Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory-
Odours when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.
WOMAN'S GRIEFS AND REWARDS.
Something thou hast to bear through womanhood- Peculiar suffering answering to the sin;
Some pang paid down for each new human life:
Some weariness in guarding such a life—
Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust
From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved Too loyally, some treason; feebleness
Within thy heart, and cruelty without;
And pressures of an alien tyranny,
With its dynastic reasons of larger bones,
And stronger sinews. But go to! thy love Shall chant itself its own beatitudes,
After its own life-working. A child's kiss, Set on thy sighing lips, and make thee glad :
A poor man served by thee, shall make thee rich; An old man help'd by thee, shall make thee strong. Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense Of service which thou renderest.
Here she lies in bed of spice, Fair as Eve in Paradise; For her beauty it was such Poets could not praise too much, Virgins come, and in a ring, Her supremest requiem sing; Then depart, but see ye tread Lightly, lightly, o'er the dead.
The sadness of your greatness fits you As if the plume upon a hero's casque. Should nod a shadow upon his victor face.
And thrust it into hell, and drew it forth Immortal, having burn'd all that could burn, And leaving only what shall still be found Untouch'd, nor with the smell of fire upon it, Under the funeral ashes of the world.
Through the hush'd air the whitening shower descends At first thin-wavering, till at last the flakes Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the day With a continual flow. The cherish'd fields Put on their winter robe of purest white: 'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts Along the mazy current. Low the woods Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun, Faint from the west, emits his evening ray; Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill, Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands The fruit of all his toil.
Goddess, I do love a girl
Ruby-lipp'd and tooth'd with pearl ; If so be I may but prove Lucky in this maid I love, I will promise there shall be Myrtles offer'd up to thee.
WILD bird, that wingest wide the glimmering moors, Whither, by belts of yellowing woods away? What pausing sunset thy wild heart allures Deep into dying day?
Would that my heart, on wings like thine, could pass Where stars their light in rosy regions lose― A happy shadow o'er the warm brown grass, Falling with falling dews!
Hast thou, like me, some true-love of thine own, In fairy lands beyond the utmost seas; Who there, unsolaced, yearns for thee alone, And sings to silent trees?
O tell that woodbird that the summer grieves, And the suns darken and the days grow cold; And, tell her, love will fade with fading leaves, And cease in common mould.
Fly from the winter of the world to her! Fly, happy bird! I follow in thy flight, Till thou art lost o'er yonder fringe of fir In baths of crimson light.
My love is dying far away from me. She sits and saddens in the fading west. For her I mourn all day, and pine to be At night upon her breast.
MOST glorious art thou! when from thy pavilion Thou lookest forth at morning; flinging wide Its curtain clouds of purple and vermilion, Dispensing life and light on every side;
Brightening the mountain cataract, dimly spied Through glittering mist; opening each dew-gemm'd flower, Or touching in some hamlet, far descried,
Its spiral wreaths of smoke that upward tower, While birds their matin sing from many a leafy bower.
And more magnificent art thou, bright sun, Uprising from the Ocean's billowy bed! Who that has seen thee thus, as I have done, Can e'er forget the effulgent splendours spread From thy emerging radiance? Upward sped Even to the centre of the vaulted sky.
Thy beams pervade the heavens, and o'er them shed Hues indescribable-of gorgeous dye,
Making among the clouds mute glorious pageantry.
A passage in Mrs. BROWNING's Aurora Leigh.
I TOOK up the old days With all their Tuscan pleasures worn and spoil'd,— Like some lost book we dropt in the long grass On such a happy summer afternoon
When last we read it with a loving friend, And find in autumn, when the friend is gone,
The grass cut short, the weather changed, too late, And stare at, as at something wonderful
For sorrow,-thinking how two hands, before, Had held up what is left to only one,
And how we smiled when such a vehement nail Impress'd the tiny dint here, which presents This verse in fire for ever! Tenderly And mournfully I lived. I knew the birds And insects, which look'd father'd by the flowers And emulous of their hues: I recognised The moths, with that great overpoise of wings Which makes a mystery of them how at all They can stop flying: butterflies, that bear Upon their blue wings such red embers round, They seem to scorch the blue air into holes
Each flight they take: and fire-flies that suspire In short lapses of transported flame Across the tingling Dark, while overhead The constant and inviolable stars
Outburn those lights-of-love: melodious owls (If music had but one note and was sad, 'Twould sound just so), and all the silent swirl Of bats, that seem to follow in the air
Some grand circumference of a shadowy dome To which we are blind: and then, the nightingales, Which pluck our heart across a garden-wall (When walking in the town), and carry it So high into the bowery almond-trees, We tremble and are afraid, and feel as if The golden flood of moonlight unaware Dissolved the pillars of the steady earth And made it less substantial. And I knew The harmless opal snakes, and large mouth'd frogs (Those noisy vaunters of their shallow streams), And lizards, the green lightnings of the wall, Which, if you sit down still, nor sigh too loud, Will flatter you and take you for a stone, And flash familiarly about your feet
With such prodigious eyes in such small heads!
I knew them, though they had somewhat dwindled from My childish imagery,-and kept in mind
How last I sat among them equally,
In fellowship and mateship, as a child
Will bear him still toward insect, beast and bird, Before the Adam in him has foregone
All privilege of Eden,-making friends
And talk with such a bird or such a goat, And buying many a two-inch-wide rush-cage To let out the caged cricket on a tree,
Saying, "Oh, my dear grillino, were you cramp'd? And are you happy with the ilex-leaves? And do you love me who have let you go? Say yes, in singing, and I'll understand." But now the creatures all seem'd further off, No longer mine, nor like me; only there, A gulf between us. I could yearn indeed, Like other rich men, for a drop of dew To cool this heat,- -a drop of the early dew, The irrecoverable child-innocence
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