Sonnet Lxxxvi: Lost Days
The lost days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?
I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
“I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?”
“And I—and I—thyself,” (lo! each one saith,)
“And thou thyself to all eternity!”
Sonnet Xci: Lost On Both Sides
As when two men have loved a woman well,
Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit;
Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet
And the long pauses of this wedding-bell;
Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
The two lives left that most of her can tell:—
So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
And Peace before their faces perished since:
So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
They roam together now, and wind among
Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.
Lost On Both Sides
As when two men have loved a woman well,
Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit;
Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet
And the long pauses of this wedding bell;
Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
The two lives left that most of her can tell:
So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
And Peace before their faces perished since:
So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
They roam together now, and wind among
Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.
Untimely Lost Oliver Madox Brown Born 1855; Died 1874
UPON the landscape of his coming life
A youth high-gifted gazed, and found it fair:
The heights of work, the floods of praise, were there.
What friendships, what desires, what love, what wife?—
All things to come. The fanned springtime was rife
With imminent solstice; and the ardent air
Had summer sweets and autumn fires to bear;—
Heart's ease full-pulsed with perfect strength for strife.
A mist has risen: we see the youth no more:
Does he see on and strive on? And may we
Late-tottering world-worn hence, find his to be
The young strong hand which helps us up that shore?
Or, echoing the No More with Nevermore,
Must Night be ours and his? We hope: and he?
