You are here

قراءة كتاب The House of Life

تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"

‏اللغة: English
The House of Life

The House of Life

تقييمك:
0
No votes yet
المؤلف:
دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 7

  A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
  Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
  Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart,
  Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill.

LOVE'S FATALITY

  Sweet Love,—but oh! most dread Desire of Love
  Life-thwarted. Linked in gyves I saw them stand,
  Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand:
  And one was eyed as the blue vault above:
  But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hove
  I' the other's gaze, even as in his whose wand
  Vainly all night with spell-wrought power has spann'd
  The unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove.

  Also his lips, two writhen flakes of flame,
  Made moan: 'Alas O Love, thus leashed with me!
  Wing-footed thou, wing-shouldered, once born free:
  And I, thy cowering self, in chains grown tame,
  Bound to thy body and soul, named with thy name,
  Life's iron heart, even Love's Fatality.'

STILLBORN LOVE

  The hour which might have been yet might not be,
  Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore
  Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
  Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
  Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
  It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before
  The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
  His hours elect in choral consonancy.

  But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
  Together tread at last the immortal strand
  With eyes where burning memory lights love home?
  Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
  And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:—
  'I am your child: O parents, ye have come!'

TRUE WOMAN

I. HERSELF

  To be a sweetness more desired than Spring;
  A bodily beauty more acceptable
  Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell;
  To be an essence more environing
  Than wine's drained juice; a music ravishing
  More than the passionate pulse of Philomel;—
  To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell
  That is the flower of life:—how strange a thing!

  How strange a thing to be what Man can know
  But as a sacred secret! Heaven's own screen
  Hides her soul's purest depth and loveliest glow;
  Closely withheld, as all things most unseen,—
  The wave-bowered pearl, the heart-shaped seal of green
  That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow.

II. HER LOVE

  She loves him; for her infinite soul is Love,
  And he her lodestar. Passion in her is
  A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss
  Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move
  That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove,
  And it shall turn, by instant contraries,
  Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his
  For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove.

  Lo! they are one. With wifely breast to breast
  And circling arms, she welcomes all command
  Of love,—her soul to answering ardours fann'd:
  Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest,
  Ah! who shall say she deems not loveliest
  The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand?

III. HER HEAVEN

  If to grow old in Heaven is to grow young,
  (As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he
  With youth forevermore, whose heaven should be
  True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung.
  Here and hereafter,—choir-strains of her tongue,—
  Sky-spaces of her eyes,—sweet signs that flee
  About her soul's immediate sanctuary,—
  Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among.

  The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill
  Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth
  Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe
  Even yet those lovers who have cherished still
  This test for love:—in every kiss sealed fast
  To feel the first kiss and forebode the last.

LOVE'S LAST GIFT

  Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,
  And said: 'The rose-tree and the apple-tree
  Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;
  And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf
  Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief,
  Victorious Summer; aye, and 'neath warm sea
  Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably
  Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.

  All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love
  To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;
  But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang
  From those worse things the wind is moaning of.
  Only this laurel dreads no winter days:
  Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.'

PART II. CHANGE AND FATE

TRANSFIGURED LIFE

  As growth of form or momentary glance
  In a child's features will recall to mind
  The father's with the mother's face combin'd,—
  Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
  And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance,
  The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
  Till in the blended likeness now we find
  A separate man's or woman's countenance:—

  So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
  Its very parents, evermore expand
  To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain,
  By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd;
  And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
  There comes the sound as of abundant rain.

THE SONG-THROE

  By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
  O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
  Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
  Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
  Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
  Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
  Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh,
  That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.

  The Song-god—He the Sun-god—is no slave
  Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
  Fledges his shaft: to no august control
  Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
  But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
  The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.

THE SOUL'S SPHERE

  Come prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,—
  Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre
  Blazed with momentous memorable fire;—
  Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these?
  Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease
  Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight
  Conjectured in the lamentable night?…
  Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images!

  What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast
  The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
  Of Love's unquestioning unreveale'd span,—
  Visions of golden futures: or that

Pages