The Giant Book of Poetry (2006)
Page 12
in a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
curves his white bastions with projected roof
round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
so fanciful, so savage, naught cares he
for number or proportion. Mockingly,
on coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
a swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
maugre the farmer’s sighs; and at the gate
a tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
to mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
the frolic architecture of the snow.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861)
Sonnets from the Portuguese – I1
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years,
who each one in a gracious hand appears
to bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
and, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
the sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
those of my own life, who by turns had flung
a shadow across me. Straightway I was ’ware,
so weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
and a voice said in mastery, while I strove,
“Guess now who holds thee?”—“Death,” I said.
but, there,
the silver answer rang,—“Not Death, but Love.”
Sonnets from the Portuguese – XIV1
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—her way
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.
Sonnets from the Portuguese – XX2
Belovëd, my Belovëd, when I think
that thou wast in the world a year ago,
what time I sat alone here in the snow
and saw no footprint, heard the silence sink
no moment at thy voice, but, link by link,
went counting all my chains as if that so
they never could fall off at any blow
struck by thy possible hand,—why, thus I drink
of life’s great cup of wonder! Wonderful,
never to feel thee thrill the day or night
with personal act or speech,—nor ever cull
some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.
Sonnets from the Portuguese – XLIII1
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 the 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.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)
A Nameless Grave2
“A soldier of the Union mustered out,”
is the inscription on an unknown grave
at Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,
nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout
shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout
of battle, when the loud artillery drave
its iron wedges through the ranks of brave
and doomed battalions, storming the redoubt.
Thou unknown hero sleeping by the sea
in thy forgotten grave! With secret shame
I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn,
when I remember thou hast given for me
all that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name,
and I can give thee nothing in return.
Jugurtha1
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
Cried the African monarch, the splendid,
as down to his death in the hollow
dark dungeons of Rome he descended,
uncrowned, unthroned, unattended;
how cold are thy baths, Apollo!
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended,
as the vision, that lured him to follow,
with the mist and the darkness blended,
and the dream of his life was ended;
how cold are thy baths, Apollo!
Killed at the Ford2
He is dead, the beautiful youth,
the heart of honor, the tongue of truth,
he, the life and light of us all,
whose voice was blithe as a bugle-call,
whom all eyes followed with one consent,
the cheer of whose laugh, and whose pleasant word,
hushed all murmurs of discontent.
Only last night, as we rode along,
down in the dark of the mountain gap,
to visit the picket-guard at the ford,
little dreaming of any mishap,
he was humming the words of some old song:
“Two red roses he had on his cap
and another he bore at the point of his sword.”
Sudden and swift a whistling ball
came out of a wood, and the voice was still;
something I heard in the darkness fall,
and for a moment my blood grew chill;
I spake in a whisper, as he who speaks
in a room where some one is lying dead;
but he made no answer to what I said.
We lifted him up to his saddle again,
and through the mire and the mist and the rain
carried him back to the silent camp,
and laid him as if asleep on his bed;
and I saw by the light of the surgeon’s lamp
two white roses upon his cheeks,
and one, just over his heart, blood red!
And I saw in a vision how far and fleet
that fatal bullet went speeding forth,
till it reached a town in the distant North,
till it reached a house in a sunny street,
till it reached a heart that ceased to beat
without a murmur, without a cry;
and a bell was tolled in that far-off town,
for one who had passed from cross to crown,
and the neighbors wondered that she should die.
King Witlaf’s Drinki
ng-Horn1
Witlaf, a king of the Saxons,
ere yet his last he breathed,
to the merry monks of Croyland
his drinking-horn bequeathed,—
that, whenever they sat at their revels,
and drank from the golden bowl,
they might remember the donor,
and breathe a prayer for his soul.
So sat they once at Christmas,
and bade the goblet pass;
in their beards the red wine glistened
like dew-drops in the grass.
They drank to the soul of Witlaf,
they drank to Christ the Lord,
and to each of the Twelve Apostles,
who had preached his holy word.
They drank to the Saints and Martyrs
of the dismal days of yore,
and as soon as the horn was empty
they remembered one Saint more.
And the reader droned from the pulpit
like the murmur of many bees,
the legend of good Saint Guthlac,
and Saint Basil’s homilies;
till the great bells of the convent,
from their prison in the tower,
Guthlac and Bartholomaeus,
proclaimed the midnight hour.
And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney,
and the Abbot bowed his head,
and the flamelets flapped and flickered,
but the Abbot was stark and dead.
Yet still in his pallid fingers
he clutched the golden bowl,
in which, like a pearl dissolving,
had sunk and dissolved his soul.
But not for this their revels
the jovial monks forbore,
for they cried, “Fill high the goblet!
We must drink to one Saint more!”
Nature1
As a fond mother, when the day is o’er,
leads by the hand her little child to bed,
half willing, half reluctant to be led,
and leave his broken playthings on the floor,
still gazing at them through the open door,
nor wholly reassured and comforted
by promises of others in their stead,
which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
so Nature deals with us, and takes away
our playthings one by one, and by the hand
leads us to rest so gently, that we go
scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
being too full of sleep to understand
how far the unknown transcends the what we know.
The Beleaguered City1
I have read, in some old marvelous tale,
some legend strange and vague,
that a midnight host of specters pale
beleaguered the walls of Prague.
Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream
with the wan moon overhead,
there stood as in an awful dream,
the army of the dead.
White as a sea-fog, landward bound,
the spectral camp was seen,
and, with a sorrowful deep sound,
the river flowed between.
No other voice nor sound was there,
nor drum, nor sentry’s pace;
the mist like banners clasped the air,
as clouds with clouds embrace.
But, when the old cathedral bell
proclaimed the morning prayer,
the white pavilions rose and fell
on the alarmed air.
Down the broad valley fast and far
the troubled army fled;
up rose the glorious morning star,
the ghastly host was dead.
I have read, in the marvelous heart of man
that strange and mystic scroll,
that an army of phantoms vast and wan
beleaguer the human soul.
Encamped beside Life’s rushing stream,
in Fancy’s misty light,
gigantic shapes and shadows gleam,
portentous through the night.
Upon its midnight battle-ground
the spectral camp is seen,
and with sorrowful deep sound
flows the River of Life between.
No other voice, nor sound is there,
in the army of the grave;
no other challenge breaks the air,
but the rushing of Life’s wave.
And, when the solemn and deep church-bell
entreats the soul to pray,
the midnight phantoms feel the spell,
the shadows sweep away.
Down the broad Vale of Tears afar,
the spectral camp is fled;
faith shineth as a morning star,
our ghastly fears are dead.
The Fire of Drift-Wood1
We sat within the farm-house old,
whose windows, looking o’er the bay,
gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold,
an easy entrance, night and day.
Not far away we saw the port,—
the strange, old-fashioned, silent town,—
the lighthouse—the dismantled fort,—
the wooden houses, quaint and brown.
We sat and talked until the night,
descending, filled the little room;
our faces faded from the sight,—
our voices only broke the gloom.
We spake of many a vanished scene,
of what we once had thought and said,
of what had been, and might have been,
and who was changed, and who was dead;
and all that fills the hearts of friends,
when first they feel, with secret pain,
their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
and never can be one again
the first slight swerving of the heart,
that words are powerless to express,
and leave it still unsaid in part,
or say it in too great excess.
The very tones in which we spake
had something strange, I could but mark;
the leaves of memory seemed to make
a mournful rustling in the dark.
Oft died the words upon our lips,
as suddenly, from out the fire
built of the wreck of stranded ships,
the flames would leap and then expire.
And, as their splendor flashed and failed,
we thought of wrecks upon the main,—
of ships dismasted, that were hailed
and sent no answer back again.
The windows, rattling in their frames,—
the ocean roaring up the beach,—
the gusty blast—the bickering flames,—
all mingled vaguely in our speech;
Until they made themselves a part
of fancies floating through the brain,—
the long-lost ventures of the heart,
that send no answers back again.
O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!
they were indeed too much akin,—
the drift-wood fire without that burned,
the thoughts that burned and glowed within.
The Landlord’s Tale1
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
on the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
hardly a man is now alive
who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, “If the British march
by land or sea from the town to-night,
hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
of the North Church tower as a signal light,—
one, if by land, and two, if by sea;
and I on the opposite shore will be,
ready to ride and spread the alarm
through every Middlesex village
and farm
for the country folk to be up and to arm,”
Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar
silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
just as the moon rose over the bay,
where swinging wide at her moorings lay
the Somerset, British man-of-war;
a phantom ship, with each mast and spar
across the moon like a prison bar,
and a huge black hulk, that was magnified
by its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,
wanders and watches with eager ears,
till in the silence around him he hears
the muster of men at the barrack door,
the sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
and the measured tread of the grenadiers,
marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
by the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
to the belfry-chamber overhead,
and startled the pigeons from their perch
on the somber rafters, that round him made
masses and moving shapes of shade,—
by the trembling ladder, steep and tall
to the highest window in the wall,
where he paused to listen and look down
a moment on the roofs of the town,
and the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
in their night-encampment on the hill,
wrapped in silence so deep and still
that he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
the watchful night-wind, as it went
creeping along from tent to tent
and seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
of the lonely belfry and the dead;
for suddenly all his thoughts are bent
on a shadowy something far away,
where the river widens to meet the bay,—
a line of black that bends and floats
on the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
on the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
now gazed at the landscape far and near,
then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
and turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
but mostly he watched with eager search