To hearken what I said between my tears, —

Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot

My soul’s full meaning into future years,

That they should lend it utterance, and salute

Love that endures, from Life that disappears!

XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Lady Geraldine’s Courtship

A poet writes to his friend. — Place, a room in Wycombe Hall. — Time, late in the evening.

Dear my friend and fellow-student, I would lean my spirit o’er you:

Down the purple of this chamber, tears should scarcely run at will:

I am humbled who was humble! Friend, — I bow my head before you!

You should lead me to my peasants! — but their faces are too still.

There’s a lady, — an earl’s daughter; she is proud and she is noble:

And she treads the crimson carpet, and she breathes the perfumed air;

And a kingly blood sends glances up her princely eye to trouble,

And the shadow of a monarch’s crown is softened in her hair.

She has halls among the woodlands, she has castles by the breakers,

She has farms and she has manors, she can threaten and command,

And the palpitating engines snort in steam across her acres,

As they mark upon the blasted heaven the measure of her land.

There are none of England’s daughters who can show a prouder presence;

Upon princely suitors praying, she has looked in her disdain:

She has sprung of English nobles, I was born of English peasants;

What was I that I should love her, — save for competence to pain!

I was only a poor poet, made for singing at her casement,

As the finches or the thrushes, while she thought of other things.

Oh, she walked so high above me, she appeared to my abasement,

In her lovely silken murmur, like an angel clad in wings!

Many vassals bow before her as her carriage sweeps their door-ways;

She has blest their little children, — as a priest or queen were she.

Far too tender, or too cruel far, her smile upon the poor was,

For I thought it was the same smile which she used to smile on me.

She has voters in the commons, she has lovers in the palace,—

And of all the fair court-ladies, few have jewels half as fine:

Oft the prince has named her beauty, ’twixt the red wine and the chalice:

Oh, and what was I to love her? my Beloved, my Geraldine!

Yet I could not choose but love her, — I was born to poet uses,—

To love all things set above me, all of good and all of fair:

Nymphs of mountain, not of valley, we are wont to call the Muses,

And in nympholeptic climbing, poets pass from mount to star.

And because I was a poet, and because the people praised me,

With their critical deduction for the modern writer’s fault;

I could sit at rich men’s tables, — though the courtesies that raised me,

Still suggested clear between us the pale spectrum of the salt.

And they praised me in her presence — “Will your book appear this summer?”

Then returning to each other, “Yes, our plans are for the moors;”

Then with whisper dropped behind me, — “There he is! the latest comer!

Oh, she only likes his verses! what is over, she endures.

“Quite low born! self-educated! somewhat gifted though by nature,—

And we make a point by asking him, of being very kind;—

You may speak, he does not hear you; and besides, he writes no satire,—

All these serpents kept by charmers, leave their natural sting behind”.

I grew scornfuller, grew colder, as I stood up there among them,

Till, as frost intense will burn you, the cold scorning scorched my brow;

When a sudden silver speaking, gravely cadenced, overrung them,

And a sudden silken stirring touched my inner nature through.

I looked upward and beheld her! With a calm and regnant spirit,

Slowly round she swept her eyelids, and said clear before them all,

“Have you such superfluous honor, sir, that able to confer it,

You will come down, Mr. Bertram, as my guest to Wycombe Hall?”

Here she paused, — she had been paler at the first word of her speaking;