Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,

Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!

-Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces,--
Roses, you are not so fair after all!

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

TO MARGUERITE

YES: in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,

The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour;

O then a longing like despair

Is to their farthest caverns sent!
For surely once, they feel, we were

Parts of a single continent.

Now round us spreads the watery plain-
O might our marges meet again!

Who ordered that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
A God, a God their severance ruled;
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]

SEPARATION

STOP! not to me, at this bitter departing,

Speak of the sure consolations of time!

Fresh be the wound, still-renewed be its smarting,
So but thy image endure in its prime.

Longing

But, if the steadfast commandment of Nature
Wills that remembrance should always decay-
If the loved form and the deep-cherished feature
Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away-

Me let no half-effaced memories cumber!
Fled, fled at once, be all vestige of thee!
Deep be the darkness and still be the slumber-
Dead be the past and its phantoms to me!

967

Then, when we meet, and thy look strays towards me, Scanning my face and the changes wrought there: Who, let me say, is this stranger regards me,

With the gray eyes, and the lovely brown hair?

Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]

LONGING

COME to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth;
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say: My love! why sufferest thou?'

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

1 1

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888]

No backward path; ah! no returning;

No second crossing that ripple's flow: "Come to me now, for the west is burning; Come ere it darkens."-"Ah, no! ah, no!"

Then cries of pain, and arms outreaching,-
The beck grows wider and swift and deep:
Passionate words as of one beseeching:

The loud beck drowns them: we walk, and weep.

V

A yellow moon in splendor drooping,

A tired queen with her state oppressed, Low by rushes and swordgrass stooping, Lies she soft on the waves at rest.

The desert heavens have felt her sadness;
Her earth will weep her some dewy tears;
The wild beck ends her tune of gladness,
And goeth stilly as soul that fears.

We two walk on in our grassy places

On either marge of the moonlit flood, With the moon's own sadness in our faces, Where joy is withered, blossom and bud.

VI

A shady freshness, chafers whirring;
A little piping of leaf-hid birds;
A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring;

A cloud to the eastward snowy as curds.

Bare grassy slopes, where kids are tethered,
Round valleys like nests all ferny-lined,
Round hills, with fluttering tree-tops feathered,
Swell high in their freckled robes behind.

A rose-flush tender, a thrill, a quiver,
When golden gleams to the tree-tops glide;
A flashing edge for the milk-white river,
The beck, a river with still sleek tide.

Divided

Broad and white, and polished as silver,

On she goes under fruit-laden trees: Sunk in leafage cooeth the culver,

And 'plaineth of love's disloyalties.

Glitters the dew, and shines the river,
Up comes the lily and dries her bell;
But two are walking apart forever,

And wave their hands for a mute farewell.

VII

A braver swell, a swifter sliding;

The river hasteth, her banks recede.
Wing-like sails on her bosom gliding
Bear down the lily, and drown the reed.

Stately prows are rising and bowing
(Shouts of mariners winnow the air),
And level sands for banks endowing

The tiny green ribbon that showed so fair,

While, O my heart! as white sails shiver,

}

And clouds are passing, and banks stretch wide,
How hard to follow, with lips that quiver,
That moving speck on the far-off side.

Farther, farther; I see it, know it

My eyes brim over, it melts away: Only my heart to my heart shall show it As I walk desolate day by day.

VIII

And yet I know past all doubting, truly,-
A knowledge greater than grief can dim,-
I know, as he loved, he will love me duly,--
Yea, better, e'en better than I love him.

And as I walk by the vast calm river,

The awful river so dread to see,

I say, "Thy breadth and thy depth forever

971

Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me." Jean Ingelow [1820-1897]

MY PLAYMATE

THE pines were dark on Ramoth hill,
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.

The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the year.

For, more to me than birds or flowers, My playmate left her home,

And took with her the laughing spring, The music and the bloom.

She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine:
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father's kine?

She left us in the bloom of May:
The constant years told o'er
Their seasons with as sweet May morns
But she came back no more.

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round

Of uneventful years;

Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring
And reap the autumn ears.

She lives where all the golden year
Her summer roses blow;
The dusky children of the sun
Before her come and go.

There haply with her jeweled hands
She smooths her silken gown,-

No more the homespun lap wherein
I shook the walnuts down.

« ZurückWeiter »