XLVII
Oh, the golden-hearted daisies
Witnessed there, before my youth,
To the truth of things, with praises
Of the beauty of the truth;
And I woke to Nature’s real, laughing joyfully for both.
XLVIII
And I said within me, laughing,
I have found a bower to-day,
A green lusus, fashioned half in
Chance and half in Nature’s play,
And a little bird sings nigh it, I will never more missay.
XLIX
Henceforth, I will be the fairy
Of this bower not built by one;
I will go there, sad or merry,
With each morning’s benison,
And the bird shall be my harper in the dreamhall I have won.
L
So I said. But the next morning,
( — Child, look up into my face —
‘Ware, oh sceptic, of your scorning!
This is truth in its pure grace!)
The next morning, all had vanished, or my wandering missed the place.
LI
Bring an oath most sylvan-holy,
And upon it swear me true —
By the wind-bells swinging slowly
Their mute curfews in the dew,
By the advent of the snowdrop, by the rosemary and rue, —
LII
I affirm by all or any,
Let the cause be charm or chance,
That my wandering searches many
Missed the bower of my romance —
That I nevermore upon it turned my mortal countenance.
LIII
I affirm that, since I lost it,
Never bower has seemed so fair;
Never garden-creeper crossed it
With so deft and brave an air,
Never bird sung in the summer, as I saw and heard them there.
LIV
Day by day, with new desire,
Toward my wood I ran in faith,
Under leaf and over brier,
Through the thickets, out of breath;
Like the prince who rescued Beauty from the sleep as long as death.
LV
But his sword of mettle clashèd,
And his arm smote strong, I ween,
And her dreaming spirit flashèd
Through her body’s fair white screen,
And the light thereof might guide him up the cedar alleys green:
LVI
But for me, I saw no splendour —
All my sword was my child-heart;
And the wood refused surrender
Of that bower it held apart,
Safe as Oedipus’s grave-place ‘mid Colonos’ olives swart.
LVII
As Aladdin sought the basements
His fair palace rose upon,
And the four-and-twenty casements
Which gave answers to the sun;
So, in ‘wilderment of gazing, I looked up and I looked down.
LVIII
Years have vanished since, as wholly
As the little bower did then;
And you call it tender folly
That such thoughts should come again?
Ah, I cannot change this sighing for your smiling, brother men!
LIX
For this loss it did prefigure
Other loss of better good,
When my soul, in spirit-vigour
And in ripened womanhood,
Fell from visions of more beauty than an arbour in a wood.
LX
I have lost — oh, many a pleasure,
Many a hope and many a power —
Studious health and merry leisure,
The first dew on the first flower!
But the first of all my losses was the losing of the bower.
LXI
I have lost the dream of Doing,
And the other dream of Done,
The first spring in the pursuing,
The first pride in the Begun, —
First recoil from incompletion, in the face of what is won —
LXII
Exaltations in the far light
Where some cottage only is;
Mild dejections in the starlight,
Which the sadder-hearted miss;
And the child-cheek blushing scarlet for the very shame of bliss.
LXIII
I have lost the sound child-sleeping
Which the thunder could not break;
Something too of the strong leaping
Of the staglike heart awake,
Which the pale is low for keeping in the road it ought to take.
LXIV
Some respect to social fictions
Has been also lost by me;
And some generous genuflexions,
Which my spirit offered free
To the pleasant old conventions of our false humanity.
LXV
All my losses did I tell you,
Ye perchance would look away; —
Ye would answer me, “Farewell! you
Make sad company to-day,
And your tears are falling faster than the bitter words you say.”
LXVI
For God placed me like a dial
In the open ground with power,
And my heart had for its trial
All the sun and all the shower:
And I suffered many losses, — and my first was of the bower.
LXVII
Laugh you? If that loss of mine be
Of no heavy-seeming weight —
When the cone falls from the pine-tree,
The young children laugh thereat;
Yet the wind that struck it, riseth, and the tempest shall be great.
LXVIII
One who knew me in my childhood
In the glamour and the game,
Looking on me long and mild, would
Never know me for the same.
Come, unchanging recollections, where those changes overcame!
LXIX
By this couch I weakly lie on,
While I count my memories, —
Through the fingers which, still sighing,
I press closely on mine eyes, —
Clear as once beneath the sunshine, I behold the bower arise.
LXX
Springs the linden-tree as greenly,
Stroked with light adown its rind;
And the ivy-leaves serenely
Each in either intertwined;
And the rose-trees at the doorway, they have neither grown nor pined.
LXXI
From those overblown faint roses
Not a leaf appeareth shed,
And that little bud discloses
Not a thorn’s-breadth more of red,
For the winters and the summers which have passed me overhead.
LXXII
And that music overfloweth,
Sudden sweet, the sylvan eaves:
Thrush or nightingale — who knoweth?
Fay or Faunus — who believes?
But my heart still trembles in me to the trembling of the leaves.
LXXIII
Is the bower lost, then? who sayeth
That the bower indeed is lost?
Hark! my spirit in it prayeth
Through the sunshine and the frost, —
And the prayer preserves it greenly, to the last and uttermost.
LXXIV
Till another open for me
In God’s Eden-land unknown,
With an angel at the doorway,
White with gazing at His Throne;
And a saint’s voice in the palm-trees, singing— “All is lost . . . and won! “
A SONG AGAINST SINGING.
TO E. J. H.
I
They bid me sing to thee,
Thou golden-haired and silver-voicèd child —
With lips by no worse sigh than sleep’s
defiled —
With eyes unknowing how tears dim the sight,
And feet all trembling at the new delight
Treaders of earth to be!
II
Ah no! the lark may bring
A song to thee from out the morning cloud,
The merry river from its lilies bowed,
The brisk rain from the trees, the lucky wind
That half doth make its music, half doth find, —
But I — I may not sing.
III
How could I think it right,
New-comer on our earth as, Sweet, thou art,
To bring a verse from out a human heart
Made heavy with accumulated tears,
And cross with such amount of weary years
Thy day-sum of delight?
IV
Even if the verse were said,
Thou — who wouldst clap thy tiny hands to hear
The wind or rain, gay bird or river clear —
Wouldst, at that sound of sad humanities,
Upturn thy bright uncomprehending eyes
And bid me play instead.
V
Therefore no song of mine, —
But prayer in place of singing; prayer that would
Commend thee to the new-creating God
Whose gift is childhood’s heart without its stain
Of weakness, ignorance, and changing vain —
That gift of God be thine!
VI
So wilt thou aye be young,
In lovelier childhood than thy shining brow
And pretty winning accents make thee now:
Yea, sweeter than this scarce articulate sound
(How sweet!) of “father,” “mother,” shall be found
The Abba on thy tongue.
VII
And so, as years shall chase
Each other’s shadows, thou wilt less resemble
Thy fellows of the earth who toil and tremble,
Than him thou seèst not, thine angel bold
Yet meek, whose ever-lifted eyes behold
The Ever-loving’s face.
WINE OF CYPRUS.
GIVEN TO ME BY H. S. BOYD, AUTHOR OF “SELECT PASSAGES FROM THE GREEK FATHERS,” ETC.,
TO WHOM THESE STANZAS ARE ADDRESSED.
I
If old Bacchus were the speaker,
He would tell you with a sigh
Of the Cyprus in this beaker
I am sipping like a fly, —
Like a fly or gnat on Ida
At the hour of goblet-pledge,
By queen Juno brushed aside, a
Full white arm-sweep, from the edge.
II
Sooth, the drinking should be ampler
When the drink is so divine,
And some deep-mouthed Greek exemplar
Would become your Cyprus wine:
Cyclops’ mouth might plunge aright in,
While his one eye overleered,
Nor too large were mouth of Titan
Drinking rivers down his beard.
III
Pan might dip his head so deep in,
That his ears alone pricked out,
Fauns around him pressing, leaping,
Each one pointing to his throat:
While the Naiads, like Bacchantes,
Wild, with urns thrown out to waste,
Cry, “O earth, that thou wouldst grant us
Springs to keep, of such a taste!”
IV
But for me, I am not worthy
After gods and Greeks to drink,
And my lips are pale and earthy
To go bathing from this brink:
Since you heard them speak the last time,
They have faded from their blooms,
And the laughter of my pastime
Has learnt silence at the tombs.
V
Ah, my friend! the antique drinkers
Crowned the cup and crowned the brow.
Can I answer the old thinkers
In the forms they thought of, now?
Who will fetch from garden-closes
Some new garlands while I speak,
That the forehead, crowned with roses,
May strike scarlet down the cheek?
VI
Do not mock me! with my mortal
Suits no wreath again, indeed;
I am sad-voiced as the turtle
Which Anacreon used to feed:
Yet as that same bird demurely
Wet her beak in cup of his,
So, without a garland, surely
I may touch the brim of this.
VII
Go, — let others praise the Chian!
This is soft as Muses’ string,
This is tawny as Rhea’s lion,
This is rapid as his spring,
Bright as Paphia’s eyes e’er met us,
Light as ever trod her feet;
And the brown bees of Hymettus
Make their honey not so sweet.
VIII
Very copious are my praises,
Though I sip it like a fly!
Ah — but, sipping, — times and places
Change before me suddenly:
As Ulysses’ old libation
Drew the ghosts from every part,
So your Cyprus wine, dear Grecian,
Stirs the Hades of my heart.
IX
And I think of those long mornings
Which my thought goes far to seek,
When, betwixt the folio’s turnings,
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek:
Past the pane the mountain spreading,
Swept the sheep’s-bell’s tinkling noise,
While a girlish voice was reading,
Somewhat low for ‘s and ‘s.
X
Then, what golden hours were for us!
While we sat together there,
How the white vests of the chorus
Seemed to wave up a live air!
How the cothurns trod majestic
Down the deep iambic lines,
And the rolling anapæstic
Curled like vapour over shrines!
XI
Oh, our Æschylus, the thunderous,
How he drove the bolted breath
Through the cloud, to wedge it ponderous
In the gnarlèd oak beneath!
Oh, our Sophocles, the royal,
Who was born to monarch’s place,
And who made the whole world loyal
Less by kingly power than grace!
XII
Our Euripides, the human,
With his droppings of warm tears,
And his touches of things common
Till they rose to touch the spheres!
Our Theocritus, our Bion,
And our Pindar’s shining goals! —
These were cup-bearers undying
Of the wine that’s meant for souls.
XIII
And my Plato, the divine one,
If men know the gods aright
By their motions as they shine on
With a glorious trail of light!
And your noble Christian bishops,
Who mouthed grandly the last Greek!
Though the sponges on their hyssops
Were distent with wine — too weak.
XIV
Yet, your Chrysostom, you praised him
As a liberal mouth of gold;
And your Basil, you upraised him
To the height of speakers old:
And we both praised Heliodorus
For his secret of pure lies, —
Who forged first his linkèd stories
In the heat of ladies’ eyes.
XV
And we both praised your Synesius
For the fire shot up his odes,
Though the Church was scarce propitious
As he whistled dogs and gods.
And we both
praised Nazianzen
For the fervid heart and speech:
Only I eschewed his glancing
At the lyre hung out of reach.
XVI
Do you mind that deed of Atè
Which you bound me to so fast, —
Reading “De Virginitate,”
From the first line to the last?
How I said at ending, solemn
As I turned and looked at you,
That Saint Simeon on the column
Had had somewhat less to do?
XVII
For we sometimes gently wrangled,
Very gently, be it said,
Since our thoughts were disentangled
By no breaking of the thread!
And I charged you with extortions
On the nobler fames of old —
Ay, and sometimes thought your Porsons
Stained the purple they would fold.
XVIII
For the rest — a mystic moaning
Kept Cassandra at the gate,
With wild eyes the vision shone in,
And wide nostrils scenting fate.
And Prometheus, bound in passion
By brute Force to the blind stone,
Showed us looks of invocation
Turned to ocean and the sun.
XIX
And Medea we saw burning
At her nature’s planted stake:
And proud Oedipus fate-scorning
While the cloud came on to break —
While the cloud came on slow, slower,
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 59
