SONNET XLIV.

THE SUN'S SHAME.

BEHOLDING youth and hope in mockery caught
From life; and mocking pulses that remain
When the soul's death of bodily death is fain;
Honour unknown, and honour known unsought;
And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought

On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
And longed-for woman longing all in vain

For lonely man with love's desire distraught;

And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleasantness, Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,

None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they :— Beholding these things, I behold no less

The blushing morn and blushing eve confess

The shame that loads the intolerable day.

SONNET XIV.

THE VASE OF LIFE.

AROUND the vase of Life at your slow pace

He has not crept, but turned it with his hands,

And all its sides already understands.

There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race;
Whose road runs far by sands and fruitful space;

Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has pass'd;
Who weeps, nor stays for weeping; who at last,
A youth, stands somewhere crowned, with silent face.

And he has filled this vase with wine for blood,
With blood for tears, with spice for burning vow,
With watered flowers for buried love most fit;

And would have cast it shattered to the flood,
Yet in Fate's name has kept it whole; which now
Stands empty till his ashes fall in it.

SONNET XLVI.

A SUPERSCRIPTION.

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell

Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between ;

Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell

Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,

Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.

Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart

One moment through thy soul the soft surprise

Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,-Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart

Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart

Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.

SONNET XLVII.

HE AND I.

WHENCE came his feet into my field, and why?

How is it that he sees it all so drear?

How do I see his seeing, and how hear The name his bitter silence knows it by? This was the little fold of separate sky

Whose pasturing clouds in the soul's atmosphere Drew living light from one continual year: How should he find it lifeless? He, or I?

Lo! this new Self now wanders round my field,
With plaints for every flower, and for each tree
A moan, the sighing wind's auxiliary :
And o'er sweet waters of my life, that yield
Unto his lips no draught but tears unseal'd,

Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he.

SONNETS XLVIII., XLIX.

NEWBORN DEATH.

I.

TO-DAY Death seems to me an infant child
Which her worn mother Life upon my knee
Has set to grow my friend and play with me;
If haply so my heart might be beguil'd
To find no terrors in a face so mild,-
If haply so my weary heart might be
Unto the newborn milky eyes of thee,
O Death, before resentment reconcil'd.

How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart
Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand
Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart,

What time with thee indeed I reach the strand

Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art, And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?