Whose lamps are stirred continually
With prayer sent up to God;

And see our old prayers, granted, melt
Each like a little cloud.

85 'We two will lie i' the shadow of That living mystic tree

90

Within whose secret growth the Dove
Is sometimes felt to be,

While every leaf that His plumes touch
Saith His name audibly.

'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!
Yea, one wast thou with me

That once of old. But shall God lift
To endless unity

The soul whose likeness with thy soul
Was but its love for thee?)

'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,
Margaret and Rosalys.

'Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
And foreheads garlanded;

Into the fine cloth white like flame

Weaving the golden thread,

To fashion the birth-robes for them
Who are just born, being dead.

115 'He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:
Then will I lay my cheek
To his, and tell about our love,
Not once abashed or weak:
And the dear Mother will approve

'Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
To Him round whom all souls
Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
Bowed with their aureoles:

125 And angels meeting us shall sing
To their citherns and citoles.

130

'There will I ask of Christ the Lord
Thus much for him and me:-

Only to live as once on earth
With Love, only to be,
As then awhile, forever now
Together, I and he.'

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.
Her eyes prayed, and she smil'd.

(I saw her smile.) But soon their path Was vague in distant spheres:

And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,

And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears.)

5

10

THE SEA-LIMITS

(From the same)

Consider the sea's listless chime:
Time's self it is, made audible,—
The murmur of the earth's own shell.
Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's, it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Gray and not known, along its path.

15 Listen alone beside the sea,

20

Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes

Shall have one sound alike to thee:

Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again,-

Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strown beach

And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,

25 The echo of the whole sea's speech.

And all mankind is thus at heart

Not any thing but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

SONNETS

SIBYLLA PALMIFERA

(For a Picture)

Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck

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,
By sea or sky or woman, to one law,

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,-
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams
and glooms

'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,
Sit at the roadside table and arise:
And every life among them in likewise

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
In separate living souls for joy or pain?
Nay, all its corners may be painted plain.
Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent
well;

And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.