Sonnets

YOU see this dog. It was but yesterday I mused forgetful of his presence here Till thought on thought drew downward tear on tear; When from the pillow, where wet-cheeked I lay, A head as hairy as Faunus, thrust its way Right sudden against my face,—two golden-clear Large eyes astonished mine,—a drooping ear Did flap me on either cheek, to dry the spray! I started first, as some Arcadian, Amazed by goatly God in twilight grove: But as my bearded vision closelier ran My tears off, I knew Flush, and rose above Surprise and sadness; thanking the true Pan, Who, by low creatures, leads to heights of love.

THE wind sounds only in opposing straights, The sea, beside the shore; man's spirit rends Its quiet only up against the ends Of wants and oppositions, loves and hates, Where worked and worn by passionate debates, And losing by the loss it apprehends, Its flesh rocks round, and every breath it sends, Is ravelled to a sigh. All tortured states Suppose a straightened place. Jehovah Lord, Make room for rest, around me! Out of sight Now float me, of the vexing land abhorred, Till, in deep calms of space, my soul may right Her nature; shoot large sail on lengthening cord, And rush exultant on the Infinite.

THE shadow of her face upon the wall May take your memory to the perfect Greek; But when you front her, you would call the cheek Too full, sir, for your models, if withal That bloom it wears could leave you critical, And that smile reaching toward the rosy streak:— For one who smiles so, has no need to speak, To lead your thoughts along, as steed to stall! A smile that turns the sunny side o' the heart On all the world, as if herself did win By what she lavished on an open mart:— Let no man call the liberal sweetness, sin,— While friends may whisper, as they stand apart, "Methinks there's still some warmer place within."

THE simple goatherd, between Alp and sky, Seeing his shadow, in that awful tryst, Dilated to a giant's on the mist, Esteems not his own stature larger by The apparent image, but more patiently Strikes his staff down beneath his clenching fist— While the snow-mountains lift their amethyst And sapphire crowns of splendor, far and nigh, Into the air around him. Learn from hence Meek morals, all ye poets that pursue Your way still onward, up to eminence! Ye are not great, because creation drew Large revelations round your earliest sense, Nor bright, because God's glory shines for you.

THE poet hath the child's sight in his breast, And sees all new. What oftenest he has viewed, He views with the first glory. Fair and good Pall never on him, at the fairest, best, But stand before him, holy and undressed In week-day false conventions, such as would Drag other men down from the altitude Of primal types, too early dispossessed. Why, God would tire of all his heavens as soon As thou, O godlike, childlike poet, didst, Of daily and nightly sights of sun and moon! And therefore hath He set thee in the midst, Where men may hear thy wonder's ceaseless tune, And praise His world for ever, as thou bidst.

THEY say Ideal Beauty cannot enter The house of anguish. On the threshold stands An alien Image with the shackled hands, Called the Greek Slave: as if the artist meant her, (That passionless perfection which he lent her, Shadowed, not darkened, where the sill expands) To, so, confront man's crimes in different lands, With man's ideal sense. Pierce to the centre, Art's fiery finger!—and break up ere long The serfdom of this world! Appeal, fair stone, From God's pure heights of beauty, against man's wrong! Catch up in thy divine face, not alone East griefs but west,—and strike and shame the strong, By thunders of white silence, overthrown.

EACH creature holds an insular point in space: Yet what man stirs a finger, breathes a sound, But all the multitudinous beings round In all the countless worlds, with time and place For their conditions, down to the central base, Thrill, haply, in vibration and rebound, Life answering life across the vast profound, In full antiphony, by a common grace!— I think, this sudden joyaunce which illumes A child's mouth sleeping, unaware may run From some soul newly loosened from earth's tombs: I think, this passionate sigh, which, half-begun, I stifle back, may reach and stir the plumes Of God's calm angel standing in the sun.

WE cannot live, except, thus, mutually, We alternate, aware or unaware, The reflex act of life: and when we bear Our virtue outward most impulsively, Most full of invocation, and to be Most instantly compellant, certes, there, We live most life, whoever breathes most air And counts his dying years by sun and sea. But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth Throw out her full force on another soul, The conscience and the concentration, both, Make mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole And aim consummated, is Love in sooth, As nature's magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.

GOD, who, with thunders and great voices kept Beneath thy throne, and stars most silver-paced Along the inferior gyres, and open-faced Melodious angels round;—canst intercept Music with music;—yet, at will, hast swept All back, all back, (said he in Patmos placed,) To fill the heavens with silence of the waste, Which lasted half-an-hour!—Lo, I, who have wept All day and night, beseech Thee, by my tears, And by that dread response of curse and groan Men alternate across these hemispheres, Vouchsafe us such a half-hour's hush alone, In compensation for our noisy years! As heaven has paused from song, let earth, from moan.

METHINKS we do as fretful children do, Leaning their faces on the window-pane To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain, And shut the sky and landscape from their view. And thus, alas! since God the maker drew A mystic separation 'twixt those twain, The life beyond us, and our souls in pain, We miss the prospect which we're called unto, By grief we're fools to use. Be still and strong, O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath, And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong,— That so, as life's appointment issueth, Thy vision may be clear to watch along The sunset consummation-lights of death.

GOD would not let the spheric Lights accost This God-loved man, and bade the earth stand off With all her beckoning hills, whose golden stuff Under the feet of the royal sun is crossed. Yet such things were, to him, not wholly lost,— Permitted, with his wandering eyes light-proof, To have Mr visions rendered full enough By many a ministrant accomplished ghost: And seeing, to sounds of softly-turned book-leaves, Sappho's crown-rose, and Meleager's spring, And Gregory's starlight, on Greek-burnished eves: Till Sensual and Unsensual seemed one thing Viewed from one level;—earth's reapers at the sheaves, Not plainer than Heaven's angels marshalling!

BELOVED friend, who living many years With sightless eyes raised vainly to the sun, Didst learn to keep thy patient soul in tune To visible nature's elemental cheers! God has not caught thee to new hemispheres Because thou wast aweary of this one:— I think thine angel's patience first was done, And that he spake out with celestial tears, "Is it enough, dear God? then lighten so This soul that smiles in darkness!" Stedfast friend, Who never didst my heart or life misknow, Nor either's faults too keenly apprehend,— How can I wonder when I see thee go To join the Dead, found faithful to the end?

THREE gifts the Dying left me; Æschylus, And Gregory Nazianzen, and a clock Chiming the gradual hours out like a flock Of stars, whose motion is melodious. The books were those I used to read from, thus Assisting my dear teacher's soul to unlock The darkness of his eyes: now, mine they mock, Blinded in turn, by tears: now, murmurous Sad echoes of my young voice, years agone, Entoning, from these leaves, the Græcian phrase, Return and choke my utterance. Books, lie down In silence on the shelf within my gaze! And thou, clocks striking the hour's pulses on, Chime in the day which ends these parting days!