English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 579. Sonnets from the Portuguese |
| | | II |
| | | Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) |
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| BUT only three in all God’s universe | |
| Have heard this word thou hast said,—Himself, beside | |
| Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied | |
| One of us … that was God, … and laid the curse | |
| So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce | 5 |
| My sight from seeing thee,—that if I had died, | |
| The deathweights, placed there, would have signified | |
| Less absolute exclusion. “Nay” is worse | |
| From God than from all others, O my friend! | |
| Men could not part us with their worldly jars, | 10 |
| Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend; | |
| Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars: | |
| And, heaven being rolled between us at the end, | |
| We should but vow the faster for the stars. | |
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