As once Electra her sepulchral urn,

Less absolute exclusion. Nay is worse

The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see

That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof

A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through

III

On one another, as they strike athwart

For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?

With looking from the lattice-lights at me,

Hush, call no echo up in further proof

O my Beloved, will not shield thee so,

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!

II

Ihttps://read.99csw.comn folds of golden fulness at my door?

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

IV

Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part

Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;

Who each one in a gracious hand appears

And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn

The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,

To let thy music drop here unaware

The bats and owlets builders in the roof!

From God than from ｈttpｓ://reａｄ•9９cｓｗ•comall others, O my friend!

V

Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow

The dancers will break footing, from the care

The silver answer rang,— Not Death, but Love.

Guess now who holds thee? — Death, I said. But, there,

Of desolation! there s a voice within

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung

Of chief musician. What hast thou to do

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

But only three in all Gods universe

The gray dust up, . . . those laurelhttps://read.99csw.coms on thine head,

Our ministering two angels look surprise

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:

My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.

Could tread them out to darkness utterly,

And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,

Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:

Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied

I

Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn

Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.

With gages from a hundred brighter eyes

It might be well perhaps. But if instead

And Death must dig the level where these agrｈｔtps://ｒｅaｄ.9９csw•comee.

Have heard this word thou hast said,—Himself, beside

That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred

A guest for queens to social pageantries,

And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn

The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! go.

A shadow across me. Straightway I was ware,

And dost thou lift this houses latch too poor

We should but vow the faster for the stars.

Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art

Men could not part us with their worldly jars,

The deathweights, placed there, would httｐs://rｅａd•９9ｃｓｗ•ｃｏmhave signified

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair:

My sight from seeing thee,—that if I had died,

Most gracious singer of high poems! where

Unlike our uses and our destinies.

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,—

Look up and see the casement broken in,

One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse

The chrism is on thine head,—on mine, the dew,—

What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,

Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,

So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce