90 Go to Paris: rank on rank
Search the heroes flung pell-mell

'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the On the Louvre,' face and flank.

In his Croisie keeps alive the feat as it be- At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, fell;

632

Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

loved so,
-Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
What had I on earth to do

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."

III

With the slothful, with the mawkish, the un-
manly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
-Being-who?
Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our ministering two angels look surprise

One who never turned his back but marched 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 can make mine, to play thy
part

Of chief musician. What hast thou to do
With looking from the lattice-lights at me,

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work- A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through

time

Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,

"Strive and thrive!' cry "Speed,-fight on, fare ever

There as here!"'

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWN-
ING (1809-1861)

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE*

I

I thought once how Theocritus had sung1
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for
years,

Who each one 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 across me. Straightway I was 'ware,

1 Idyls, xv, 104.

* These Sonnets, forty-four in number, were written by Miss Barrett during the time of Mr. Browning's courtship, but were not shown to him until after their marriage in 1846. The title under which they were published (1850) was adopted as a disguise. To understand them aright, it must be remembered that Miss Barrett was in middle life and had long been an invalid. See Eng. Lit., p. 307. F. G. Kenyon, in his edition of Mrs. Browning's Letters, writes: "With the single exception of Rossetti, no modern English poet has written of love with such genius, such beauty, and such sincerity, as the two who gave the most beautiful example of it in their own lives."

The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
The chrism is on thine head,-on mine, the
dew,-

And Death must dig the level where these agree.

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 watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor
For hand of thine? and canst thou think and
bear

To let thy music drop here unaware
In folds of golden fulness at my door?
Look up and see the 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.

XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
I love her for her smile-her look-her way
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"-
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee, and love, sc
wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,-
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
2 The sacred ointment; here figurative for poeti
consecration.

But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

XXII

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curvèd point,-what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented?
In mounting

higher,

Think.

II

Before the phantom of False morning died,1
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried,
"When all the Temple is prepared within,
Why nods the drowsy Worshipper outside?''

III

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted-"Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more."

IV

The angels would press on us and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Belovèd,-where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it. Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose,

Now the New Year2 reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,

Where the WHITE HAND OF MOSES on the
Bough

XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's
faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,-I love thee with the
breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!-and, if God
choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.+

V

And Jamshyd's Sev 'n-ring'd Cup where no one
knows;

But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine,
And many a Garden by the Water blows.

* Omar Khayyám (i. e., Omar the Tent-maker)
was a Persian astronomer and poet of the
12th century, who dwelt at Naishápúr.
Rubáiyát is a Persian word, the plural of
rubái, which signifies "a quatrain." These
rubáiyát are therefore short, epigrammatic
poems, virtually independent of each other.
From among the numerous quatrains left by
Omar, Edward Fitzgerald selected and free-
ly translated a number, and printed them in
1859 (see Eng. Lit., p. 309). The number in
that edition was seventy-five. The third edi-
tion (1873) contained one hundred and one;
the fourth edition, which is reproduced here,
had a few further verbal changes. There are
two widely divergent views of the philosophy
contained in them, the one regarding it as
wholly materialistic, raising questions of the
"Two Worlds" only to dismiss them and take
refuge in the pleasures of sense-an Epi-
curean philosophy of "Eat, drink, and be
merry." The other regards it as an example
of Oriental mysticism, employing Wine and
the like as poetic symbols of deity. Fitz-
gerald held firmly to the former view, con-
tent, however, "to believe that, while the
wine Omar celebrates is simply the juice of
the grape, he bragged more than he drank of
it, in very defiance perhaps of that spiritual
wine which left its votaries sunk in hypocrisy
or disgust."

The opening stanza of the first edition is con-
siderably more daring in its imagery, drawing
one of its figures from the practice, in the
desert, of flinging a stone into the cup as a
signal "To Horse!"-

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Hlas flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the IIunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
Iram was an ancient garden, planted by King
Shaddad. Jamshyd was a legendary king of
Persia's golden age; his seven-ringed cup was
"typical of the seven heavens, etc., and was
a divining cup." Other kings and heroes
are mentioned in quatrains X and XVIII.
Hátim was "a well known type of oriental
generosity." For Zál and Rustum, see Ar-
nold's poem of Sohrab and Rustum.

And David's lips are lockt; but in divine
High-piping Pehlevf, with "Wine! Wine!
Wine!

And those who husbanded the Golden Grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd

Red Wine!"-the Nightingale cries to the As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh And not a drop that from our Cups we throw