Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Isobel's Child lyrics

I. To rest the weary nurse has gone:  An eight-day watch had watchèd she, Still rocking beneath sun and moon  The baby on her knee, Till Isobel its mother said "The fever waneth—wend to bed,  For now the watch comes round to me." II.  Then wearily the nurse did throw   Her pallet in the darkest place Of that sick room, and slept and dreamed:  For, as the gusty wind did blow   The night-lamp's flare across her face, She saw or seemed to see, but dreamed,  That the poplars tall on the opposite hill, The seven tall poplars on the hill, Did clasp the setting sun until His rays dropped from him, pined and still  As blossoms in frost, Till he waned and paled, so weirdly crossed, To the colour of moonlight which doth pa** Over the dank ridged churchyard gra**. The poplars held the sun, and he The eyes of the nurse that they should not see —Not for a moment, the babe on her knee, Though she shuddered to feel that it grew to be Too chill, and lay too heavily. III. She only dreamed; for all the while  'T was Lady Isobel that kept  The little baby: and it slept Fast, warm, as if its mother's smile, Laden with love's dewy weight, And red as rose of Harpocrate Dropt upon its eyelids, pressed Lashes to cheek in a sealèd rest. IV. And more and more smiled Isobel To see the baby sleep so well— She knew not that she smiled. Against the lattice, dull and wild Drive the heavy droning drops,  Drop by drop, the sound being one; As momently time's segments fall On the ear of God, who hears through all  Eternity's unbroken monotone: And more and more smiled Isobel To see the baby sleep so well— She knew not that she smiled. The wind in intermission stops  Down in the beechen forest,   Then cries aloud  As one at the sorest,   Self-stung, self-driven, And rises up to its very tops, Stiffening erect the branches bowed,  Dilating with a tempest-soul The trees that with their dark hands break Through their own outline, and heavy roll  Shadows as ma**ive as clouds in heaven   Across the castle lake And more and more smiled Isobel To see the baby sleep so well; She knew not that she smiled; She knew not that the storm was wild; Through the uproar drear she could not hear The castle clock which struck anear— She heard the low, light breathing of her child. V. O sight for wondering look! While the external nature broke Into such abandonment, While the very mist, heart-rent By the lightning, seemed to eddy Against nature, with a din,— A sense of silence and of steady Natural calm appeared to come From things without, and enter in The human creature's room. VI. So motionless she sate,  The babe asleep upon her knees, You might have dreamed their souls had gone Away to things inanimate, In such to live, in such to moan; And that their bodies had ta'en back,  In mystic change, all silences That cross the sky in cloudy rack, Or dwell beneath the reedy ground In waters safe from their own sound:   Only she wore The deepening smile I named before, And that a deepening love expressed; And who at once can love and rest? VII. In sooth the smile that then was keeping Watch upon the baby sleeping,  Floated with its tender light Downward, from the drooping eyes, Upward, from the lips apart,  Over cheeks which had grown white With an eight-day weeping: All smiles come in such a wise  Where tears shall fall or have of old— Like northern lights that fill the heart  Of heaven in sign of cold. VIII. Motionless she sate. Her hair had fallen by its weight On each side of her smile and lay Very blackly on the arm Where the baby nestled warm, Pale as baby carved in stone Seen by glimpses of the moon Up a dark cathedral aisle: But, through the storm, no moonbeam fell  Upon the child of Isobel— Perhaps you saw it by the ray  Alone of her still smile. IX.  A solemn thing it is to me   To look upon a babe that sleeps   Wearing in its spirit-deeps  The undeveloped mystery   Of our Adam's taint and woe,  Which, when they developed be,   Will not let it slumber so;  Lying new in life beneath  The shadow of the coming d**h,  With that soft, low, quiet breath,   As if it felt the sun;  Knowing all things by their blooms,  Not their roots, yea, sun and sky  Only by the warmth that comes  Out of each, earth only by   The pleasant hues that o'er it run,  And human love by drops of sweet   White nourishment still hanging round   The little mouth so slumber-bound:  All which broken sentiency  And conclusion incomplete,   Will gather and unite and climb  To an immortality   Good or evil, each sublime,  Through life and d**h to life again.   O little lids, now folded fast,   Must ye learn to drop at last  Our large and burning tears?    O warm quick body, must thou lie,  When the time comes round to die,   Still from all the whirl of years,  Bare of all the joy and pain?  O small frail being, wilt thou stand  At God's right hand,  Lifting up those sleeping eyes  Dilated by great destinies, To an endless waking? thrones and seraphim. Through the long ranks of their solemnities, Sunning thee with calm looks of Heaven's surprise,  But thine alone on Him? Or else, self-willed, to tread the Godless place, (God keep thy will!) feel thine own energies Cold, strong, objèctless, like a dead man's clasp, The sleepless d**hless life within thee grasp,— While myriad faces, like one changeless face, With woe not love's, shall gla** thee everywhere And overcome thee with thine own despair? X. More soft, less solemn images Drifted o'er the lady's heart  Silently as snow. She had seen eight days depart Hour by hour, on bended knees,  With pale-wrung hands and prayings low And broken, through which came the sound Of tears that fell against the ground, Making sad stops.—"Dear Lord, dear Lord!" She still had prayed, (the heavenly word Broken by an earthly sigh) —"Thou who didst not erst deny The mother-joy to Mary mild, Blessèd in the blessèd child Which hearkened in meek babyhood Her cradle-hymn, albeit used To all that music interfused In breasts of angels high and good! Oh, take not, Lord, my babe away— Oh, take not to thy songful heaven The pretty baby thou hast given, Or ere that I have seen him play Around his father's knees and known That he knew how my love has gone From all the world to him. Think, God among the cherubim, How I shall shiver every day In thy June sunshine, knowing where The grave-gra** keeps it from his fair Still cheeks: and feel, at every tread, His little body, which is dead And hidden in thy turfy fold, Doth make thy whole warm earth a-cold! O God, I am so young, so young—  I am not used to tears at nights Instead of slumber—not to prayer With sobbing lips and hands out-wrung! Thou knowest all my prayings were  'I bless thee, God, for past delights— Thank God!' I am not used to bear Hard thoughts of d**h; the earth doth cover No face from me of friend or lover: And must the first who teaches me The form of shrouds and funerals, be Mine own first-born belovèd? he Who taught me first this mother-love? Dear Lord who spreadest out above Thy loving, transpierced hands to meet All lifted hearts with blessing sweet,— Pierce not my heart, my tender heart Thou madest tender! Thou who art So happy in thy heaven alway, Take not mine only bliss away!" XI. She so had prayed: and God, who hears Through seraph-songs the sound of tears From that belovèd babe had ta'en The fever and the beating pain. And more and more smiled Isobel To see the baby sleep so well,  (She knew not that she smiled, I wis) Until the pleasant gradual thought Which near her heart the smile enwrought, Now soft and slow, itself did seem To float along a happy dream,  Beyond it into speech like this. XII. "I prayed for thee, my little child,  And God has heard my prayer! And when thy babyhood is gone, We two together undefiled By men's repinings, will kneel down  Upon His earth which will be fair (Not covering thee, sweet!) to us twain,  And give Him thankful praise." XIII. Dully and wildly drives the rain: Against the lattices drives the rain. XIV. "I thank Him now, that I can think  Of those same future days, Nor from the harmless image shrink  Of what I there might see— Strange babies on their mothers' knee, Whose innocent soft faces might From off mine eyelids strike the light,  With looks not meant for me!" XV. Gustily blows the wind through the rain, As against the lattices drives the rain. XVI. "But now, O baby mine, together,  We turn this hope of ours again To many an hour of summer weather, When we shall sit and intertwine  Our spirits, and instruct each other  In the pure loves of child and mother! Two human loves make one divine." XVII. The thunder tears through the wind and the rain, As full on the lattices drives the rain. XVIII. "My little child, what wilt thou choose?  Now let me look at thee and ponder. What gladness, from the gladnesses  Futurity is spreading under Thy gladsome sight? Beneath the trees Wilt thou lean all day, and lose Thy spirit with the river seen Intermittently between  The winding beechen alleys,— Half in labour, half repose,  Like a shepherd keeping sheep,  Thou, with only thoughts to keep Which never a bound will overpa**, And which are innocent as those  That feed among Arcadian valleys   Upon the dewy gra**?" XIX. The large white owl that with age is blind,  That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow, Is carried away in a gust of wind; His wings could beat him not as fast As he goeth now the lattice past;  He is borne by the winds, the rains do follow His white wings to the blast outflowing,   He hooteth in going, And still, in the lightnings, coldly glitter   His round unblinking eyes XX. "Or, baby, wilt thou think it fitter  To be eloquent and wise, One upon whose lips the air  Turns to solemn verities For men to breathe anew, and win A deeper-seated life within? Wilt be a philosopher,  By whose voice the earth and skies Shall speak to the unborn? Or a poet, broadly spreading  The golden immortalities Of thy soul on natures lorn  And poor of such, them all to guard From their decay,—beneath thy treading, Earth's flowers recovering hues of Eden,— And stars, drawn downward by thy looks, To shine ascendant in thy books?" XXI.  The tame hawk in the castle-yard, How it screams to the lightning, with its wet Jagged plumes overhanging the parapet! And at the lady's door the hound Scratches with a crying sound. XXII. "But, O my babe, thy lids are laid  Close, fast upon thy cheek, And not a dream of power and sheen Can make a pa**age up between; Thy heart is of thy mother's made,  Thy looks are very meek, And it will be their chosen place To rest on some beloved face,  As these on thine, and let the noise Of the whole world go on nor drown  The tender silence of thy joys: Or when that silence shall have grown  Too tender for itself, the same Yearning for sound,—to look above And utter its one meaning, LOVE,  That He may hear His name." XXIII. No wind, no rain, no thunder! The waters had trickled not slowly, The thunder was not spent Nor the wind near finishing; Who would have said that the storm was diminishing? No wind, no rain, no thunder! Their noises dropped asunder From the earth and the firmament, From the towers and the lattices, Abrupt and echoless As ripe fruits on the ground unshaken wholly  As life in d**h. And sudden and solemn the silence fell, Startling the heart of Isobel  As the tempest could not: Against the door went panting the breath Of the lady's hound whose cry was still,  And she, constrained howe'er she would not, Lifted her eyes and saw the moon Looking out of heaven alone  Upon the poplared hill,—  A calm of God, made visible  That men might bless it at their will. XXIV. The moonshine on the baby's face  Falleth clear and cold: The mother's looks have fallen back  To the same place: Because no moon with silver rack, Nor broad sunrise in jasper skies  Has power to hold  Our loving eyes, Which still revert, as ever must Wonder and Hope, to gaze on the dust. XXV. The moonshine on the baby's face  Cold and clear remaineth; The mother's looks do shrink away,— The mother's looks return to stay,  As charmèd by what paineth: Is any glamour in the case?  Is it dream, or is it sight? Hath the change upon the wild  Elements that sign the night, Pa**ed upon the child?  It is not dream, but sight. XXVI. The babe has awakened from sleep  And unto the gaze of its mother,  Bent over it, lifted another—  Not the baby-looks that go  Unaimingly to and fro, But an earnest gazing deep Such as soul gives soul at length  When by work and wail of years It winneth a solemn strength  And mourneth as it wears. A strong man could not brook,  With pulse unhurried by fears, To meet that baby's look  O'erglazed by manhood's tears, The tears of a man full grown, With a power to wring our own, In the eyes all undefiled Of a little three-months' child— To see that babe-brow wrought By the witnessing of thought  To judgment's prodigy, And the small soft mouth unweaned, By mother's kiss o'erleaned, (Putting the sound of loving Where no sound else was moving  Except the speechless cry) Quickened to mind's expression, Shaped to articulation, Yea, uttering words, yea, naming woe,  In tones that with it strangely went  Because so baby-innocent, As the child spake out to the mother, so:— XXVII. "O mother, mother, loose thy prayer!  Christ's name hath made it strong. It bindeth me, it holdeth me With its most loving cruelty,  From floating my new soul along  The happy heavenly air. It bindeth me, it holdeth me  In all this dark, upon this dull Low earth, by only weepers trod. It bindeth me, it holdeth me!  Mine angel looketh sorrowful Upon the face of God. XXVIII. "Mother, mother, can I dream  Beneath your earthly trees? I had a vision and a gleam,  I heard a sound more sweet than these When rippled by the wind:  Did you see the Dove with wings  Bathed in golden glisterings From a sunless light behind,  Dropping on me from the sky, Soft as mother's kiss, until I seemed to leap and yet was still?  Saw you how His love-large eye Looked upon me mystic calms,  Till the power of His divine  Vision was indrawn to mine? XXIX. "Oh, the dream within the dream!  I saw celestial places even. Oh, the vistas of high palms  Making finites of delight  Through the heavenly infinite, Lifting up their green still tops  To the heaven of heaven! Oh, the sweet life-tree that drops Shade like light across the river Glorified in its for-ever  Flowing from the Throne! Oh, the shining holinesses Of the thousand, thousand faces  God-sunned by the thronèd One, And made intense with such a love That, though I saw them turned above, Each loving seemed for also me! And, oh, the Unspeakable, the He, The manifest in secrecies  Yet of mine own heart partaker With the overcoming look Of One who hath been once forsook  And blesseth the forsaker! Mother, mother, let me go Toward the Face that looketh so!  Through the mystic wingèd Four Whose are inward, outward eyes Dark with light of mysteries  And the restless evermore 'Holy, holy, holy,'—through The sevenfold Lamps that burn in view  Of cherubim and seraphim,— Through the four-and-twenty crowned Stately elders white around,  Suffer me to go to Him! XXX. "Is your wisdom very wise,  Mother, on the narrow earth,  Very happy, very worth That I should stay to learn? Are these air-corrupting sighs  Fashioned by unlearnèd breath? Do the students' lamps that burn  All night, illumine d**h? Mother, albeit this be so, Loose thy prayer and let me go Where that bright chief angel stands Apart from all his brother bands, Too glad for smiling, having bent In angelic wilderment O'er the depths of God, and brought Reeling thence one only thought To fill his own eternity. He the teacher is for me— He can teach what I would know— Mother, mother, let me go! XXXI. "Can your poet make an Eden  No winter will undo, And light a starry fire while heeding  His hearth's is burning too? Drown in music the earth's din, And keep his own wild soul within  The law of his own harmony? Mother, albeit this be so, Let me to my heaven go!  A little harp me waits thereby, A harp whose strings are golden all And tuned to music spherical, Hanging on the green life-tree Where no willows ever be. Shall I miss that harp of mine? Mother, no!—the Eye divine Turned upon it, makes it shine; And when I touch it, poems sweet Like separate souls shall fly from it, Each to the immortal fytte. We shall all be poets there, Gazing on the chiefest Fair. XXXII. "Love! earth's love! and can we love Fixedly where all things move? Can the sinning love each other?  Mother, mother, I tremble in thy close embrace, I feel thy tears adown my face,  Thy prayers do keep me out of bliss— O dreary earthly love! Loose thy prayer and let me go  To the place which loving is Yet not sad; and when is given Escape to thee from this below, Thou shalt behold me that I wait For thee beside the happy Gate, And silence shall be up in heaven  To hear our greeting kiss." XXXIII.  The nurse awakes in the morning sun,   And starts to see beside her bed   The lady with a grandeur spread  Like pathos o'er her face, as one  God-satisfied and earth-undone;   The babe upon her arm was dead: And the nurse could utter forth no cry,— She was awed by the calm in the mother's eye. XXXIV. "Wake, nurse!" the lady said;  "We are waking—he and I—  I, on earth, and he, in sky: And thou must help me to o'erlay With garment white this little clay  Which needs no more our lullaby. XXXV. "I changed the cruel prayer I made, And bowed my meekened face, and prayed That God would do His will; and thus He did it, nurse! He parted us: And His sun shows victorious The dead calm face,—and I am calm, And Heaven is hearkening a new psalm. XXXVI. "This earthly noise is too anear, Too loud, and will not let me hear The little harp. My d**h will soon Make silence."   And a sense of tune, A satisfied love meanwhile Which nothing earthly could despoil, Sang on within her soul. XXXVII.     Oh you, Earth's tender and impa**ioned few, Take courage to entrust your love To Him so named who guards above  Its ends and shall fulfil! Breaking the narrow prayers that may Befit your narrow hearts, away  In His broad, loving will.