In glad noonlight that never shall wane?
Alas, so long!

Ah! shall it be then Spring weather,
And ah! shall we be young together?

INSOMNIA.

[Ballads and Sonnets 1881.]

THIN are the night-skirts left behind
By daybreak hours that onward creep,
And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
That wavers with the spirit's wind:
But in half-dreams that shift and roll
And still remember and forget,
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.

Our lives, most dear, are never near,
Our thoughts are never far apart,

Though all that draws us heart to heart
Seems fainter now and now more clear.
To-night Love claims his full control,
And with desire and with regret
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.

Is there a home where heavy earth

Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
Where water leaves no thirst again

And springing fire is Love's new birth?
If faith long bound to one true goal
May there at length its hope beget,
My soul that hour shall draw your soul
For ever nearer yet.

THE HOUSE OF LIFE.

[Von den hier ausgewählten Sonetten erschienen in den Poems von 1870: XXXVI, XXXVIII, XLVI, XLIX-LII, LXIX-LXXIII, LXXXIV, LXXXVI, XCVII, CI; die anderen in den Ballads and Sonnets 1881.

Die Sonette XLIX—LII, LXXXVI, XCVII (nebst anderen hier nicht abgedruckten) erschienen vorher in "The Fortnightly Review" 1869, Sonett XXIV im "Athenæum" 1881.

Son. LXXI-III "must belong to 1847, or perhaps to an early date in 1848." Memoir pg. 108.

Über die vermutliche Reihenfolge, in der die Sonette entstanden sind, vgl. die Tabelle von W. M. Rossetti in den Collected Works I, 517f.]

Part I. YOUTH AND CHANGE.

SONNET XIX.

SILENT NOON.

YOUR hands lie open in the long fresh grass,

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms: Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass. All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge. 'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
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 XXIV.

PRIDE OF YOUTH.

EVEN as a child, of sorrow that we give
The dead, but little in his heart can find,
Since without need of thought to his clear mind
Their turn it is to die and his to live:-

Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive

Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind,
Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.

There is a change in every hour's recall,
And the last cowslip in the fields we see
On the same day with the first corn-poppy.

Alas for hourly change! Alas for all

The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall, Even as the beads of a told rosary!

SONNET XXVI.

MID-RAPTURE.

THOU lovely and beloved, thou my love;

Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning eyes,
Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise,

Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above
All modulation of the deep-bowered dove,

Is like a hand laid softly on the soul;

Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control
Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of:—

What word can answer to thy word,-what gaze
To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere
My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there
Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?
What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove,
O lovely and beloved, O my love?

SONNET XXXIV.

THE DARK GLASS.

NOT I myself know all my love for thee:
How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh
To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday?
Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be
As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,

Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray;
And shall my sense pierce love, the last relay
And ultimate outpost of eternity?

Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?

One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,— One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand. Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call And veriest touch of powers primordial

That any hour-girt life may understand.

SONNET XXXVI.

LIFE-IN-LOVE.

NOT in thy body is thy life at all,

But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes; Through these she yields thee life that vivifies What else were sorrow's servant and death's thrall. Look on thyself without her, and recall

The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise That lived but in a dead-drawn breath of sighs O'er vanished hours and hours eventual.

Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair
Which, stored apart, is all love hath to show
For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago;
Even so much life endures unknown, even where,
'Mid change the changeless night environeth,
Lies all that golden hair undimmed in death.

SONNET XXXVIII.

THE MORROW'S MESSAGE.

"THOU Ghost," I said, "and is thy name To-day?--
Yesterday's son, with such an abject brow!-
And can To-morrow be more pale than thou?"
While yet I spoke, the silence answered: "Yea,
Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey,

And each beforehand makes such poor avow
As of old leaves beneath the budding bough
Or night-drift that the sundawn shreds away."
Then cried I: "Mother of many malisons,
O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed!"
But therewithal the tremulous silence said:
"Lo! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once:-
Yea, twice, whereby thy life is still the sun's;
And thrice, whereby the shadow of death is dead."

SONNET XL.

SEVERED SELVES.

Two separate divided silences,

Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
Two glances which together would rejoice.

In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees;
Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease;
Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,
Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same;
Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas:-

Such are we now. Ah! may our hope forecast
Indeed one hour again, when on this stream
Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam?—
An hour how slow to come, how quickly past,—
Which blooms and fades, and only leaves at last,
Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream.