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Title: A Denial
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning [
More Titles by Browning]
I.
We have met late--it is too late to meet,
O friend, not more than friend!
Death's forecome shroud is tangled round my feet,
And if I step or stir, I touch the end.
In this last jeopardy
Can I approach thee, I, who cannot move?
How shall I answer thy request for love?
Look in my face and see.
II.
I love thee not, I dare not love thee! go
In silence; drop my hand.
If thou seek roses, seek them where they blow
In garden-alleys, not in desert-sand.
Can life and death agree,
That thou shouldst stoop thy song to my complaint?
I cannot love thee. If the word is faint,
Look in my face and see.
III.
I might have loved thee in some former days.
Oh, then, my spirits had leapt
As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise!
Before these faded cheeks were overwept,
Had this been asked of me,
To love thee with my whole strong heart and head,--
I should have said still ... yes, but _smiled_ and said,
"Look in my face and see!"
IV.
But now ... God sees me, God, who took my heart
And drowned it in life's surge.
In all your wide warm earth I have no part--
A light song overcomes me like a dirge.
Could Love's great harmony
The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose,
Not weigh me down? am _I_ a wife to choose?
Look in my face and see--
V.
While I behold, as plain as one who dreams,
Some woman of full worth,
Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's,
Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth;
One younger, more thought-free
And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget,
With brighter eyes than these ... which are not wet ...
Look in my face and see!
VI.
So farewell thou, whom I have known too late
To let thee come so near.
Be counted happy while men call thee great,
And one beloved woman feels thee dear!--
Not I!--that cannot be.
I am lost, I am changed,--I must go farther, where
The change shall take me worse, and no one dare
Look in my face and see.
VII.
Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine
I bless thee from all such!
I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine,
Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch
Of loyal troth. For me,
I love thee not, I love thee not!--away!
Here's no more courage in my soul to say
"Look in my face and see."
[The end]
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem: Denial
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