English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
595. Sonnets from the Portuguese
XVIIII
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully,
I ring out to the full brown length and say
“Take it.” My day of youth went yesterday:
My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee,
Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree,
As girls do, any more; it only may
Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears,
Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside
Through sorrow’s trick. I thought the funeral-shears
Would take this first, but love is justified,—
Take it thou, finding pure, from all those years,
The kiss my mother left here when she died.