A Denial
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We have met late---it is too late to meet,
   O friend, not more than friend!
Death's forecome shroud is tangled round my feet,
And if I step or stir, I touch the end.
   In this last jeopardy
Can I approach thee, I, who cannot move?
How shall I answer thy request for love?
   Look in my face and see.

 I love thee not, I dare not love thee! go
   In silence; drop my hand.
If thou seek roses, seek them where they blow
In garden-alleys, not in desert-sand.
   Can life and death agree,
That thou shouldst stoop thy song to my complaint?
I cannot love thee. If the word is faint,
   Look in my face and see. 


I might have loved thee in some former days.
   Oh, then, my spirits had leapt
As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise!
Before these faded cheeks were overwept,
   Had this been asked of me,
To love thee with my whole strong heart and head,---
I should have said still . . . yes, but smiled and said,
   "Look in my face and see!" 

But now . . . God sees me, God, who took my heart
   And drowned it in life's surge.
In all your wide warm earth I have no part---
A light song overcomes me like a dirge.
   Could Love's great harmony
The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose,
Not weigh me down? am I a wife to choose?
   Look in my face and see---

While I behold, as plain as one who dreams,
   Some woman of full worth,
Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's,
Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth;
   One younger, more thought-free
And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget,
With brighter eyes than these . . . which are not wet.
    Look in my face and see!

So farewell thou, whom I have known too late
   To let thee come so near.
Be counted happy while men call thee great,
And one belovèd woman feels thee dear!---
   Not I!---that cannot be.
I am lost, I am changed,---I must go farther, where
The change shall take me worse, and no one dare
   Look in my face and see.

Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine
   I bless thee from all such!
I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine,
Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch
   Of loyal troth. For me,
I love thee not, I love thee not!---away!
Here's no more courage in my soul to say
   "Look in my face and see."

'I know a hidden field...'
Felix Dennis

I know a hidden field of ridge and furrow
              Far from track or human tread,
Where grasses sigh and coneys burrow,
       Where the cowslips dot the midden,
    Where a skylark hovers, hidden,
             Very high above your head.
I know an ancient road men call The Drover,
             Free of fences, gate or wire;
A chalky way of turf and clover,
     There the hedge is white at May time,
     There a barn owl roosts in daytime
             Snug within a ruined byre.

I know a Druid yew, a silent mourner,
              Mourning what, I do not know.
It stands within a pasture corner,
      Grim with age, grown gaunt and hollow,
      Guarding still some secret sorrow;
              Rot within and grief below.

I know a grassy mound, an orchard parcel
              Tucked beside a hazel wood,
There the lambs play king o’ the castle,
      There I’ve sat amid the cherries,
      Swearing I’d be back for berries—
           Knowing that I never should.

 

Returning, We Hear The Larks
Isaac Rosenberg

Sombre the night is:

And, though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.

 

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know

This poison-blasted track opens on our camp—

On a little safe sleep.

 

But hark! Joy—joy—strange joy.

Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks:

Music showering on our upturned listening faces.

 

Death could drop from the dark

As easily as song—

But song only dropped,

Like a blind man's dreams on the sand

By dangerous tides;

Like a girl's dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there,

Or her kisses where a serpent hides.