Sonnets from the Portuguese

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of being and ideal grace.I love thee to the level of every day'sMost quiet need, by sun and candle-light.I love thee freely, as men strive for right.I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.I love thee with the passion put to useIn my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.I love thee with a love I seemed to loseWith my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,I shall but love thee better after death.”

“Quick-loving hearts ... may quickly loathe.”

“If thou must love me, let it be for naughtExcept for love's sake only. Do not say,'I love her for her smile—her look—her wayOf speaking gently,—for a trick of thoughtThat falls in well with mine, and certes broughtA sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—For these things in themselves, Belovèd, mayBe changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,May be unwrought so. Neither love me forThine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:A creature might forget to weep, who boreThy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!But love me for love's sake, that evermoreThou mayst love on, through love's eternity.If Thou Must Love Me”

“And yet, because I love thee, I obtainFrom that same love this vindicating grace,To live on still in love, and yet in vain”

“I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,Those of my own life, who by turns had flungA shadow across me.”

“Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.”

“Will that light come again,As now these tears come...falling hot and real!”

“My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!And yet they seem alive and quiveringAgainst my tremulous hands which loose the stringAnd let them drop down on my knee to-night.This said, -- he wished to have me in his sightOnce, as a friend: this fixed a day in springTo come and touch my hand ... a simple thing,Yet I wept for it! -- this, ... the paper's light ...Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailedAs if God's future thundered on my past.This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paledWith lying at my heart that beat too fast.And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availedIf, what this said, I dared repeat at last!”

“Men could not part us with their worldly jars,Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars,--And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,We should but vow the faster for the stars.”

“Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.”

“And wilt thou have me fashion into speechThe love I bear thee, finding words enough,And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,Between our faces, to cast light on each? -I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teachMy hand to hold my spirits so far offFrom myself--me--that I should bring thee proofIn words, of love hid in me out of reach.Nay, let the silence of my womanhoodCommend my woman-love to thy belief, -Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,And rend the garment of my life, in brief,By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.”

“But love me for love's sake, that evermoreThou may'st love on, through love's eternity.”

“Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeedAnd worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,Let temple burn, or flax; an equal lightLeaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:And love is fire. And when I say at needI love thee ... mark! ... I love thee -- in thy sightI stand transfigured, glorified aright,With conscience of the new rays that proceedOut of my face toward thine. There's nothing lowIn love, when love the lowest: meanest creaturesWho love God, God accepts while loving so.And what I feel, across the inferior featuresOf what I am, doth flash itself, and showHow that great work of Love enhances Nature's.”

“Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall standHenceforth in thy shadow. NevermoreAlone upon the threshold of my doorOf individual life, I shall commandThe uses of my soul, nor lift my handSerenely in the sunshine as before,Without the sense of that which I forbore--Thy touch upon the palm. The widest landDoom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mineWith pulses that beat double. What I doAnd what I dream include thee, as the wineMust taste of its own grapes. And when I sueGod for myself, He hears that name of thine,And sees within my eyes the tears of two.”

“I thought once how Theocritus had sungOf the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,Who each one in a gracious hand appearsTo bear a gift for mortals, old or young;And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,Those of my own life, who by turns had flungA shadow across me. Straightaway I was 'ware,So weeping, how a mystic Shape did moveBehind me, and drew me backward by the hair;And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,--Guess now who holds thee?--Death, I said, But, there,The silver answer rang,--Not Death, but Love.”

“The picture of helpless indolence she calls herselfsublimely helpless and impotentI had done living I thoughtWas ever life so like death before? My face was so close against the tombstones, that there seemed no room for tears.”

“The soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,And placed it by thee on a golden throne,-- And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)Is by thee only, whom I love alone.”

“I love thee to the level of every day'sMost quiet need, by sun and candle-light.”

“Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.”

“Why, conqueringMay prove as lordly and complete a thingIn lifting upward, as in crushing low!And as a vanquished soldier yields his swordTo one who lifts him from the bloody earth,Even so, Belovëd, I at last record,Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth,I rise above abasement at the word.Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth!”

“Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brinkOf obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,Was caught up into love, and taught the wholeOf life in a new rhythm.”

“Behold and seeWhat a great heap of grief lay hid in me,And how the red wild sparkles dimly burnThrough the ashen greyness.- Sonnet V”

“How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fineSad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?A shade, in which to sing—of palm or pine?A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.”

“What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wineMust taste of its own grapes. And when I sueGod for myself, He hears that name of thine,And sees within my eyes the tears of two.”

“I never gave a lock of hair awayTo a man, Dearest, except this to thee,Which now upon my fingers thoughtfullyI ring out to the full brown length and say“Take it.”  My day of youth went yesterday;My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee,Nor plant I it from rose- or myrtle-tree,As girls do, any more: it only mayNow shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears,Taught drooping from the head that hangs asideThrough sorrow’s trick.  I thought the funeral-shearsWould take this first, but Love is justified,—Take it thou,—finding pure, from all those years,The kiss my mother left here when she died.”

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach.”

“Let the world's sharpness like a clasping knife Shut in upon itself and do no harmIn this close hand of Love, now soft and warm, And let us hear no sound of human strifeAfter the click of the shutting.- Sonnet XXIV”