Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam(圣弗朗城).pdf

S FROM THE PORTUGUESE
S FROM THE
PORTUGUESE
by Browning
1
S FROM THE PORTUGUESE
I
I thought once how Theocritus had sung 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."
II
But only three in all God's universe Have heard this word thou hast
said,--himself, beside Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied One of
us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse So darkly on my eyelids, so as
to amerce My sight from seeing thee,--that if I had died, The death-
weights, placed there, would have signified Less absolute exclusion.
"Nay" is worse From God than from all others, O my friend! Men could
not part us with their worldly jars, Nor the seas change us, nor the
tempests bend; Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars: And,
heaven being rolled between us at the end, We should but vow the faster
for the stars.
III
Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart! Unlike our uses and our
destinies. Our ministering two angels look surprise On one another, as
they strike athwart Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art A
guest for queens to social pageantries, With gages from a hundred brighter
eyes Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part Of chief musician.
What hast thou to do With looking from the lattice-lights at me, A poor,
tired, wandering singer, singing through The dark, and leaning up a
2
S FROM THE PORTUGUESE
cypress tree? The chrism is on thine head,--on mine, the dew, -