Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/846

 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

688 Sonnets jrom the Portuguese

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��THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and whh'd-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 thec ? ' 'Death,' I said. But there

The silver answer rang 'Not Death, but Love.'

689 Unlike our uses and our destinies.

Our ministering two angels look surprise On one another, as they strike athwart Their wings in pavssmg. Thou, bethink thec, art

A guest for queens for 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.

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