ; 
 
 Verse and nothing else have I to 
 give you. 
 
 Other heights in other lives, God 
 willing : 
 
 All the gifts from all the heights, 
 your own, Love! 
 
 XIII 
 
 Yet a semblance of resource avails 
 
 us- 
 Shade so finely touched, love's 
 
 sense must seize it. 
 Take these lines, look lovingly and 
 
 nearly, 
 Lines I write the first time and the 
 
 last time. 
 He who works in fresco, steals a 
 
 hair-brush, 
 
 122 
 
Curbs the liberal hand, subservient 
 proudly, 
 
 Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in 
 little, 
 
 Makes a strange art of an art fa- 
 miliar, 
 
 Fills his lady's missal-marge with 
 flowerets. 
 
 He who blows through bronze, 
 may breathe through silver, 
 
 Fitly serenade a slumbrous prin- 
 cess. 
 
 He who writes, may write for once 
 as I do. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Love, you saw me gather men and 
 
 women, 
 Live or dead or fashioned by my 
 
 fancy, 
 Enter each and all, and use their 
 
 service, 
 
 123 
 
Speak from every mouth,— the 
 speech, a poem. 
 
 Hardly shall I tell my joys and 
 sorrows, 
 
 Hopes and fears, belief and disbe- 
 lieving : 
 
 I am mine and yours — the rest be 
 all men's, 
 
 Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the 
 fifty. 
 
 Let me speak this once in my true 
 person, 
 
 Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea, 
 
 Though the fruit of speech be just 
 this sentence : 
 
 Pray you, look on these my men 
 and women, 
 
 Take and keep my fifty poems fin- 
 ished ; 
 
 Where my heart lies, let my brain 
 lie also! 
 
 Poor the speech ; be how I speak, 
 for all things. 
 124 
 
XV 
 
 Not but that you know me! Lo, 
 the moon's self! 
 
 Here in London, yonder late in 
 Florence, 
 
 Still we find her face, the thrice- 
 transfigured. 
 
 Curving on a sky imbrued with 
 colour, 
 
 Drifted over Fiesole by twilight, 
 
 Came she, our new crescent of a 
 hair's-breadth. 
 
 Full she flared it, lamping Sammi- 
 niato, 
 
 Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and 
 rounder, 
 
 Perfect till the nightingales ap- 
 plauded. 
 
 Now, a piece of her old self, impov- 
 erished, 
 
 Hard to greet, she traverses the 
 house-roofs, 
 
 125 
 
Hurries with unhandsome thrift of 
 
 silver, 
 Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish. 
 
 XVI 
 
 What, there 's nothing in the moon 
 
 noteworthy? 
 Nay : for if that moon could love 
 
 a mortal, 
 Use, to charm him (so to fit a 
 
 fancy), 
 All her magic ('t is the old sweet 
 
 mythos), 
 She would turn a new side to her 
 
 mortal, 
 Side unseen of herdsman, hunts- 
 man, steersman — 
 Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace, 
 Blind to Galileo on his turret, 
 Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats — 
 
 him, even! 
 
 126 
 
Think, the wonder of the moon- 
 struck mortal — 
 
 When she turns round, comes again 
 in heaven, 
 
 Opens out anew for worse or better! 
 
 Proves she like some portent of an 
 iceberg 
 
 Swimming full upon the ship it 
 founders, 
 
 Hungry with huge teeth of splin- 
 tered crystals? 
 
 Proves she as the paved work of a 
 sapphire 
 
 Seen by Moses when he climbed 
 the mountain? 
 
 Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu 
 
 Climbed and saw the very God, the 
 Highest, 
 
 Stand upon the paved work of a 
 sapphire. 
 
 Like the bodied heaven in his clear- 
 ness 
 
 127 
 
Shone the stone, the sapphire of 
 
 that paved work, 
 When they ate and drank and saw 
 
 God also! 
 
 XVII 
 
 What were seen? None knows, 
 
 none ever shall know. 
 Only this is sure— the sight were 
 
 other, 
 Not the moon's same side, born 
 
 late in Florence, 
 Dying now impoverished here in 
 
 London. 
 God be thanked, the meanest of 
 
 his creatures 
 Boasts two soul-sides, one to face 
 
 the world with, 
 One to show a woman when he 
 
 loves her! 
 
 128 
 
XVIII 
 
 This I say of me, but think of you, 
 Love! 
 
 This to you— yourself my moon of 
 poets! 
 
 Ah, but that 's the world's side, 
 there 's the wonder, 
 
 Thus they see you, praise you, 
 think they know you! 
 
 There, in turn I stand with them 
 and praise you — 
 
 Out of my own self, I dare to 
 phrase it. 
 
 But the best is when I glide from 
 out them, 
 
 Cross a step or two of dubious twi- 
 light, 
 
 Come out on the other side, the 
 novel 
 
 Silent silver lights and darks un- 
 dreamed of, 
 9 129 
 
Where I hush and bless myself 
 with silence. 
 
 XIX 
 
 Oh, their Rafael of the dear Ma- 
 donnas, 
 
 Oh, their Dante of the dread In- 
 ferno, 
 
 Wrote one song— and in my brain 
 I sing it, 
 
 Drew one angel — borne, see, on 
 my bosom! 
 
 R. B. 
 
 130 
 
PROSPICE 
 
 Fear death?— To feel the fog in 
 my throat, 
 The mist in my face, 
 When the snows begin, and the 
 blasts denote 
 I am nearing the place, 
 The power of the night, the press 
 of the storm, 
 The post of the foe ; 
 Where he stands, the Arch Fear in 
 a visible form, 
 Yet the strong man must go : 
 For the journey is done and the 
 summit attained, 
 131 
 
And the barriers fall, 
 Though a battle 's to fight ere the 
 guerdon be gained, 
 The reward of it all. 
 I was ever a fighter, so— one fight 
 more, 
 The best and the last! 
 I would hate that death bandaged 
 my eyes, and forbore, 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No! let me taste the whole of it, 
 fare like my peers 
 The heroes of old, 
 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay 
 glad life's arrears 
 Of pain, darkness and cold. 
 For sudden the worst turns the best 
 to the brave, 
 The black minute 's at end, 
 And the elements' rage, the fiend- 
 voices that rave, 
 Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
 132 
 
Shall change, shall become first a 
 peace out of pain, 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul! I shall 
 clasp thee again, 
 And with God be the rest! 
 
 133 
 
"O LYRIC LOVE" 
 
 (From "The Ring and the Book") 
 
 O lyric Love, half angel and half 
 
 bird, 
 And all a wonder and a wild de- 
 sire, — 
 Boldest of hearts that ever braved 
 
 the sun, 
 Took sanctuary within the holier 
 
 blue, 
 And sang a kindred soul out to his 
 
 face, — 
 Yet human at the red-ripe of the 
 
 heart — 
 When the first summons from the 
 
 darkling earth 
 134 
 
Reached thee amid thy chambers, 
 blanched their blue, 
 
 And bared them of the glory — to 
 drop down, 
 
 To toil for man, to suffer or to 
 die, — 
 
 This is the same voice : can thy 
 soul know change? 
 
 Hail then, and hearken from the 
 realms of help! 
 
 Never may I commence my song, 
 my due 
 
 To God who best taught song by 
 gift of thee, 
 
 Except with bent head and be- 
 seeching hand — 
 
 That still, despite the distance and 
 the dark, 
 
 What was, again may be ; some in- 
 terchange 
 
 Of grace, some splendour once thy 
 very thought, 
 i35 
 
Some benediction anciently thy 
 
 smile : 
 — Never conclude, but raising 
 
 hand and head 
 Thither where eyes, that cannot 
 
 reach, yet yearn 
 For all hope, all sustainment, all 
 
 reward, 
 Their utmost up and on, — so bless- 
 ing back 
 In those thy realms of help, that 
 
 heaven thy home, 
 Some whiteness which, I judge, thy 
 
 face makes proud, 
 Some wanness where, I think, thy 
 
 foot may fall! 
 
 136 
 
 H 489 B5 
 
JUL 8 1905 
 
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