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Home  »  An American Anthology, 1787–1900  »  170 Sonnets

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Sarah HelenWhitman

170 Sonnets

1

WHEN first I looked into thy glorious eyes,

And saw, with their unearthly beauty pained,

Heaven deepening within heaven, like the skies

Of autumn nights without a shadow stained,

I stood as one whom some strange dream enthralls;

For, far away in some lost life divine,

Some land which every glorious dream recalls,

A spirit looked on me with eyes like thine.

Even now, though death has veiled their starry light,

And closed their lids in his relentless night,—

As some strange dream, remembered in a dream,

Again I see, in sleep, their tender beam;

Unfading hopes their cloudless azure fill,

Heaven deepening within heaven, serene and still.

2

Oft since thine earthly eyes have closed on mine,

Our souls, dim-wandering in the hall of dreams,

Hold mystic converse on the life divine,

By the still music of immortal streams;

And oft thy spirit tells how souls, affied

By sovran destinies, no more can part,—

How death and hell are powerless to divide

Souls whose deep lives lie folded heart in heart.

And if, at times, some lingering shadow lies

Heavy upon my path, some haunting dread,

Then do I point thee to the harmonies

Of those calm heights whereto our souls arise

Through suffering,—the faith that doth approve

In death the deathless power and divine life of love.

3

On our lone pathway bloomed no earthly hopes:

Sorrow and death were near us, as we stood

Where the dim forest, from the upland slopes,

Swept darkly to the sea. The enchanted wood

Thrilled, as by some foreboding terror stirred;

And as the waves broke on the lonely shore,

In their low monotone, methought I heard

A solemn voice that sighed, “Ye meet no more.”

There, while the level sunbeams seemed to burn

Through the long aisles of red, autumnal gloom,—

Where stately, storied cenotaphs inurn

Sweet human hopes, too fair on Earth to bloom,—

Was the bud reaped, whose petals pure and cold

Sleep on my heart till Heaven the flower unfold.

4

If thy sad heart, pining for human love,

In its earth solitude grew dark with fear,

Lest the high Sun of Heaven itself should prove

Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere

Wherein thy spirit wandered,—if the flowers

That pressed around thy feet, seemed but to bloom

In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours,

When all who loved had left thee to thy doom,—

Oh, yet believe that, in that hollow vale

Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain

So much of Heaven’s sweet grace as shall avail

To lift its burden of remorseful pain,

My soul shall meet thee, and its Heaven forego

Till God’s great love, on both, one hope, one Heaven bestow.