The House of Life
• 2. The Sonnet
• 3. Love Enthroned
• The World's Woe (The Sun's Shame) VERSO
• 4. Her Love (True Woman II)
• 5. True Woman II
• 6. True Woman III
• 7. Her Heaven (True Woman III
• 8. First Fire
• Through Death to Love (see 2nd version p. 27)
• 9. Love Enthroned
• 10. Cassandra II (See Green Book 6. Purple Book 10 & 11
• 11. Love's Testament
• 12. Heart's Hope
• 13. The Lover's Walk
• 14. The Symphony ( Love's Youth's Antiphony)
• Commandments (Soothsay) See Purple Bk. p.14, 15, 17.
• 15. Youth's Spring Tribute
• 16. Love's Pageant (Beauty's Pageant)
• 17. Genius in Beauty
• 18. Silent Noon
• 19. Gracious Moonlight
• 20. Heart's Haven
• 21. Mid Rapture
• 22. Lovelight (Soul Light)
• The Lamp's Shrine See p. 30
• 23. Last Fire
• 24. Love Measure (Equal Troth)
• 25. The Dark Glass
• 26. Life in Love
• 27. Through Death to Love See p. 8
• 28. Love and Hope
• 29. Without Her
• 30. Love's Fatality
• The Love Lamp VERSO See also p. 22
• 31. True Woman See also p 4-7
• 32. Love's Last Gift
• 33. Transfigured Life
• 34. The Man's Choice 2.
• 35.  *     *     *    3.
• 36. Cloud and Wind
• 37. From Dawn to Noon
• 38. Joy Delayed (Hoarded Joy)
• 39. Vain Virtues
• 40. The Sun's Shame See also p. 3
• 41. Run and Won (The Vase of Life)

The House of Life:

A Sonnet Sequence

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Part I.

Youth and Change

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Part II.

Change and Fate

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• A Sonnet is a moment's monument,—
• Memorial from the Soul's eternity
• To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
• Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
• Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
• Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
• As Day or Night prevail may rule; and let Time see
• Its flowering crest impearled and orient.

• A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
• 10The soul,—its converse, to what Power 'tis due:—
• Whether for tribute to the august appeals
• Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
• It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
• In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.

       

• I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair:—
• Truth, with proud awed lips; & Hope, with eyes upcast;
• And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen past
• To fires that death/of [?] signal-fires, Oblivion's flight can to scare;
• And Youth, with some bright spray of woman's hair
• Yet to his shoulder clinging, since the last
• Embrace wherein two sweet/kind/fair sweet arms held him fast;
• And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.

• Love's throne was not with these; but far above
• 10 All passionate wind of welcome & farewell
• He sat in breathless bowers they dreamed not of;
• Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, & Hope foretell,
• And Fame be for Love's sake desirable,
• And Youth be dear, & Life be sweet to Love.

   

• As some true chief of men, beneath the deep-bowed with stress
• Of life's disastrous eld, on [?]ing blossoming youth
• May gaze, & murmur with self-pity & ruth,—
• “Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess,
• Such blessing of mine all coming years should bless”:
• Then sends one glance sigh forth to the unknown goal,
• And with that thought bitterly feels breathe against his soul
• The hour swift-paced of nearer nothingness:—

• Even so the World's grey soul to the green world
• 10 Sighs now & says: “Ah! woe is me, for whom
• Dread change portends the inevitable irrevocable doom,—
• Whose heart's old fire in vapour of shame is furled:
• Which thou even as of old yore art journeying,
• All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring.”

   

• She loves him; for her infinite soul is Love,
• And he her lodestar. Passion in her is
• A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss
• Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move
• That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove,
• And it shall turn, by instant contraries,
• Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his
• For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove.

• Lo! they are one. With wifely breast to breast
• 10 And circling arms, she welcomes all command
• Of love,—her soul to answering ardours fann'd:
• Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest,
• Ah! who shall say she deems not loveliest
• The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand?

   

• She loves him; for her infinite soul is Love,
• And he her lodestar. Passion in her is
• A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss
• Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move
• That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove,
• And it shall turn, by instant contraries,
• Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his
• For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove.

• Lo! they are one. Perchance there was a in love's first day
• 10 When to Her mind unto his mind her mind faint response gave,
• His heart to her rich heart. But as sea-spray
• Over itself aspires till each curved c wave
• Of shadow is lapped in light,—even so he gave
• And she their dower. Shall this not last for aye?

   

• If “To grow old in Heaven is to grow young,”
• (As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he
• With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be
• True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung.
• Here and hereafter,—choir-strains of her tongue,—
• Added TextSky-spaces of her eyes,—sweet signs that flee
• The heavenly things that in her eyes have place
• Added TextAbout her soul's immediate sanctuary,—
• Those eyes, fair sky-breaks in the auroral face
• Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among.

• The sunrise blooms & withers on the hill
• 10 Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth
• Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe
• Even yet those lovers who have treasured still
• This test for love:—in every kiss sealed fast
• To feel the first kiss and forbode the last.

   

• If to grow old in Heaven is to grow young,
• (As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he
• With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be
• True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung.
• Here and hereafter,—choir-strains of the her tongue,—
• Sky-spaces of her eyes,—sweet signs that flee
• About her soul's immediate sanctuary,—
• Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among.

• The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill
• 10 Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth
• Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe
• Even yet those lovers who have cherished still
• This test for love:—in every kiss sealed fast
• To feel the first kiss and forbode the last.

   

• This hour be her sweet body all my song—
• Now the same heart-beat blends her gaze with mine,—
• One parted fire, Love's silent countersign:
• Her arms lie open, throbbing with their throng
• Of confluent pulses, bare and fair and strong:
• And her deep-freighted lips expect me now,
• Amid the clustering hair that shrines her brow
• Five kisses broad, her neck ten kisses long.

• Lo, Love! thy heaven of Beauty; where a sun
• 10 Thou shin'st; and art a white-winged moon to press
• By hidden paths to every hushed recess;
• Yea, and with sinuous lightenings here anon
• Of passionate change, an instant seen & gone,
• Shalt light the tumult of this loveliness.

   

• Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee ,—
• Like From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,—
• Like multiform circumfluence manifold
• Of the stark soul's night,—like terrors that agree
• On Of fire dumb-tongued, & inarticulate sea,—
• So [??] eyes Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath,
• Teems evermore with/these Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
• Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.

• Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
• 10 One Power than flow of stream or flight of dove
• Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
• Tell me, my heart,—what angel-greeted door
• Or threshold of wing-winnowed threshing-floor
• Hath guest hope fire-fledged as thine, whose guest is Love?

   

• I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair:—
• Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;
• And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen past
• To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare;
• And Youth, with still some single golden hair
• Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last
• Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;
• And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.

• Love's throne was not with these; but far above
• 10 All passionate wind of welcome and farewell
• He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of;
• Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, and Hope foretell,
• And Fame be for Love's sake desirable,
• And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love.

   

• “O Hector, gone, gone, gone! O Hector, thee
• Two chariots wait, in Troy long blessed and curs'd;
• And Grecian sword and Phrygian sand athirst
• Crave from thy veins the blood of victory.
• Lo! long upon our hearth the brand had we,
• Lit for the roof-tree's ruin: and to-day
• The ground-stone quits the wall,—the wind hath way,—
• And higher and higher the wings of fire are free.

• O Paris, Paris! O thou burning brand,
• 10 Thou beacon of the sea whence Venus rose,
• Lighting thy race to shipwreck! Even that hand
• Wherewith she took thine apple let her close
• Within thy curls, and while Troy's death-pyre glows
• Lift thee her trophy to the sea and land.”

   

• O thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
• Unto my heart dost evermore present,
• Clothed with his fire, thy heart his testament;
• Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
• The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
• Who without speech hast owned him, and, intent
• Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
• And murmured, “I am thine, thou'rt one with me!”—

• O what from thee the grace, to me the prize,
• 10 And what to Love the glory,—when the whole
• Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal
• And weary water of the place of sighs,
• And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
• Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!

   

• By what word's power, the key of paths untrod,
• Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
• Till parted waves of song yield up the shore
• Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?
• For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
• Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
• Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
• Thee from myself, neither our love from God.

• Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I
• 10 Draw from one loving heart such evidence
• As to all hearts all things shall signify;
• Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense
• As instantaneous penetrating sense,
• In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.

   

• Sweet twining hedgeflowers wind-stirred in no wise
• On this June day; and hand that clings in hand:—
• Still glades; and meeting faces scarcely fann'd:—
• An osier-odoured stream that draws the skies
• Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:—
• Fresh hourly wonder o'er the Summer land
• Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spann'd
• With one o'erarching heaven of smiles and sighs:—

• Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto
• 10 Each other's visible sweetness amorously,—
• Whose passionate hearts lean by Love's high decree
• Together on his heart for ever true,
• As the cloud-foaming firmamental blue
• Rest on the blue line of a foamless sea.

   

• “I love you, sweet: how can you ever learn
• How much I love you?” “ But You I love you even so,
• And so I learn it.” “Sweet, you cannot know
• How fair you are.” “If fair enough to earn
• Your love, so much is all my love's concern.”
• “My love grows hourly, sweet.” “Mine too doth grow;
• Yet love seemed full so many hours ago!”
• And here spech ends and kisses take their turn.
  Added TextThus lovers speak, and kiss at every turn till kisses claim their turn.

   

• Let no man ask you of anything
• Beyond [?] of flight of Spring
  Added TextNot yearborn between Spring & Spring.
• More of all worlds than he can know,
• Each day the [?] single sun doth show.
• A [?] tale A trustier gloss than you can tell
• Added TextA trustier creed than you can draw
• By all wise words remembered well
  Added TextFrom all wise scrolls demonstrative,
• Added TextFrom all the swords of faith & law
• The sea doth sigh & the wind sing.

• Let no lord awe you on any height
• Of earthly kingship's mouldering might.
• 10The dust his heel [?] bequeaths holds meet for your brow bequeaths
• Has all of it been what both are now,
• And he and you may plague together
• A beggar's eyes in some dusty weather
• When none that is now knows sound or sight.

• Let no priest tell you of any home
• Unseen above the sky's blue dome.
• To have played in childhood by the sea,
• Or to have been young in Italy,
• Or anywhere in the sun or rain
• 20To have loved and been beloved again,
• Is nearer heaven than he can come

   

• On this sweet bank your head thrice sweet and dear
• I lay, and spread your hair on either side,
• And see the newborn woodflowers bashful-eyed
• Look through the golden tresses here and there.
• On these debateable borders of the year
• Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know
• The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow;
• And through her bowers the wind's way still is clear.

• But April's sun strikes down the glades today;
• 10 So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss
• Creep, as the Spring now thrills through every spray,
• Up your warm throat to your warm lips: for this
• Is even the hour of Love's sworn suitservice,
• With whom cold hearts are counted castaway.

   

• What dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last
• Incarnate flower of culminating day,—
• What marshalled marvels on the skirts of May,
• Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast;
• What glory of change by nature's hand amass'd
• Can vie with all those moods of varying grace
• Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face
• Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd?

• Love's very vesture and elect disguise
• 10 Was each fine movement,—wonder new-begot
• Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot;
• Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs,
• Parted again; and sorrow yet for eyes
• Unborn, that read these words and saw her not.

   

• Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call
• Of Homer's or of Dante's soul heart sublime,—
• Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,—
• Is more with compassed mysteries musical;
• Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall
• More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes
• Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes
• Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.

• As many men are poets in their youth,
• 10 But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong
• Even through all change the indomitable song;
• So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth
• Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth,
• Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong.

   

• Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,—
• The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
• Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
• 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
• All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
• Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
• Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
• 'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

• Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
• 10Hangs like a blue thr thread loosened from the sky:—
• So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
• Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
• This close-companioned inarticulate hour
• When twofold silence was the song of love.

   

• Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
• When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
• Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
• So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace
• When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face
• What shall be said,—which, like a governing star,
• Gathers and garners from all things that are
• Their silent penetrative loveliness?

• O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring,
• 10 There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf
• With flowering rush and sceptred arrow-leaf,
• So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring
• Of cloud above and wave below, take wing
• And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief.

   

• Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
• Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,
• With still tears showering and averted face,
• Inexplicably filled with faint alarms:
• And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms
• I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,—
• Against all ills the fortified strong place
• And sweet reserve of sovereign countercharms.

• And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
• 10 Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away
• All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
• Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune
• And as soft waters warble to the moon,
• Our answering spirits chime one roundelay.

   

• Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love;
• Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning eyes,
• Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise,
• Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above
• All modulation of the deep-bowered dove,
• Is like a hand laid softly on the soul;
• Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control
• Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of:—

• What word can answer to thy word,—what gaze
• 10 To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere
• My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there
• Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?
• What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove,
• O lovely and beloved, O my love?

   

• What other woman could be loved like you,
• Or how of you should love possess his fill?
• After the fulness of all rapture, still,—
• Even as beyond some deep-leaved noon proof avenue
  Added TextAs at the end of some deep avenue
• A tender glamour of light day,—there comes to view
• Far in your eyes a yet more hungering thrill,—
• Such fire as Love's accordant soul-winnowing hands distil
• Even from his inmost urn/ark ark of light and dew.
• Added TextSuch fire as love's very life distil
• Added TextFrom inmost utmost bowers of light & dew.

• And as the traveller triumphs with the sun,
• 10 Glorying in heat's mid-height, till yet startide brings
• Wonder unknown, & yet fresh until new transport springs
  Added Text New satiate bliss Wonder new-born, and still fresh transport springs
• From limpid lambent hours of day begun;—
• Even so, still within your arms your soul doth move
• My soul with many changeful light s of infinite love.

   

• I would that I could find I could find in her/thee thee some fault,
• That I might love her/thee thee still in spite of it,
• But our Lord Love is just, nor will remit / Yet [?] we not, love never dare
  Added TextYet now should our Lord Love one ray remit
• Aught of thy dues Of thy pure crown he whom most I would exalt?
• And therefore doth he/makes he now / For lo! how he hath made Alas! he can but make my heart's poor low vault
• Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit
• With thy most loving soul's pure perquisite
  Added TextBy thy gem-cinctured heart/love love, made exquisite
• Of With fiery chrysoprase & bright basalt.

• Yet will I nowise shrink; but at Love's shrine
• 10 Myself within the light beams his brow doth dart
• Will set the flashing jewel of thy heart
• In that dull chamber where it deigns to shine;
• Ever for more For lo! in honour of thine excellencies,
• Proud of My heart takes pride to show how vile poor it is.

   

• Love, through your spirit and mine what summer eve
• Now glows with glory of all things possess'd,
• Since this day's sun of rapture filled the west
• And the light sweetened as the fire took leave?
• Awhile now softlier let your bosom heave,
• As in Love's harbour, even that loving breast,
• All care takes refuge while we sink to rest,
• And mutual dreams the bygone bliss retrieve.

• Many the days that Winter keeps in store,
• 10 Sunless throughout, or whose brief sun-glimpses
• Scarce shed the heaped snow through the naked trees.
• This day at least was Summer's paramour,
• Sun-coloured to the imperishable core
• With sweet well-being of love and full heart's ease.

   

• Not by one measure mayst thou mete our love;
• For how should I be loved as I love thee?—
• I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely
• All gifts that with thy queenship best behove;—
• Thou, throned in every heart's elect alcove,
• And crowned with garlands culled from every tree,
• Which for no head but thine, by Love's decree,
• All beauties and all mysteries interwove.

• But here thine eyes and lips yield soft rebuke:—
• 10“Then only,” (sayst thou) “could I love thee less,
• When thou couldst doubt my love's equality.”
• Peace, sweet! If not to sum but worth we look,—
• Thy heart's transcendence, not my heart's excess,—
• Then more a thousandfold thou lov'st than I.

   

• Not I myself know all my love for thee:
• How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh
• Tomorrow's dower by gage of yesterday?
• Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be
• As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,
• Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray;
• And shall my sense pierce love,—the last relay
• And ultimate outpost of eternity?

• Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?
• 10 One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,—
• One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.
• Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call
• And veriest touch of powers primordial
• That any hour-girt life may understand.

   

• Not in my thy body is my thy life at all
• But in my this lady's lips and hands and eyes;
• Through these she yields the life that vivifies
• What else were sorrow's servant and death's thrall.
• Life, reft of her would be but vain Look on thyself without her, & recall
• Of The waste remembrance & forlorn surmise
• As breathless living awoke as each buried day that the dead-drawn breath that sighs
• In the past time's impervious interval O'er vanished hours and hours eventual.

• Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair
• 10 Which, stored apart, is all love hath to show
• For hour-beats and for heart-beats long ago;
• Even so much life endures unseen unknown, even where,
• 'Mid change the changeless night environeth,
• Lies all that golden hair undimmed by death.

   

• Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
• From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,—
• Like multiform circumfluence manifold
• Of night's flood-tide,—like terrors that agree
• Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea,—
• Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath,
• Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
• Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.

• Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
• 10 One Power than flow of stream or flight of dove
• Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
• Tell me, my heart,—what angel-greeted door
• Or threshold of wing-winnowed threshing-floor
• Hath guest fire-fledged as thine, whose lord is Love?

   

• Bless love and hope. Kiss me again. Full many a withered year
• Whirled past us, eddying to its chill doomsday;
• And clasped together where the blown leaves lay,
• We long have knelt and wept full many a tear.
• Yet lo! one hour at last, the Spring's compeer,
• Flutes softly to us from some green byeway:
• Those years, those tears are dead, but only they:
• Bless love and hope Kiss me again, my love; for we are here.

• Cling heart to heart; nor of this hour demand
• 10 Whether in very truth, when we are dead,
• Our hearts shall wake to know Love's golden head
• Sole sunshine of the imperishable land;
• Or but discern, through night's unfeatured scope,
• Scorn-fired at length the illusive eyes of Hope.

   

• What of her glass without her? The blank grey
• There where the pool is blind of the moon's face.
• Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
• Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
• Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway
• Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
• Without her? Tears, ah me! for love's good grace,
• And cold forgetfulness of night or day.

• What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart,
• 10 Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?
• A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
• Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
• Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart,
• Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill.