Collected Works (Vol. I)

TANNHAUSER A STORY OF ALL TIME TANNHAUSER. XVI One is incisive, corrosive ; Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant ; Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive; Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant : Five! . . . O Danaides, O Sieve! XVII Now, they ply axes and crowbars ; Now, they prick pins at a tissue Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar’s Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue ? Where is our gain at the Two-bars? XVIII Est fuga, volvitur rota. On we drift : where looms the dim port? One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota ; Something is gained, if one caught but the import— Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha ! —R. BROWNING, Afasler Hitoues of Saxe-Gotha. DEDICATION. I SHALL not tell thee that I love thee ! Nay! by the Star in Ifeaven burning, Its ray to me at midnight turning To tell me that it beams above thee Nay ! though thou wert, as Tam, yearning, I should not tell'thee that I love thee ! 1 ‘The refercuce is to the five acts of the play. i | know what secret thought once blossomed Into a blush that seemed a kiss, Some swift suppressed extreme of bliss 'In thy most fearful sigh embosomed. What oracle should prate of this ? I know the secret thought that blossomed ! Extol the truth of love’s disdain ! Love, daring by no glance to gladden A heart that waits but that to madden In purple pleasure plucked of pain. | Nay! let our tears, that fail to sadden, . Extol the truth of love’s disdain ! Let deeper silence shield the deeper rapture ! _ Hardly our eyes reveal the inward Dliss, ' Sealed by no speech and shadowed by no kiss. Love is no wizard to elude recapture | _ In the strong prison of his silences! | Let deeper silence shield the deeper rapture ! Twin souls are Heaven ! Twin souls on earth by earthly bars divided ! But, did thy spirit glide as mine has glided Straight to That Star—no rose-leaves ask to leaven The manna that the Moon of Love pro- vided ! Twin souls are we, to one Star bound in Tleaven! we, to one Star bound in Not to thy presence in the veil and vision Of solemn lies that men miscall the world ; Not to thy mind the lightnings truthward hurled Tturn. IT laugh dead distance to derision !— Spirit to spirit: there our loves are curled, Not to thy presence in the veil and vision! 222