Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916.
I thought once how Theocritus had sungElizabeth Barrett Browning (18061861)
From ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’
I
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was ’ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair,
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,
‘Guess now who holds thee?’—‘Death’, I said. But, there,
The silver answer rang—‘Not Death, but Love.’