Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

XIX.

Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song-and in my brain I sing it,
Drew one angel-borne, see, on my bosom !

200

[graphic]

PROSPICE.

FEAR death?-to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,

When the snows begin, and the blasts denote

I am nearing the place,

The power of the night, the press of the storm,

The post of the foe,

Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form?

Yet the strong man must go ;

For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.

I was ever a fighter, so-one fight more,

The best and the last!

5

10

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, 15

And bade me creep past.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers,

The heroes of old,

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness, and cold.

20

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute 's at end,

And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,

Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!

Uor M

25

INVOCATION.

From the 'RING AND THE Book.'

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird,
And all a wonder and a wild desire-
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face-

Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart

When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory-to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die-

This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!
Never may I commence my song, my due
To God who best taught song by gift of thee,
Except with bent head and beseeching hand-
That still, despite the distance and the dark,
What was, again may be; some interchange.
Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought,
Some benediction anciently thy smile;-
Never conclude, but raising hand and head.
Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn
For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,
Their utmost up and on-so blessing back

10

15

20

In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home, Some whiteness, which, I judge, thy face makes proud, s Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall.

5

A WALL.

I.

O THE old wall here! How I could pass
Life in a long midsummer day,
My feet confined to a plot of grass,
My eyes from a wall not once away!

II.

And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe
Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:
Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loath,
In lappets of tangle they laugh between.

III.

Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?
Why tremble the sprays? What life o'erbrims

The body-the house no eye can probe-
Divined as, beneath a robe, the limbs?

IV.

And there again! But my heart may guess
Who tripped behind; and she sang perhaps ;
So the old wall throbbed, and its life's excess
Died out and away in the leafy wraps!

V.

Wall upon wall are between us; life

And song should away from heart to heart! I-prison-bird, with a ruddy strife

At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start

ΙΟ

15

20

VI.

Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing
That's spirit: though cloistered fast, soar free;
Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring

Of the rueful neighbours, and-forth to thee!

[graphic]
« AnteriorContinuar »