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

      "O mother, mother, loose thy prayer!

      Christ's name hath made it strong.

      It bindeth me, it holdeth me

      With its most loving cruelty,

      From floating my new soul along

      The happy heavenly air.

      It bindeth me, it holdeth me

      In all this dark, upon this dull

      Low earth, by only weepers trod.

      It bindeth me, it holdeth me!

      Mine angel looketh sorrowful

      Upon the face of God.1

      "Mother, mother, can I dream

      Beneath your earthly trees?

      I had a vision and a gleam,

      I heard a sound more sweet than these

      When rippled by the wind:

      Did you see the Dove with wings

      Bathed in golden glisterings

      From a sunless light behind,

      Dropping on me from the sky,

      Soft as mother's kiss, until

      I seemed to leap and yet was still?

      Saw you how His love-large eye

      Looked upon me mystic calms,

      Till the power of His divine

      Vision was indrawn to mine?

      "Oh, the dream within the dream!

      I saw celestial places even.

      Oh, the vistas of high palms

      Making finites of delight

      Through the heavenly infinite,

      Lifting up their green still tops

      To the heaven of heaven!

      Oh, the sweet life-tree that drops

      Shade like light across the river

      Glorified in its for-ever

      Flowing from the Throne!

      Oh, the shining holinesses

      Of the thousand, thousand faces

      God-sunned by the thronèd One,

      And made intense with such a love

      That, though I saw them turned above,

      Each loving seemed for also me!

      And, oh, the Unspeakable, the He,

      The manifest in secrecies

      Yet of mine own heart partaker

      With the overcoming look

      Of One who hath been once forsook

      And blesseth the forsaker!

      Mother, mother, let me go

      Toward the Face that looketh so!

      Through the mystic wingèd Four

      Whose are inward, outward eyes

      Dark with light of mysteries

      And the restless evermore

      'Holy, holy, holy,' – through

      The sevenfold Lamps that burn in view

      Of cherubim and seraphim, —

      Through the four-and-twenty crowned

      Stately elders white around,

      Suffer me to go to Him!

      "Is your wisdom very wise,

      Mother, on the narrow earth,

      Very happy, very worth

      That I should stay to learn?

      Are these air-corrupting sighs

      Fashioned by unlearnèd breath?

      Do the students' lamps that burn

      All night, illumine death?

      Mother, albeit this be so,

      Loose thy prayer and let me go

      Where that bright chief angel stands

      Apart from all his brother bands,

      Too glad for smiling, having bent

      In angelic wilderment

      O'er the depths of God, and brought

      Reeling thence one only thought

      To fill his own eternity.

      He the teacher is for me —

      He can teach what I would know —

      Mother, mother, let me go!

      "Can your poet make an Eden

      No winter will undo,

      And light a starry fire while heeding

      His hearth's is burning too?

      Drown in music the earth's din,

      And keep his own wild soul within

      The law of his own harmony?

      Mother, albeit this be so,

      Let me to my heaven go!

      A little harp me waits thereby,

      A harp whose strings are golden all

      And tuned to music spherical,

      Hanging on the green life-tree

      Where no willows ever be.

      Shall I miss that harp of mine?

      Mother, no! – the Eye divine

      Turned upon it, makes it shine;

      And when I touch it, poems sweet

      Like separate souls shall fly from it,

      Each to the immortal fytte.

      We shall all be poets there,

      Gazing on the chiefest Fair.

      "Love! earth's love! and can we love

      Fixedly where all things move?

      Can the sinning love each other?

      Mother, mother,

      I tremble in thy close embrace,

      I feel thy tears adown my face,

      Thy prayers do keep me out of bliss —

      O dreary earthly love!

      Loose thy prayer and let me go

      To the place which loving is

      Yet not sad; and when is given

      Escape to thee from this below,

      Thou shalt behold me that I wait

      For thee beside the happy Gate,

      And silence shall be up in heaven

      To hear our greeting kiss."

      The nurse awakes in the morning sun,

      And starts to see beside her bed

      The lady with a grandeur spread

      Like pathos o'er her face, as one

      God-satisfied and earth-undone;

      The