Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
Sonnets from the Portuguese: I. ‘Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!’Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
U
Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our minist’ring two angels look surprise
On one another, as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art
A guest for queens to social pageantries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part
Of chief musician. What hast thou to do
With looking from the lattice-lights at me—
A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through
The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
The chrism is on thine head—on mine the dew—
And Death must dig the level where these agree.