I know not too well how I found my way home in the night. There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right, Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware: I repressed, I got thro' them as hardly, as stragglingly there, As a runner beset by the populace famished for news-- Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews; And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not, 320 For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest, Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest. Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth-- Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth; In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills; In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills; In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe: 330 E'en the serpent that slid away silent--he felt the new law. The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers; The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers; And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low. With their obstinate, all but hushed voices--"E'en so, it is so!" * * * * * ONE WORD MORE TO E.B.B. I There they are, my fifty men and women Naming me the fifty poems finished! Take them, Love, the book and me together; Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. II Rafael deg. made a century of sonnets, deg.5 Made and wrote them in a certain volume Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil Else he only used to draw Madonnas; These, the world might view--but one, the volume. Who that one, deg. you ask? Your heart instructs you. deg.10 Did she live and love it all her lifetime? Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, Die, and let it drop beside her pillow Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory, Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving-- Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's, Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's? III You and I would rather read that volume (Taken to his beating bosom by it), Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, 20 Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas-- Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno, Her, that visits Florence in a vision, Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre-- Seen by us and all the world in circle. IV