Sonnets from the Portuguese | Page 4

God, . . . and laid the curse
So darkly on my
eyelids, so as to amerce
My sight from seeing thee,--that if I had died,

The death-weights, placed there, would have signified
Less
absolute exclusion. "Nay" is worse
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.
III
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 unaware
In folds of golden fulness
at my door?
Look up and see the casement broken in,
The bats and
owlets builders in the roof!
My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.

Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation! there's a voice
within
That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof.
V
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 further 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
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,
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.
VIII
What can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast
brought the gold
And purple of thine heart, unstained, 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?
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 on.

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 sighing 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,
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