Five years ago! you cannot choose
But know the face of change,
Though July sleeps and Spring renews
The gloss in gorge and range.
Five years ago! I hardly know
How they have slipped away,
Since here we watched at ebb and flow
The waters of the Bay;
And saw, with eyes of little faith,
From cumbered summits fade
The rainbow and the rainbow wraith,
That shadow of a shade.
For Love and Youth were vext with doubt,
Like ships on driving seas,
And in those days the heart gave out
Unthankful similes.
But let it be! I've often said
His lot was hardly cast
Who never turned a happy head
To an unhappy Past—
Who never turned a face of light
To cares beyond recall:
He only fares in sorer plight
Who hath no Past at all!
So take my faith, and let it stand
Between us for a sign
That five bright years have known the land
Since yonder tumbled line
Of seacliff took our troubled talk—
The words at random thrown,
And Echo lived about this walk
Of gap and slimy stone.
Here first we learned the Love which leaves
No lack or loss behind,
The dark, sweet Love which woos the eves
And haunts the morning wind.
And roves with runnels in the dell,
And houses by the wave
What time the storm hath struck the fell
And Terror fills the cave—
A Love, you know, that lives and lies
For moments past control,
And mellows through the Poet's eyes
And sweetens in his soul.
Here first we faced a briny breeze,
What time the middle gale
Went shrilling over whitened seas
With flying towers of sail.
And here we heard the plovers call
As shattered pauses came,
When Heaven showed a fiery wall
With sheets of wasted flame.
Here grebe and gull and heavy glede
Passed eastward far away,
The while the wind, with slackened speed,
Drooped with the dying Day.
And here our friendship, like a tree,
Perennial grew and grew,
Till you were glad to live for me,
And I to live for you.
For Ever
Out of the body for ever,
Wearily sobbing, "Oh, whither?"
A Soul that hath wasted its chances
Floats on the limitless ether.
Lost in dim, horrible blankness;
Drifting like wind on a sea,
Untraversed and vacant and moaning,
Nor shallow nor shore on the lee!
Helpless, unfriended, forsaken;
Haunted and tracked by the Past,
With fragments of pitiless voices,
And desolate faces aghast!
One saith—"It is well that he goeth
Naked and fainting with cold,
Who worshipped his sweet-smelling garments,
Arrayed with the cunning of old!
"Hark! how he crieth, my brothers,
With pain for the glittering things
He saw on the shoulders of Rulers,
And the might in the mouths of the Kings!
"This Soul hath been one of the idlers
Who wait with still hands, when they lack
For Fortune, like Joseph, to throw them
The cup thrust in Benjamin's sack.
"Now, had he been faithful in striving,
And warring with Wrong to the sword,
He must have passed over these spaces
Caught up in the arms of the Lord."
A second: "Lo, Passion was wilful;
And, glad with voluptuous sighs,
He held it luxurious trouble
To ache for luxurious eyes!
"She bound him, the woman resplendent;
She withered his strength with her stare;
And Faith hath been twisted and strangled
With folds of her luminous hair!
"Was it well, O you wandering wailer,
Abandoned in terrible space,
To halt on the highway to Heaven
Because of a glittering face?"
And another: "Behold, he was careful:
He faltered to think of his Youth,
Dejected and weary and footsore,
Alone on the dim road to Truth.
"If the way had been shorter and greener
And brighter, he might have been brave;
But the goal was too far and he fainted,
Like Peter with Christ on the wave!"
Beyond the wild haunts of the mockers—
Far in the distance and gray,
Floateth that sorrowful spirit
Away, and away, and away.
Pale phantoms fly past it, like shadows:
Dim eyes that are blinded with tears;
Old faces all white with affliction—
The ghosts of the wasted dead years!
"Soul that hath ruined us, shiver
And moan when you know us," they cry—
"Behold, I was part of thy substance!"—
"And I"—saith another—"and I!"
Drifting from starless abysses
Into the ether sublime,
Where is no upward nor downward,
Nor region nor record of Time!
Out of the Body for ever
No refuge—no succour nor stay—
Floated that sorrowful Spirit
Away, and away, and away.
Sonnets
To N. D. Stenhouse, Esq.
Dark days have passed, but you who taught me then
To look upon the world with trustful eyes,
Are not forgotten! Quick to sympathise
With noble thoughts, I've dreamt of moments when
Your low voice filled with strains of fairer skies!
Stray breaths of Grecian song that went and came,
Like floating fragrance from some quiet glen
In those far hills which shine with classic fame
Of passioned nymphs and grand-browed god-like men!
I sometimes fear my heart hath lost the same
Sweet sense of harmony; but this I know
That Beauty waits on you where'er you go,
Because she loveth child-like Faith! Her bowers
Are rich for it with glad perennial flowers.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A lofty Type of all her sex, I ween,
My English brothers, though your wayward race
Now slight the Soul that never wore a screen,
And loved too well to keep her noble place!
Ah, bravest Woman that our World hath seen
(A light in spaces wild and tempest-tost),
In every verse of thine, behold, we trace
The full reflection of an earnest face
And hear the scrawling of an eager pen!
O sisters! knowing what you've loved and lost,
I ask where shall we find its like, and when?
That dear heart with its passion sorrow-crost,
And pathos rippling, like a brook in June
Amongst the roses of a windless noon.