When I made answer, I began: "Alas! How many sweet thoughts and how much desire Led these two onward to the dolorous pass!" Then turned to them, as who would fain inquire, And said: "Francesca, these thine agonies Wring tears for pity and grief that they inspire :But tell me, in the season of sweet sighs, When and what way did Love instruct you so That he in your vague longings made you wise?" Then she to me: "There is no greater woe 10 Than the remembrance brings of happy days In Misery; and this thy guide doth know. But if the first beginnings to retrace Of our sad love can yield thee solace here, So will I be as one that weeps and says. One day we read, for pastime and sweet cheer, Of Lancelot, how he found Love tyrannous: We were alone and without any fear. Our eyes were drawn together, reading thus, Full oft, and still our cheeks would pale and glow; 20 Not therefore are we certain that the rod now ΙΟ Beneath thine hand so many nations bow, So many kings:- not therefore, O my God! But because Man is parcelled out in men To-day; because, for any wrongful blow, No man not stricken asks, "I would be told Why thou dost thus:" but his heart whispers then, "He is he, I am I." By this we know That the earth falls asunder, being old. THE SONNET When do I see thee most, beloved one? The worship of that Love through thee made known? Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,) The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, LOVE-SWEETNESS Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head The changing guests, each in a different mood, And may be stamped, a memory all in vain, Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell. KNOWN IN VAIN 10 As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope, Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laugh'd When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze 10 After their life sailed by, and hold their breath. Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze Thenceforth their incommunicable ways Follow the desultory feet of Death? Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink, But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell, (And mine own image, had I noted well!) — Was that my point of turning? I had thought The stations of my course should rise unsought, As altar-stone or ensigned citadel. But lo! the path is missed, I must go back, II Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening, That the same goal is still on the same track. THE CHOICE I Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die. Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I are toll'd, Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky. Now kiss, and think that there are really those, My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase 10 Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way! Through many years they toil; then on a day They die not, - for their life was death, but cease; And round their narrow lips the mould falls close. II Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die. And dost thou prate of all that man shall do? Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be I I Glad in his gladness that comes after thee? Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go Look in my face; my name is Might-havebeen; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell; Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart One moment through thy soul the soft surprise 10 |