The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 1

V

 
Bow lower down before the throne,
Triumphant Rosalind!
He boweth on thy corpse his face,
And weepeth as the blind:
'Twas a dread sight to see them so,
For the senseless corpse rocked to and fro
With the wail of his living mind.
 

VI

 
But dreader sight, could such be seen,
His inward mind did lie,
Whose long-subjected humanness
Gave out its lion-cry,
And fiercely rent its tenement
In a mortal agony.
 

VII

 
I tell you, friends, had you heard his wail,
'Twould haunt you in court and mart,
And in merry feast until you set
Your cup down to depart —
That weeping wild of a reckless child
From a proud man's broken heart.
 

VIII

 
O broken heart, O broken vow,
That wore so proud a feature!
God, grasping as a thunderbolt
The man's rejected nature,
Smote him therewith i' the presence high
Of his so worshipped earth and sky
That looked on all indifferently —
A wailing human creature.
 

IX

 
A human creature found too weak
To bear his human pain —
(May Heaven's dear grace have spoken peace
To his dying heart and brain!)
For when they came at dawn of day
To lift the lady's corpse away,
Her bier was holding twain.
 

X

 
They dug beneath the kirkyard grass,
For born one dwelling deep;
To which, when years had mossed the stone,
Sir Roland brought his little son
To watch the funeral heap:
And when the happy boy would rather
Turn upward his blithe eyes to see
The wood-doves nodding from the tree,
"Nay, boy, look downward," said his father,
"Upon this human dust asleep.
And hold it in thy constant ken
That God's own unity compresses
(One into one) the human many,
And that his everlastingness is
The bond which is not loosed by any:
That thou and I this law must keep,
If not in love, in sorrow then, —
Though smiling not like other men,
Still, like them we must weep."
 

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME