Puslapio vaizdai
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How did he like it when the live creatures Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,

And worm, slug, eft, with serious features, Came in, each one, for his right of trover?

When the water beetle with great blind deaf face

Made of her eggs the stately deposit, And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface

As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet?

All that life and fun and romping,

All that frisking and twisting and coupling,

While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping

And clasps were cracking and covers suppling!

As if you had carried sour John Knox
To the play-house at Paris, Vienna or
Munich,

Fastened him into a front-row box,

And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.

Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it?

Back to my room shall you take your sweet self!

Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, sufficit!

See the snug niche I have made on my shelf.

A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover

you,

Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay,

And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,

Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day!

SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER

[1842.]

GR-R-R there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?

At the meal we sit together:
Salve tibi! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What's the Latin name for parsley'?
What's the Greek name for Swine's
Snout?

Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial

Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)

Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank,
With Sanchicha, telling stories,

Steeping tresses in the tank, Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs, - Can't I see his dead eye glow, Bright as 'twere a Barbary's corsair's? (That is, if he'd let it show!)

When he finishes refection,

Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As I do, in Jesu's praise.
I, the Trinity illustrate,

Drinking watered orange-pulp-
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp!

Oh, those melons! If he 's able

We're to have a feast; so nice! One goes to the Abbot's table, All of us get each a slice. How go on your flowers? None double? Not one fruit-sort can you spy? Strange! And I, too, at such trouble, Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

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Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste, Pound at thy powder, I am not in haste! Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things,

Than go where men wait me and dance at the King's.

That in the mortar - you call it a gum? Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!

And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue, Sure to taste sweetly, is that poison too?

Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,

What a wild crowd of invisible_pleasures! To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree-basket!

Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!

But to light a pastille, and Elise, with her head

And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!

Quick- is it finished? The colour 's too grim!

Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim?

Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,

And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!

What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me

That's why she ensnared him: this never will free

The soul from those masculine eyes, say, 'no!'

To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.

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For only last night, as they whispered, I brought

My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought

Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,

Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it

all!

Not that I bid you spare her the pain!
Let death be felt and the proof remain;
Brand, burn up, bite into its grace.
He is sure to remember her dying face!
Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be

not morose;

It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:

The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee

If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?

Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,

You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!

But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings

Ere I know it-next moment I dance at the King's!

CRISTINA [1842.]

SHE should never have looked at me
If she meant I should not love her!
There are plenty. men, you call such,
I suppose
she may discover
All her soul to, if she pleases,

And yet leave much as she found them: But I'm not so, and she knew it

When she fixed me, glancing round them

What? To fix me thus meant nothing?

But I can't tell (there's my weakness) What her look said! - no vile cant, sure, About 'need to strew the bleakness Of some lone shore with its pearl-seed, That the sea feels'- -no 'strange yearn ing

That such souls have, most to lavish
Where there's chance of least returning.'

Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows!
But not quite so sunk that moments,
Sure tho' seldom, are denied us,
When the spirit's true endowments

Stand out plainly from its false ones,
And appraise it if pursuing
Or the right way or the wrong way,
To its triumph or undoing.

There are flashes struck from midnights, There are fire-flames noondays kindle, Whereby piled-up honours perish,

Whereby swoln ambitions dwindle, While just this or that poor impulse Which for once had play unstifled Seems the sole work of a lifetime

That away the rest have trifled.

Doubt you if, in some such moment, As she fixed me, she felt clearly, Ages past the soul existed,

Here an age 'tis resting merely, And hence fleets again for ages,

While the true end, sole and single, It stops here for is, this love-way, With some other soul to mingle?

Else it loses what it lived for

And eternally must lose it; Better ends may be in prospect,

Deeper blisses (if you choose it) But this life's end and this love-bliss Have been lost here. Doubt you whether This she felt as, looking at me,

Mine and her souls rushed together.

Oh, observe! Of course, next moment,
The world's honours, in derision,
Trampled out the light for ever:
Never fear but there's provision
Of the Devil's to quench knowledge

Lest we walk the earth in rapture! - Making those who catch God's secret Just so much more prize their capture.

Such am I the secret's mine now!

She has lost me, I have gained her; Her soul's mine: and thus, grown perfect, I shall pass my life's remainder. Life will just hold out the proving

Both our powers, alone and blended; And then, come the next life quickly! This world's use will have been ended.

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So, the year's done with!
(Love me for ever!)
All March begun with,
April's endeavour;
May-wreaths that bound me
June needs must sever;
Now snows fall round me,
Quenching June's fever -
(Love me for ever!)

MEETING AT NIGHT
T1845.]

THE grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

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Be a god and hold me
With a charm!

Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!
Teach me, only teach, Love!
As I ought

I will speak thy speech, Love,
Think thy thought-

Meet, if thou require it,
Both demands,
Laying flesh and spirit
In thy hands.

That shall be to-morrow,
Not to-night:

I must bury sorrow
Out of sight:

Must a little weep, Love,
(Foolish me!)

And so fall asleep, Love,
Loved by thee.

EVELYN HOPE

[1855.]

BEAUTIFUL Evelyn Hope is dead!

Sit and watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She plucked that piece of geraniumflower,

Beginning to die too, in the glass;

Little has yet been changed, I think: The shutters are shut, no light may pass Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink.

Sixteen years old when she died!

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name; It was not her time to love; beside, Her life had many a hope and aim, Duties enough and little cares,

And now was quiet, now astir, Till God's hand beckoned unawares, And the sweet white brow is all of her.

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?

What, your soul was pure and true, The good stars met in your horoscope, Made you of spirit, fire and dew And, just because I was thrice as old

And our paths in the world diverged so wide,

Each was nought to each, must I be told? We were fellow mortals, nought beside? No, indeed! for God above

Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
And creates the love to reward the love:
I claim you still, for my own love's sake!
Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
Through worlds I shall traverse, not a
few:

Much is to learn and much to forget
Ere the time be come for taking you.

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O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall Bounding all,

Made of marble, men might march on no be prest,

In the lower earth, in the years long still,
That body and soul so pure and gay?
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,
And your mouth of your own geranium's And such plenty and perfection, see, a

And what you would do with me, in fine, In the new life come in the old one's stead.

I have lived, I shall say, so much since then,

Given up myself so many times, Gained me the gains of various men,

Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, Either I missed or itself missed me: And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope! What is the issue? let us see!

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while!

My heart seemed full as it could hold There was place and to spare for the frank young smile

And the red young mouth and the hair's young gold.

So, hush, I will give you this leaf to keep

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand. There, that is our secret! go to sleep; You will wake, and remember, and understand.

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Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'er spreads

Every vestige of the city, guessed alone Stock or stone

Where a multitude of men breathed joy and

Lust of glory pricked their hearts up dread of shame

Struck them tame;

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Sprang sublime,

And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced

As they raced,

And the monarch and his minions and his dames

Viewed the games.

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured

eve

Smiles to leave

To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece

In such peace,

And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey

Melt away

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That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair

Waits me there

In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul

For the goal,

When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb

Till I come.

But he looked upon the city, every side, Far and wide,

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