Search -
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poetical Works
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poetical Works Author:Elizabeth Barrett Browning Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE POET'S VOW. O be wiser thou Instructed that true knowledge leads to lore. WO ED THE POET'S VOW, PART THE FIRST. SHOWING WHEKEFOKB THE VOW W... more »AS MADE. Eve is a twofold mystery; The stillness Earth doth keep, The motion wherewith human hearts Do each to either leap As if all souls between the poles Felt' Parting comes in sleep.' n. The rowers lift their oars to view Each other in the sea; The landsmen watch the rocking boats In a pleasant company ; While up the hill go gladlier still Dear friends by two and three. The peasant's wife hath looked without Her cottage door and smiled, For there the peasant drops his spade To clasp his youngest child Which hath no speech, but its hand can reach And stroke his forehead mild. A poet sate that eventide Within his hall alone, As silent as its ancient lords In the coffined place of stone, When the bat hath shrunk from the praying monk, And the praying monk is gone. Nor wore the dead a stiller face Beneath the cerement's roll: His lips refusing out in words Their mystic thoughts to dole, His steadfast eye burnt inwardly, As burning out his soul. You would not think that brow could e'er Ungentle moods express, Tet seemed it, in this troubled world, Too calm for gentleness, When the very star that shines from far Shines trembling ne'ertheless. It lacked, all need, the softening light Which other brows supply: We should conjoin the scathed trunks Of our humanity, That each leafless spray ontwining may Look softer 'gainst the sky. vm. None gazed within the poet's face, The poet gazed in none He threw a lonely shadow straight Before the moon and sun, Affronting nature's heaven-dwelling creatures With wrong to nature don...« less