XV
Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear
Too calm and sad a fa front of thine;
For we two look two ways, and ot shine
With the same sunlight on our brow and hair.
Ohou lookest with no doubting care,
As on a bee shut in a crystalline;
Since sorrow hath shut me safe in loves divine,
And to spread wing and fly ier air
Were most impossible failure, if I strove
To fail so. But I look on thee--on thee--
Beholding, besides love, the end of love,
Hearing oblivion beyond memory;
As one who sits and gazes from above,
Over the rivers to the bitter sea.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
XVI
A, because thou overest so,
Because thou art more noble and like a king,
Thou st prevail against my fears and fling
Thy purple rouill my heart shall grow
Too close against thi heh to know
How it shook when alone. Why, quering
May prove as lordly and plete a thing
In lifting upward, as in crushing low !
And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword
To one who lifts him from the bloody earth,
Even so, Beloved, I at last record,
Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth,
I rise above abasement at the word.
Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
XVII
My poet, thou st tou all the notes
God set between his After and Before,
And strike up and strike off the general roar
Of the rushing worlds a melody that floats
In a serene air purely. Antidotes
Of medicated musiswering for
Mankinds forlor uses, thou st pour
From theo their ears. Gods will devotes
Thio suds, and mio wait on thine.
How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use ?
A hope, to sing by gladly ? or a fine
Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse ?
A shade, in which to sing--of palm or pine ?
A grave, on which to rest from singing ? Choose.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
XVIII
I never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Whiow upon my fihoughtfully,
I ring out to the full browh and say
Take it. My day of youth weerday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foots glee,
Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree,
As girls do, any more: it only may
Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears,
Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside
Through sorrows trick. I thought the funeral-shears
Would take this first, but Love is justified,--
Take it thou,--finding pure, from all those years,
The kiss my mother left here when she died.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
XIX
The souls Rialto hath its merdise;
I barter curl for curl upon that mart,
And from my poets forehead to my heart
Receive this lock which outweighs argosies,--
As purply black, as erst to Pindars eyes
The dim purpureal tresses gloomed athwart
The nine white Muse-brows. For this terpart, . . .
The bay-s shade, Beloved, I surmise,
Still lingers on thy curl, it is so black !
Thus, with a fillet of smooth-kissing breath,
I tie the shadows safe from gliding back,
And lay the gift where nothing hih;
Here on my heart, as on thy brow, to lack
No natural heat till mine grows cold ih.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
XX
And wilt thou have me fashion i