Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) | Page 4

sun's grave in the deep clear west?A sweet strong wind blows, glad of life: and I,?Under the soft keen stardawn whence the sky?Takes life renewed, and all night's godlike breast?Palpitates, gradually revealed at rest?By growth and change of ardours felt on high,?Make onward, till the last flame fall and die?And all the world by night's broad hand lie blest.?Haply, meseems, as from that edge of death,?Whereon the day lies dark, a brightening breath?Blows more of benediction than the morn,?So from the graves whereon grief gazing saith?That half our heart of life there lies forlorn?May light or breath at least of hope be born.
II
The wind was soft before the sunset fled:?Now, while the cloud-enshrouded corpse of day?Is lowered along a red funereal way?Down to the dark that knows not white from red,?A clear sheer breeze against the night makes head,?Serene, but sure of life as ere a ray?Springs, or the dusk of dawn knows red from grey,?Being as a soul that knows not quick from dead.?From far beyond the sunset, far above,?Full toward the starry soundless east it blows?Bright as a child's breath breathing on a rose,?Smooth to the sense as plume of any dove;?Till more and more as darkness grows and glows?Silence and night seem likest life and love.
III
If light of life outlive the set of sun?That men call death and end of all things, then?How should not that which life held best for men?And proved most precious, though it seem undone?By force of death and woful victory won,?Be first and surest of revival, when?Death shall bow down to life arisen again??So shall the soul seen be the self-same one?That looked and spake with even such lips and eyes?As love shall doubt not then to recognise,?And all bright thoughts and smiles of all time past?Revive, transfigured, but in spirit and sense?None other than we knew, for evidence?That love's last mortal word was not his last.
A STUDY FROM MEMORY
If that be yet a living soul which here?Seemed brighter for the growth of numbered springs?And clothed by Time and Pain with goodlier things?Each year it saw fulfilled a fresh fleet year,?Death can have changed not aught that made it dear;?Half humorous goodness, grave-eyed mirth on wings?Bright-balanced, blither-voiced than quiring strings;?Most radiant patience, crowned with conquering cheer;?A spirit inviolable that smiled and sang?By might of nature and heroic need?More sweet and strong than loftiest dream or deed;?A song that shone, a light whence music rang?High as the sunniest heights of kindliest thought;?All these must be, or all she was be nought.
TO DR. JOHN BROWN
Beyond the north wind lay the land of old?Where men dwelt blithe and blameless, clothed and fed?With joy's bright raiment and with love's sweet bread,?The whitest flock of earth's maternal fold.?None there might wear about his brows enrolled?A light of lovelier fame than rings your head,?Whose lovesome love of children and the dead?All men give thanks for: I far off behold?A dear dead hand that links us, and a light?The blithest and benignest of the night,?The night of death's sweet sleep, wherein may be?A star to show your spirit in present sight?Some happier island in the Elysian sea?Where Rab may lick the hand of Marjorie.
March 1882.
TO WILLIAM BELL SCOTT
The larks are loud above our leagues of whin?Now the sun's perfume fills their glorious gold?With odour like the colour: all the wold?Is only light and song and wind wherein?These twain are blent in one with shining din.?And now your gift, a giver's kingly-souled,?Dear old fast friend whose honours grow not old,?Bids memory's note as loud and sweet begin.?Though all but we from life be now gone forth?Of that bright household in our joyous north?Where I, scarce clear of boyhood just at end,?First met your hand; yet under life's clear dome,?Now seventy strenuous years have crowned my friend,?Shines no less bright his full-sheaved harvest-home.
April 20, 1882.
A DEATH ON EASTER DAY
The strong spring sun rejoicingly may rise,?Rise and make revel, as of old men said,?Like dancing hearts of lovers newly wed:?A light more bright than ever bathed the skies?Departs for all time out of all men's eyes.?The crowns that girt last night a living head?Shine only now, though deathless, on the dead:?Art that mocks death, and Song that never dies.?Albeit the bright sweet mothlike wings be furled,?Hope sees, past all division and defection,?And higher than swims the mist of human breath,?The soul most radiant once in all the world?Requickened to regenerate resurrection?Out of the likeness of the shadow of death.
April 1882.
ON THE DEATHS OF THOMAS CARLYLE AND GEORGE ELIOT
Two souls diverse out of our human sight?Pass, followed one with love and each with wonder:?The stormy sophist with his mouth of thunder,?Clothed with loud words and mantled in the might?Of darkness and magnificence of night;?And one whose eye could smite the night in sunder,?Searching if light or no light were thereunder,?And found in love