POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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  • A THOUGHT FOR A LONELY DEATH-BED
  • ADEQUACY
  • AN APPREHENSION
  • CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON
  • COMFORT
  • DISCONTENT
  • EXAGGERATION
  • FUTURITY
  • GRIEF
  • INSUFFICIENCY
  • IRREPARABLENESS
  • ON A PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH BY B. R. HAYDON
  • PAIN IN PLEASURE
  • PAST AND FUTURE
  • PATIENCE TAUGHT BY NATURE
  • PERPLEXED MUSIC
  • SUBSTITUTION
  • TEARS
  • THE LOOK
  • THE MEANING OF THE LOOK
  • THE PRISONER
  • THE SERAPH AND POET
  • THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION
  • THE TWO SAYINGS
  • TO GEORGE SAND: A DESIRE
  • TO GEORGE SAND: A RECOGNITION
  • WORK
  • WORK AND CONTEMPLATION

  • A THOUGHT FOR A LONELY DEATH-BED



    INSCRIBED TO MY FRIEND E. C.

    IF God compel thee to this destiny,
    To die alone, with none beside thy bed
    To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said
    And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,--
    Pray then alone, 'O Christ, come tenderly!
    By thy forsaken Sonship in the red
    Drear wine-press,--by the wilderness out-spread,--
    And the lone garden where thine agony
    Fell bloody from thy brow,--by all of those
    Permitted desolations, comfort mine!
    No earthly friend being near me, interpose
    No deathly angel 'twixt my face aud thine,
    But stoop Thyself to gather my life's rose,
    And smile away my mortal to Divine! '




    ADEQUACY



    NOW, by the verdure on thy thousand hills,
    Beloved England, doth the earth appear
    Quite good enough for men to overbear
    The will of God in, with rebellious wills!
    We cannot say the morning-sun fulfils
    Ingloriously its course, nor that the clear
    Strong stars without significance insphere
    Our habitation: we, meantime, our ills
    Heap up against this good and lift a cry
    Against this work-day world, this ill-spread feast,
    As if ourselves were better certainly
    Than what we come to. Maker and High Priest,
    I ask thee not my joys to multiply,--
    Only to make me worthier of the least.






    AN APPREHENSION



    IF all the gentlest-hearted friends I know
    Concentred in one heart their gentleness,
    That still grew gentler till its pulse was less
    For life than pity,--I should yet be slow
    To bring my own heart nakedly below
    The palm of such a friend, that he should press
    Motive, condition, means, appliances,

    My false ideal joy and fickle woe,
    Out full to light and knowledge; I should fear
    Some plait between the brows, some rougher chime
    In the free voice. O angels, let your flood
    Of bitter scorn dash on me! do ye hear
    What I say who hear calmly all the time
    This everlasting face to face with GOD ?






    CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON



    I THINK we are too ready with complaint
    In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
    Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
    Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint
    To muse upon eternity's constraint
    Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope
    Must widen early, is it well to droop,
    For a few days consumed in loss and taint ?
    O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted
    And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
    Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
    Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
    To meet the flints ? At least it may be said
    'Because the way is short, I thank thee, God. '






    COMFORT



    SPEAK low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet
    From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low
    Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so
    Who art not missed by any that entreat.
    Speak to mo as to Mary at thy feet!
    And if no precious gums my hands bestow,
    Let my tears drop like amber while I go
    In reach of thy divinest voice complete
    In humanest affection -- thus, in sooth,
    To lose the sense of losing. As a child,
    Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore
    Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth
    Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
    He sleeps the faster that he wept before.






    DISCONTENT



    LIGHT human nature is too lightly tost
    And ruffled without cause, complaining on--
    Restless with rest, until, being overthrown,
    It learneth to lie quiet. Let a frost
    Or a small wasp have crept to the inner-most
    Of our ripe peach, or let the wilful sun
    Shine westward of our window,--straight we run
    A furlong's sigh as if the world were lost.
    But what time through the heart and through the brain
    God hath transfixed us,--we, so moved before,
    Attain to a calm. Ay, shouldering weights of pain,
    We anchor in deep waters, safe from shore,
    And hear submissive o'er the stormy main
    God's chartered judgments walk for evermore.






    EXAGGERATION



    WE overstate the ills of life, and take
    Imagination (given us to bring down
    The choirs of singing angels overshone
    By God's clear glory) down our earth to rake
    The dismal snows instead, flake following flake,
    To cover all the corn; we walk upon
    The shadow of hills across a level thrown,
    And pant like climbers: near the alder brake
    We sigh so loud, the nightingale within
    Refuses to sing loud, as else she would.
    O brothers, let us leave the shame and sin
    Of taking vainly, in a plaintive mood,
    The holy name of GRIEF!--holy herein
    That by the grief of ONE came all our good.






    FUTURITY



    AND, O beloved voices, upon which
    Ours passionately call because erelong
    Ye brake off in the middle of that song
    We sang together softly, to enrich
    The poor world with the sense of love, and witch,
    The heart out of things evil,--I am strong,
    Knowing ye are not lost for aye among

    The hills, with last year's thrush. God keeps a niche
    In Heaven to hold our idols; and albeit
    He brake them to our faces and denied
    That our close kisses should impair their white,
    I know we shall behold them raised, complete,
    The dust swept from their beauty,--glorified
    New Memnons singing in the great God-light.





    GRIEF



    I TELL you, hopeless grief is passionless;
    That only men incredulous of despair,
    Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
    Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
    Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
    In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
    Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
    Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
    Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death--
    Most like a monumental statue set
    In everlasting watch and moveless woe
    Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
    Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
    If it could weep, it could arise and go.







    INSUFFICIENCY



    When I attain to utter forth in verse
    Some inward thought, my soul throbs audibly
    Along my pulses, yearning to be free
    And something farther, fuller, higher, rehearse
    To the individual, true, and the universe,
    In consummation of right harmony:
    But, like a wind-exposed distorted tree,
    We are blown against for ever by the curse
    Which breathes through Nature. Oh, the world is weak!
    The effluence of each is false to all,
    And what we best conceive we fail to speak.
    Wait, soul, until thine ashen garments fall,
    And then resume thy broken strains, and seek
    Fit peroration without let or thrall.






    IRREPARABLENESS



    I HAVE been in the meadows all the day
    And gathered there the nosegay that you see
    Singing within myself as bird or bee
    When such do field-work on a morn of May.
    But, now I look upon my flowers, decay
    Has met them in my hands more fatally
    Because more warmly clasped,--and sobs are free
    To come instead of songs. What do you say,
    Sweet counsellors, dear friends ? that I should go
    Back straightway to the fields and gather more ?
    Another, sooth, may do it, but not I!
    My heart is very tired, my strength is low,
    My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,
    Held dead within them till myself shall die.







    ON A PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH BY B. R. HAYDON



    WORDSWORTH upon Helvellyn! Let the cloud
    Ebb audibly along the mountain-wind,
    Then break against the rock, and show behind
    The lowland valleys floating up to crowd
    The sense with beauty. He with forehead bowed
    And humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined
    Before the sovran thought of his own mind,
    And very meek with inspirations proud,
    Takes here his rightful place as poet-priest
    By the high altar, singing prayer and prayer

    To the higher Heavens. A noble vision free
    Our Haydon's hand has flung out from the mist:
    No portrait this, with Academic air!
    This is the poet and his poetry.







    PAIN IN PLEASURE



    A THOUGHT ay like a flower upon mine heart,
    And drew around it other thoughts like bees
    For multitude and thirst of sweetnesses;
    Whereat rejoicing, I desired the art
    Of the Greek whistler, who to wharf and mart
    Could lure those insect swarms from orange-trees
    That I might hive with me such thoughts and please
    My soul so, always. foolish counterpart
    Of a weak man's vain wishes! While I spoke,
    The thought I called a flower grew nettle-rough
    The thoughts, called bees, stung me to festering:
    Oh, entertain (cried Reason as she woke)
    Your best and gladdest thoughts but long enough,
    And they will all prove sad enough to sting!







    PAST AND FUTURE



    MY future will not copy fair my past
    On any leaf but Heaven's. Be fully done
    Supernal Will! I would not fain be one
    Who, satisfying thirst and breaking fast,
    Upon the fulness of the heart at last
    Says no grace after meat. My wine has run
    Indeed out of my cup, and there is none
    To gather up the bread of my repast
    Scattered and trampled; yet I find some good
    In earth's green herbs, and streams that bubble up
    Clear from the darkling ground,--content until
    I sit with angels before better food: --
    Dear Christ! when thy new vintage fills my cup,
    This hand shall shake no more, nor that wine spill






    PATIENCE TAUGHT BY NATURE



    'O DREARY life,'we cry, 'O dreary life! '
    And still the generations of the birds
    Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
    Serenely live while we are keeping strife
    With Heaven's true purpose in us, as a knife
    Against which we may struggle! Ocean girds
    Unslackened the dry land, savannah-swards
    Unweary sweep, hills watch unworn, and rife
    Meek leaves drop year]y from the forest-trees
    To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass
    In their old glory: O thou God of old,
    Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these!--
    But so much patience as a blade of grass
    Grows by, contented through the heat and cold.






    PERPLEXED MUSIC



    AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO E. J.

    EXPERIENCE, like a pale musician, holds
    A dulcimer of patience in his hand,
    Whence harmonies, we cannot understand,
    Of God; will in his worlds, the strain unfolds
    In sad-perplexed minors: deathly colds
    Fall on us while we hear, and countermand
    Our sanguine heart back from the fancyland
    With nightingales in visionary wolds.
    We murmur 'Where is any certain tune
    Or measured music in such notes as these ? '
    But angels, leaning from the golden seat,
    Are not so minded their fine ear hath won
    The issue of completed cadences,
    And, smiling down the stars, they whisper--
         SWEET.






    SUBSTITUTION



    WHEN some beloved voice that was to you
    Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,
    And silence, against which you dare not cry,
    Aches round you like a strong disease and new--
    What hope ? what help ? what music will undo
    That silence to your sense ? Not friendship's sigh,
    Not reason's subtle count; not melody
    Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew;
    Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales
    Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress-trees
    To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws
    Self-chanted, nor the angels'sweet 'All hails,'
    Met in the smile of God: nay, none of these.
    Speak THOU, availing Christ!--and fill this pause.






    TEARS



    THANK God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
    More grief than ye can weep for. That is well--
    That is light grieving! lighter, none befell
    Since Adam forfeited the primal lot.
    Tears! what are tears ? The babe weeps in its cot,
    The mother singing, at her marriage-bell
    The bride weeps, and before the oracle
    Of high-faned hills the poet has forgot
    Such moisture on his cheeks. Thank God for grace,
    Ye who weep only! If, as some have done,
    Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place

    And touch but tombs,--look up I those tears will run
    Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,
    And leave the vision clear for stars and sun







    THE LOOK



    The Saviour looked on Peter. Ay, no word,
    No gesture of reproach; the Heavens serene
    Though heavy with armed justice, did not lean
    Their thunders that way: the forsaken Lord
    Looked only, on the traitor. None record
    What that look was, none guess; for those who have seen
    Wronged lovers loving through a death-pang keen,
    Or pale-cheeked martyrs smiling to a sword,
    Have missed Jehovah at the judgment-call.
    And Peter, from the height of blasphemy--
    'I never knew this man '--did quail and fall
    As knowing straight THAT GOD; and turned free
    And went out speechless from the face of all
    And filled the silenc, weeping bitterly.







    THE MEANING OF THE LOOK



    I think that look of Christ might seem to say--
    'Thou Peter! art thou then a common stone
    Which I at last must break my heart upon
    For all God's charge to his high angels may
    Guard my foot better ? Did I yesterday
    Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run
    Quick to deny me 'neath the morning sun ?
    And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray ?
    The cock crows coldly.--GO, and manifest
    A late contrition, but no bootless fear!
    For when thy final need is dreariest,
    Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here;
    My voice to God and angels shall attest,
    Because I KNOW this man, let him be clear.'







    THE PRISONER



    I count the dismal time by months and years
    Since last I felt the green sward under foot,
    And the great breath of all things summer-
    Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears
    As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres
    Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature's lute
    Sounds on, behind this door so closely shut,
    A strange wild music to the prisoner's ears,
    Dilated by the distance, till the brain
    Grows dim with fancies which it feels too
    While ever, with a visionary pain,
    Past the precluded senses, sweep and Rhine
    Streams, forests, glades, and many a golden train
    Of sunlit hills transfigured to Divine.






    THE SERAPH AND POET



    THE seraph sings before the manifest
    God-One, and in the burning of the Seven,
    And with the full life of consummate
    Heaving beneath him like a mother's
    Warm with her first-born's slumber in that
    The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven,
    Before the naughty world, soon self-forgiven
    For wronging him,--and in the darkness prest
    From his own soul by worldly weights.
         Even so,
    Sing, seraph with the glory! heaven is high;
    Sing, poet with the sorrow! earth is low:
    The universe's inward voices cry
    'Amen' to either song of joy and woe:
    Sing, seraph,--poet,--sing on equally!








    THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION



    WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound
    I strive and struggle to deliver right
    That music of my nature, day and night
    With dream and thought and feeling interwound
    And inly answering all the senses round
    With octaves of a mystic depth and height
    Which step out grandly to the infinite
    From the dark edges of the sensual ground.
    This song of soul I struggle to outbear
    Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
    And utter all myself into the air:
    But if I did it,--as the thunder-roll
    Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there,
    Before that dread apocalypse of soul.







    THE TWO SAYINGS



    Two savings of the Holy Scriptures beat
    Like pulses in the Church's brow and breast;
    And by them we find rest in our unrest
    And, heart deep in salt-tears, do yet entreat
    God's fellowship as if on heavenly seat.
    The first is JESUS WEPT,--whereon is prest
    Full many a sobbing face that drops its best
    And sweetest waters on the record sweet:
    And one is where the Christ, denied and scorned
    LOOKED UPON PETER. Oh, to render plain
    By help of having loved a little and mourned,
    That look of sovran love and sovran pain
    Which HE, who could not sin yet suffered, turned
    On him who could reject but not sustain!







    TO GEORGE SAND: A DESIRE



    THOU large-brained woman and large-hearted man,
    Self-called George Sand! whose soul, amid the lions
    Of thy tumultuous senses, moans defiance
    And answers roar for roar, as spirits can:
    I would some mild miraculous thunder ran
    Above the applauded circus, in appliance
    Of thine own nobler nature's strength and science,
    Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan,
    From thy strong shoulders, to amaze the place
    With holier light! that thou to woman's claim
    And man's, mightst join beside the angel's grace
    Of a pure genius sanctified from blame
    Till child and maiden pressed to thine embrace
    To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame.






    TO GEORGE SAND: A RECOGNITION



    TRUE genius, but true woman! dost deny
    The woman's nature with a manly scorn
    And break away the gauds and armlets worn
    By weaker women in captivity?
    Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry
    Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn, _
    Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn
    Floats back dishevelled strength in agony
    Disproving thy man's name: and while before
    The world thou burnest in a poet-fire,
    We see thy woman-heart beat evermore
    Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher,
    Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore
    Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire!







    WORK



    WHAT are we set on earth for ? Say, to toil;
    Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines
    For all the heat o' the day, till it declines,
    And Death's mild curfew shall from work assoil.
    God did anoint thee with his odorous oil,
    To wrestle, not to reign; and He assigns
    All thy tears over, like pure crystallines,
    For younger fellow-workers of the soil
    To wear for amulets. So others shall
    Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand
    From thy hand and thy heart and thy brave cheer,
    And God's grace fructify through thee to
    The least flower with a brimming cup may stand,
    And share its dew-drop with another near.







    WORK AND CONTEMPLATION



    The woman singeth at her spinning-wheel
    A pleasant chant, ballad or barcarole;
    She thinketh of her song, upon the whole,
    Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel
    Is full, and artfully her fingers feel
    With quick adjustment, provident control,
    The lines--too subtly twisted to unroll--
    Out to a perfect thread. I hence appeal
    To the dear Christian Church--that we may do
    Our Father's business in these temples mirk,
    Thus swift and steadfast, thus intent and strong;
    While thus, apart from toil, our souls pursue
    Some high calm spheric tune, and prove our work
    The better for the sweetness of our song.