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Title: Sonnets by the Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur

Author: Sir Nizamat Jung

Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #11266]
                Most recently updated: December 25, 2020

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Olaf Voss and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONNETS BY THE NAWAB NIZAMAT JUNG BAHADUR ***




Produced by Olaf Voss and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




SONNETS

BY THE

NAWAB NIZAMAT JUNG BAHADUR


"_Love is not discoverable by the eye, but only by the soul. Its
elements are indeed innate in our mortal constitution, and we
give it the names of Joy and Aphrodite; but in its highest nature no
mortal hath fully comprehended it_."

EMPEDOCLES.


"_Every one choose the object of his affections according to his
character.... The Divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and by these the
wings of the soul are nourished_."

PLATO.




1917




CONTENTS


         FOREWORD, BY R.C. FRASER
         NOTE ON THE HISTORY OF THE SONNET IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
         PROLOGUE
      I. REBIRTH
     II. THE CROWN OF LIFE
    III. BEFORE THE THRONE
     IV. WORSHIP
      V. UNITY
     VI. LOVE'S SILENCE
    VII. THE SUBLIME HOPE
   VIII. THE HEART OF LOVE
     IX. "'TWIXT STAR AND STAR"
      X. THE HIGHER KNIGHTHOOD
     XI. IN BEAUTY'S BLOOM
    XII. ETERNAL JOY
   XIII. CONSTANCY
    XIV. CALM AFTER STORM
     XV. THE STAR OF LOVE
    XVI. IMPRISONED MUSIC
   XVII. LOVE'S MESSAGE
  XVIII. ECSTASY
    XIX. THE DREAM
     XX. ETHEREAL BEAUTY
    XXI. A CROWN OF THORNS
   XXII. TWO HEARTS IN ONE
  XXIII. YEARNING
   XXIV. LOVE'S GIFT
         EPILOGUE




FOREWORD

BY RICHARD CHARLES FRASER


The following Sonnet Sequence,--written during rare intervals of leisure
in a busy and strenuous life,--was privately printed in Madras early in
1914, without any intention of publication on the part of the author. He
has, however, now consented to allow it to be given to a wider audience;
and we anticipate in many directions a welcome for this small but
significant volume by the writer of _India to England_, one of the most
popular and often-quoted lyrics evoked by the Great War.

The Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur, was born in the State of Hyderabad, but
educated in England; and there are some--at Cambridge and elsewhere--who
will remember his keenly discriminating interest in British history and
literature, and the comprehensive way he, in a few words, would indicate
his impressions of poets and heroes, long dead, but to him ever-living.

His appreciation was both ardent and just; he could swiftly recognise
the nobler elements in characters which at first glance might seem
startlingly dissimilar; and he could pass without apparent effort from
study of the lives of men of action to the inward contemplations of
abstruse philosophers.

To those who have not met him, it may appear paradoxical to say that his
tastes were at the same moment acutely fastidious and widely
sympathetic; but anyone who has talked with him will recall the blend of
high impersonal ideas with a remarkable personality which seldom failed
to stimulate other minds--even if those others shared few if any of his
intellectual tastes.

A famous British General (still living) was once asked, "What is the
most essential quality for a great leader of men?" And he replied in one
word "SYMPATHY." The General was speaking of leadership in relation to
warfare; and by "Sympathy" he meant swift insight into the minds of
others; and, with this insight, the power to arouse and fan into a flame
the spark of chivalry and true nobility in each. The career of the Nawab
Nizamat Jung has not been set in the world of action,--he is at present
a Judge of the High Court in Hyderabad,--but nevertheless this
definition of sympathy is not irrelevant, for the Nawab's personal
influence has been more subtle and far-reaching than he himself is yet
aware. His love of poetry and history, if on the one hand it has
intensified his realisation of the sorrows and tragedies of earthly
life, on the other hand has equipped him with a power to awake in others
a vivid consciousness of the moral value of literature,--through which
(for the mere asking) we any of us can find our way into a kingdom of
great ideas. This kingdom is also the kingdom of eternal realities--or
so at least it should be; and those who in the early nineties in England
talked with Nizamoudhin (as he then was) could scarcely fail to notice
that he valued the genius of an author, or the exploits of a character
in history, chiefly in proportion to the permanent and vital nature of
the truths this character had laboured to express--whether in words or
action.

But Truth, has many faces; and scarcely any poet (except perhaps
Shakespeare) has come within measurable distance of expressing every
aspect of the human character. The Nawab could take pleasure in reading
poets as temperamentally dissimilar as Shelley and Scott, Spenser and
Byron,--to name only a few. Shelley, who was a spirit utterly unable to
understand this world or ordinary homespun human nature; and Scott, who
not only comprehended both without an effort, but who combined the
practical and the romantic elements successfully in his own life, A
devotion to Spenser, "the poet's poet," the poet of a dreamy yet very
real and living chivalry,--Spenser who used to forget himself in his
creations,--did not prevent the Nawab from understanding Byron, who
never could forget himself at all; and who, with all his vivid impulses
of generous sympathy for the oppressed, is nevertheless generally
classed to-day as a colossal egoist. (Unjustly so, for no mere egoist
would have toiled as he toiled for Greek emancipation, in the
nerve-racking campaign which cost him his life.)

In _India to England_--most characteristic of the war poems of Nizamat
Jung--we see traces of the influence of more than one of the English
poets he has read so lovingly. But the poem is none the less poignantly
personal. The same may be said of the Sonnets here prefaced; for
although they are related to the sonnets of earlier poets whose work
must be familiar to the writer, yet they are in no sense imitations, nor
are they echoes.

"_Poetry is the natural language of strong emotion_," the Nawab said many
years ago;--and if it may be asked why, holding this view, he has chosen
such an elaborate (and, some people might add, artificial) form as the
Sonnet, we can only answer that when an emotion or conviction is
deep-seated and permanent, it becomes clarified, concentrated, and
intensified under the stern discipline of compression within the
arbitrary yet expressive limitations of a sonnet.[A]

One of the main reasons why the Nawab's friends have urged the
publication of his Sonnets, is that despite occasional imperfections (of
which he himself is conscious), they form a consistent whole, and in
their spirit and sentiment they are akin to some of the most noble
utterances of the great minds and hearts whose words have been like
torches to show what heights a strong aspiring soul can climb.

"_The Will is the master. Imagination the tool, and the body the plastic
material_," said a famous physician, who was also a practical man of the
world;--and the poet who identifies his will and imagination with the
eternal truths, who looks up to the stars instead of down into the mud,
may always, even in his weariest hours, cheer himself by mental
companionship with the other resolute souls whose pens have been used as
swords in the service of Divine Beauty.

Of all the most famous writers of Sonnets, it is Michelangelo whose
words come back most vividly to memory as we read the Nawab's
expressions of faith.

  "_Love wakes the soul and gives it wings to fly_."


  "_All beauty that to human sight is given
  Is but the shadow, if we rightly see,
  Of Him from Whom man's spirit issueth_."


  "_As heat from fire, my love from the ideal
  Is parted never_."


  "_Oh noble spirit, noble semblance taking,
  We mirrored in Thy mortal beauty see
  What Heaven and earth achieve in harmony_."

Thus wrote Michelangelo of Vittoria Colonna (Marchioness of Pescara),
"being enamoured of her divine spirit";[B] and though in the Sonnets of
the Nawab, who uses what is for him a foreign tongue, the ideal is
sometimes greater than the expression of it, yet the spirit shines out
with a light which none can mistake. And whether the average man accepts
or rejects the standards therein embodied, lovers of poetry will
recognise that the Nawab, in his championship of a high and noble ideal,
fights in the same army as Dante and Michelangelo,--neither of them
cloistered dreamers, neither of them arm-chair theorists, but men who
lived and loved and suffered amidst the turmoil of a world they viewed
with wide-open eyes and unflinching minds.

The chivalrous ideal of an exalted and inspiring love can be rejected if
we please;--but let none claim to be manly because this ideal seems too
ethereal. For it is by the most vigorous, most strenuous, and most
commanding souls and minds that this faith in the Eternal Beauty has
been cherished and upheld most ardently and resolutely.

_September 29, 1917_.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] See "Note on the History of the Sonnet in English Literature," below.

[B] Ascanio Condivi's "Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti."




NOTE ON THE HISTORY OF THE SONNET IN ENGLISH LITERATURE


Now that Italy holds such a brilliant place among our Allies during this
the greatest war in the world's history--the war of chivalry (which is
to say moral and spiritual right) against the arrogant might of the
Prussian Octopus,--it is well to remember that it was from Italy the
Sonnet first came into England. The word _sonnet_ in fact, is from the
Italian _sonetto_ (literally "a little sound"), and the _sonetto_ was
originally a short poem recited or sung to the accompaniment of music,
probably the lute or mandolin.

Whether its birth should be attributed to Italy or Sicily,--or to
Provence, the cradle of troubadour poetry,--is a subject on which the
learned may still indulge in pleasant controversies. But in Italy,
towards the end of the thirteenth century, it had already become a
favourite mode of expression; and some forty years later, in a
manuscript treatise on the _Poetica Volgare_ (written in 1332 by a Judge
in Padua), sixteen different forms of sonnet were enumerated as then in
current use.

But despite the continued vogue of the Sonnet, and its association with
the names of such masters as Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and Michelangelo in
Italy; Ronsard in France; Camoens in Portugal; Shakespeare, Milton,
Wordsworth and Rossetti in England--to say nothing of a host of minor
poets, who, though one star differeth from another in glory, yet
constitute a brilliant galaxy--it is remarkable that even now the
average non-literary reader when asked "What is a Sonnet?" seldom gives
any more explicit reply than to say it is "a short poem limited to
fourteen lines."

The rules for the structure of those fourteen lines, and the labour and
patience entailed in producing a poem under these limitations, are not
always realised even by those who enjoy the results of the poet's
concentrated efforts. The more successful a sonnet, the more the reader
is apt to accept its beauty as if it had grown by a natural process like
a flower. This, perhaps, is the best compliment we could pay the poet;
but if the poet is one who boldly essays a most difficult and complex
form, in a language which for him is foreign, then we should pause a
moment to consider what it is that he has set out to accomplish.

Taking the structure first (though for the poet the spirit and impetus
of the central idea must of course come first)--a sonnet on the Italian
(Petrarchan) model must consist of fourteen lines of ten syllables each,
and must be composed of a major and minor system, i.e. an octave and a
sestet.

In the octave (the first eight lines) the first, fourth, fifth and
eighth lines must rhyme on the same sound, and the second, third, sixth
and seventh, must rhyme on another sound.

In the sestet (the last six lines) more liberty of rhyme and arrangement
is permitted, but a rhymed couplet at the end is not usual except when
the sonnet departs from the Italian model and is on the English or, as
we say, "Shakespearian" pattern.

Each sonnet must be complete; and, even if one of a sequence, it should
contain within itself everything necessary to the understanding of it.
It must be the expression of _one_ emotion, _one_ fact, _one_ idea, and
"the continuity of the thought, idea, or emotion must be unbroken
throughout." "Dignity and repose," "expression ample yet reticent," are
qualities which one of our ablest modern critics emphasises as
essential, and the end must always be more impressive than the
beginning,--the reader must be carried onwards and upwards, and left
with a definite feeling that in what has been said there is neither
superfluity nor omission, but rather a completeness which precludes all
wish or need for a longer poem.

How difficult this is for the poet can only be realised by trying to
achieve it.

The earliest writers of English sonnets were two very romantic and
gallant men of action, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Henry Howard, Earl of
Surrey,--both destined to brief brilliant lives and tragic deaths. They
were followed by Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney and a host of Elizabethan
poets, courtly and otherwise. But it is Shakespeare whose Sonnets
(though not conforming to the Petrarchan model) show the most force and
fire of any in our language until those of Milton.

To analyse the variations of the Shakesperian, Spenserian and Miltonian
forms is, however, unnecessary to our present purpose, as the Sonnet
Sequence we are now prefacing is based on the Petrarchan model. Strictly
speaking, the Petrarchan sestet (the last six lines) should have three
separate rhymed sounds; the first and fourth lines, the second and
fifth, and the third and sixth should form the three rhymes. But this
rule is by no means invariably followed; even Wordsworth and Rossetti
often rhymed the first with the third, and the second with the fourth
lines; and sometimes used only two sounds,--the first, third, and fifth
lines making one rhyme and the second, fourth, and sixth the other.

As already said, these liberties are permitted, for the sestet is not
under such arbitrary regulations as the octave.

There are writers who keep all the rules, and yet leave their readers
cold; and others who are technically less correct, but in whom the
vigour and intensity of emotion is swiftly felt and silences adverse
criticism. The ideal is to combine deep and exalted feeling with perfect
expression, and produce a whole which goes to the heart like a beautiful
piece of music, and satisfies the mind--like one of those ancient Greek
gems which, in a small space, presents engraved images symbolic of
sublime ideas vast as the universe.

The Nawab Nizamat Jung has written in English several sonnets which we
should admire even if English were his native language. But if any of us
would like to form some estimate of the difficulties he has surmounted,
let us sit down and try to express in a sonnet in _any_ foreign language
our own thoughts and beliefs. We shall then the better appreciate what
he has achieved.

As, however, while the Great War lasts, few of us have leisure for
literary experiments, it will perhaps be best to read these Sonnets
primarily for their soul and spirit. In melody and expression they are
of varying degrees of merit and completeness, but in the inspiring ideal
they consistently embody they rise to heights which have been scaled
only by the noblest. In tone and temper--as already said--they are akin
to the Sonnets to Vittoria Colonna by Michelangelo,--of whom it was
written by one who knew him well, "_Though I have held such long
intercourse with him I have never heard from his mouth a word, that was
not most honourable.... In him there are no base thoughts.... He loves
not only human beauty, but everything that is beautiful and exquisite in
its own kind,--marvelling at it with a wonderful admiration_."

Here we see defined the temperament of the heroic poet, that inner
nobility and exaltation without which mere technical skill can avail
little in moving and holding the hearts of men.

This note on the structure of the Sonnet would fail in its purpose if it
distracted the reader from the spirit behind the form;--for the spirit
is the life,--and few who read these Sonnets will deny that the spirit
of Nizamat Jung is that of the true poet, ever striving to look beyond
ephemeral sorrows up to the Eternal Beauty--now hidden behind a veil,
but some day to be revealed in all its splendour and completeness.

R.C.F.

_October 6, 1917_.




SONNETS




PROLOGUE


  As one who wanders lone and wearily
  Through desert tracts of Silence and of Night,
  Pining for Lovers keen utterance and for light,
  And chasing shadowy forms that mock and flee,
  My soul was wandering through Eternity,
  Seeking, within the depth and on the height
  Of Being, one with whom it might unite
  In life and love and immortality;

  When lo! she stood before me, whom I'd sought,
  With dying hope, through life's decaying years--
  A form, a spirit, human yet divine.
  Love gave her eyes the light of heav'n, and taught
  Her lips the mystic music of the spheres.
  Our beings met,--I felt her soul in mine;




I

REBIRTH


  To me no mortal but a spirit blest,
  A Light-girt messenger of Love art thou--
  The radiant star of Hope upon thy brow.
  The thrice-pure fire of Love within thy breast!
  Thou comest to me as a heavenly guest,
  As God's fulfilment of the purest vow
  Love's heart e'er made--thou com'st to show e'en _now_
  The Infinite, th' Eternal and the Best!

  I clasp thy feet,--O fold me in thy wings,
  And place thy pure white hands upon my head,
  And breathe, O breathe, thy love-breath o'er mine eyes
  Till, like the flame that from dark ashes springs,
  My chastened spirit, from a self that's dead,
  Upon the wings of Love shall heav'nward rise.




II

THE CROWN OF LIFE


  I know not what Love is,--a memory
  Of Heav'n once known,--a yearning for some goal
  That shines afar,--a dream that doth control
  The spirit, shadowing forth what is to be.
  But this I know, my heart hath found in thee
  The crown of life, the glory of the soul,
  The healing of all strife, the making whole
  Of my imperfect being,--yea, of me!

  For to mine eyes thine eyes, through Love, reveal
  The smile of God; to me God's healing breath
  Comes through thy hallowed lips whose pray'r is Love.
  Thy touch gives life! And oh, let me but feel
  Thy hovering hand my closing eyes above,--
  Then, then, my soul will triumph over Death.




III

BEFORE THE THRONE


  When on thy brow I gaze and in thine eyes--
  Eyes heavy-laden with the soul's desire,
  Not passion-lit, but lit with Heav'n's own fire--
  I have a vision of Love's Paradise.
  Gazing, my trancèd spirit straightway flies
  Beyond the zone to which the stars aspire;
  I hear the blent notes of the white-wing'd quire
  Around Immortal Love triumphant rise.

  And there I kneel before th' eternal throne
  Of Love, whose light conceals him,--there I see,
  Veiled in his sacred light, a face well known
  To me on earth, now, yearning, bend o'er me.
  Heaven's mystic veil, inwove of light and tone,
  Conceals thee not, Belovèd,--I know thee!




IV

WORSHIP


  How poor is all my love, how great thy claim!
  How weak the breath, the voice which would reveal
  All that thy soul hath taught my soul to feel--
  Longings profound,--deep thoughts without a name.
  If God's self might be worshipped, without blame,
  In His best works, then would I silent kneel
  Watching thine eyes,--until my soul should steal
  Back, unperceived, to regions whence it came!

  If my whole life were but one thought of thee,
  That thought the purest worship of my heart
  And my soul's yearning blent; if at thy feet
  I offered such a life, there still would be
  Something to wish for,--something to complete
  The measure of my love and thy desert.




V

UNITY


  When I approach thee, Love, I lay aside
  All that is mortal in me; with a heart
  Absolved and pure, and cleansed in every part
  Of every thought that I might wish to hide
  From God, I come,--fit spirit to abide
  With such a soaring spirit as thou art,
  Whose eye transfixes with a fiery dart
  Presumptuous passion and ignoble pride.

  Yea, thus I come to thee, and thus I dare
  To gaze into thine eyes; I take thy hand,
  And its soft touch upon my lips and eyes
  Thrills thy pure being, while it lingers there,
  Into my heart and soul;--and then we stand
  Like the first two that loved in Paradise!




VI

LOVE'S SILENCE


  When through thine eyes the light of Heav'n doth shine
  Upon my being, and thy whisper brings,
  As the soft rustling of an angel's wings,
  Joy to my soul and peace and grace divine;
  When thus thy body and thy soul combine
  To weave the mystic web thy beauty flings
  Around my heart, whose thrilling silence rings
  With Hope's unuttered songs that make thee mine,--

  Ah, then, O Love! what need of words have we,
  Who speak in feeling to each other's heart?
  Words are too weak Love's message to impart,
  Too frail to live through Love's eternity.
  Silence, the voice of God, alone must be
  Love's voice for thee, beloved as them art.




VII

THE SUBLIME HOPE


  What need to tell thee o'er and o'er again
  What eyes to eyes have spoken silently
  And heart to heart hath uttered? Love must be
  For us a hushed delight, a voiceless pain
  Serenely borne! Our lips must ne'er profane
  Our inmost feelings,--lest the sanctity
  Of Love be lessened in our hearts and we
  Nought higher than the common path attain!

  The common path were death to us, whose love,
  O'erruled by Fate, from earthly hopes debarred,
  Must look to Heav'n for sublimer joys
  Than those which earth can give, which earth destroys.
  Our path is steep, but there is light above,
  And Faith can make the roughest way less hard.




VIII

THE HEART OF LOVE


  Look in mine eyes, Belovèd,--for my tongue
  Must never utter what my heart doth claim,--
  And read Love there, for Love's forbidden name
  Dies on my trembling lips unvoiced, unsung.
  Nor sighs, nor tears--the bitter tribute wrung
  From hearts of woe--must e'er that love proclaim
  For which the world's unpitying heart would blame
  Thy pity--though from purest fountains sprung.

  Fate and the world, they bid wide oceans roll
  Between our yearning hearts and their desire;
  Yea, lips they silence, but can ne'er control
  The heart of Love, nor quench its sacred fire.
  I must not speak; O look into my soul--
  There read the message which thou dost require!




IX

"TWIXT STAR AND STAR"


  Not here,--not here, where weak conventions mar
  Life's hopes and joys, Love's beauty, truth and grace,
  Must I come near thee, greet thee face to face,
  Pour in thine ear the songs and sighs that are
  My heart's best offerings. But in regions far,
  Where Love's ethereal pinions may embrace
  Beauty divine--in the clear interspace
  Of twilight silence betwixt star and star,

  And in the smiles of cloudless skies serene,
  In Dawn's first blush and Sunset's lingering glow,
  And in the glamour of the Moon's chaste beams--
  My soul meets thine, and there thine image seen,
  More real than life, doth to my lone heart show
  Such charms as live in Memory's haunting dreams!




X

THE HIGHER KNIGHTHOOD


  A time there was, when for thy beauty's prize--
  Hadst thou but deemed my love that prize deserved--
  What hope, what faith my daring heart had nerved
  For proud achievement and for high emprize!
  No Knight, that owned the spell of Beauty's eyes
  And wore her sleeve upon his helm, had served
  His vows with faith like mine; I ne'er had swerved
  One jot from mine for all beneath the skies.

  That time is dead, alas! and yet this heart
  Is thine, still thine, with Love's high chivalry
  And Faith that cannot die; but now its part
  Must be a higher knighthood,--patiently
  To brook life's ills, and, pierced with many a dart,
  By sacrifice of self to merit thee.




XI

IN BEAUTY'S BLOOM


  As when the Moon, emerging from a cloud,
  Sheds on the dreary earth her gracious light,
  A smile comes o'er the frowning brow of Night,
  Who hastens to withdraw her sable shroud;
  And then the lurking shadows' dark-robed crowd,
  Pursued with glitt'ring shafts, is put to flight;
  And, robed in silv'ry raiment, soft and bright
  The humblest flower as a Queen seems proud;

  So when thou com'st to me in Beauty's bloom,
  And on thy face soft Pity's graces shine,
  Thou can'st dispel the heavy shades of gloom
  From my sad heart, which ceases then to pine;
  And Hope and Joy their quenched beams relume
  And gild the universe with light divine.




XII

ETERNAL JOY


  Truth is but as the eye of God doth see;
  And Love is truth, and Love hath made thee mine.
  What though on earth our lives may not combine,
  Love makes us one for all Eternity!
  God gives us to each other, bids us be
  Each other's soul's fulfilment, makes Love shine
  Upon our souls as His own light divine.
  An effluence of His own deity.

  Why ask for more? Our union is above
  All earthly unions, ours those heights serene
  Where Love alone is Heav'n and Heav'n is Love--
  Where never comes the world's harsh breath between
  Hope's fruits and flow'rs. Ah, why then earthward move,
  Where pure and perfect bliss hath never been?




XIII

CONSTANCY


  Ah, Love, I know that to my love thou art,
  And must be, in this life, a dream,--a name!
  But be it joy or grief, or praise or blame,
  I give thee all the worship of my heart.
  'Tis not for Love to bid life's cares depart;
  Love wings the soul for Heaven whence it came.
  Such love from Petrarch's soul did Laura claim,
  And Beatrice to Dante did impart.

  To thee I turn,--be thou or near or far,
  And whether on my love thou frown or smile,--
  As, in mid-ocean, to some fairy isle
  Palm-crowned; as, in the heav'ns, to eve's bright star
  Whose pure white fire allures the vision, while
  Myriads of paler lights unnoticed are!




XIV

CALM AFTER STORM


  Thou hast but seen what but mine eyes have shown--
  Mine eyes that gazing on thee picture Heaven;
  Thou hast but heard what but my voice hath given--
  My voice that takes from thine a calmer tone.
  Ah! couldst thou know all that my heart hath known,
  While with Despair's dark phantoms it hath striven--
  From faith to doubt, from joy to sorrow driven,
  Till rescued and redeemed by Love alone,--

  Thou wouldst not marvel were my cloudless brow
  O'er-clouded, were my aspect less serene!
  Love smiles on Death, unveils his mystery
  Of joy and grief, and Love bids me avow
  This truth, with chastened heart and tranquil mien,--
  'Less pure Love's bliss if less Love's agony.'




XV

THE STAR OF LOVE


  Time's cycle rolls--once more I hail the day
  On which propitious Heaven sent to Earth,
  Disguised in thy fair form, in mortal birth,
  The Star of Love, whose pure celestial ray
  Glides through the spirit's gloom and lights the way
  To bliss! I hail thy coming 'midst the dearth
  Of the soul's aspirations, when the worth
  Of hearts like thine had ceased men's hearts to sway.

  I greet thee, Love, and with thee scale the height,
  That cloudless height where winged spirits rest:
  Where the deep yearnings of the mortal breast,
  From mortal bin set free, reveal to sight
  That living Presence, that Eternal Light
  In which enwrapt the eager soul is blest.




XVI

IMPRISONED MUSIC


  Oh, had I but the poet's voice to sing,
  Then would the music prisoned in my heart
  (Panting in vain its message to impart)
  Hover around thee, Love, on trembling wing,
  To tell thee of the soft-eyed hopes that cling
  To Love's white feet, the doubts and fears that start
  And pierce his bosom with a poisoned dart,--
  The smiles that soothe, the cold hard looks that sting!

  But 'tis not mine, the soaring joy of Song:
  I strive to voice my soul, but strive in vain.
  Though passion thrills, and eager fancies throng,
  Deckt in the varying hues of joy and pain,
  Yet the weak voice--as weak as Love is strong--
  Dies murm'ring on Love's throbbing heart again.




XVII

LOVE'S MESSAGE


  We will not take Love's name; that little word,
  By lips too oft profaned, we will not use.
  From Nature's best and loveliest we will choose
  Fit symbols for Love's message; like a bird,--
  Whose warbled love-notes by its mate are heard
  In greenwood glade,--shalt thou in strains profuse
  The prisoned music of thy heart unloose,
  While my heart's love is by sweet flow'rs averred.

  Then take, O take these fresh-awakened flowers,
  The symbols of my love, and keep them near,
  Where they may feel thy breath and touch thy hand;
  Then sing thy songs to me,--in silver showers
  Pour forth, thine eager soul, and I shall hear;
  Ah, thus will Love Love's message Understand!




XVIII

ECSTASY


  The Nightingale upon the Rose's breast
  Warbling her tale of life-long sorrow lies,
  Till in love's trancèd ecstasy her eyes
  Close and her throbbing heart is set at rest;
  For, to the yielding flow'r her bosom prest,
  Death steals upon her in the sweet disguise
  Of crownèd love and brings what life denies,--
  mingling of the souls,--Love's eager quest!

  Thus let my heart against thy heart repose,
  Sigh forth its life in one delicious sigh,
  Then drink new life from out thy balmy breath;
  Thus in love's languor let our eyelids close,
  And let our blended souls enchanted lie,
  And dream of joy beyond the gates of death.




XIX

THE DREAM


  Was it a dream, when, through the spirit's gloom,
  I saw the yearning face of Beauty shine--
  Soft in its human aspect, though divine,
  Pleading for human love, though armed with doom?
  And was it but a dream, that faint perfume,
  Blent of loose tress and soft lips joined to mine,
  Those fair white arms that did my neck entwine,
  That neck's sweet warmth, that smooth cheek's floral bloom?

  Ah! was it true, or was it but a dream
  Of bliss that scarce to mortal hearts is given?
  Ah! was it thou, Belovèd, or some bright
  Phantom of thee that made thy presence seem,
  Rich with the warmth of Life, the light of Heaven,
  To hover o'er the realms where both unite?




XX

ETHEREAL BEAUTY


  Nay, it was thou, when the fair Evening Star
  Leaned on the purple bosom of the West;
  'Twas thou, when o'er the far hills' frowning crest
  Fell the soft beams of Cynthia's silv'ry car:
  Thyself--than stars and moonbeams fairer far--
  A vision in ethereal beauty drest!
  But, when thy head drooped flow'r-like on my breast,
  Then did no word our souls' communion mar:

  Love spake to love without a sign or glance,
  And heart to heart its inmost depth revealed
  In the deep thrilling silence of that trance,
  Till earth, and earthly being ceased to be,
  And our blent souls at that high altar kneeled
  Whence Love doth gaze upon Eternity!




XXI

A CROWN OF THORNS


  There was a crown of thorns upon the head
  Of Love, when he across my threshold came.
  I knew the sign and did not ask his name,
  But took him to my heart, although he said,
  'The soul's dumb agonies, the tears unshed
  That sear the heart, th' injustice and the blame
  Of the harsh world,--God wills that I should claim
  Through these immortal Life when Hope is dead.'

  I took him to my heart and clasped him close.
  E'en though his thorns did make my bosom bleed.
  Then from the very core of pain arose
  A joy that seemed to be the utmost need
  Of my worn soul! Love whispered, '_This_ the meed
  Of hearts that keep their faith amidst Love's woes.'




XXII

TWO HEARTS IN ONE


  Two hearts made one by Love that cannot die
  Whatever life may bring, shall never part;
  In life they're one, and e'en in death one heart!
  Are we not such, Belovèd, thou and I?
  Ah, then, why mourn that 'neath another sky,
  Far from these longing arms and eyes thou art?
  I clasp thee still, and lo! thy lips impart
  New life to me as in the days gone by.

  I feel thy heart in mine,--our hopes and fears,
  Like music's wedded notes, together flow;
  Our sighs the same, the same our smiles and tears,--
  The selfsame bliss is ours, the selfsame woe.
  For Love no weary leagues, no ling'ring years--
  Two hearts in one nor time nor distance know.




XXIII

YEARNING


  The night is sweet: thy breath is in the air,
  I feel it on my face; thy tender eyes
  Look love upon me from yon starry skies!
  They bring to me, those glancing moonbeams fair,
  The shine and ripple of thy silken hair.
  And in the silent whispers and the sighs
  That from the throbbing heart of Nature rise,
  I hear thee, feel thee,--own thy presence there.

  Ah, fond deceit!--too soon the heart, unblest,
  Unsated, turns from these illusive charms
  Back to the haunting dream of heav'n once known:
  It pines for those soft eyes, that throbbing breast,
  Those sweet life-giving lips, those circling arms--
  The breath, the touch, the warmth of Beauty flown.




XXIV

LOVE'S GIFT


  I'm far from thee, yet oft our spirits meet:
  We share the longings of each other's breast,
  And all our joys and sorrows are confest
  As though our lips did love's fond tale repeat.
  Ah! then thine eyes send forth, mine eyes to greet,
  Glances in which thy whole soul is exprest,
  Then, like some song-bird flutt'ring in its nest,
  I hear thy heart in pulsing cadence beat.

  I know its music and I know its thought;
  My heart to it th' unuttered words supplies;
  I listen to the thrilling melody
  Until my soul its subtle tone hath caught.
  And then I take it as Love's gift,--it lies
  Imprisoned in my own weak poesy!




EPILOGUE


  From out the golden dawn of vanished years
  She glides into my dreams, a form divine
  Of light and love, to soothe the thoughts that pine
  For what has been, to stem the tide of tears
  That inward flows upon the heart and sears
  Its inmost core. Her countenance benign,
  Where Love and Pity's chastened graces shine,
  Reflects the hallowed light of other spheres.

  Then to my anguished soul, with care outworn,
  Comes, like a strain on aerial wings upborne,
  This message from her soul:--'_Bid sorrow cease;
  Love dies not;--'tis th' immortal life above.
  And chastened souls, that win eternal peace
  Through earthly suff'ring, know that Heaven is Love_!'







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