Fawning, fondling, breathing fast, Therefore to this dog will I, Render praise and favor: Therefore and forever. And because he loves me so, Often, man, or woman, CONSOLATION. ALL are not taken! there are left behind Living Beloveds, tender looks to bring, And make the daylight still a happy thing, Moving light, as all young things - And tender voices to make soft the Only free from flutterings wind. Of loud mirth that scorneth meas That ne'er said, "God be praised." We sit together with the skies, "And how long will you love us?" The eyes grow dim with prophecy, The voices low and breathless "Till death us part!"-O words to be Our best for love, the deathless! Look up and triumph rather— Lo! in the depth of God's Divine, The Son abjures the FatherBE PITIFUL, O GOD! ONLY A CURL. FRIENDS of faces unknown and a land Unvisited over the sea, Who tell me how lonely you stand, With a single gold curl in the hand Held up to be looked at by me! While you ask me to ponder and say What a father and mother can do, With the bright yellow locks put away Out of reach, beyond kiss, in the clay, Where the violets press nearer than you: Be pitiful, dear God! | Shall I speak like a poet, or run Into weak woman's tears for relief? We tremble by the harmless bed Of one loved and departedOur tears drop on the lips that said Last night, "Be stronger hearted!" O God, to clasp those fingers close, And yet to feel so lonely! To see a light upon such brows, Which is the daylight only! Be pitiful, O God! We sit on hills our childhood wist, Woods, hamlets, streams, beholding; The sun strikes through the farthest mist, The city's spire to golden. The city's golden spire it was, When hope and health were strongest, But now it is the churchyard grass And soon all vision waxeth dull Oh, children! I never lost one. But my arm's round my own little son, And Love knows the secret of Grief. And I feel what it must be and is When God draws a new angel so Through the house of a man up to His, With a murmur of music you miss, And a rapture of light you forego. How you think, staring on at the door Where the face of your angel flashed in, That its brightness, familiar before, Burns off from you ever the more For the dark of your sorrow and sin. "God lent him and takes him," you sigh... -Nay, there let me break with your pain, God's generous in giving, say I, That he can ever take back again SHE was not white nor brown But could look either, like a mist that changed According to being shone on more or less. The hair, too, ran its opulence of curls In doubt 'twixt dark and bright, nor left you clear To name the color. Too much hair perhaps (I'll name a fault here) for so small a head, Which seemed to droop on that side and on this, As a full-blown rose, uneasy with its weight, Though not a breath should trouble it. Again, The dimple in the cheek had better gone With redder, fuller rounds: and somewhat large The mouth was, though the milky little teeth Dissolved it to so infantine a smile! [From Aurora Leigh.] ALAS, long suffering and most patient Thou need'st be surelier God to bear with us Than even to have made us! thou aspire, aspire From henceforth for me! thou who hast, thyself, Endured this fleshhood, knowing how, as a soaked And sucking vesture, it would drag us down And choke us in the melancholy deep, Sustain me, that, with thee, I walk these waves, Resisting!-breathe me upward, thou for me Aspiring, who art the Way, the Truth, the Life, That no truth henceforth seem indif ferent, No way to truth laborious, and no life, Not even this life I live, intolerable' |