to her mouth which answers there for all —

What sweeter than these things, except the thing

In lacking which all these would lose their sweet —

The confident heart’s still fervour: the swift beat

And soft subsidence of the spirit’s wing,

Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,

The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?

XXV. Winged Hours

Each hour until we meet is as a bird

That wings from far his gradual way along

The rustling covert of my soul, — his song

Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr’d:

But at the hour of meeting, a clear word

Is every note he sings, in Love’s own tongue;

Yet, Love, thou know’st the sweet strain wrong,

Through our contending kisses oft unheard.

What of that hour at last, when for her sake

No wing may fly to me nor song may flow;

When, wandering round my life unleaved, I

The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,

And think how she, far from me, with like eyes

Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?

Other Sonnets

Thomas Chatterton

With Shakspeare’s manhood at a boy’s wild heart, —

Through Hamlet’s doubt to Shakspeare near allied,

And kin to Milton through his Satan’s pride, —

At Death’s sole door he stooped, and craved a dart;

And to the dear new bower of England’s art, —

Even to that shrine Time else had deified,

The unuttered heart that soared against his side, —

Drove the fell point, and smote life’s seals apart.

Thy nested home-loves, noble Chatterton;

The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace

Up Redcliffe’s spire; and in the world’s armed space

Thy gallant sword-play: — these to many an one

Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown

And love-dream of thine unrecorded face.

John Keats

The weltering London ways where children weep

And girls whom none call maidens laugh, — strange road

Miring his outward steps, who inly trode

The bright Castalian brink and Latmos’ steep: —

Even such his life’s cross-paths; till deathly deep,

He toiled through sands of Lethe; and long pain,

Weary with labour spurned and love found vain,

In dead Rome’s sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep.

O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips

And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon’s eclipse, —

Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o’er, —

Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ

But rumour’d in water, while the fame of it

Along Time’s flood goes echoing evermore.

Czar Alexander the Second. (13th March, 1881.)

From him did forty million serfs, endow’d

Each with six feet of death-due soil, receive

Rich freeborn lifelong land, whereon to sheave

Their country’s harvest. These to-day aloud

Demand of Heaven a Father’s blood, — sore bow’d

With tears and thrilled with wrath; who, while they grieve,

On every guilty head would fain achieve

All torment by his edicts disallow’d.

He stayed the knout’s red-ravening fangs; and first

Of Russian traitors, his own murderers go

White to the tomb. While he, — laid foully low

With limbs red-rent, with festering brain which erst

Willed kingly freedom, — ‘gainst the deed accurst

To God bears witness of his people’s woe.

Astarte Syriaca (For a Picture)

Mystery: lo! betwixt the sun and moon

Astarte of the Syrians; Venus Queen

Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen

Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon

Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune:

And from her neck’s inclining flower-stem lean

Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean

The pulse of hearts to the sphere’s dominant tune.

Torch-bearing, her sweet ministers compel

All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea

The witnesses of Beauty’s face to be:

That face, of Love’s all-penetrative spell

Amulet, talisman, and oracle, —

Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery.

Данте Габриэль Россетти (1828–1882)

Небесная подруга

Она склонилась к золотой

      Ограде в небесах.

Вся глубина вечерних вод

      Была в ее глазах;

Три лилии в ее руке,

      Семь звезд на волосах.

Хитон свободный, и на нем

      Для литаний цвела

Лишь роза белая, — ее

      Мария ей дала.

Волна распущенных волос

      Желта, как рожь, была.

Казалось ей — прошел лишь день,

      Как умерла она,

И изумлением еще

      Была она полна.

Но там считался этот день

      За десять лет сполна.

Но для кого и десять лет…

      (…Но вот моих сейчас,

Склонясь, она волной волос

      Коснулась щек и глаз…)

…Ничто: осенняя листва,

      Мелькает год, как час.

Она стояла на валу,

      Где божий дом сиял;

У самой бездны на краю

      Бог создал этот вал,

Так высоко, что солнца свет

      Внизу — едва мерцал.

Был перекинут чрез эфир

      Тот вал, как мост — дугой,

Под ним чредою — день