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From ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’
GO from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand | |
| Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore | |
| Alone upon the threshold of my door | |
| Of individual life, I shall command | |
| The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand | 5 |
| Serenely in the sunshine as before, | |
| Without the sense of that which I forbore,— | |
| Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land | |
| Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine | |
| With pulses that beat double. What I do | 10 |
| And what I dream include thee, as the wine | |
| Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue | |
| God for myself, He hears that name of thine, | |
| And sees within my eyes the tears of two. * * * * * | |
| Belovèd, my Belovèd, when I think | 15 |
| That thou wast in the world a year ago, | |
| What time I sate alone here in the snow | |
| And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink | |
| No moment at thy voice,—but, link by link, | |
| Went counting all my chains, as if that so | 20 |
| They never could fall off at any blow | |
| Struck by thy possible hand—why, thus I drink | |
| Of life’s great cup of wonder! Wonderful, | |
| Never to feel thee thrill the day or night | |
| With personal act or speech,—nor ever cull | 25 |
| Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white | |
| Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull, | |
| Who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight. | |
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