Sonnets from the Portuguese | Page 8

reconciled

Into the music of Heaven's undefiled,
Call me no longer. Silence on
the bier,
While I call God--call God!--so let thy mouth
Be heir to

those who are now exanimate.
Gather the north flowers to complete
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.
XXXIV
With the same heart, I said, I'll 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
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