• 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 intricate fulness reverent:
• Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
• As Day or Night prevail; and let Time see
• Its flowering crest impearled and orient.

• A Sonnet is a coin, whose face reveals
• 10Thy soul; and its reverse to whom '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.

   

• Would God your health were as this month of May
• Should be, were this not England,—and your face
• Abroad, to give the gracious sunshine grace
• And smi laugh beneath the budding hawthorn-spray.
• But here the hedgerows pine from green to grey
• While yet May's lyre is tuning, and her song
• Is weak in shade that should in sun be strong;
• And your pulse springs not to so faint a lay.

• If in my life be breath of Italy,
• 10 Would God that I might yield it all to you!
• So, when such grafted warmth had burgeoned through
• The languor of your Maytime's hawthorn-tree,
• My spirit at rest should walk unseen & see
• The garland of your beauty bloom anew.

   

• How large that thrush looks on the bare thorn-tree!
• A swarm of such, three little months ago,
• Had hidden in the leaves and let none know
• Save by the outburst of their minstrelsy.
• A white flake here and there—a snow-lily
• Of last night's frost—our naked flower-beds hold;
• And for a rose-flower on the darkling mould
• The redbreast gleams,— poor hungry wanderer he!

• The current shudders to its icebound sedge:
• 10 Nipped in their bath, the stark reeds one by one
• Flash each its clinging diamond in the sun:
• While swells the gale which for a winter pledge
• Shall curb great king-masts to the ocean's edge
• And leave memorial forest-kings o'erthrown.

   

• That lamp thou fill'st in Eros' name to-night,
• O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take
• Tomorrow, and for drowned Leander's sake
• To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight.
• Aye, waft the unspoken vow. The dawn's first light
• On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break;
• While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake,
• Lo! where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.

• That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine
• 10 Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree)
• Till some one man the happy issue see
• Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine:
• Which still may rest unfir'd; for mine or thine,
• O brother, what brought Love to thee or me?

   

• The weltering London ways where children weep,—
• Where girls whom none call maidens laugh,—whose gain
• Hurrying men's steps, is still by loss o'erta'en:—
• The bright Castalian brink and Latmos' steep:—
• Such were his paths, till deeper & more deep
• He trod the sands of Lethe; and long pain,
• Weary with labour spurned and love found vain,
• In dead Rome's sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep.

• O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips
• 10And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon's eclipse,—
• Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o'er,—
• Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ
• But rumour'd in water, while the fame of it
• Along Time's flood goes echoing evermore.

   

• 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.

   

• Is it the moved air or the moving sound
• That is Life's self and draws my life from me,
• And by instinct ineffable decree
• Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?
• Surely an imminent visage, from some mound
• Watching the tide of all emergency,
• Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
• Its difficult eddies labour underground.

• And what is this that knows the road I came,
• 10The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,
• The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?—
• That enters with me now the wind-warm space,
• And in regenerate rapture turns my face
• Upon the devious coverts of dismay?

   

• The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring;
• The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows
• Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;
• The summer clouds that visit every wing
• With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;
• The furtive flickering streams to light re-born
• 'Mid airs new-fledged & valorous lusts of morn,
• While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:—

• These pleasure loves, and memory: and when flown
• 10 All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight
• The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,
• Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone
• Will flush all ruddy when the rose is gone;
• With ditties and with dirges infinite.

   

• As growth of form or momentary glance
• In a child's features will recall to mind
• The father's with the mother's face combin'd,—
• Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
• And yet, as childhood's years & youth's advance,
• The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
• Till in the blended likeness now we find
• A separate man's or woman's countenance:—

• So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
• 10 Its very parents, evermore expand
• To bid the passion's full-grown birth remain,
• By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd;
• And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
• There comes the sound as of abundant rain.

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• To be a sweetness more desired than Spring;
• A bodily beauty more acceptable
• Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell;
• To be an essence more environing
• Than wine's drained juice; a music ravishing
• More than the passionate pulse of Philomel;—
• To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell
• That is the flower of life:—how strange a thing!

• How strange a thing to be what Man can know
• 10 But as a sacred secret! Heaven's own screen
• Hides her soul's purest depth & loveliest glow;
• Closely withheld, as all things most unseen,—
• The wave-bowered pearl,—the heart-shaped seal of green
• That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow.

   

• 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 in love's first day
• 10 Her mind unto his mind faint response gave,—
• His heart to her rich heart. But as sea-spray
• Over itself aspires, till each curved cave
• 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 & 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,—
• 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 & forebode the last.

   

• Upon the landscape of his coming life
• A youth high-gifted gazed, and found it fair:
• The heights of work, the floods of praise were there.
• What friendships, what desires, what love, what wife?—
• All things to come. The fanned Springtime was rife
• With imminent solstice; and the ardent air
• Had Summer sweets and autumn fires to bear;—
• Heart's ease full-pulsed with perfect strength for strife.

• A mist has risen: we see the youth no more:
• 10Does he see on and strive on? And may we,
• Late-tottering worldworn hence, find his to be
• The young strong hand which helps us up that shore?
• Or, echoing the No More with Nevermore,
• Must Night be ours and his? We hope: and he?

   

• Leaves and rain & the days of the year,
• ( Water-willow & wellaway,)
• All these fall, and my soul gives ear,
• And she is hence who once was here.
• ( With a wind blown night & day.)

• Ah! but now, for a secret sign,
• ( The willow's wan and the water white,)
• In the held breath of the day's decline
• Her very lips seemed pressed to mine.
• 10 ( With a wind blown day & night.)

• O love, of my death my life is fain,
• ( The willows wave on the waterway,)
• Your mouth & mine are cold in the rain,
• But warm they'll be when we meet again.
• ( With a wind blown night & day.)

• Mists are heaved & cover the sky;
• ( The willows wail in the waning light,)
• O part your lips, leave space for a sigh,—
• They seal my soul, I cannot die.
• 20 ( With a wind blown day & night.)

• Leaves & rain & the days of the year,
• ( Water-willow & wellaway)
• All still fall, & I still give ear,
• And she is hence, & I am here.
• ( With a wind blown night & day.)

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• A little while a little love
• The hour yet bears for thee & me
• Who have not drawn the veil to see
• If still our heaven be lit above.
• Thou merely, at the day's last sigh,
• Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone;
• And I have heard the night-wind cry
• And deemed its speech mine own.

• A little while a little love
• 10 The scattering autumn hoards for us
• Whose bower is not yet ruinous
• Nor quite unleaved our songless grove.
• Only across the shaken boughs
• We hear the flood-tides seek the sea,
• And deep in both our hearts they rouse
• One wail for thee and me.

• A little while a little love
• May yet be ours who have not said
• The word it makes our eyes afraid
• 20 To know that each is thinking of.
• Not yet the end: be our lips dumb
• In smiles a little season yet:
• I'll tell thee, when the end is come,
• How we may best forget.

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• “De ta tige détachée,
• Pauvre feuille depéchée,
• Où va tu?” — “Je n' én sais rien
• L'orage a brisé le chêne
• Qui seul était mon soutien.
• De son inconstante haliene
• Le zéphyr ou l'aguilon
• Depuis ce jour me proméne
• De la forêt à la plaine,
• 10 De la montagne au vallon.
• Je vais oú le vent me mène
• Sans me plaindre on m'effrayer;
• Je vais où va toute chose,
• Où va la feuille de rose
• Et la feuille de laurier.”

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• “Torn from your parent bough,
• Poor leaf all withered now,
• Where go you?” — “I cannot tell.
• Storm-stricken is the oak tree
• Where I grew, whence I fell.
• Changeful continually,
• The zephyr & hurricane
• Since that day bid me flee
• From the woods to the lea,
• 10 From the hills to the plain.
• Where the wind carries me
• I go without fear or grief:
• I go whither each one goes,—
• Thither the leaf of the rose
• And thither the laurel-leaf.”

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DGR        

• Lo! they are one. With wifely breast to breast
• And circling arms, she welcomes 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?

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Your affectionate

Gabriel