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SONNET LV.

STILLBORN LOVE.

THE hour which might have been yet might not be,
Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore
Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,

It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before The house of Love, hears through the echoing door His hours elect in choral consonancy.

But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
Together tread at last the immortal strand

With eyes where burning memory lights love home?
Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
And leaped to them and in their faces yearned :—
"I am your child: O parents, ye have come!

SONNETS LVI., LVII., LVIII.

TRUE WOMAN.

I. HERSELF.

To be a sweetness more desired than Spring;

A bodily beauty more acceptable

Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell; To be an essence more environing

Than wine's drained juice; a music ravishing
More than the passionate pulse of Philomel;-
To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell
That is the flower of life :-how strange a thing!
How strange a thing to be what Man can know
But as a sacred secret! Heaven's own screen
Hides her soul's purest depth and loveliest glow;
Closely withheld, as all things most unseen,-
The wave-bowered pearl,-the heart-shaped seal of
green

That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow.

II. HER LOVE.

SHE loves him; for her infinite soul is Love,
And he her lodestar. Passion in her is

A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss
Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move
That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove,
And it shall turn, by instant contraries,

Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove. Lo! they are one. With wifely breast to breast And circling arms, she welcomes all command Of love, her soul to answering ardors fann'd: Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest, Ah! who shall say she deems not loveliest The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand?

III. HER HEAVEN.

IF to grow old in Heaven is to grow young,
(As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he
With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be
True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung.
Here and hereafter,-choir-strains of her tongue,-
Sky-spaces of her eyes,-sweet signs that flee
About her soul's immediate sanctuary,—
Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among.

The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill
Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth

Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe
Even yet those lovers who have cherished still
This test for love :-in every kiss sealed fast
To feel the first kiss and forbode the last.

SONNET LIX.

LOVE'S LAST GIFT.

Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,

And said: "The rose-tree and the apple-tree Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee; And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf

Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief,
Victorious Summer; aye, and 'neath warm sea
Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably
Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.

All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love
To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;
But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang
From those worse things the wind is moaning of.
Only this laurel dreads no winter days:
Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise."

PART II.

CHANGE AND FATE.

SONNET LX.

TRANSFIGURED LIFE.

As growth of form or momentary glance
In a child's features will recall to mind

The father's with the mother's face combin'd,Sweet interchange that memories still enhance : And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance, The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind, Till in the blended likeness now we find

A separate man's or woman's countenance :

So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
Its very parents, evermore expand

To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain,
By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd;
And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
There comes the sound as of abundant rain.

SONNET LXI.

THE SONG-THROE.

By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
Anguish or ardor, else no amulet.

Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet

Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh, That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.

The Song-god-He the Sun-god-is no slave
Of thine thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
Fledges his shaft: to no august control
Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.

SONNET LXII.

THE SOUL'S SPHERE.

SOME prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre

Blazed with momentous memorable fire ;

Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these? Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight Conjectured in the lamentable night?

Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images!

What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast
The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
Of Love's unquestioning unrevealed span,-
Visions of golden futures: or that last
Wild pageant of the accumulated past

That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.

SONNET LXIII.

INCLUSIVENESS.

THE changing guests, each in a different mood,
Sit at the roadside table and arise:

And every life among them in likewise

Is a soul's board set daily with new food.
What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood
How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?

May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell
In separate living souls for joy or pain?
Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.

SONNET LXIV.

ARDOR AND MEMORY.

THE Cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring;
The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows
Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;

The summer clouds that visit every wing
With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;

The furtive flickering streams to light re-born 'Mid airs new fledged and valorous lusts of morn, While all the daughters of the daybreak sing :

These ardor loves, and memory: and when flown
All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight
The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,
Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone
Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone;
With ditties and with dirges infinite.

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