SONNET XXXIX. VAIN VIRTUES. WHAT is the sorriest thing that enters Hell? Night sucks them down, the garbage of the pit, And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife, The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there. SONNET XL. LOST DAYS. THE lost days of my life until to-day, What were they, could I see them on the street Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat Sown once for food but trodden into clay? Or golden coins squandered and still to pay? Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet? Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat The throats of men in Hell, who thirst alway? I do not see them here; but after death God knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. 'I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?' ‘And I—and I—thyself,' (lo! each one saith,) 'And thou thyself to all eternity!' SONNET XLI. DEATH'S SONGSTERS. WHEN first that horse, within whose populous womb And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid The same was he who, lashed to his own mast, There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves, Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd, Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves. Say, soul,—are songs of Death no heaven to thee, Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory? SONNET XLII. 'RETRO ME, SATHANA !' GET thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled, Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair, So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world: Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air, It shall be sought and not found anywhere. Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled, Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath Much mightiness of men to win thee praise. Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways. Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path, Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath For certain years, for certain months and days. SONNET XLIII. LOST ON BOTH SIDES. As when two men have loved a woman well, Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit ; And the long pauses of this wedding-bell; At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat; : So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed The one same Peace, strove with each other long, And Peace before their faces perished since : So through that soul, in restless brotherhood, Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns. |