Whose lamps are stirred continually And see our old prayers, granted, melt 85 'We two will lie i' the shadow of That living mystic tree 90 Within whose secret growth the Dove While every leaf that His plumes touch 'And I myself will teach to him, I myself, lying so, The songs I sing here; which his voice Shall pause in, hushed and slow, 95 And find some knowledge at each pause, Or some new thing to know.' 100 (Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st! That once of old. But shall God lift The soul whose likeness with thy soul 'We two,' she said, 'will seek the groves Where the lady Mary is, 105 With her five handmaidens, whose names Are five sweet symphonies, 110 Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, 'Circlewise sit they, with bound locks Into the fine cloth white like flame Weaving the golden thread, To fashion the birth-robes for them 115 'He shall fear, haply, and be dumb: 'Herself shall bring us, hand in hand, 125 And angels meeting us shall sing 130 'There will I ask of Christ the Lord Only to live as once on earth She gazed and listened and then said, Less sad of speech than mild, 135 All this is when he comes.' She ceased. 140 The light thrilled towards her, fill'd With angels in strong level flight. (I saw her smile.) But soon their path Was vague in distant spheres: And then she cast her arms along And laid her face between her hands, 5 10 THE SEA-LIMITS (From the same) Consider the sea's listless chime: Is the sea's end: our sight may pass No quiet, which is death's, it hath 15 Listen alone beside the sea, 20 Listen alone among the woods; Shall have one sound alike to thee: Hark where the murmurs of thronged men Still the one voice of wave and tree. Gather a shell from the strown beach And listen at its lips: they sigh 25 The echo of the whole sea's speech. And all mankind is thus at heart Not any thing but what thou art: SONNETS SIBYLLA PALMIFERA (For a Picture) Under the arch of Life, where love and death, awe, I drew it in as simply as my breath. 5 Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath, 10 The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw, The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath. This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise Thy voice and hand shake still,-long known to thee By flying hair and fluttering hem,-the beat Following her daily of thy heart and feet, How passionately and irretrievably, In what fond flight, how many ways and days! (From The House of Life, in Ballads and Sonnets, 1881) SONNET XIX SILENT NOON Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,- 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass. 5 All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthornhedge. 'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass. Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly 10 Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above. Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, This close-companioned inarticulate hour When twofold silence was the song of love. SONNET LXIII. INCLUSIVENESS The changing guests, each in a different mood, Is a soul's board set daily with new food. 5 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? 10 May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell And may be stamped, a memory all in vain, |