English

WHEREIN HE EXPRESSES HIS GRATITUDE THAT FROM TIME TO TIME SHE VISITS HIM IN VISIONS

Soul of my soul, how often you return
Bearing in your small hands the gift of peace
Like perfume; Death has cancelled his dark lease
Upon those eyes, renewed them, bade them burn!
Ah, God be praised that your bliss does not spurn
My blackness, but with radiant increase
Of light illumines grief until it sees
Again your lonely haunts, your lovely urn!
Look you, how here, where so long I had lifted
A joyous voice, I pour laments instead

WHEREIN HER BEAUTY STILL HONOURS AND HAUNTS HIS SOLITUDE

How often from my own soul I have fled,
Or from the world to some sweet sombre place —
Only to feel the hot tears scald my face!
Only to hear them beat the grass like lead!
How often, my dark heart inhabited
With ghosts, I go through shadowed glens to trace
Once more in thought that glory and that grace
Which honour Death! ... Ah Death, that I were dead!
How often, gleaming like some water-sprite
From Sorga's breast, I see my soul's delight;

IN SELF-EXILE AT VAUCLUSE

Nowhere before in one miraculous hour
Have I so clearly seen my soul's desire;
Nowhere before felt freedom lift me higher
In passionate music and in lyric power;
Never proved valley's dark sequestered bower
So perfect for the sigh, the singing fire:
Not even Cyprus could Love so inspire,
Not even Gnidos build Love such a tower.
Everything breathes and spins a single spell
Upon me, whispering love: the sky, the time,
The winds, the birds, water and boughs all rhyme

WHEREIN LAURA IS FOREVER A PRESENT APPARITION

If the lone bird lament or the green leaves
Shiver beneath the summer's soft caresses,
Or rapid streams flash from dark wildernesses
Churning the rock that with my sorrow grieves,
While Love his slow eternal elegy weaves,
Then, then I see her whom this blind earth presses!
Those eyes like wells of stars, those golden tresses,
That voice like tears, that silver breast which heaves:
" Unhappy soul, why weep? Ah why, sad lover,
Thus, thus with anguish and remorse devour

WHEREIN HE CRIES OUT FOR DEATH THAT HIS SOUL MAY JOIN HER AS HAVE HIS THOUGHTS LONG SINCE

Even in the blossom of youth when Love burns high
And bends and binds our hearts with his sweet fire,
Leaving her flesh as a nun leaves earth's attire,
Laura, my life, put me and passion by:
Vital and vivid, the genius of her sky,
She sways the orbit of my soul's desire —
Why was I left to watch from mortal mire
New life's first day unfold, sin's last day die?
My every ardent thought pursues and clings

WHEREIN HER DEATH ROBS LIFE OF ITS REASON

Whereas her angel aspect, so serene,
By this brief absence hurls my beggared soul
To dungeon horrors and the darkest hole,
I strive by words to ease a wound too keen.
Certes, true anguish (none hath truer been)
Prompts my wild speech: this she and Love control;
None other balm my sick heart can console
Against the terror of this desolate scene.
Death, thou hast seized her in a savage theft!
And thou, O happy Earth, that perfect face
Now cloakest from me in thy black embrace!

WHEREIN HE SEEKS CONSOLATION IN THE THOUGHT OF HER HEAVENLY HAPPINESS

O eyes, sad eyes, our sun is overshrouded,
Or only veiled to us, and brightly burning
In Heaven's pure blue against our slow returning,
Lamenting the delay that keeps us clouded!
Ah there, mine ears, the air is sweetly crowded
With tones that speak to the heart's high discerning!
My feet, thou canst not pierce the swift white spurning
Of her celestial progress as once thou did!
Why, then, torment and tear me thus, for oh,

WHEREIN HE LIKENS HIMSELF UNTO A CITY BE-LEAGUERED AND CRIES HIS HEART TRAITOR

Peace! Give me peace! O iron-eyed despairs!
Is it not quite enough that Love, Death, Fate
Roar the red battle to my very gate,
But my soul must resound to tread of theirs?
And thou, O heart, at me alone that bares
Unfaithful fangs, what treasons congregate
Under thine auspices, unholy mate
Of my most fickle foes, my deadliest snares?
Love his most furtive missions hides in thee,
In thee her blind disasters Fate approves,

WHEREIN HE EXHORTS HIS SOUL TO LEAVE THE HOLLOW CLAIMS OF EARTH FOR THE CERTAIN REWARDS OF HEAVEN

What can you do? What think? Ah, why bend back
Upon the time that passes and is past?
The flame you fed once, the old holocaust,
Why feed again with agonies as black?
Those tones that shook the stars in sweet attack,
Those heaven-searching glances which outlast
All similes are fled; and how aghast
Must grow the late and lonely bivouac!
Cancel the resurrection of a ghost!
Forswear pursuit of dreams with desperate eyes!

WHEREIN HE FINDS NO RESPITE

Life rushes by on proud impatient feet,
And Death pursues her with a massive stride;
Ills past and present tear the soul aside,
With pain the future threatens to repeat:
I look before and after — pain I meet;
A thousand menaces my peace deride;
Ah, were not pity so involved with pride,
Long, long ago I should have found death sweet!
If ever any joy this heart has known,
Memory on it broods while, tempest-battered,
The winds still howl, the sinister heavens frown;