CATARINA TO CAMOENS.

When the angelus is ringing,

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?"

When beneath the palace-lattice

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!"

When the palace-ladies, sitting

Round your gittern, shall have said,

"Poet, 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?"

Sweetest eyes! How sweet in flowings
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

66 Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!"

135

But the priest waits for the praying,
And the choir are on their knees,—
And the soul must pass away in

Strains more solemn high than these!
Miserere

For the weary—

Oh, no longer for Catrine,
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!"

Keep my riband, take and keep it,—
I have loosed it from my hair;
Feeling, while you overweep it,
Not alone in your despair,—
Since with saintly

Watch, unfaintly,

Out of Heaven shall o'er you lean
Sweetest eyes, were ever seen."

But-but now-yet unremoved

Up to heaven they glisten fast:
You may cast away, Beloved,
In your future, all my past;
Such old phrases
May be praises

For some fairer bosom-queen—
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!"

Eyes of mine, what are ye doing?
Faithless, faithless-praised amiss,

If a tear be of your showing,

Dropt for any hope of HIS!
Death hath boldness

Besides coldness,

If unworthy tears demean

"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen."

I will look out to his future

I will bless it till it shine:

LOCKSLEY HALL.

137

Should he ever be a suitor

Unto sweeter eyes than mine,
Sunshine gild them,

Angels shield them,

Whatsoever eyes terrene

Be the sweetest HIS have seen!

ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

Co

Locksley Hall.

OMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn :

Leave me here, and when you want me, souna upon the bugle horn.

'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews

call,

Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley

Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,

And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,

Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,

Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sub

lime

With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed; When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see; Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be..

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's

breast;

In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another

crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove; In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,

And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance

hung.

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth

to me;

Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light, As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turned-her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of

sighs

All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes—

Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;"

Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long.'

LOCKSLEY HALL.

139

Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing

hands;

Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,

And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fullness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately

ships,

And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

O my cousin, shallow-hearted!
O my Amy, mine no more!
O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,

Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?—having known me—to decline On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day, What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.