I

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. 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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

II

But only three in all Gods universe

Have heard this word thou hast 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 ９9ｌib•netall the mountain-bars:

And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,

We should but vow the faster for the stars.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning