X

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed

And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,

Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light

Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:

And love is fire. And when I say at need

I love thee . . . mark! . . . I love thee - in thy sight

I stand transfigured, glorified aright,

With conscience of the new rays that proceed

Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low

In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures

Who love God, God accepts while loving so.

And what I feel, across the inferior features

Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show

How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.

XII

Indeed this very love which is my boast,

And which, when rising up from breast to brow,

Doth crown me with a ruby large enow

To draw men's eyes and prove the inner cost, -

This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost,

I should not love withal, unless that thou

Hadst set me an example, shown me how,

When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed,

And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak

Of love even, as a good thing of my own:

Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,

And placed it by thee on a golden throne, -

And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)

Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for naught

Except for love's sake only. Do not say

"I love her for her smile - her look - her way

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, so 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!

But love me for love's sake, that evermore

Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

XVII

My poet, thou canst touch on 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 music, answering for

Mankind's forlornest uses, thou canst pour

From thence into their ears. God's will devotes

Thine to such ends, and mine to 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.

XVIII

I never gave a lock of hair away

To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,

Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully

I ring out to the full brown length and say

"Take it." My day of youth went yesterday;

My hair no longer bounds to my foot's 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 sorrow's 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.

XXI

Say over again, and yet once over again,

That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated

Should seem "a cuckoo-song," as thou dost treat it,

Remember, never to the hill or plain,

Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain,

Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.

Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted

By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt's pain

Cry: "Speak once more - thou lovest!" Who can fear

Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll,

Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?

Say thou dost love me, love me, love me, - toll

The silver iterance! - only minding, Dear,

To love me also in silence with thy soul.

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 curved point, - what bitter wrong

Can the earth do us, that we should not long

Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,

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, Beloved, - 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.

XXVIII

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!

And yet they seem alive and quivering

Against my tremulous hands which loose the string

And let them drop down on my knee to-night.

This said, - he wished to have me in his sight

Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring

To come and touch my hand . . . a simple thing,

Yet I wept for it! - this, . . . the paper's light . . .

Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed,

As if God's future thundered on my past.

This said, I am thine, - and so its ink has paled

With lying at my heart that beat too fast.

And this . . . O Love, thy words have ill availed,

If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

XXXVIII

First time he kissed me, he but only kissed

The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;

And ever since, it grew more clean and white,

Slow to world-greetings, quick with its "Oh, list,"

When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst

I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,

Than that first kiss. The second passed in height

The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed,

Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!

That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown,

With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.

The third upon my lips was folded down

In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,

I have been proud, and said, "My love, my own!"

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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861]

ONE WORD MORE

TO E. B. B.

I

There they are, my fifty men and women

Naming me the fifty poems finished!

Take them, Love, the book and me together;

Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

II

Rafael made a century of sonnets,

Made and wrote them in a certain volume

Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil

Else he only used to draw Madonnas:

These, the world might view - but one, the volume.

Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.

Did she live and love it all her lifetime?

Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,

Die, and let it drop beside her pillow

Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory,

Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving -

Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's,

Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's?

III

You and I would rather read that volume,

(Taken to his beating bosom by it)

Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael,

Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas -

Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,

Her, that visits Florence in a vision,

Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre -

Seen by us and all the world in circle.

IV

You and I will never read that volume.

Guido Reni, like his own eye's apple

Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it.

Guido Reni dying, all Bologna

Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours, the treasure!"

Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

V

Dante once prepared to paint an angel:

Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice."

While he mused and traced it and retraced it,

(Peradventure with a pen corroded

Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,

When, his left hand i' the hair o' the wicked,

Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,

Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment,

Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,

Let the wretch go festering through Florence) -

Dante, who loved well because he hated,

Hated wickedness that hinders loving,

Dante standing, studying his angel, -

In there broke the folk of his Inferno.

Says he - "Certain people of importance"

(Such he gave his daily dreadful line to)

"Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet."

Says the poet - "Then I stopped my painting."

VI

You and I would rather see that angel,

Painted by the tenderness of Dante,

Would we not? - than read a fresh Inferno.

VII

You and I will never see that picture.

While he mused on love and Beatrice,

While he softened o'er his outlined angel,

In they broke, those "people of importance":

We and Bice bear the loss forever.

VIII

What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture?

This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not

Once, and only once, and for one only,

(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language

Fit and fair and simple and sufficient -

Using nature that's an art to others,

Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature.

Ay, of all the artists living, loving,

None but would forego his proper dowry, -

Does he paint? he fain would write a poem, -

Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,

Put to proof art alien to the artist's,

Once, and only once, and for one only,

So to be the man and leave the artist,

Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow.

IX

Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement!

He who smites the rock and spreads the water,

Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,

Even he, the minute makes immortal,

Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute,

Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.

While he smites, how can he but remember,

So he smote before, in such a peril,

When they stood and mocked - "Shall smiting help us?"

When they drank and sneered - "A stroke is easy!"

When they wiped their mouths and went their journey,

Throwing him for thanks - "But drought was pleasant."

Thus old memories mar the actual triumph;

Thus the doing savors of disrelish;

Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat;

O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate,

Carelessness or consciousness - the gesture.

For he bears an ancient wrong about him,

Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces,

Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prelude -

"How shouldst thou of all men, smite, and save us?"

Guesses what is like to prove the sequel -

"Egypt's flesh-pots - nay, the drought was better."

X

Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant!

Theirs, the Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance,

Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat.

Never dares the man put off the prophet.

XI

Did he love one face from out the thousands,

(Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely,

Were she but the Aethiopian bondslave,)

He would envy yon dumb patient camel,

Keeping a reserve of scanty water

Meant to save his own life in the desert;

Ready in the desert to deliver

(Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)

Hoard and life together for his mistress.

XII

I shall never, in the years remaining,

Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,

Make you music that should all-express me;

So it seems: I stand on my attainment.

This of verse alone, one life allows me;

Verse and nothing else have I to give you.

Other heights in other lives, God willing:

All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!

XIII

Yet a semblance of resource avails us -

Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it.

Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,

Lines I write the first time and the last time.

He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush,

Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,

Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,

Makes a strange art of an art familiar,

Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets.

He who blows through bronze, may breathe through silver,

Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.

He who writes, may write for once as I do.

XIV

Love, you saw me gather men and women,

Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,

Enter each and all, and use their service,

Speak from every mouth, - the speech, a poem.

Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,

Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:

I am mine and yours - the rest be all men's,

Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty.

Let me speak this once in my true person,

Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea,

Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence:

Pray you, lock on these my men and women,

Take and keep my fifty poems finished;

Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!

Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.

XV

Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self!

Here in London, yonder late in Florence,

Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.

Curving on a sky imbrued with color,

Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,

Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth.

Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,

Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder,

Perfect till the nightingales applauded.

Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,

Hard to greet, she traverses the house-roofs,

Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,

Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish,

XVI

What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?

Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,

Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),

All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos),

She would turn a new side to her mortal,

Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman -

Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,

Blind to Galileo on his turret,

Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats - him, even!

Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal -

When she turns round, comes again in heaven,

Opens out anew for worse or better!

Proves she like some portent of an iceberg

Swimming full upon the ship it founders,

Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?

Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire

Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?

Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu

Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,

Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.

Like the bodied heaven in his clearness

Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,

When they ate and drank and saw God also!

XVII

What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.

Only this is sure - the sight were other,

Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence,

Dying now impoverished here in London.

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures

Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,

One to show a woman when he loves her!

XVIII

This I say of me, but think of you, Love!

This to you - yourself my moon of poets!

Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder,

Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you!

There, in turn I stand with them and praise you -

Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.

But the best is when I glide from out them,

Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,

Come out on the other side, the novel

Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,

Where I hush and bless myself with silence.

XIX

Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,

Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,

Wrote one song - and in my brain I sing it,

Drew one angel - borne, see, on my bosom!

Robert Browning [1812-1889]