SONNET XXI.

PARTED LOVE.

What shall be said of this embattled day
And armed occupation of this night

By all thy foes beleaguered,—now when sight
Nor sound denotes the loved one far away?

Of these thy vanquished hours what shalt thou say,— As every sense to which she dealt delight

Now labours lonely o'er the stark noon-height

To reach the sunset's desolate disarray?

Stand still, fond fettered wretch! while Memory's art
Parades the Past before thy face, and lures
Thy spirit to her passionate portraitures:
Till the tempestuous tide-gates flung apart
Flood with wild will the hollows of thy heart,

And thy heart rends thee, and thy body endures.

SONNET XXII.

BROKEN MUSIC.

THE mother will not turn, who thinks she hears
Her nursling's speech first grow articulate;

But breathless with averted eyes elate
She sits, with open lips and open ears,

That it
may call her twice. 'Mid doubts and fears
Thus oft my soul has hearkened; till the song,
A central moan for days, at length found tongue.
And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears.

But now, whatever while the soul is fain

To list that wonted murmur, as it were

The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain,

No breath of song, thy voice alone is there,

O bitterly beloved! and all her gain

Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer.

SONNET XXIII.

DEATH-IN-LOVE.

THERE came an image in Life's retinue

That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon : Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon, O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue! Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,

Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power Sped trackless as the immemorable hour When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new.

But a veiled woman followed, and she caught

The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,-
Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
And held it to his lips that stirred it not,

And said to me, 'Behold, there is no breath:
I and this Love are one, and I am Death.'

SONNETS XXIV., XXV., XXVI, XXVII.

WILLOWWOOD.

I.

I SAT with Love upon a woodside well,
Leaning across the water, I and he ;

Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
But touched his lute wherein was audible

The certain secret thing he had to tell :

Only our mirrored eyes met silently

In the low wave; and that sound came to be
The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.

And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
And with his foot and with his wing-feathers

He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth. Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,

And as I stooped, her own lips rising there

Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

II.

And now Love sang: but his was such a song,
So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
As souls disused in death's sterility

May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
And I was made aware of a dumb throng

That stood aloof, one form by every tree,

All mournful forms, for each was I or she, The shades of those our days that had no tongue.

They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
While fast together, alive from the abyss,
Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss ;
And pity of self through all made broken moan
Which said, 'For once, for once, for once alone!'

And still Love sang, and what he sang was this :