Sonnets From the Portuguese

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

        I

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

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

Who each one in a gracious hand appears

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young;

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung

A shadow across me. Straightaway I was 'ware,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;

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

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

The silver answer rang,--Not Death, but Love.

 

        II

But only three in all God's universe

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

Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied

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

So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce

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

The deathweights, placed there, would have signified

Less absolute exclusion. Nay is worse

From God than from all others, O my friend!

Men could not part us with their worldly jars,

Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;

Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:

And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,

We should but vow the faster for the stars.

 

        III

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!

Unlike our uses and our destinies.

Our ministering two angels look surprise

On one another, as they strike athwart

Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art

A guest for queens to social pageantries,

With gages from a hundred brighter eyes

Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part

Of chief musician. What hast thou to do

With looking from the lattice-lights at me,

A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through

The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?

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

And Death must dig the level where these agree.

 

        IV

Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,

Most gracious singer of high poems! where

The dancers will break footing, from the care

Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.

And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor

For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear

To let thy music drip here unaware

In folds of golden fulness at my door?

Look up and see the casement broken in,

The bats and owlets builders in the roof!

My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.

Hush, call no echo up in further proof

Of desolation! there's a voice within

That weeps...as thou must sing...alone, aloof.

 

        V

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,

As once Electra her sepulchral urn,

And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn

The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see

What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,

And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn

Through the ashen greyness. If thy foot in scorn

Could tread them out to darkness utterly,

It might be well perhaps. But if instead

Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow

The grey dust up,...those laurels on thine head,

O my Belovèd, will not shield thee so,

That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred

The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! go.

 

        VI

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand

Henceforth in thy shadow. Nevermore

Alone upon the threshold of my door

Of individual life, I shall command

The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand

Serenely in the sunshine as before,

Without the sense of that which I forbore--

Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land

Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine

With pulses that beat double. What I do

And what I dream include thee, as the wine

Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue

God for myself, He hears that name of thine,

And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

 

        VII

The face of all the world is changed, I think,

Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul

Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole

Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink

Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,

Was caught up into love, and taught the whole

Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole

God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,

And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear.

The names of country, heaven, are changed away

From where thou art or shalt be, there or here;

And this...this lute and song...loved yesterday,

(The singing angels know) are only dear

Because thy name moves right in what they say.



        VIII

What can I give thee back, O liberal

And princely giver, who hast brought the gold

And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,

And laid them on the outside of the wall

For such as I to take or leave withal,

In unexpected largesse? am I cold,

Ungrateful, that for these most manifold

High gifts, I render nothing back at all?

Not so; not cold,--but very poor instead.

Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run

The colours from my life, and left so dead

And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done

To give the same as pillow to thy head.

Go farther! let it serve to trample on.

 

        IX

Can it be right to give what I can give?

To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears

As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years

Re-sighing on my lips renunciative

Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live

For all thy adjurations? O my fears,

That this can scarce be right! We are not peers,

So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve,

That givers of such gifts as mine are, must

Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas!

I will not soil thy purple with my dust,

Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass,

Nor give thee any love--which were unjust.

Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.

 

        X

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed

And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,

Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light

Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:

And love is fire. And when I say at need

I love thee...mark!...I love thee--in thy sight

I stand transfigured, glorified aright,

With conscience of the new rays that proceed

Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low

In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures

Who love God, God accepts while loving so.

And what I feel, across the inferior features

Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show

How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.

 

        XI

And therefore if to love can be desert,

I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as pale

As these you see, and trembling knees that fail

To bear the burden of a heavy heart,--

This weary minstrel-life that once was girt

To climb Aornus, and can scarce avail

To pipe now 'gainst the valley nightingale

A melancholy music,--why advert

To these things? O Belovèd, it is plain

I am not of thy worth nor for thy place!

And yet, because I love thee, I obtain

From that same love this vindicating grace,

To live on still in love, and yet in vain,--

To bless thee, yet renounce thee to thy face.

 

        XII

Indeed this very love which is my boast,

And which, when rising up from breast to brow,

Doth crown me with ruby large enow

To draw men's eyes and prove the inner cost,--

This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost,

I should not love withal, unless that thou

Hadst set me an example, shown me how,

When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed,

And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak

Of love even, as good thing of my own:

Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,

And placed it by thee on a golden throne,--

And that I love (O soul, we must be meek--)

Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

 

        XIII

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech

The love I bear thee, finding words enough,

And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,

Between our faces, to cast light on each?--

I drop at thy feet. I cannot teach

My hand to hold my spirit so far off

From myself--me--that I should bring thee proof

In words, of love hid in me out of reach.

Nay, let the silence of my womanhood

Commend my woman-love to thy belief,--

Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,

And rend the garment of my life, in brief,

By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,

Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

 

        XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought

Except for love's sake only. Do not say

I love her for her smile--her look--her way

Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought

That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of ease on such a day--

For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may

Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for

Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheek dry,--

A creature might forget to weep, who bore

Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!

But love me for love's sake, that evermore

Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

 

        XV

Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear

Too calm and sad a face in front of thine;

For we two look two ways, and cannot shine

With the same sunlight on our brow and hair.

On me thou lookest with no doubting care,

As on a bee in a crystalline;

Since sorrow hath shut me safe in love's divine

And to spread wing and fly in the outer air

Were most impossible failure, if I strove

To fail so. But I look on thee--on thee--

Beholding, besides love, the end of love,

Hearing oblivion beyond memory;

As one who sits and gazes from above,

Over the rivers to the bitter sea.

 

        XVI

And yet, because thou overcomest so,

Because thou art more noble and like a king,

Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling

Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow

Too close against thine heart henceforth to know

How it shook when alone. Why, conquering

May prove as lordly and complete a thing

In lifting upward, as in crushing low!

And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword

To one who lifts him from the bloody earth;

Even so, Belovèd, I at last record,

Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth,

I rise above abasement at the word.

Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth.

 

        XVII

My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes

God set between His After and Before,

And strike up and strike off the general roar

Of the rushing worlds a melody that floats

In a serene air purely. Antidotes

Of medicated music, answering for

Mankind's forlornest uses, thou canst pour

From thence into their ears. God's will devotes

Thine to such ends, and mine to wait on thine.

How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?

A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine

Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?

A shade, in which to sing--of palm or pine?

A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.

 

        XVIII

I never gave a lock of hair away

To a man, dearest, except this to thee,

Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully,

I ring out to the full brown length and say

Take it. My day of youth went yesterday;

My hair no longer bounds to my foot's glee,

Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree,

As girls do, any more: it only may

Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears,

Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside

Through sorrow's trick. I thought the funeral-shears

Would take this first, but Love is justified,--

Take it thou,--finding pure, from all those years,

The kiss my mother left here when she died.

 

        XIX

The soul's Rialto hath its merchandise;

I barter curl for curl upon that mart,

And from my poet's forehead to my heart

Receive this lock which outweighs argosies,--

As purply black, as erst to Pindar's eyes

The dim purpureal tresses gloomed athwart

The nine white Muse-brows. For this counterpart,...

The bay-crown's shade, Belovèd, I surmise,

Still lingers on thy curl, it so black!

Thus, with a fillet of smooth-kissing breath,

I tie the shadows safe from gliding back,

And lay the gift where nothing hindereth;

Here on my heart, as on thy brow, to lack

No natural heat till mine grows cold in death.

 

        XX

Belovèd, my Belovèd, when I think

That thou wast in the world a year ago,

What time I sat alone here in the snow

And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink

No moment at thy voice, but, link by link

Went counting all my chains as if that so

They never could fall off at any blow

Struck by thy possible hand,--why, thus I drink

Of life's great cup of wonder! Wonderful,

Never to feel thee thrill the day or night

With personal act or speech,--nor ever cull

Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white

Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull

Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight.

 

        XXI

Say over again, and yet once over again,

That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated

Should seem "a cuckoo-song," as thou dost treat it,

Remember, never to the hill or plain,

Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain

Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed,

Belovèd, I, amid the darkness greeted

By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt's pain

Cry, Speak once more--thou lovest! Who can fear

Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll,

Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?

Say thou dost love me, love me, love me--toll

The silver iterance!--only minding, Dear,

To love me also in silence with thy soul.

 

        XXII

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,

Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,

Until the lengthening wings break into fire

At either curvèd point,--what bitter wrong

Can the earth do to us, that we should not long

Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,

The angels would press on us and aspire

To drop some golden orb of perfect song

Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay

Rather on earth, Belovèd,--where the unfit

Contrarious moods of men recoil away

And isolate pure spirits, and permit

A place to stand and love in for a day,

With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

 of Sonnets from the Portuguese

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

	Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

	Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

	That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

	Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

	Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

	But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

	I never writ, nor no man ever loved.



			 William Shakespeare   

				(1564 - 1616)

 
 William Shakespeare 
 
CI.
O TRUANT Muse, what shall be thy amends 
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed? 
Both truth and beauty on my love depends; 
So dost thou too, and therein dignified. 
Make answer, Muse: wilt thou not haply say 
'Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd; 
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay; 
But best is best, if never intermix'd?' 
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb? 
Excuse not silence so; for't lies in thee 
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb, 
And to be praised of ages yet to be. 
Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how 
To make him seem long hence as he shows now. 
CII.
MY love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming; 
I love not less, though less the show appear: 
That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming 
The owner's tongue doth publish every where. 
Our love was new and then but in the spring 
When I was wont to greet it with my lays, 
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing 
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days: 
Not that the summer is less pleasant now 
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, 
But that wild music burthens every bough 
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. 
Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue, 
Because I would not dull you with my song. 
CIII.
ALACK, what poverty my Muse brings forth, 
That having such a scope to show her pride, 
The argument all bare is of more worth 
Than when it hath my added praise beside! 
O, blame me not, if I no more can write! 
Look in your glass, and there appears a face 
That over-goes my blunt invention quite, 
Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace. 
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend, 
To mar the subject that before was well? 
For to no other pass my verses tend 
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell; 
And more, much more, than in my verse can sit 
Your own glass shows you when you look in it. 
CIV.
TO me, fair friend, you never can be old, 
For as you were when first your eye I eyed, 
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold 
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride, 
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd 
In process of the seasons have I seen, 
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, 
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. 
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, 
Steal from his figure and no pace perceived; 
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, 
Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived: 
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred; 
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead. 
CV.
LET not my love be call'd idolatry, 
Nor my beloved as an idol show, 
Since all alike my songs and praises be 
To one, of one, still such, and ever so. 
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, 
Still constant in a wondrous excellence; 
Therefore my verse to constancy confined, 
One thing expressing, leaves out difference. 
'Fair, kind and true' is all my argument, 
'Fair, kind, and true' varying to other words; 
And in this change is my invention spent, 
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. 
'Fair, kind, and true,' have often lived alone, 
Which three till now never kept seat in one. 
CVI.
WHEN in the chronicle of wasted time 
I see descriptions of the fairest wights, 
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme 
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, 
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, 
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, 
I see their antique pen would have express'd 
Even such a beauty as you master now. 
So all their praises are but prophecies 
Of this our time, all you prefiguring; 
And, for they look'd but with divining eyes, 
They had not skill enough your worth to sing: 
For we, which now behold these present days, 
Had eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. 
CVII.
NOT mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul 
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, 
Can yet the lease of my true love control, 
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. 
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured 
And the sad augurs mock their own presage; 
Incertainties now crown themselves assured 
And peace proclaims olives of endless age. 
Now with the drops of this most balmy time 
My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes, 
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, 
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes: 
And thou in this shalt find thy monument, 
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent. 
CVIII.
WHAT'S in the brain that ink may character 
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit? 
What's new to speak, what new to register, 
That may express my love or thy dear merit? 
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine, 
I must, each day say o'er the very same, 
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, 
Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name. 
So that eternal love in love's fresh case 
Weighs not the dust and injury of age, 
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, 
But makes antiquity for aye his page, 
Finding the first conceit of love there bred 
Where time and outward form would show it dead. 
CIX.
O, NEVER say that I was false of heart, 
Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify. 
As easy might I from myself depart 
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: 
That is my home of love: if I have ranged, 
Like him that travels I return again, 
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged, 
So that myself bring water for my stain. 
Never believe, though in my nature reign'd 
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, 
That it could so preposterously be stain'd, 
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good; 
For nothing this wide universe I call, 
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all. 
CX.
ALAS, 'tis true I have gone here and there 
And made myself a motley to the view, 
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, 
Made old offences of affections new; 
Most true it is that I have look'd on truth 
Askance and strangely: but, by all above, 
These blenches gave my heart another youth, 
And worse essays proved thee my best of love. 
Now all is done, have what shall have no end: 
Mine appetite I never more will grind 
On newer proof, to try an older friend, 
A god in love, to whom I am confined. 
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, 
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast. 
CXI.
O, FOR my sake do you with Fortune chide, 
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
That did not better for my life provide 
Than public means which public manners breeds. 
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
And almost thence my nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand: 
Pity me then and wish I were renew'd; 
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink 
Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection 
No bitterness that I will bitter think, 
Nor double penance, to correct correction. 
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye 
Even that your pity is enough to cure me. 
CXII.
YOUR love and pity doth the impression fill 
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow; 
For what care I who calls me well or ill, 
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow? 
You are my all the world, and I must strive 
To know my shames and praises from your tongue: 
None else to me, nor I to none alive, 
That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong. 
In so profound abysm I throw all care 
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense 
To critic and to flatterer stopped are. 
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense: 
You are so strongly in my purpose bred 
That all the world besides methinks are dead. 
CXIII.
SINCE I left you, mine eye is in my mind; 
And that which governs me to go about 
Doth part his function and is partly blind, 
Seems seeing, but effectually is out; 
For it no form delivers to the heart 
Of bird of flower, or shape, which it doth latch: 
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part, 
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch: 
For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight, 
The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature, 
The mountain or the sea, the day or night, 
The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature: 
Incapable of more, replete with you, 
My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue. 
CXIV.
OR whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you, 
Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery? 
Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true, 
And that your love taught it this alchemy, 
To make of monsters and things indigest 
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, 
Creating every bad a perfect best, 
As fast as objects to his beams assemble? 
O,'tis the first; 'tis flattery in my seeing, 
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up: 
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing, 
And to his palate doth prepare the cup: 
If it be poison'd, 'tis the lesser sin 
That mine eye loves it and doth first begin. 
CXV.
THOSE lines that I before have writ do lie, 
Even those that said I could not love you dearer: 
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why 
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. 
But reckoning time, whose million'd accidents 
Creep in 'twixt vows and change decrees of kings, 
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents, 
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things; 
Alas, why, fearing of time's tyranny, 
Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,' 
When I was certain o'er incertainty, 
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest? 
Love is a babe; then might I not say so, 
To give full growth to that which still doth grow? 
CXVI.
LET me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds, 
Or bends with the remover to remove: 
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 
It is the star to every wandering bark, 
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. 
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come: 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
If this be error and upon me proved, 
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 
CXVII.
ACCUSE me thus: that I have scanted all 
Wherein I should your great deserts repay, 
Forgot upon your dearest love to call, 
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day; 
That I have frequent been with unknown minds 
And given to time your own dear-purchased right 
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds 
Which should transport me farthest from your sight. 
Book both my wilfulness and errors down 
And on just proof surmise accumulate; 
Bring me within the level of your frown, 
But shoot not at me in your waken'd hate; 
Since my appeal says I did strive to prove 
The constancy and virtue of your love. 
CXVIII.
LIKE as, to make our appetites more keen, 
With eager compounds we our palate urge, 
As, to prevent our maladies unseen, 
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge, 
Even so, being tuff of your ne'er-cloying sweetness, 
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding 
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness 
To be diseased ere that there was true needing. 
Thus policy in love, to anticipate 
The ills that were not, grew to faults assured 
And brought to medicine a healthful state 
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured: 
But thence I learn, and find the lesson true, 
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you. 
CXIX.
WHAT potions have I drunk of Siren tears, 
Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within, 
Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears, 
Still losing when I saw myself to win! 
What wretched errors hath my heart committed, 
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never! 
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted 
In the distraction of this madding fever! 
O benefit of ill! now I find true 
That better is by evil still made better; 
And ruin'd love, when it is built anew, 
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. 
So I return rebuked to my content 
And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent. 
CXX.
THAT you were once unkind befriends me now, 
And for that sorrow which I then did feel 
Needs must I under my transgression bow, 
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel. 
For if you were by my unkindness shaken 
As I by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time, 
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken 
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime. 
O, that our night of woe might have remember'd 
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits, 
And soon to you, as you to me, then tender'd 
The humble slave which wounded bosoms fits! 
But that your trespass now becomes a fee; 
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me. 
   

 
 The Eagle and the Mole
AVOID the reeking herd, 
Shun the polluted flock, 
Live like that stoic bird, 
The eagle of the rock. 
The huddled warmth of crowds 
Begets and fosters hate; 
He keeps above the clouds 
His cliff inviolate. 
When flocks are folded warm, 
And herds to shelter run, 
He sails above the storm, 
He stares into the sun. 
If in the eagle's track 
Your sinews cannot leap, 
Avoid the lathered pack, 
Turn from the steaming sheep. 
If you would keep your soul 
From spotted sight or sound, 
Live like the velvet mole: 
Go burrow underground. 
And there hold intercourse 
With roots of trees and stones, 
With rivers at their source, 
And disembodied bones. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Beauty
SAY not of beauty she is good, 
Or aught but beautiful, 
Or sleek to doves' wings of the wood 
Her wild wings of a gull. 
Call her not wicked; that word's touch 
Consumes her like a curse; 
But love her not too much, too much, 
For that is even worse. 
O, she is neither good nor bad, 
But innocent and wild! 
Enshrine her and she dies, who had 
The hard heart of a child. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Wild Peaches
1
WHEN the world turns completely upside down 
You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore 
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; 
We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, 
You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown 
Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold colour. 
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, 
We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown. 
The winter will be short, the summer long, 
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, 
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong; 
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. 
The squirrels in their silver fur will fall 
Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot. 
2
The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass 
Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. 
The misted early mornings will be cold; 
The little puddles will be roofed with glass. 
The sun, which burns from copper into brass, 
Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold 
Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold 
Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass. 
Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; 
A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; 
The spring begins before the winter's over. 
By February you may find the skins 
Of garter snakes and water moccasins 
Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear. 
3
When April pours the colours of a shell 
Upon the hills, when every little creek 
Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake 
In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell, 
When strawberries go begging, and the sleek 
Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak, 
We shall live well -- we shall live very well. 
The months between the cherries and the peaches 
Are brimming cornucopias which spill 
Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black; 
Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches 
We'll trample bright persimmons, while you kill 
Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback. 
4
Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones 
There's something in this richness that I hate. 
I love the look, austere, immaculate, 
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. 
There's something in my very blood that owns 
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, 
A thread of water, churned to milky spate 
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. 
I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, 
Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; 
That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath, 
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, 
Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, 
And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Les Lauriers Sont Coupée
AH, love, within the shadow of the wood 
The laurels are cut down; some other brows 
May bear the classic wreath which Fame allows 
And find the burden honorable and good. 
Have we not passed the laurels as they stood-- 
Soft in the veil with which Spring endows 
The wintry glitter of their woven boughs-- 
Nor stopped to break the branches while we could? 
Ah, love, for other brows they are cut down. 
Thornless and scentless are their stems and flowers, 
And cold as death their twisted coronal. 
Sweeter to us the sharpness of this crown; 
Sweeter the wildest roses which are ours; 
Sweeter the petals, even when they fall. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 The Child on the Curbstone
THE headlights raced; the moon, death-faced, 
Stared down on that golden river. 
I saw through the smoke the scarlet cloak 
Of a boy who could not shiver. 
His father's hand forced him to stand, 
The traffic thundered slaughter; 
One foot he thrust in the whirling dust 
As it were running water. 
As in a dream I saw the stream 
Scatter in drops that glistened; 
They flamed, they flashed, his brow they splashed, 
And danger's son was christened. 
The portent passed; his fate was cast, 
Sea-farer, desert-ranger. 
Tearless I smiled on that fearless child 
Dipping his foot in Danger. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 The Lost Path
THE garden's full of scented wallflowers, 
And, save that these stir faintly, nothing stirs; 
Only a distant bell in hollow chime 
Cried out just now for far-forgoten time, 
And three reverberate words the great bell spoke. 
The knocker's made of brass, the door of oak, 
And such a clamor must be loosed on air 
By the knocker's blow that knock I do not dare. 
The silence is a spell, and if it break, 
What things, that now lie sleeping, will awake? 
Are simple creatures lying there in cool 
Sweet linen sheets, in slumber like the pool 
Of moonlight white as water on the floor? 
Will they come down laughing and unlock the door? 
And will they draw me in, and let me sit 
On the tall settle while the lamp is lit? 
And shall I see their innocent clean lives 
Shining as plainly as the plates and knives, 
The blue bowls, and the brass cage with its bird? 
But listen! listen! surely something stirred 
Within the house, and creeping down the halls 
Draws close to me with sinister footfalls. 
Will long pale fingers softly lift the latch, 
And lead me up, under the osier thatch, 
To a little room, a little secret room, 
Hung with green arras picturing the doom, 
The most disasterous death of some proud knight? 
And shall I search the room by candle-light 
And see, behind the curtains of my bed, 
A murdered man who sleeps as sleep the dead? 
Or will my clamorous knocking shake the trees 
With lonely thunder through the stillnesses, 
And then lie down--the coldest fear of all-- 
To nothing, and deliberate silence fall 
On the house deep in the silence, and no one come 
To door or window, staring blind and dumb? 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Phases of the Moon
ONCE upon a time I heard 
That the flying moon was a Phoenix bird; 
Thus she sails through windy skies, 
Thus in the willow's arms she lies; 
Turn to the East or turn to the West 
In many trees she makes her nest. 
When she's but a pearly thread 
Look among birch leaves overhead; 
When she dies in yellow smoke 
Look in a thunder-smitten oak; 
But in May when the moon is full, 
Bright as water and white as wool, 
Look for her where she loves to be, 
Asleep in a high magnolia tree. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Nadir
IF we must cheat ourselves with any dream, 
Then let it be a dream of nobleness: 
Since it is necessary to express 
Gall from black grapes--to sew an endless seam 
With a rusty needle--chase a spurious gleam 
Narrowing to the nothing through the less-- 
Since life's no better than a bitter guess, 
And love's a stranger--let us change the theme. 
Let us at least pretend--it may be true-- 
That we can close our lips on poisonous 
Dark wine diluted by the Stygean wave; 
And let me dream sublimity in you, 
And courage, liberal for the two of us: 
Let us at least pretend we can be brave. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 The Poor Old Cannon
UPBROKE the sun 
In red-gold foam; 
Thus spoke the gun 
At the Soldier's Home: 
"Whenever I hear 
Blue thunder speak 
My voice sounds clear 
But little and weak. 
"And when the proud 
Young cockerels crow 
My voice sounds loud, 
But gentle and low. 
"When the mocking-bird 
Prolongs his note 
I cannot be heard 
Though I split my throat." 
Elinor Wylie
 
 October
BEAUTH has a tarnished dress, 
And a patchwork cloak of cloth 
Dipped deep in mournfulness, 
Striped like a moth. 
Wet grass where it trails 
Dyes it green along the hem; 
She has seven silver veils 
With cracked bells on them. 
She is tired of all these-- 
Grey gauze, translucent lawn; 
The broad cloak of Herakles. 
Is tangled flame and fawn. 
Water and light are wearing thin: 
She has drawn above her head 
The warm enormous lion skin 
Rough red and gold. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Ophelia
MY locks are shorn for sorrow 
Of love which may not be; 
Tomorrow and tomorrow 
Are plotting cruelty. 
The winter wind tangles 
These ringlets half-grown, 
The sun sprays with spangles 
And rays like his own. 
Oh, quieter and colder 
Is the stream; he will wait; 
When my curls touch my shoulder 
He will comb them straight. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Poor Earth
IT is not heaven: bitter seed 
Leavens its entrails with despair 
It is a star where dragons breed: 
Devils have a footing there. 
The sky has bent it out of shape; 
The sun has strapped it to his wheel; 
Its course is crooked to escape 
Traps and gins of stone and steel. 
It balances on air, and spins 
Snared by strong transparent space; 
I forgive it all its sins; 
I kiss the scars upon its face. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Love Song
LOVERS eminent in love 
Ever diversities combine; 
The vocal chords of the cushat-dove, 
The snake's articulated spine. 
Such elective elements 
Educate the eye and lip 
With one's refreshing innocence, 
The other's claim to scholarship. 
The serpent's knowledge of the world 
Learn, and the dove's more naïve charm; 
Whether your ringlets should be curled, 
And why he likes his claret warm. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Quarrel
LET us quarrel for these reasons: 
You detest the salt which seasons 
My speech . . . and all my lights go out 
In the cold poison of your doubt. 
I love Shelley . . . you love Keats 
Something parts and something meets. 
I love salads . . . you love chops; 
Something goes and something stops. 
Something hides its face and cries; 
Something shivers; something dies. 
I love blue ribbons brought from fairs; 
You love sitting splitting hairs. 
I love truth, and so do you . . . 
Tell me, is it truly true? 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Death and the Maiden
BARCAROLE ON THE STYX 
FAIR youth with the rose at your lips, 
A riddle is hid in your eyes; 
Discard conversational quips, 
Give over elaborate disguise. 
The rose's funeral breath 
Confirms by intuitive fears; 
To prove your devotion, Sir Death, 
Avaunt for a dozen of years. 
But do not forget to array 
Your terror in juvenile charms; 
I shall deeply regret my delay 
If I sleep in a skeleton's arms. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Primavera in the North
SHE has danced for leagues and leagues, 
Over thorns and thistles, 
Prancing to a tune of Griegg's 
Performed on willow whistles. 
Antelopes behold her, dazed, 
Velvet-eyed, and furry; 
Polar flowers, crackle-glazed, 
Snap beneath her hurry. 
In a wig of copper wire, 
A gown of scalloped gauzes, 
She capers like a flame of fire 
Over Arctic mosses. 
All her tears have turned to birds, 
All her thoughts of dolour 
Paint the snow with scarlet words 
And traceries of colour. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Little Joke
Stripping an almond tree in flower 
The wise apothecary's skill 
A single drop of lethal power 
From perfect sweetness can distill 
From bitterness in efflorescence, 
With murderous poisons packed therein; 
The poet draws pellucid essence 
Pure as a drop of metheglin. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Venetian Interior
ALLEGRA, rising from her canopied dreams, 
Slides both white feet across the slanted beams 
Which lace the peacock jalousies: behold 
An idol of fine clay, with feet of gold. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 The Pekingese
FOR A PICTURE 
THIS Pekingese, that makes the sand-grains spin, 
Is digging little tunnels to Pekin: 
Dream him emerging in a porcelain cave 
Where wounded dragons stain a pearly wave. 
Elinor Wylie
 
 Curious Circumstance
THE sailorman's child 
And the girl of the witch-- 
They can't be defiled 
By touching pitch. 
The sailorman's son 
Had a ship for a nursery; 
The other one 
Was baptised by sorcery. 
Although he's shipped 
To the Persian Gulf, her 
Body's been dipped 
In burning sulphur. 
Elinor Wylie