Of chief musician. What hast thou to do

That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!

The deathweights, placed there, would have signified

And Death must dig the level where these agree.

My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.

Who each one in a gracious hand appears

Could tread them out to darkness utterly,

We should but vow the fas99lib•netter for the stars.

A shadow across me. Straightway I was ware,

Men could not part us with their worldly jars,

The bats and owlets builders in the roof!

So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce

Of desolation! there s a voice within

Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied

I

My sight from seeing thee,—that if I had died,

In folds of golden fulness at my door?

That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

The九九藏书 dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?

On one another, as they strike athwart

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,—

Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn

Hush, call no echo up in further proof

O my Beloved, will not shield thee so,

But only three in all Gods universe

What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,

With gages from a hundred brighter eyes

As once Electra her sepulchral urn,

The gray dust up, . . . those laurels on thine head,

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,

The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,

Nor the seas change us,

九*九*藏*书*网

nor the tempests bend;

The dancers will break footing, from the care

Unlike our uses and our destinies.

Look up and see the casement broken in,

With looking from the lattice-lights at me,

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through

Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:

V

For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear

One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse

It might be well perhaps. But if instead

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair:

And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,

I saw, in gradual vision through my t九-九-藏-书-网ears,

And dost thou lift this houses latch too poor

III

A guest for queens to social pageantries,

Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art

The chrism is on thine head,—on mine, the dew,—

II

The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see

Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part

Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.

Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,

And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:

Thou wait 九九藏书beside me for the wind to blow

Less absolute exclusion. Nay is worse

Guess now who holds thee? — Death, I said. But, there,

IV

From God than from all others, O my friend!

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! go.

The silver answer rang,— Not Death, but Love.

To let thy music drop here unaware

Our ministering two angels look surprise

And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn

Have heard this word thou hast said,—Himself, beside

Most gracious singer of high poems! where