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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 So
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.