So 01 - I thought once how Theocritus had sung
I
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who eae in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
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 ae. Straightway I was ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
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.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
So 02 - But only three in all Gods universe
II
But only three in all Gods 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
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,
Nor the seas ge 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.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
So 03 - Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
III
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
A guest for queens to social pageantries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even make mio play thy part
Of chief musi. What hast thou to do
With looking from the lattice-lights at me,
A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through
The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
The chrism is on thine head,—on mihe de;mdash;
Ah must dig the level where these agree.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
So 04 - Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor
IV
Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems! where
The dancers will break footing, from the care
Of watg up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this houses latch too poor
For hand of thine? and st thou think and bear
To let thy music drop here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door?
Look up ahe casement broken in,
The bats and owlets builders in the roof!
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
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
So 05 - I lift my heavy heart up solemnly
V
I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,
As ora 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,
And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot i