Elizabeth Browning - The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 2

"At dawn and at eve, mother, who sitteth there
With the brown rosary never used for a prayer?
Stoop low, mother, low! If we went there to see,
What an ugly great hole in that east wall must be
At dawn and at even!

"Who meet there, my mother, at dawn and at even?
Who meet by that wall, never looking to heaven?
O sweetest my sister, what doeth with thee
The ghost of a nun with a brown rosary
And a face turned from heaven?

"Saint Agnes o'erwatcheth my dreams and erewhile
I have felt through mine eyelids the warmth of her smile;
But last night, as a sadness like pity came o'er her,
She whispered – 'Say two prayers at dawn for Onora:
The Tempted is sinning.'"

"Onora, Onora!" they heard her not coming,
Not a step on the grass, not a voice through the gloaming;
But her mother looked up, and she stood on the floor
Fair and still as the moonlight that came there before,
And a smile just beginning:

It touches her lips but it dares not arise
To the height of the mystical sphere of her eyes,
And the large musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorry
Sing on like the angels in separate glory
Between clouds of amber;

For the hair droops in clouds amber-coloured till stirred
Into gold by the gesture that comes with a word;
While – O soft! – her speaking is so interwound
Of the dim and the sweet, 't is a twilight of sound
And floats through the chamber.

"Since thou shrivest my brother, fair mother," said she
"I count on thy priesthood for marrying of me,
And I know by the hills that the battle is done.
That my lover rides on, will be here with the sun,
'Neath the eyes that behold thee."

Her mother sat silent – too tender, I wis,
Of the smile her dead father smiled dying to kiss:
But the boy started up pale with tears, passion-wrought —
"O wicked fair sister, the hills utter nought!
If he cometh, who told thee?"

"I know by the hills," she resumed calm and clear,
"By the beauty upon them, that HE is anear:
Did they ever look so since he bade me adieu?
Oh, love in the waking, sweet brother, is true,
As Saint Agnes in sleeping!"

Half-ashamed and half-softened the boy did not speak,
And the blush met the lashes which fell on his cheek:
She bowed down to kiss him: dear saints, did he see
Or feel on her bosom the BROWN ROSARY,
That he shrank away weeping?

Must we stand so far, and she
So very fair?

As bodies be.

And she so mild?

As spirits when
They meeken, not to God, but men.

And she so young, that I who bring
Good dreams for saintly children, might
Mistake that small soft face to-night,
And fetch her such a blessèd thing
That at her waking she would weep
For childhood lost anew in sleep.
How hath she sinned?

In bartering love;
God's love for man's.

We may reprove
The world for this, not only her:
Let me approach to breathe away
This dust o' the heart with holy air.

Stand off! She sleeps, and did not pray.

Did none pray for her?

Ay, a child, —
Who never, praying, wept before:
While, in a mother undefiled,
Prayer goeth on in sleep, as true
And pauseless as the pulses do.

Then I approach.

It is not WILLED.

One word: is she redeemed?

No more!
The place is filled.

Forbear that dream – forbear that dream! too near to heaven it leaned.

Nay, leave me this – but only this! 't is but a dream, sweet fiend!

It is a thought .

A sleeping thought – most innocent of good:
It doth the Devil no harm, sweet fiend! it cannot if it would.
I say in it no holy hymn, I do no holy work,
I scarcely hear the sabbath-bell that chimeth from the kirk.

Forbear that dream – forbear that dream!

Nay, let me dream at least.
That far-off bell, it may be took for viol at a feast:
I only walk among the fields, beneath the autumn-sun,
With my dead father, hand in hand, as I have often done.

Forbear that dream – forbear that dream!

Nay, sweet fiend, let me go:
I never more can walk with him , oh, never more but so!
For they have tied my father's feet beneath the kirk-yard stone,
Oh, deep and straight! oh, very straight! they move at nights alone:
And then he calleth through my dreams, he calleth tenderly,
"Come forth, my daughter, my beloved, and walk the fields with me!"

Forbear that dream, or else disprove its pureness by a sign.

Speak on, thou shalt be satisfied, my word shall answer thine.
I heard a bird which used to sing when I a child was praying,
I see the poppies in the corn I used to sport away in:
What shall I do – tread down the dew and pull the blossoms blowing?
Or clap my wicked hands to fright the finches from the rowan?

Thou shalt do something harder still. Stand up where thou dost stand
Among the fields of Dreamland with thy father hand in hand,
And clear and slow repeat the vow, declare its cause and kind,
Which not to break, in sleep or wake thou bearest on thy mind.

I bear a vow of sinful kind, a vow for mournful cause;
I vowed it deep, I vowed it strong, the spirits laughed applause:
The spirits trailed along the pines low laughter like a breeze,
While, high atween their swinging tops, the stars appeared to freeze.