A Sequence of Sonnets on the Death of Robert…

The clearest eyes in all the world they read

With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true

Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew

Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed,

As they the light of ages quick and dead,

Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew

Can slay not one of all the works we knew,

Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head.

The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought,

And moulded of unconquerable thought,

And quickened with imperishable flame,

Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought

May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame,

Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name.

Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom

Time is not lord, but servant? What least part

Of all the fire that fed his living heart,

Of all the light more keen that sundawn's bloom

That lit and led his spirit, strong as doom

And bright as hope, can aught thy breath may dart

Quench? Nay, thou knowest he knew thee what thou art,

A shadow born of terror's barren womb,

That brings not forth save shadows. What art thou,

To dream, albeit thou breathe upon his brow,

That power on him is given thee,—that thy breath

Can make him less than love acclaims him now,

And hears all time sound back the word it saith?

What part hast thou then in his glory, Death?

III

A graceless doom it seems that bids us grieve:

Venice and winter, hand in deadly hand,

Have slain the lover of her sunbright strand

And singer of a stormbright Christmas Eve.

A graceless guerdon we that loved receive

For all our love, from that the dearest land

Love worshipped ever. Blithe and soft and bland,

Too fair for storm to scathe or fire to cleave,

Shone on our dreams and memories evermore

The domes, the towers, the mountains and the shore

That gird or guard thee, Venice: cold and black

Seems now the face we loved as he of yore.

We have given thee love—no stint, no stay, no lack:

What gift, what gift is this thou hast given us back?

But he—to him, who knows what gift is thine,

Death? Hardly may we think or hope, when we

Pass likewise thither where to-night is he,

Beyond the irremeable outer seas that shine

And darken round such dreams as half divine

Some sunlit harbour in that starless sea

Where gleams no ship to windward or to lee,

To read with him the secret of thy shrine.

There too, as here, may song, delight, and love,

The nightingale, the sea-bird, and the dove,

Fulfil with joy the splendour of the sky

Till all beneath wax bright as all above:

But none of all that search the heavens, and try

The sun, may match the sovereign eagle's eye.

Among the wondrous ways of men and time

He went as one that ever found and sought

And bore in hand the lamp-like spirit of thought

To illume with instance of its fire sublime

The dusk of many a cloudlike age and clime.

No spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought,

No faith, no fear, no dream, no rapture, nought

That blooms in wisdom, nought that burns in crime,

No virtue girt and armed and helmed with light,

No love more lovely than the snows are white,

No serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb,

No song-bird singing from some live soul's height,

But he might hear, interpret, or illume

With sense invasive as the dawn of doom.

What secret thing of splendour or of shade

Surmised in all those wandering ways wherein

Man, led of love and life and death and sin,

Strays, climbs, or cowers, allured, absorbed, afraid,

Might not the strong and sunlike sense invade

Of that full soul that had for aim to win

Light, silent over time's dark toil and din,

Life, at whose touch death fades as dead things fade?

O spirit of man, what mystery moves in thee

That he might know not of in spirit, and see

The heart within the heart that seems to strive,

The life within the life that seems to be,

And hear, through all thy storms that whirl and drive,

The living sound of all men's souls alive?

VII

He held no dream worth waking: so he said,

He who stands now on death's triumphal steep,

Awakened out of life wherein we sleep

And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead.

But never death for him was dark or dread:

"Look forth" he bade the soul, and fear not. Weep,

All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep

Vain memory's vision of a vanished head

As all that lives of all that once was he

Save that which lightens from his word: but we,

Who, seeing the sunset-coloured waters roll,

Yet know the sun subdued not of the sea,

Nor weep nor doubt that still the spirit is whole,

And life and death but shadows of the soul.