Читать книгу The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 2 - Browning Elizabeth Barrett - Страница 2

– so find we profit,

By losing of our prayers.

To rest the weary nurse has gone:

An eight-day watch had watchèd she,

Still rocking beneath sun and moon

The baby on her knee,

Till Isobel its mother said

"The fever waneth – wend to bed,

For now the watch comes round to me."

Then wearily the nurse did throw

Her pallet in the darkest place

Of that sick room, and slept and dreamed:

For, as the gusty wind did blow

The night-lamp's flare across her face,

She saw or seemed to see, but dreamed,

That the poplars tall on the opposite hill,

The seven tall poplars on the hill,

Did clasp the setting sun until

His rays dropped from him, pined and still

As blossoms in frost,

Till he waned and paled, so weirdly crossed,

To the colour of moonlight which doth pass

Over the dank ridged churchyard grass.

The poplars held the sun, and he

The eyes of the nurse that they should not see

– Not for a moment, the babe on her knee,

Though she shuddered to feel that it grew to be

Too chill, and lay too heavily.

She only dreamed; for all the while

'T was Lady Isobel that kept

The little baby: and it slept

Fast, warm, as if its mother's smile,

Laden with love's dewy weight,

And red as rose of Harpocrate

Dropt upon its eyelids, pressed

Lashes to cheek in a sealèd rest.

And more and more smiled Isobel

To see the baby sleep so well —

She knew not that she smiled.

Against the lattice, dull and wild

Drive the heavy droning drops,

Drop by drop, the sound being one;

As momently time's segments fall

On the ear of God, who hears through all

Eternity's unbroken monotone:

And more and more smiled Isobel

To see the baby sleep so well —

She knew not that she smiled.

The wind in intermission stops

Down in the beechen forest,

Then cries aloud

As one at the sorest,

Self-stung, self-driven,

And rises up to its very tops,

Stiffening erect the branches bowed,

Dilating with a tempest-soul

The trees that with their dark hands break

Through their own outline, and heavy roll

Shadows as massive as clouds in heaven

Across the castle lake

And more and more smiled Isobel

To see the baby sleep so well;

She knew not that she smiled;

She knew not that the storm was wild;

Through the uproar drear she could not hear

The castle clock which struck anear —

She heard the low, light breathing of her child.

O sight for wondering look!

While the external nature broke

Into such abandonment,

While the very mist, heart-rent

By the lightning, seemed to eddy

Against nature, with a din, —

A sense of silence and of steady

Natural calm appeared to come

From things without, and enter in

The human creature's room.

So motionless she sate,

The babe asleep upon her knees,

You might have dreamed their souls had gone

Away to things inanimate,

In such to live, in such to moan;

And that their bodies had ta'en back,

In mystic change, all silences

That cross the sky in cloudy rack,

Or dwell beneath the reedy ground

In waters safe from their own sound:

Only she wore

The deepening smile I named before,

And that a deepening love expressed;

And who at once can love and rest?

In sooth the smile that then was keeping

Watch upon the baby sleeping,

Floated with its tender light

Downward, from the drooping eyes,

Upward, from the lips apart,

Over cheeks which had grown white

With an eight-day weeping:

All smiles come in such a wise

Where tears shall fall or have of old —

Like northern lights that fill the heart

Of heaven in sign of cold.

Motionless she sate.

Her hair had fallen by its weight

On each side of her smile and lay

Very blackly on the arm

Where the baby nestled warm,

Pale as baby carved in stone

Seen by glimpses of the moon

Up a dark cathedral aisle:

But, through the storm, no moonbeam fell

Upon the child of Isobel —

Perhaps you saw it by the ray

Alone of her still smile.

A solemn thing it is to me

To look upon a babe that sleeps

Wearing in its spirit-deeps

The undeveloped mystery

Of our Adam's taint and woe,

Which, when they developed be,

Will not let it slumber so;

Lying new in life beneath

The shadow of the coming death,

With that soft, low, quiet breath,

As if it felt the sun;

Knowing all things by their blooms,

Not their roots, yea, sun and sky

Only by the warmth that comes

Out of each, earth only by

The pleasant hues that o'er it run,

And human love by drops of sweet

White nourishment still hanging round

The little mouth so slumber-bound:

All which broken sentiency

And conclusion incomplete,

Will gather and unite and climb

To an immortality

Good or evil, each sublime,

Through life and death to life again.

O little lids, now folded fast,

Must ye learn to drop at last

Our large and burning tears?

O warm quick body, must thou lie,

When the time comes round to die,

Still from all the whirl of years,

Bare of all the joy and pain?

O small frail being, wilt thou stand

At God's right hand,

Lifting up those sleeping eyes

Dilated by great destinies,

To an endless waking? thrones and seraphim.

Through the long ranks of their solemnities,

Sunning thee with calm looks of Heaven's surprise,

But thine alone on Him?

Or else, self-willed, to tread the Godless place,

(God keep thy will!) feel thine own energies

Cold, strong, objèctless, like a dead man's clasp,

The sleepless deathless life within thee grasp, —

While myriad faces, like one changeless face,

With woe not love's, shall glass thee everywhere

And overcome thee with thine own despair?

More soft, less solemn images

Drifted o'er the lady's heart

Silently as snow.

She had seen eight days depart

Hour by hour, on bended knees,

With pale-wrung hands and prayings low

And broken, through which came the sound

Of tears that fell against the ground,

Making sad stops. – "Dear Lord, dear Lord!"

She still had prayed, (the heavenly word

Broken by an earthly sigh)

– "Thou who didst not erst deny

The mother-joy to Mary mild,

Blessèd in the blessèd child

Which hearkened in meek babyhood

Her cradle-hymn, albeit used

To all that music interfused

In breasts of angels high and good!

Oh, take not, Lord, my babe away —

Oh, take not to thy songful heaven

The pretty baby thou hast given,

Or ere that I have seen him play

Around his father's knees and known

That he knew how my love has gone

From all the world to him.

Think, God among the cherubim,

How I shall shiver every day

In thy June sunshine, knowing where

The grave-grass keeps it from his fair

Still cheeks: and feel, at every tread,

His little body, which is dead

And hidden in thy turfy fold,

Doth make thy whole warm earth a-cold!

O God, I am so young, so young —

I am not used to tears at nights

Instead of slumber – not to prayer

With sobbing lips and hands out-wrung!

Thou knowest all my prayings were

'I bless thee, God, for past delights —

Thank God!' I am not used to bear

Hard thoughts of death; the earth doth cover

No face from me of friend or lover:

And must the first who teaches me

The form of shrouds and funerals, be

Mine own first-born belovèd? he

Who taught me first this mother-love?

Dear Lord who spreadest out above

Thy loving, transpierced hands to meet

All lifted hearts with blessing sweet, —

Pierce not my heart, my tender heart

Thou madest tender! Thou who art

So happy in thy heaven alway,

Take not mine only bliss away!"

She so had prayed: and God, who hears

Through seraph-songs the sound of tears

From that belovèd babe had ta'en

The fever and the beating pain.

And more and more smiled Isobel

To see the baby sleep so well,

(She knew not that she smiled, I wis)

Until the pleasant gradual thought

Which near her heart the smile enwrought,

Now soft and slow, itself did seem

To float along a happy dream,

Beyond it into speech like this.

"I prayed for thee, my little child,

And God has heard my prayer!

And when thy babyhood is gone,

We two together undefiled

By men's repinings, will kneel down

Upon His earth which will be fair

(Not covering thee, sweet!) to us twain,

And give Him thankful praise."

Dully and wildly drives the rain:

Against the lattices drives the rain.

"I thank Him now, that I can think

Of those same future days,

Nor from the harmless image shrink

Of what I there might see —

Strange babies on their mothers' knee,

Whose innocent soft faces might

From off mine eyelids strike the light,

With looks not meant for me!"

Gustily blows the wind through the rain,

As against the lattices drives the rain.

"But now, O baby mine, together,

We turn this hope of ours again

To many an hour of summer weather,

When we shall sit and intertwine

Our spirits, and instruct each other

In the pure loves of child and mother!

Two human loves make one divine."

The thunder tears through the wind and the rain,

As full on the lattices drives the rain.

"My little child, what wilt thou choose?

Now let me look at thee and ponder.

What gladness, from the gladnesses

Futurity is spreading under

Thy gladsome sight? Beneath the trees

Wilt thou lean all day, and lose

Thy spirit with the river seen

Intermittently between

The winding beechen alleys, —

Half in labour, half repose,

Like a shepherd keeping sheep,

Thou, with only thoughts to keep

Which never a bound will overpass,

And which are innocent as those

That feed among Arcadian valleys

Upon the dewy grass?"

The large white owl that with age is blind,

That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow,

Is carried away in a gust of wind;

His wings could beat him not as fast

As he goeth now the lattice past;

He is borne by the winds, the rains do follow

His white wings to the blast outflowing,

He hooteth in going,

And still, in the lightnings, coldly glitter

His round unblinking eyes

"Or, baby, wilt thou think it fitter

To be eloquent and wise,

One upon whose lips the air

Turns to solemn verities

For men to breathe anew, and win

A deeper-seated life within?

Wilt be a philosopher,

By whose voice the earth and skies

Shall speak to the unborn?

Or a poet, broadly spreading

The golden immortalities

Of thy soul on natures lorn

And poor of such, them all to guard

From their decay, – beneath thy treading,

Earth's flowers recovering hues of Eden, —

And stars, drawn downward by thy looks,

To shine ascendant in thy books?"

The tame hawk in the castle-yard,

How it screams to the lightning, with its wet

Jagged plumes overhanging the parapet!

And at the lady's door the hound

Scratches with a crying sound.

"But, O my babe, thy lids are laid

Close, fast upon thy cheek,

And not a dream of power and sheen

Can make a passage up between;

Thy heart is of thy mother's made,

Thy looks are very meek,

And it will be their chosen place

To rest on some beloved face,

As these on thine, and let the noise

Of the whole world go on nor drown

The tender silence of thy joys:

Or when that silence shall have grown

Too tender for itself, the same

Yearning for sound, – to look above

And utter its one meaning, LOVE,

That He may hear His name."

No wind, no rain, no thunder!

The waters had trickled not slowly,

The thunder was not spent

Nor the wind near finishing;

Who would have said that the storm was diminishing?

No wind, no rain, no thunder!

Their noises dropped asunder

From the earth and the firmament,

From the towers and the lattices,

Abrupt and echoless

As ripe fruits on the ground unshaken wholly

As life in death.

And sudden and solemn the silence fell,

Startling the heart of Isobel

As the tempest could not:

Against the door went panting the breath

Of the lady's hound whose cry was still,

And she, constrained howe'er she would not,

Lifted her eyes and saw the moon

Looking out of heaven alone

Upon the poplared hill, —

A calm of God, made visible

That men might bless it at their will.

The moonshine on the baby's face

Falleth clear and cold:

The mother's looks have fallen back

To the same place:

Because no moon with silver rack,

Nor broad sunrise in jasper skies

Has power to hold

Our loving eyes,

Which still revert, as ever must

Wonder and Hope, to gaze on the dust.

The moonshine on the baby's face

Cold and clear remaineth;

The mother's looks do shrink away, —

The mother's looks return to stay,

As charmèd by what paineth:

Is any glamour in the case?

Is it dream, or is it sight?

Hath the change upon the wild

Elements that sign the night,

Passed upon the child?

It is not dream, but sight.

The babe has awakened from sleep

And unto the gaze of its mother,

Bent over it, lifted another —

Not the baby-looks that go

Unaimingly to and fro,

But an earnest gazing deep

Such as soul gives soul at length

When by work and wail of years

It winneth a solemn strength

And mourneth as it wears.

A strong man could not brook,

With pulse unhurried by fears,

To meet that baby's look

O'erglazed by manhood's tears,

The tears of a man full grown,

With a power to wring our own,

In the eyes all undefiled

Of a little three-months' child —

To see that babe-brow wrought

By the witnessing of thought

To judgment's prodigy,

And the small soft mouth unweaned,

By mother's kiss o'erleaned,

(Putting the sound of loving

Where no sound else was moving

Except the speechless cry)

Quickened to mind's expression,

Shaped to articulation,

Yea, uttering words, yea, naming woe,

In tones that with it strangely went

Because so baby-innocent,

As the child spake out to the mother, so: —

"O mother, mother, loose thy prayer!

Christ's name hath made it strong.

It bindeth me, it holdeth me

With its most loving cruelty,

From floating my new soul along

The happy heavenly air.

It bindeth me, it holdeth me

In all this dark, upon this dull

Low earth, by only weepers trod.

It bindeth me, it holdeth me!

Mine angel looketh sorrowful

Upon the face of God.1

"Mother, mother, can I dream

Beneath your earthly trees?

I had a vision and a gleam,

I heard a sound more sweet than these

When rippled by the wind:

Did you see the Dove with wings

Bathed in golden glisterings

From a sunless light behind,

Dropping on me from the sky,

Soft as mother's kiss, until

I seemed to leap and yet was still?

Saw you how His love-large eye

Looked upon me mystic calms,

Till the power of His divine

Vision was indrawn to mine?

"Oh, the dream within the dream!

I saw celestial places even.

Oh, the vistas of high palms

Making finites of delight

Through the heavenly infinite,

Lifting up their green still tops

To the heaven of heaven!

Oh, the sweet life-tree that drops

Shade like light across the river

Glorified in its for-ever

Flowing from the Throne!

Oh, the shining holinesses

Of the thousand, thousand faces

God-sunned by the thronèd One,

And made intense with such a love

That, though I saw them turned above,

Each loving seemed for also me!

And, oh, the Unspeakable, the He,

The manifest in secrecies

Yet of mine own heart partaker

With the overcoming look

Of One who hath been once forsook

And blesseth the forsaker!

Mother, mother, let me go

Toward the Face that looketh so!

Through the mystic wingèd Four

Whose are inward, outward eyes

Dark with light of mysteries

And the restless evermore

'Holy, holy, holy,' – through

The sevenfold Lamps that burn in view

Of cherubim and seraphim, —

Through the four-and-twenty crowned

Stately elders white around,

Suffer me to go to Him!

"Is your wisdom very wise,

Mother, on the narrow earth,

Very happy, very worth

That I should stay to learn?

Are these air-corrupting sighs

Fashioned by unlearnèd breath?

Do the students' lamps that burn

All night, illumine death?

Mother, albeit this be so,

Loose thy prayer and let me go

Where that bright chief angel stands

Apart from all his brother bands,

Too glad for smiling, having bent

In angelic wilderment

O'er the depths of God, and brought

Reeling thence one only thought

To fill his own eternity.

He the teacher is for me —

He can teach what I would know —

Mother, mother, let me go!

"Can your poet make an Eden

No winter will undo,

And light a starry fire while heeding

His hearth's is burning too?

Drown in music the earth's din,

And keep his own wild soul within

The law of his own harmony?

Mother, albeit this be so,

Let me to my heaven go!

A little harp me waits thereby,

A harp whose strings are golden all

And tuned to music spherical,

Hanging on the green life-tree

Where no willows ever be.

Shall I miss that harp of mine?

Mother, no! – the Eye divine

Turned upon it, makes it shine;

And when I touch it, poems sweet

Like separate souls shall fly from it,

Each to the immortal fytte.

We shall all be poets there,

Gazing on the chiefest Fair.

"Love! earth's love! and can we love

Fixedly where all things move?

Can the sinning love each other?

Mother, mother,

I tremble in thy close embrace,

I feel thy tears adown my face,

Thy prayers do keep me out of bliss —

O dreary earthly love!

Loose thy prayer and let me go

To the place which loving is

Yet not sad; and when is given

Escape to thee from this below,

Thou shalt behold me that I wait

For thee beside the happy Gate,

And silence shall be up in heaven

To hear our greeting kiss."

The nurse awakes in the morning sun,

And starts to see beside her bed

The lady with a grandeur spread

Like pathos o'er her face, as one

God-satisfied and earth-undone;

The babe upon her arm was dead:

And the nurse could utter forth no cry, —

She was awed by the calm in the mother's eye.

"Wake, nurse!" the lady said;

"We are waking – he and I —

I, on earth, and he, in sky:

And thou must help me to o'erlay

With garment white this little clay

Which needs no more our lullaby.

"I changed the cruel prayer I made,

And bowed my meekened face, and prayed

That God would do His will; and thus

He did it, nurse! He parted us:

And His sun shows victorious

The dead calm face, – and I am calm,

And Heaven is hearkening a new psalm.

"This earthly noise is too anear,

Too loud, and will not let me hear

The little harp. My death will soon

Make silence."

And a sense of tune,

A satisfied love meanwhile

Which nothing earthly could despoil,

Sang on within her soul.

Oh you,

Earth's tender and impassioned few,

Take courage to entrust your love

To Him so named who guards above

Its ends and shall fulfil!

Breaking the narrow prayers that may

Befit your narrow hearts, away

In His broad, loving will.