268

VIVIEN'S SONG.

And yet that same word "once"

Is humanly acceptive! Kings have said,
Shaking a discrowned head,

"We ruled once;"-dotards, "We once taught and led;"— Cripples once danced i' the vines; and bards approved

Were once by scornings moved;

But love strikes one hour-love. Those never loved

Who dream that they loved once.

E. B. Browning.

VIVIEN'S SONG.

In love, if love be love, if love be ours,
Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers:
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.

It is the little rift within the lute,

That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.

The little rift within the lover's lute,
Or little pitted speck in garnered fruit,
That rotting inward slowly moulders all.

It is not worth the keeping; let it go:
But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no.
And trust me not at all, or all in all.

A. Tennyson.

ELAINE'S SONG.

"SWEET is true love tho' given in vain, in vain; And sweet is Death who puts an end to pain: I know not which is sweeter-no, not I.

"Love, art thou sweet? then bitter Death must be: Love, thou art bitter: sweet is Death to me. O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.

"Sweet Love, that seems not made to fade away, Sweet Death, that seems to make us loveless clay, I know not which is sweeter-no, not I.

"I fain would follow Love, if that could be; I needs must follow Death, who calls for me; Call and I follow, I follow! Let me die."

A. Tennyson.

270

LOVE AND DEATH.

LOVE AND DEATH.

WHAT time the mighty moon was gathering light,
Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,

And all about him rolled his lustrous eyes;
When, turning round a cassia, full in view,.
Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,
And talking to himself, first met his sight:

"You must begone," said Death, "these walks are mine." Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight;

Yet, ere he parted, said, "This hour is thine;

Thou art the shadow of life; and as the tree
Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,
So in the light of great eternity

Life eminent creates the shade of death;

The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,
But I shall reign for ever over all.”

A. Tennyson.

LOVE-A SONNET.

I THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one, in a gracious hand, appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old and young;
And as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw a gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware.
So weeping, how a mystic shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backwards by the hair,
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,

"Guess now who holds thee?" "Death," I said; but there The silver answer rang, "Not Death, but Love."

E. B. Browning.

272

LOVESIGHT.

LOVESIGHT.

WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize

The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,)
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti.