Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (231 page)

Sonnets from the Portuguese I

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

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 its antique tongue,
  
5
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
  
10
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.”

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Sonnets from the Portuguese II

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

BUT only three in all God’s universe
Have heard this word thou hast said, — Himself, beside
Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied
One of us …
that
was God, … and laid the curse
So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce
  
5
My sight from seeing thee, — that if I had died,
The deathweights, placed there, would have signified
Less absolute exclusion. “Nay” is worse
From God than from all others, O my friend!
Men could not part us with their worldly jars,
  
10
Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;
Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:
And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,
We should but vow the faster for the stars.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

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Sonnets from the Portuguese III

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

UNLIKE are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our ministering two angels look surprise
On one another, as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art
  
5
A guest for queens to social pageantries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part
Of chief musician. What hast
thou
to do
With looking from the lattice-lights at me,
  
10
A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through
The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
The chrism is on thine head, — on mine, the dew, —
And Death must dig the level where these agree.

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Sonnets from the Portuguese IV

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

THOU hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems! where
The dancers will break footing, from the care
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this house’s latch too poor
  
5
For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear
To let thy music drop here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door?
Look up and see the casement broken in,
The bats and owlets builders in the roof!
  
10
My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
Hush, call no echo up in further proof
Of desolation! there’s a voice within
That weeps … as thou must sing … alone, aloof.

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Sonnets from the Portuguese V

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

I LIFT my heavy heart up solemnly,
As once Electra her sepulchral urn,
And looking in thine eyes, I overturn
The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,
  
5
And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn
Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
It might be well perhaps. But if instead
Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow
  
10
The gray dust up, … those laurels on thine head,
O my Belovèd, will not shield thee so,
That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred
The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! go.

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Sonnets from the Portuguese VI

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

GO from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Hence forward 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
  
5
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
  
10
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 my eyes the tears of two.

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Sonnets from the Portuguese VII

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

THE FACE of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,
  
5
Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole
God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,
And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear.
The names of country, heaven, are changed away
  
10
For where thou art or shalt be, there or here;
And this … this lute and song … loved yesterday,
(The singing angels know) are only dear
Because thy name moves right in what they say.

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Sonnets from the Portuguese VIII

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

WHAT can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast brought the gold
And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,
And laid them on the outside of the wall
For such as I to take or leave withal,
  
5
In unexpected largesse? am I cold,
Ungrateful, that for these most manifold
High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
Not so; not cold, — but very poor instead.
Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run
  
10
The colors from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to thy head.
Go farther! let it serve to trample on.

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Sonnets from the Portuguese IX

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

CAN it be right to give what I can give?
To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears
As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years
Re-sighing on my lips renunciative
Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live
  
5
For all thy adjurations? O my fears,
That this can scarce be right! We are not peers,
So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve,
That givers of such gifts as mine are, must
Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas!
  
10
I will not soil thy purple with my dust,
Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass,
Nor give thee any love — which were unjust.
Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.

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Sonnets from the Portuguese X

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

YET, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
  
5
I love thee
… mark! …
I love thee
— in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
  
10
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
And what I
feel,
across the inferior features
Of what I
am,
doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.

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Sonnets from the Portuguese XI

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

AND therefore if to love can be desert,
I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as pale
As these you see, and trembling knees that fail
To bear the burden of a heavy heart, —
This weary minstrel-life that once was girt
  
5
To climb Aornus, and can scarce avail
To pipe now ‘gainst the valley nightingale
A melancholy music, — why advert
To these things? O Belovèd, it is plain
I am not of thy worth nor for thy place!
  
10
And yet, because I love thee, I obtain
From that same love this vindicating grace,
To live on still in love, and yet in vain, —
To bless thee, yet renounce thee to thy face.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order