Prometheus Bound, and other poems/The Claim

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

THE CLAIM.

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I.

GRIEF sate upon a rock and sighed one day:
⁠(Sighing is all her rest!)
"Wellaway, wellaway, ah, wellaway!"
As ocean beat the stone, did she her breast. . .
"Ah, wellaway! . . ah me! alas, ah me!"
⁠Such sighing uttered she.

II.

A Cloud spake out of heaven, as soft as rain
⁠That falls on water; "Lo,
The Winds have wandered from me! I remain
Alone in the sky-waste, and cannot go
To lean my whiteness on the mountain blue,
⁠Till wanted for more dew.

III.

"The Sun has struck my brain to weary peace,
⁠Whereby, constrained and pale,
I spin for him a larger golden fleece
Than Jason's, yearning for as full a sail!
Sweet Grief, when thou hast sighed to thy mind,
⁠Give me a sigh for wind,—

 

IV.

And let it carry me adown the west!"
⁠But Love, who, prostrated,
Lay at Grief's foot, . . his lifted eyes possessed
Of her full image, . . answered in her stead:
"Now nay, now nay! she shall not give away
What is my wealth, for any Cloud that flieth.
⁠Where Grief makes moan,
⁠Love claims his own!
And therefore do I lie here night and day,
And eke my life out with the breath she sigheth."