The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume II Part 31

Yet shall she not our mistress live, As doth the moon of ocean, Though gently as the moon she give Our thoughts a light and motion: More like a harp of many lays, Moving its master while he plays.

XXII.

No sod in all that island doth Yawn open for the dead; No wind hath borne a traitor's oath; No earth, a mourner's tread; We cannot say by stream or shade, "I suffered _here_,--was _here_ betrayed."

XXIII.

Our only "farewell" we shall laugh To s.h.i.+fting cloud or hour, And use our only epitaph To some bud turned a flower: Our only tears shall serve to prove Excess in pleasure or in love.

XXIV.

Our fancies shall their plumage catch From fairest island-birds, Whose eggs let young ones out at hatch, Born singing! then our words Unconsciously shall take the dyes Of those prodigious fantasies.

XXV.

Yea, soon, no consonant unsmooth Our smile-tuned lips shall reach; Sounds sweet as h.e.l.las spake in youth Shall glide into our speech: (What music, certes, can you find As soft as voices which are kind?)

XXVI.

And often, by the joy without And in us, overcome, We, through our musing, shall let float Such poems,--sitting dumb,-- As Pindar might have writ if he Had tended sheep in Arcady;

XXVII.

Or aeschylus--the pleasant fields He died in, longer knowing; Or Homer, had men's sins and s.h.i.+elds Been lost in Meles flowing; Or Poet Plato, had the undim Unsetting G.o.dlight broke on him.

XXVIII.

Choose me the cave most worthy choice, To make a place for prayer, And I will choose a praying voice To pour our spirits there: How silverly the echoes run!

_Thy will be done,--thy will be done._

XXIX.

Gently yet strangely uttered words!

They lift me from my dream; The island fadeth with its swards That did no more than seem: The streams are dry, no sun could find-- The fruits are fallen, without wind.

x.x.x.

So oft the doing of G.o.d's will Our foolish wills undoeth!

And yet what idle dream breaks ill, Which morning-light subdueth?

And who would murmur and mis...o...b.., When G.o.d's great sunrise finds him out?

_THE SOUL'S TRAVELLING._

~ede noerous Petasai tarsous.~

SYNESIUS.

I.

I dwell amid the city ever.

The great humanity which beats Its life along the stony streets, Like a strong and unsunned river In a self-made course, I sit and hearken while it rolls.

Very sad and very hoa.r.s.e Certes is the flow of souls; Infinitest tendencies By the finite prest and pent, In the finite, turbulent: How we tremble in surprise When sometimes, with an awful sound, G.o.d's great plummet strikes the ground!

II.

The champ of the steeds on the silver bit, As they whirl the rich man's carriage by; The beggar's whine as he looks at it,-- But it goes too fast for charity; The trail on the street of the poor man's broom, That the lady who walks to her palace-home, On her silken skirt may catch no dust; The tread of the business-men who must Count their per-cents by the paces they take; The cry of the babe unheard of its mother Though it lie on her breast, while she thinks of the other Laid yesterday where it will not wake; The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks Held out in the smoke, like stars by day; The gin-door's oath that hollowly c.h.i.n.ks Guilt upon grief and wrong upon hate; The cabman's cry to get out of the way; The dustman's call down the area-grate; The young maid's jest, and the old wife's scold, The haggling talk of the boys at a stall, The fight in the street which is backed for gold, The plea of the lawyers in Westminster Hall; The drop on the stones of the blind man's staff As he trades in his own grief's sacredness, The brothel shriek, and the Newgate laugh, The hum upon 'Change, and the organ's grinding, (The grinder's face being nevertheless Dry and vacant of even woe While the children's hearts are leaping so At the merry music's winding;) The black-plumed funeral's creeping train, Long and slow (and yet they will go As fast as Life though it hurry and strain!) Creeping the populous houses through And nodding their plumes at either side,-- At many a house, where an infant, new To the suns.h.i.+ny world, has just struggled and cried,-- At many a house where sitteth a bride Trying to-morrow's coronals With a scarlet blush to-day: Slowly creep the funerals, As none should hear the noise and say "The living, the living must go away To multiply the dead."

Hark! an upward shout is sent, In grave strong joy from tower to steeple The bells ring out, The trumpets sound, the people shout, The young queen goes to her Parliament.

She turneth round her large blue eyes More bright with childish memories Than royal hopes, upon the people; On either side she bows her head Lowly, with a queenly grace And smile most trusting-innocent, As if she smiled upon her mother; The thousands press before each other To bless her to her face; And booms the deep majestic voice Through trump and drum,--"May the queen rejoice In the people's liberties!"

III.

I dwell amid the city, And hear the flow of souls in act and speech, For pomp or trade, for merrymake or folly: I hear the confluence and sum of each, And that is melancholy!

Thy voice is a complaint, O crowned city, The blue sky covering thee like G.o.d's great pity.

IV.

O blue sky! it mindeth me Of places where I used to see Its vast unbroken circle thrown From the far pale-peaked hill Out to the last verge of ocean, As by G.o.d's arm it were done Then for the first time, with the emotion Of that first impulse on it still.

Oh, we spirits fly at will Faster than the winged steed Whereof in old book we read, With the sunlight foaming back From his flanks to a misty wrack, And his nostril reddening proud As he breasteth the steep thundercloud,-- Smoother than Sabrina's chair Gliding up from wave to air, While she smileth debonair Yet holy, coldly and yet brightly, Like her own mooned waters nightly, Through her dripping hair.

V.

Very fast and smooth we fly, Spirits, though the flesh be by; All looks feed not from the eye Nor all hearings from the ear: We can hearken and espy Without either, we can journey Bold and gay as knight to tourney, And, though we wear no visor down To dark our countenance, the foe Shall never chafe us as we go.

VI.

I am gone from peopled town!

It pa.s.seth its street-thunder round My body which yet hears no sound, For now another sound, another Vision, my soul's senses have-- O'er a hundred valleys deep Where the hills' green shadows sleep Scarce known because the valley-trees Cross those upland images, O'er a hundred hills each other Watching to the western wave, I have travelled,--I have found The silent, lone, remembered ground.

VII.

I have found a gra.s.sy niche Hollowed in a seaside hill, As if the ocean-grandeur which Is aspectable from the place, Had struck the hill as with a mace Sudden and cleaving. You might fill That little nook with the little cloud Which sometimes lieth by the moon To beautify a night of June; A cavelike nook which, opening all To the wide sea, is disallowed From its own earth's sweet pastoral: Cavelike, but roofless overhead And made of verdant banks instead Of any rocks, with flowerets spread Instead of spar and stalact.i.te, Cowslips and daisies gold and white: Such pretty flowers on such green sward, You think the sea they look toward Doth serve them for another sky As warm and blue as that on high.

VIII.

And in this hollow is a seat, And when you shall have crept to it, Slipping down the banks too steep To be o'erbrowzed by the sheep, Do not think--though at your feet The cliffs disrupt--you shall behold The line where earth and ocean meet; You sit too much above to view The solemn confluence of the two: You can hear them as they greet, You can hear that evermore Distance-softened noise more old Than Nereid's singing, the tide spent Joining soft issues with the sh.o.r.e In harmony of discontent, And when you hearken to the grave Lamenting of the underwave, You must believe in earth's communion Albeit you witness not the union.

IX.

Except that sound, the place is full Of silences, which when you cull By any word, it thrills you so That presently you let them grow To meditation's fullest length Across your soul with a soul's strength: And as they touch your soul, they borrow Both of its grandeur and its sorrow, That deathly odour which the clay Leaves on its deathlessness alway.

X.

Alway! alway? must this be?

Rapid Soul from city gone, Dost thou carry inwardly What doth make the city's moan?