Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/74

This page has been validated.
68
SONNETS.

LIFE.


EACH creature holds an insular point in space:
Yet what man stirs a finger, breathes a sound,
But all the multitudinous beings round
In all the countless worlds, with time and place
For their conditions, down to the central base,
Thrill, haply, in vibration and rebound,
Life answering life across the vast profound,
In full antiphony, by a common grace!—
I think, this sudden joyaunce which illumes
A child's mouth sleeping, unaware may run
From some soul newly loosened from earth's tombs:
I think, this passionate sigh, which, half-begun,
I stifle back, may reach and stir the plumes
Of God's calm angel standing in the sun.



LOVE.


WE cannot live, except, thus, mutually,
We alternate, aware or unaware,
The reflex act of life: and when we bear
Our virtue outward most impulsively,
Most full of invocation, and to be
Most instantly compellant, certes, there,
We live most life, whoever breathes most air

And counts his dying years by sun and sea.