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Home  »  The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse  »  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

Sonnets from the Portuguese: I. ‘Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!’

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

UNLIKE are we, unlike, O princely Heart!

Unlike our uses and our destinies.

Our minist’ring two angels look surprise

On one another, as they strike athwart

Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art

A guest for queens to social pageantries,

With gages from a hundred brighter eyes

Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part

Of chief musician. What hast thou to do

With looking from the lattice-lights at me—

A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through

The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?

The chrism is on thine head—on mine the dew—

And Death must dig the level where these agree.