Yet, envious coveter Of other's grieving! This lonely longing yet 'Scapeth your reaving. Cruel to take from a Sinner his Heaven! Think you with contrite smiles To be forgiven? _Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_ Penitent! give me back Angels, and Heaven; Render your stolen self, And be forgiven! How frontier Heaven from you? For my soul prays, Sweet, Still to your face in Heaven, Heaven in your face, Sweet! _Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals!_ HER PORTRAIT Oh, but the heavenly grammar did I hold Of that high speech which angels' tongues turn gold! So should her deathless beauty take no wrong, Praised in her own great kindred's fit and cognate tongue. Or if that language yet with us abode Which Adam in the garden talked with God! But our untempered speech descends--poor heirs! Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's bricklayers: Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit, Strong but to damn, not memorise, a spirit! A cheek, a lip, a limb, a bosom, they Move with light ease in speech of working-day; And women we do use to praise even so. But here the gates we burst, and to the temple go. Their praise were her dispraise; who dare, who dare, Adulate the seraphim for their burning hair? How, if with them I dared, here should I dare it? How praise the woman, who but know the spirit? How praise the colour of her eyes, uncaught While they were coloured with her varying thought? How her mouth's shape, who only use to know What tender shape her speech will fit it to? Or her lips' redness, when their joinèd veil Song's fervid hand has parted till it wore them pale?