Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

FROM "THE HOUSE OF LIFE: A SONNET-SEQUENCE"

INTRODUCTORY

A SONNET is a moment's monument, —
Memorial from the Soul's eternity

To one dead, deathless hour. Look that it
be,
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fulness reverent :
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,

As Day or Night may rule; and let Time

see

Its flowering crest impearl'd and orient.
A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul, its converse, to what power 't is
due :-

Whether for tribute to the august appeals

Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,

In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.

LOVESIGHT

WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee
made known?

Or when, in the dusk hours (we two alone),
Close-kiss'd, and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of
thee,

Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope

The ground-whirl of the perish'd leaves of Hope,

The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

1 In the drawing Mary has left a procession of revellers, and is ascending by a sudden impulse the steps of the house where she sees Christ. Her lover has followed her, and is trying to turn her back.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

CONSIDER the sea's listless chime :
Time's self it is, made audible,
The murmur of the earth's own shell.
Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea's end: our sight may pass No furlong further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's, it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Gray and not known, along its path.

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

ODE ON CONFLICTING CLAIMS HAST thou no right to joy,

O youth grown old! who palest with the thought

Of the measureless annoy,
The pain and havoc wrought

By Fate on man: and of the many men,
The unfed, the untaught,

Who groan beneath that adamantine chain Whose tightness kills, whose slackness whips the flow

Of waves of futile woe:

Hast thou no right to joy?

Thou thinkest in thy mind
In thee it were unkind

To revel in the liquid Hyblian store,
While more and more the horror and the
shame,

The pity and the woe grow more and more, Persistent still to claim

The filling of thy mind.

Thou thinkest that, if none in all the rout Who compass thee about

Turn full their soul to that which thou desirest,

Nor seek to gain thy goal,

Beauty, the heart of beauty,

The sweetness, yea, the thoughtful sweet

ness,

The one right way in each, the best,

[blocks in formation]

As thou art, yield to the strict law of duty; And thou from them must thine example take,

Leave the amaranthine vine,
And the prized joy forsake.

O thou, foregone in this,

Long struggling with a world that is amiss, Reach some old volume down,

Some poet's book, which in thy bygone years Thou hast consum'd with joys as keen as fears,

When o'er it thou wouldst hang with rapturous frown,

Admiring with sweet envy all The exquisite of words, the lance-like fall Of mighty verses, each on each, The sweetness which did never cloy, (So wrought with thought ere touch'd with speech),

And ask again, Hast thou no right to joy? Take the most precious tones that thunderstruck thine ears

In gentler days gone by:

And if they yield no more the old ecstasy, Then give thyself to tears.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »