A lyric poem from Mrs. Browning

The first poem in Mrs. Browning's Lyrical Sonnets

I remembered that the Greek poets once sang:

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

Year after year, that good time is in earnest hope

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,

It comes gracefully, each one Bring a gift

Who each one appears in a gracious hand

give it to the world - young or old.

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:

When I think so, sighing the poet's ancient tune,

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

I saw, that The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,

My own years are connected by black shadows

< p>Those of my own life, who by turns had flung

passed over me. Immediately afterwards, I noticed

A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,

（I cried) There was a mysterious black shadow behind me

< p>So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;< /p>

Pull back, and there was a cry (I was just struggling):

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, --

"This Who caught you? Guess!" "Death," I replied.

`Guess now who holds thee?' -- `Death.' I said. But, there

Listen, the silver bell-like echo: "It's not death, it's love." ! ”

The silver answer rang, -- `Not Death, but love.'

*02.EEB

Mrs. Browning’s Lyrical Fourteen Lines The second poem in the collection of poems

But only three in all God's universe

Three people heard it Your words: except

Have heard this word thou hast said, -- Himself, beside

You who speak, I who obey, that is he——

< p>Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied

God Himself! There is one among us

One of us... _that_ was God, ... and laid the curse

came out to answer; the dark curse fell

< p>So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce

My eyelids, blocking you from seeing,

My sight from seeing thee, -- that if I had died,

Even if I close my eyes and put heavy "eye candy",

The death-weights, placed there, would have signed

It's not so completely isolated.

Alas,

Less absolute exclusion. `Nay' is worse

Better than anyone else, God's "No!"

From God than from all others, O my friend!

Otherwise, worldly slander could not separate us,

Men could not part us with their worldly jars,

Let the storm fly , nor can it shake the steadfastness;

Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;

Our hands will reach out across the mountains and touch each other;

Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars

And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,

We both swear to the stars, and we must hold on tighter.

We should but vow the faster for the stars.

*03.EEB

The Third Lyrical Sonnet from Mrs. Browning

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!

Unlike is our duty and future.

Unlike our uses and our destinies.

The angels above you and me are flying towards us,

Our ministering two angels look surprise

< p>Wings touched wings, staring at each other

On one another, as they struck athwart

Shocked eyes. Thou, bethink thee, art

Their wings in passing. A guest for queens to social pageantries,

(Even if they are full of teardrops, they can’t teach my eyes

With gages from a hundred brighter eyes

Yes This brilliance) asks you to be the cantor.

Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part

Then what are you doing through the lighted screen window

Of chief musician. What hast _thou_ to do

Look at me? ——I, a desolate, wandering singer

With looking from the lattice-lights at me,

singer, leaning against the cypress tree tiredly, sighing

A poor, tired, wandering singer, ... singing through

In the vast darkness. Holy oil on your head——

The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?

Poor me, my head is bearing the cool night dew.

The chrism is on thine head, -- on mine, the dew, --

Only death can equalize such a pair.

And Death must dig the level where these agree.