The Heart
TWO SONNETS
(To my Critic, who had objected to the phrase—‘The heart’s burning floors.’)
I
THE heart you hold too small and local thing,Such spacious terms of edifice to bear.And yet, since Poesy first shook out her wing,The mighty Love has been impalaced there;That has she given him as his wide demesne,And for his sceptre ample empery;Against its door to knock has Beauty beenContent; it has its purple canopyA dais for the sovereign lady spreadOf many a lover, who the heaven would thinkToo low an awning for her sacred head.The world, from star to sea, cast down its brink—Yet shall that chasm, till He Who these did buildAn awful Curtius make Him, yawn unfilled.
II
O nothing, in this corporal earth of man,That to the imminent heaven of his high soulResponds with colour and with shadow, canLack correlated greatness. If the scrollWhere thoughts lie fast in spell of hieroglyphBe mighty through its mighty habitants;If God be in His Name; grave potence ifThe sounds unbind of hieratic chants;All’s vast that vastness means. Nay, I affirmNature is whole in her least things exprest,Nor know we with what scope God builds the worm.Our towns are copied fragments from our breast;And all man’s Babylons strive but to impartThe grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.