HIS LADY
OF THE SONNETS
BY
ROBERT W. NORWOOD
BOSTON
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY
TO
MY WIFE
"I shall never, in the years remaining,
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,
Make you music that should all-express me;
So it seems: I stand on my attainment.
This of verse alone, one life allows me;
Verse and nothing else have I to give you.
Other heights in other lives, God willing:
All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!"
ROBERT BROWNING.
CONTENTS
His Lady Of The Sonnets
Antony To Cleopatra, After Actium
Paul To Timothy
Dives In Torment
SONNETS AND SONGS
Fellow Craftsmen
Posca
Reincarnation
Jacob's Dream
Keats
A Poet's Prayer
What Is Religion?
A Song Of Spring
A Fallen Angel
A Litany
The Great Comrade
A Revery
Good-Bye
David's Song To Michal
David Before Saul
A Villanelle Of Fate
One Woman
HIS LADY OF THE SONNETS
I
My soul awoke from slumber—the long ease
Of years that passed away in dull content,
Not caring what the world's deep voices meant—
Sunk in my dreams, I heard their harmonies
Like wind-blown clamour of far-calling seas
That told of Ithaca to sailors spent
With trouble, and forgetful at the scent
And taste of fruit plucked from the lotus trees;
For as I slept, your footsteps on the grass,
Your voice, wrought once again the Miracle
Of Eden; and I saw appear and pass
Eve in her beauty, binding still the spell
That Adam felt, when from his opened side
Stepped Woman forth in loveliness and pride.
II
I meet you in the mystery of the night,
A dear Dream-Goddess on a crescent moon;
An opalescent splendour, like a noon
Of lilies; and I wonder that the height
Should darken for the depth to give me light—
Light of your face, so lovely that I swoon
With gazing, and then wake to find how soon
Joy of the world fades when you fade from sight.
Beholding you, I am Endymion,
Lost and immortal in Latmian