Vii

Sweet as the noise in parchèd plains Of bubbling wells that fret the stones, (If any sense in me remains) Thy words will be: thy cheerful tones As welcome to my crumbling bones.

Buonoparte

Reprinted without any alteration among Early Sonnets in 1872, and unaltered since.

He thought to quell the stubborn hearts of oak, Madman!—to chain with chains, and bind with bands That island queen who sways the floods and lands From Ind to Ind, but in fair daylight woke, When from her wooden walls, lit by sure hands, With thunders and with lightnings and with smoke, Peal after peal, the British battle broke, Lulling the brine against the Coptic sands. We taught him lowlier moods, when Elsinore Heard the war moan along the distant sea, Rocking with shatter’d spars, with sudden fires Flamed over: at Trafalgar yet once more We taught him: late he learned humility Perforce, like those whom Gideon school’d with briers.

Sonnet—“Oh, beauty, passing beauty!...”

I.

Oh, Beauty, passing beauty! sweetest Sweet! How canst thou let me waste my youth in sighs? I only ask to sit beside thy feet. Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes, Might I but kiss thy hand! I dare not fold My arms about thee—scarcely dare to speak. And nothing seems to me so wild and bold, As with one kiss to touch thy blessed cheek. Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke, The bare word KISS hath made my inner soul To tremble like a lutestring, ere the note Hath melted in the silence that it broke.

II.

Reprinted in 1872 among Early Sonnets with two alterations, “If I were loved” for “But were I loved,” and “tho’” for “though”.

But were I loved, as I desire to be, What is there in the great sphere of the earth, And range of evil between death and birth, That I should fear—if I were loved by thee? All the inner, all the outer world of pain Clear Love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine, As I have heard that, somewhere in the main, Fresh water-springs come up through bitter brine. ’Twere joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee, To wait for death—mute—careless of all ills, Apart upon a mountain, though the surge Of some new deluge from a thousand hills Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge Below us, as far on as eye could see.

The Hesperides

Hesperus and his daughters three That sing about the golden tree.

—(Comus).

The Northwind fall’n, in the newstarred night Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond The hoary promontory of Soloë Past Thymiaterion, in calmèd bays, Between the Southern and the Western Horn, Heard neither warbling of the nightingale, Nor melody o’ the Lybian lotusflute Blown seaward from the shore; but from a slope That ran bloombright into the Atlantic blue, Beneath a highland leaning down a weight Of cliffs, and zoned below with cedarshade, Came voices, like the voices in a dream, Continuous, till he reached the other sea.

Song—“The golden apple...”