FOUR SONNETS BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. I. 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 breaking new the bond of 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. II. 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! But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth Show out her full force on another soul, The conscience and the concentration, both, Make mere life, Love! For life in perfect whole And aim consummated, is Love in sooth, As nature's magnet-heat rounds pole with pole. III. HEAVEN AND EARTH. 1845. "And there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour."-- Revelation. God, who with thunders and great voices kept Beneath thy throne, and stars most silver-paced Along the inferior gyres, and open-faced Melodious angels round, canst intercept Music with music, yet, at will, hast swept All back--all back--(said he in Patmos placed) To fill the heavens with silence of the waste, Which lasted half an hour! Lo! I, who have wept All day and night, beseech Thee by my tears, And by that dread response of curse and groan Men alternate across these hemispheres, Vouchsafe as such a half-hour's hush alone, In compensation of our noisy years! As heaven has paused from song, let earth, from moan. IV. THE PROSPECT. 1845. Methinks we do as fretful children do, Leaning their faces on the window-pane To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain, And shut the sky and landscape from their view. And thus, alas! since God the maker drew A mystic separation twixt those twain, The life beyond us and our souls in pain, We lose the prospect which we are called unto, By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong, O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath, And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong, That so, as life's appointment issueth, Thy vision may be clear to watch along The sunset consummation-lights of death.