Poetry Friday IX

I am an appreciator of the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, so thought I'd feature her this poetry Friday. The first poem below is the full sonnet of fragment I have blogged in the past, about the sad perplexity our current experience sometimes is, yet with a reminder that when we know the full story all will be seen as the goodness of God. The second is just a lovely love sonnet, from the Sonnets from the Portugese (though it begs the question of whether humans are capable of such a love - else why should there ever be any discrimination involved in a "romantic" love?).

EXPERIENCE, like a pale musician, holds

A dulcimer of patience in his hand,

Whence harmonies, we cannot understand,

Of God's will in his worlds, the strain unfolds

In sad-perplexed minors: deathly colds

Fall on us while we hear, and countermand

Our sanguine heart back from the fancyland

With nightingales in visionary wolds.

We murmur 'Where is any certain tune

Or measured music in such notes as these?'

But angels, leaning from the golden seat,

Are not so minded their fine ear hath won

The issue of completed cadences,

And, smiling down the stars, they whisper--SWEET.

XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought

Except for love's sake only. Do not say

"I love her for her smile - her look - her way

Of speaking gently,- for a trick of thought

That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" -

For these things in themselves, Beloved, may

Be changed, or change for thee,- and love, so wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for

Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,-

A creature might forget to weep, who bore

Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!

But love me for love's sake, that evermore

Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

Elizabeth Barrett-Browning