Sonnets from the Portuguese

Sonnets from the portuguese

I

I thought once how Theocritus had sungOf the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,Who each one in a gracious hand appearsTo bear a gift for mortals, old or young;And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,Those of my own life, who by turns had flungA shadow across me. Straightway I was ’ware,So weeping, how a mystic Shape did moveBehind me, and drew me backward 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.”

II

But only three in all God’s universeHave heard this word thou hast said⁠—Himself, besideThee speaking, and me listening! and repliedOne of us⁠—that was God!⁠—and laid the curseSo darkly on my eyelids, as to amerceMy sight from seeing thee⁠—that if I had died,The deathweights placed there would have signifiedLess absolute exclusion. “Nay” is worseFrom God than from all others, O my friend!Men could not part us with their worldly jars,Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend:Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars⁠—

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