ページの画像
PDF
ePub

LOVED ONCE.

How say ye, "We loved once,"

Blasphemers? Is your earth not cold enow,
Mourners, without that snow?

Ah, friends! and would ye wrong each other so?
And could ye say of some, whose love is known,

Whose prayers have met your own,

267

Whose tears have fallen for you, whose smiles have shone,

Such words, "We loved them once?"

Could ye "We loved her once"

Say calm of me, sweet friends, when out of sight?

When hearts of better right

Stand in between me and your happy light?

And when, as flowers kept too long in shade,

Ye find my colours fade,

And all that is not love in me, decayed?
Such words, "Ye loved me once!"

Could ye "We loved her once"

Say cold of me, when further put away

In earth's sepulchral clay?

When mute the lips which deprecate to day?—
Not so! not then-least then! When life is shriven,
And death's full joy is given;

Of those who sit and love you up in heaven

Say not, "We loved them once."

Say never, ye loved once!

God is too near above, the grave beneath,
And all our moments breathe

Too quick in mysteries of life and death,
For such a word. The eternities avenge
Affections light of range-

There comes no change to justify that change,
Whatever comes-loved once!

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.

269

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.

271

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.

« 前へ次へ »