HIS LADY
OF THE SONNETS

BY

ROBERT W. NORWOOD

BOSTON
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY
1915

COPYRIGHT, 1915
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY

TO

MY WIFE

"I shall never, in the years remaining,
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,
Make you music that should all-express me;
So it seems: I stand on my attainment.
This of verse alone, one life allows me;
Verse and nothing else have I to give you.
Other heights in other lives, God willing:
All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!"
                                                                            ROBERT BROWNING.

CONTENTS

His Lady Of The Sonnets
Antony To Cleopatra, After Actium
Paul To Timothy
Dives In Torment

SONNETS AND SONGS

Fellow Craftsmen
Posca
Reincarnation
Jacob's Dream
Keats
A Poet's Prayer
What Is Religion?
A Song Of Spring
A Fallen Angel
A Litany
The Great Comrade
A Revery
Good-Bye
David's Song To Michal
David Before Saul
A Villanelle Of Fate
One Woman

HIS LADY OF THE SONNETS

I

My soul awoke from slumber—the long ease
Of years that passed away in dull content,
Not caring what the world's deep voices meant—
Sunk in my dreams, I heard their harmonies
Like wind-blown clamour of far-calling seas
That told of Ithaca to sailors spent
With trouble, and forgetful at the scent
And taste of fruit plucked from the lotus trees;

For as I slept, your footsteps on the grass,
Your voice, wrought once again the Miracle
Of Eden; and I saw appear and pass
Eve in her beauty, binding still the spell
That Adam felt, when from his opened side
Stepped Woman forth in loveliness and pride.

II

I meet you in the mystery of the night,
A dear Dream-Goddess on a crescent moon;
An opalescent splendour, like a noon
Of lilies; and I wonder that the height
Should darken for the depth to give me light—
Light of your face, so lovely that I swoon
With gazing, and then wake to find how soon
Joy of the world fades when you fade from sight.

Beholding you, I am Endymion,
Lost and immortal in Latmian dreams;
With Dian bending down to look upon
Her shepherd, whose æonian slumber seems
A moment, twinkling like a starry gem
Among the jewels of her diadem.

III

If I could tell why, when you look at me,
Dreams that have visited half wakeful nights
Re-form and shape themselves, and Pisgah-sights
Fill one far valley to a purple sea;
And white-domed cities rise with porphyry,
Jacinth and sapphire gates, beneath the heights,
Rose-flamed within the dawn where Phœbus smites
Earth with his heel—claiming its lord to be;

Then would you know what my heart seeks to say
And falters ere sufficient words be found:
How all the voiceless night and vocal day
Love looks on you and trembles into sound;
Love longs and pleads for his one moment's bliss—
You and him mingled in a silent kiss.

IV

My love is like a spring among the hills
Whose brimming waters may not be confined,
But pour one torrent through the ways that wind
Down to a garden; there the rose distills
Its nectar; there a tall, white lily fills
Night with anointing of two lovers, blind,
Dumb, deaf, of body, spirit, and of mind
From breathless blending of far-sundered wills.

Long ere my love had reached you, hard I strove
To send its torrent through the barren fields;
I wanted you, the lilied treasure-trove
Of innocence, whose dear possession yields
Immortal gladness to my heart that knows
How you surpass the lily and the rose.

V

Like one great opal on the breast of Night,
Soft and translucent, hangs the orb of June!
I hear wild pipings of a joyous tune
Played on a golden reed for the delight
Of you, my hidden, lovely Eremite—
You by the fountain from the marble hewn—
You silent as in dream, with flowers