with their son. Robert Weidman Barrett Browning, 1860
- Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
- Unlike our uses and our destinies.
- Our ministering 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.
- Sonnet Four from Sonnets from the Portuguese
- Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
- Most gracious singer of high poems! where
- The dancers will break footing, from the care
- Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
- And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor
- For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear
- To let thy music drip here unaware
- In folds of golden fulness at my door?
- Look up and see the casement broken in,
- The bats and owlets builders in the roof!
- My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.
- Hush, call no echo up in further proof
- Of desolation! there's a voice within
- That weeps...as thou must sing...alone, alo
