Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Last Lines
And filled the silence, weeping bitterly.
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.
And share its dew-drop with another near.
And smile away my mortal to Divine.
And they will all prove sad enough to sting.
And, smiling down the stars, they whisper -- Sweet.
Because I know this man, let him be clear.
Because the way is short, I thank thee, -- God!
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.
Can I suffice for HEAVEN, and not for earth?
Discerns in silent tears, both prayer and praise.
Fit peroration, without let or thrall.
God's chartered judgments walk for evermore.
Grows by contented through the heat and cold
He sleeps the faster that he wept before.
Held dead within them till myself shall die.
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
New Memnons singing in the great God-light.
Of sunlit hills, transfigured to Divine.
On him who could reject, but not sustain!
Only to make me worthier of the least.
Sing seraph, -- poet, -- sing on equally.
Speak THOU, availing Christ! -- and fill this pause.
That, by the grief of ONE, came all our good.
The better for the sweetness of our song.
This everlasting face-to-face with GOD?
This hand shall shake no more, nor that wine spill.
This is the poet and his poetry.
Thou art sweet, thou art strange!
To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame.
Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire.
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