The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 2. Browning Elizabeth Barrett

      The large white owl that with age is blind,

      That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow,

      Is carried away in a gust of wind;

      His wings could beat him not as fast

      As he goeth now the lattice past;

      He is borne by the winds, the rains do follow

      His white wings to the blast outflowing,

      He hooteth in going,

      And still, in the lightnings, coldly glitter

      His round unblinking eyes

      "Or, baby, wilt thou think it fitter

      To be eloquent and wise,

      One upon whose lips the air

      Turns to solemn verities

      For men to breathe anew, and win

      A deeper-seated life within?

      Wilt be a philosopher,

      By whose voice the earth and skies

      Shall speak to the unborn?

      Or a poet, broadly spreading

      The golden immortalities

      Of thy soul on natures lorn

      And poor of such, them all to guard

      From their decay, – beneath thy treading,

      Earth's flowers recovering hues of Eden, —

      And stars, drawn downward by thy looks,

      To shine ascendant in thy books?"

      The tame hawk in the castle-yard,

      How it screams to the lightning, with its wet

      Jagged plumes overhanging the parapet!

      And at the lady's door the hound

      Scratches with a crying sound.

      "But, O my babe, thy lids are laid

      Close, fast upon thy cheek,

      And not a dream of power and sheen

      Can make a passage up between;

      Thy heart is of thy mother's made,

      Thy looks are very meek,

      And it will be their chosen place

      To rest on some beloved face,

      As these on thine, and let the noise

      Of the whole world go on nor drown

      The tender silence of thy joys:

      Or when that silence shall have grown

      Too tender for itself, the same

      Yearning for sound, – to look above

      And utter its one meaning, LOVE,

      That He may hear His name."

      No wind, no rain, no thunder!

      The waters had trickled not slowly,

      The thunder was not spent

      Nor the wind near finishing;

      Who would have said that the storm was diminishing?

      No wind, no rain, no thunder!

      Their noises dropped asunder

      From the earth and the firmament,

      From the towers and the lattices,

      Abrupt and echoless

      As ripe fruits on the ground unshaken wholly

      As life in death.

      And sudden and solemn the silence fell,

      Startling the heart of Isobel

      As the tempest could not:

      Against the door went panting the breath

      Of the lady's hound whose cry was still,

      And she, constrained howe'er she would not,

      Lifted her eyes and saw the moon

      Looking out of heaven alone

      Upon the poplared hill, —

      A calm of God, made visible

      That men might bless it at their will.

      The moonshine on the baby's face

      Falleth clear and cold:

      The mother's looks have fallen back

      To the same place:

      Because no moon with silver rack,

      Nor broad sunrise in jasper skies

      Has power to hold

      Our loving eyes,

      Which still revert, as ever must

      Wonder and Hope, to gaze on the dust.

      The moonshine on the baby's face

      Cold and clear remaineth;

      The mother's looks do shrink away, —

      The mother's looks return to stay,

      As charmèd by what paineth:

      Is any glamour in the case?

      Is it dream, or is it sight?

      Hath the change upon the wild

      Elements that sign the night,

      Passed upon the child?

      It is not dream, but sight.

      The babe has awakened from sleep

      And unto the gaze of its mother,

      Bent over it, lifted another —

      Not the baby-looks that go

      Unaimingly to and fro,

      But an earnest gazing deep

      Such as soul gives soul at length

      When by work and wail of years

      It winneth a solemn strength

      And mourneth as it wears.

      A strong man could not brook,

      With pulse unhurried by fears,

      To meet that baby's look

      O'erglazed by manhood's tears,

      The tears of a man full grown,

      With a power to wring our own,

      In the eyes all undefiled

      Of a little three-months' child —

      To see that babe-brow wrought

      By the witnessing of thought

      To judgment's prodigy,

      And the small soft mouth unweaned,

      By mother's kiss o'erleaned,

      (Putting the sound of loving

      Where no sound else was moving

      Except