THE LATTICE AT SUNRISE
As on my bed at dawn I mused and prayed, I saw my lattice pranked upon the wall, The flaunting leaves and flitting birds withal - A sunny phantom interlaced with shade; "Thanks be to heaven!" in happy mood I said, "What sweeter aid my matins could befall
Than this fair glory from the East hath made? What holy sleights hath God, the Lord of all, To bid us feel and see! we are not free To say we see not, for the glory comes Nightly and daily, like the flowing sea;
His lustre pierceth through the midnight glooms; And, at prime hour, behold! He follows me With golden shadows to my secret rooms!
Charles Tennyson-Turner.
SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who would'st not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car? And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree? Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).
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.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1809-1861).
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 me 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 forevermore, 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.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE
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 mine eyes the tears of two.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile her look
Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day:"
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee,
and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
WHEN our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curvèd point, what bitter wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher, The angels would press on us and aspire To drop some golden orb of perfect song Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay Rather on earth, Belovèd, — where the unfit Contrarious moods of men recoil away And isolate pure spirits, and permit A place to stand and love in for a day, With darkness and the death-hour rounding it. Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
THEY rose to where their sovran eagle sails, They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height, Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and night Against the Turk, whose inroad nowhere scales Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails, And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales. O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Tsernogora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892).
WRITTEN IN EDINBURGH
EVEN thus, methinks, a city reared should be, Yea, an imperial city, that might hold Five times a hundred noble towns in fee, And either with their might of Babel old, Or the rich Roman pomp of empery Might stand compare, highest in arts enrolled, Highest in arms; brave tenement for the free, Who never couch to thrones, or sin for gold. Thus should her towers be raised with vicinage Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets, As if to vindicate 'mid choicest seats
Of art, abiding Nature's majesty;
And the broad sea beyond, in calm or rage Chainless alike, and teaching Liberty.
Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-1833).
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