C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
From ‘Catarina to Camoens’
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
O
I have gazed too long: adieu!
Hope withdraws her “peradventure”;
Death is near me,—and not you!
Come, O lover,
Close and cover
These poor eyes you called, I ween,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen!”
In my vernal days and bowers,
Other praises disregarding,
I but hearkened that of yours,
Only saying
In heart-playing,
“Blessèd eyes mine eyes have been,
If the sweetest
Cold the sun shines down the door.
If you stood there, would you whisper,
“Love, I love you,” as before,—
Death pervading
Now and shading
Eyes you sang of, that yestreen,
As the sweetest ever seen?
Near the bed I die upon,
Though their beauty you denied them,
As you stood there looking down,
You would truly
Call them duly,
For the love’s sake found therein,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen.”
And if they looked up to you,
All the light which has foregone them
Would be gathered back anew;
They would truly
Be as duly
Love-transformed to beauty’s sheen,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen.”
In your thoughts of loving man,
Smiling soft, perhaps, and dreamy,
Through the wavings of my fan;
And unweeting
Go repeating
In your revery serene,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen.”
When you praised their sweetness so,
Did you think, in singing of it,
That it might be near to go?
Had you fancies
From their glances,
That the grave would quickly screen
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen”?
In the courtyard sounds alone.
As the water to the marble
So my heart falls with a moan
From love-sighing
To this dying.
Death forerunneth Love to win
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen.”
Where all sweetnesses are hid,
Where thy voice, my tender-hearted,
Will not lift up either lid,
Cry, O lover,
Love is over!
Cry, beneath the cypress green,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen!”
Near the convent will you walk,
And recall the choral singing
Which brought angels down our talk?
Spirit-shriven
I viewed heaven,
Till you smiled—“Is earth unclean,
Sweetest eyes were ever seen?”
You ride slow as you have done,
And you see a face there that is
Not the old familiar one,
Will you oftly
Murmur softly,
“Here ye watched me morn and e’en,
Sweetest eyes were ever seen”?
Round your gittern, shall have said,
“Poets, sing those verses written
For the lady who is dead,”
Will you tremble,
Yet dissemble,
Or sing hoarse, with tears between,
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen”?
The repeated cadence is!
Though you sang a hundred poems,
Still the best one would be this.
I can hear it
’Twixt my spirit
And the earth-noise intervene,—
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen!”
Up to heaven they glisten fast;
You may cast away, belovèd,
In your future all my past:
Such old phrases
May be praises
For some fairer bosom-queen—
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen!”
Faithless, faithless, praised amiss
If a tear be, on your showing,
Dropped for any hope of
Death has boldness
Besides coldness,
If unworthy tears demean
“Sweetest eyes were ever seen.”
I will bless it till it shine.
Should he ever be a suitor
Unto sweeter eyes than mine,
Sunshine gild them,
Angels shield them,
Whatsoever eyes terrene
Be the sweetest