Sonnets from the Portuguese | Page 8

and answer with the smile that came?At play last moment, and went on with me?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.
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?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 thy heart wide,?And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.
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 between?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?A still renewable fear . . . O love, O troth . . .?Lest these enclasped hands should never hold,?This mutual kiss drop down between 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.
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?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 commemorate,?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 "O, 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,?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."
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 distracting lethargy,?The patient angel waiting for a place?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!
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. Mussulmans 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,?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?Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot?To harken 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!
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