House of Life (1870) [excerpts]

A Sonnet is a moment’s monument,—

Memorial from the Soul’s eternity

To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,

Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,

Of its own arduous fulness reverent:

Carve it in ivory or in ebony,

As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see

Its flowering crest impearled and orient.

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals

10The soul,—its converse, to what Power ’tis due:—                                                       10

Whether for tribute to the august appeals

Of Life, or dower in Love’s high retinue,

It serve; or,’mid the dark wharf’s cavernous breath,

In Charon’s palm it pay the toll to Death.

What smouldering senses in death’s sick delay

Or seizure of malign vicissitude

Can rob this body of honour, or denude

This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?

For lo! even now my lady’s lips did play

With these my lips such consonant interlude

As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed

The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.

I was a child beneath her touch,—a man

When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,—                                                                   10

A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—

A god when all our life-breath met to fan

Our life-blood, till love’s emulous ardours ran,

Fire within fire, desire in deity.

At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:

And as the last slow sudden drops are shed

From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,

So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.

Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start

Of married flowers to either side outspread

From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,

Fawned on each other where they lay apart.

Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,

nd their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.                                                     10

Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams

Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;

Till from some wonder of new woods and streams

He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.