There is honey in the trees where her misty vales expand, And her forest paths in summer are by falling waters fann'd, There is dew at high noontide there, and springs i' the yellow sand,

On the fair hills of holy Ireland.

Curl'd he is and ringleted, and plaited to the knee-
Uileacan dubh O!

Each captain who comes sailing across the Irish Sea;
Uileacan dubh O!

And I will make my journey, if life and health but stand,
Unto that pleasant country, that fresh and fragrant strand,
And leave your boasted braveries, your wealth and high
command,

For the fair hills of holy Ireland.

Large and profitable are the stacks upon the ground,
Uileacan dubh O!

The butter and the cream do wondrously abound;
Uileacan dubh O!

The cresses on the water and the sorrels are at hand,
And the cuckoo's calling daily his note of music bland,
And the bold thrush sings so bravely his song i' the forests
grand,

On the fair hills of holy Ireland.

577

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
[1806-1861]

A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,

And breaking the golden lilies afloat

With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river;
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flow'd the river;

And hack'd and hew'd as a great god can
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan (How tall it stood in the river!), Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,

Steadily from the outside ring,

And notch'd the poor dry empty thing

In noies, as he sat by the river.

'This is the way,' laugh'd the great god Pan (Laugh'd while he sat by the river),

'The only way, since gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed.' Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man:

The true gods sigh for the cost and painFor the reed which grows nevermore again

As a reed with the reeds of the river.

578

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE

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 its 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. Straightway 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."

BUT only three in all God's universe

Have heard this word thou hast said,-Himself, beside
Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied

that was God,

One of us
So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce

and lai the curse

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.

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.

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 drop 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

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 grayness. 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 gray dust up, those laurels on thine head,

.

O my Beloved, will not shield thee so,

That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred
The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! go.

583

VI

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward 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.

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
For 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.