Page images
PDF
EPUB

SONNETS.

III.

I WOULD not have this perfect love of ours
Grow from a single root, a single stem,
Bearing no goodly fruit, but only flowers
That idly hide life's iron diadem:

It should grow alway like that Eastern tree
Whose limbs take root and spread forth constantly;
That love for one, from which there doth not spring
Wide love for all, is but a worthless thing.

Not in another world, as poets prate,
Dwell we apart above the tide of things,

High floating o'er earth's clouds on faery wings;
But our pure love doth ever elevate

Into a holy bond of brotherhood

All earthly things, making them pure and good.

1840.

IV.

"FOR this true nobleness I seek in vain,

In woman and in man I find it not;

I almost weary of my earthly lot,

My life-springs are dried up with burning pain."

Thou find'st it not? I pray thee look again,

Look inward through the depths of thine own soul. How is it with thee? Art thou sound and whole? Doth narrow search show thee no earthly stain ? BE NOBLE! and the nobleness that lies

In other men, sleeping, but never dead,

Will rise in majesty to meet thine own;
Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes,
Then will pure light around thy path be shed,
And thou wilt nevermore be sad and lone.

1840.

VI.

GREAT Truths are portions of the soul of man; Great souls are portions of Eternity;

Each drop of blood that e'er through true heart ran
With lofty message, ran for thee and me;

For God's law, since the starry song began,
Hath been, and still forevermore must be,
That every deed which shall outlast Time's span
Must spur the soul to be erect and free;
Slave is no word of deathless lineage sprung;
Too many noble souls have thought and died,
Too many mighty poets lived and sung,
And our good Saxon, from lips purified

With martyr-fire, throughout the world hath rung Too long to have God's holy cause denied.

1841.

IX.'

My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die; Albeit I ask no fairer life than this,

Whose numbering-clock is still thy gentle kiss,
While Time and Peace with hands enlockèd fly;
Yet care I not where in Eternity

We live and love, well knowing that there is
No backward step for those who feel the bliss
Of Faith as their most lofty yearnings high:
Love hath so purified my being's core,

Meseems I scarcely should be startled, even,
To find, some morn, that thou hadst gone before;
Since, with thy love, this knowledge too was given,
Which each calm day doth strengthen more and

more,

That they who love are but one step from Heaven.

1841.

XI.

THERE never yet was flower fair in vain,
Let classic poets rhyme it as they will;

The seasons toil that it may blow again,
And summer's heart doth feel its every ill;
Nor is a true soul ever born for naught;
Wherever any such hath lived and died,

There hath been something for true freedom wrought,

Some bulwark levelled on the evil side:
Toil on, then, Greatness! thou art in the right,
However narrow souls may call thee wrong;
Be as thou wouldst be in thine own clear sight,
And so thou shalt be in the world's erelong;
For worldlings cannot, struggle as they may,
From man's great soul one great thought hide away.

1841.

XII.

SUB PONDERE CRESCIT.

THE hope of Truth grows stronger, day by day;
I hear the soul of Man around me waking,
Like a great sea, its frozen fetters breaking,
And flinging up to heaven its sunlit spray,
Tossing huge continents in scornful play,
And crushing them, with din of grinding thunder,
That makes old emptinesses stare in wonder;

The memory of a glory passed away
Lingers in every heart, as, in the shell,
Resounds the bygone freedom of the sea,
And every hour new signs of promise tell,
That the great soul shall once again be free,
For high, and yet more high, the murmurs swell
Of inward strife for truth and liberty.

1841.

XXV.

I GRIEVE not that ripe Knowledge takes away
The charm that Nature to my childhood wore,
For, with that insight, cometh, day by day,
A greater bliss than wonder was before;
The real doth not clip the poet's wings,-
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart
Reveals some clue to spiritual things,
And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art:
Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes,
Their beauty thrills him by an inward sense;
He knows that outward seemings are but lies,
Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, whence
The soul that looks within for truth may guess
The presence of some wondrous heavenliness.

« PreviousContinue »