Charles Hammond Gibson

“ Are those which break in twain the lover’s heart,
Which cling to life when love from life doth part,
And cause it to take sorrow for its share.
In vain do men go forth, in dim despair,
Seeking to extricate Love’s poisoned dart
From some dark spot whence it would not depart,
And still return to find it fastened there.
O god of Love! Some mercy to thy swains
Show in the hours of agony they feel!
Couldst thou but suffer half they do endure,
Or feel in part the measure of their pains;
With something, thou wouldst try their wounds to heal,
Or else endeavor thy disease to cure! ”

“ To honor those, though thou mayst love them not,
Who love thy soul, when flesh may turn to dust.
For if to honor love thou rightly triest,
Thy name shall live on earth without a blot.
{92} XCII
BELIEVE not, gentle maid, that all is won
When first thou dost behold thy lover dear;
Nor yet that all thy path lies fair and clear
From love’s first charm until its work be done.
A fickle child thou comest thereupon,
Whom thou mayst learn in time to view with fear.
Cupid, though young, may cast a shadow drear,
Whose chilling gloom shall hide thee from the sun. ”

“ That I am all thine own, and not in part
The man thou dost possess and captivate?
Still, while I thank the gods, I would berate
The irony of nature that doth start
In me the wound that Cupid’s fiery dart
Hath caused to flow, and mourn it, now too late.
Why must the mistress of emotion give
To one a portion of divine desire,
And to another an unending flow
Of love’s untempered thought, that cannot live,
Save in some reservoir, that must inspire
The whole of thy fair being love to know? ”

“ Despite the momentary doubt, however, the next six sonnets are rhapsodic in celebration of the perfect union of feeling that binds the two hearts. “For love at last walks hand in hand with me,” he sings. And there seems to lurk in all their association the atmosphere of a conviction that happiness is finally to crown their lives. But the charm is snapped. The woman has not yet “drunk the cup of worldly pleasure dry.” Betraying his trust again, she proves the fickle baseness of her nature. The wound she inflicts promises to be deep and lasting. ”

“ Think not alone that vanity may guard
Thy spirit from the friend that thou wouldst fling
So heedlessly aside. For life may bring
Its own swift sorrow, sad, or cold, or hard;
Then mayst thou think, perchance, of that young bard,
Who came to thee, his song of love to sing!
And when thy heart repine thee, if it doth,
Take from my own the sorrow thou hast given,
Like to a travesty of happiness,
Devoured in its fulness by a moth,
That eats the leaf from off the tree of Heaven,
And leaves the soul of man in loneliness!
{37} XXXVII
DIDST have, for me, one fleeting hour of love? ”

“ The soul of one who doth thine own admire,
Although thou givest in return but nought.
Were it but given to thine eye to see
The splendor of love’s passion in its prime,
Burning upon the rock of thine own being,
Nature might then increase her power in thee,
And thou might’st find a summit here to climb,
That would eclipse all objects thou art seeing.
{66} LXVI
IF in the years to come life bringeth thee
Some of love’s sorrow, to carry in thine hand;
If thou shouldst thus experience it, and
By its strange weight, be forced to think and see
What youth casts from it in its extasy ”

“ HOW little comfort is there in the thought,
Kind friends so often give love’s bleeding heart:
That love’s sharp pain grows less whene’er we part,
And leave behind the prize so dearly bought!
Yet who doth learn this lesson he hath taught,
So that when love shall send its subtle dart
Within his soul, he may the same impart
Unto himself, and leave what he hath sought?
I know but few, among them not myself,
Who practise this sad cure for love’s disease,
That do not bear some wound, in after years,
More painful than love’s wounding pain itself ”

“ The game of love thy beauty would inspire?
I cannot now extinguish the sweet fire
That burns within my soul. To thee I say,
I am in an imperishable way
Thy faithful friend, whose love shall never tire.
Dost thou then fear committal to be mine,
Even for a space, lest scandal touch thy name?
No thought is further from my wish towards thee.
To make our sweet companionship, in time,
Ripen to all that life may bring to fame,
Is my intention for thyself and me.
{35} XXXV
WHAT fault within me dost thou cultivate? ”

“ Dance round the corse of pleasure, dead in truth,
And in thine heart is echoed sorrow’s cry:
Then mayst thou come, with me, Love, to believe
That better than all else, is to obtain
The heart’s affection of one single being,
That unto thee like adamant may cleave;
And lighten on its way life’s palsied pain;
So that love’s heaven thou art alway seeing.
{84} LXXXIV
STRANGE law, whose reason man doth not possess,
That underlieth every age and clime,
That every human bosom must sometime
Its presence and its influence confess! ”

“ Than in old age thou shouldst aside be cast,
And when thou diest be but death’s repast:
Nought but cold clay (from which the soul should rise) .
Forget not that thy flesh must soon expire,
And thy youth’s veil from off thy face be torn.
Then must thou from deception soon retire,
When outward beauty is by time outworn.
Oh! I would see thy soul by love reborn:
Thou for thyself; I for my heart’s desire.
{99} XCIX
WHEN I alone unto my chamber go,
To fold the shroud of night about my heart,
And mourn an empty day that doth depart;
And with sad thought compose my spirit so ”

“ The end of this battle of man’s and woman’s heart against terms of alliance with the opposite sex is always, and has always been, inexplicable. A force deeper than can be comprehended or controlled—the vital preservation of the human kind—draws them by its inevitable laws towards the completion of its wonderful purpose in mortal existence: and yet the peculiar circumstances of man’s intellectual sovereignty over the destiny of his kind have set this purpose into warring factions. ”

“ Blends with the russet touch of summer’s hand;
And in thine eye, fresh youth, that fades not soon,
Lives in perpetual triumph, that is won
From country joys, waving their magic wand
Beneath the sunlit skies or silvery moon.
{108} CVIII
NO mind have I to tell thee all thou art,
Yet giving half, how can I keep the rest,
Since, knowing all, I see both worst and best,
And may not then in truth withhold a part?
Thy worst is like love’s dagger to my heart;
Like Satan, in angelic vestment drest,
That bringeth pain disguised into my breast.
Such is thy worst. Let me thy best impart. ”

“ In the circumstance which ensnares the man’s affections as he conceives them, the author finds fate offering no atonement in the end for the bitter trials of faith and patience endured; and in his art the poet offers no compromise to appease the sentimentalist. Truth is too insistent of her rights. Logic is too tenacious, too pitilessly inflexible in its purpose of carrying the intentions of fate to its grievous conclusions. Not at any point in the poem is there the least suggestion that chance will alter the fortunes of this battle of hearts. ”

“ OH, Love doth play such wanton tricks with men,
That all their frailty is at once revealed,
However much they wish it were concealed;
For common wisdom lies beyond their ken.
Like some slain victim toward a lion’s den,
So are they led, when once to love they yield.
The warrior tamed lays by his trusted shield;
The youth, his youth; old age its reason then.
In each condition is mankind disturbed,
Played false, or in unguarded mood surprised,
Made mad by overjoy, or else perturbed
Through sudden fear that love must be disguised. ”

“ And my sad soul, once more within love’s station,
As thy fair form doth twine my heart around!”
Here at last seems the surrender. Now that her “fair form doth twine” around his heart, the very suddenness of victory inspires even in its joy a dubious misgiving; so hard won has it been, that all the past anxiety and pain robs it of half the exquisite realization the event should bring. ”

“ Toward something higher than mere passion’s sway?
How canst thou then, in truth, to thine heart say
Thou hast fulfilled the duty of true love?
I fear me that, like many, thou dost find
A cruel joy in breaking this poor heart,
Whose only crime is that it loves too well.
Dost feel no obligation to be kind
To those who honor thee, nor to depart
From evils that no mortal can foretell?
{48} XLVIII
TO-morrow I must journey for a space. ”

“ Some lie that lives, yet dares not show its face?
Some tale that knows ’tis false as soon as told?
Such company my love doth poorly grace.
{117} CXVII
AND with the morn, though sunrise shall disperse
Those phantoms that dark hours oft have sought,
The spectral visage of some midnight thought
Doth still unite its poison to my verse.
In truth, suspicion makes a cruel nurse,
A poor companion, that the world hath brought
To tend the soul when, ill and overwrought,
It reaches by such means a stage still worse. ”

“ IN what uncertain guise doth passion strive
To work in men the mischief of their being;
Even as Satan doth pursue them, fleeing
In fear from their own shadows, while alive.
Yet, from the realm of passion we derive
Something that with true love is well agreeing;
That he who once hath seen is alway seeing,
Tragic, yet like a flower that doth revive. ”

“ In love’s ideal and Cupid’s vernal grove.
For love that doth prove false must die of grief.
{118} CXVIII
NOT every prince, nor king, nor emperor liveth,
After his years upon this earth pass by;
Not every painter’s brush, nor poet’s sigh
Bringeth to the world the passion that it giveth;
Not every sculptor’s chiselled stone outliveth
The fell destruction of time’s tenancy;
Nor men thought great, nor man’s inconstancy,
Commit the sins that life’s last court forgiveth,
Not such as these form that immortal band,
Whose names adorn the temples of past ages. ”

“ Waft the sweet air that fans with perfect ease
The trembling leaves, the ferns on every hand;
A place wherein might sport some fairy band,
And in their gaiety my fancy seize.
In some such place would I find love awaiting,
Ready to guide me by the trickling brooks,
And lead me to some soft and rustic lair.
With thee, my well-beloved, would I be mating
(Like birds in springtime ’neath the shaded nooks) ,
The vision of thy love to my despair! ”

“ And on Love’s altar pour Love’s sacred wine.
Let myrtle crown thy brow, lest, like my fate,
Thou mayst find poison mingled in thy veins.
Make lasting thine embrace, ere ’tis too late,
And worms creep in, and mould leave deathly stains.
Then may youth’s sunshine warm thy chosen mate;
For nought so sweet as love through life remains.
{90} XC
ALL else may die: the leaves that Nature bore
In springtime soon may hear the autumn’s knell,
And men likewise feel death’s o’erpowering spell;
Ripe youth may fall, and age in time grow hoar;
The moon doth wane, the sun sink from the shore ”

“ We can find no difference between these great chronicles of the heart, beyond the fact of love winning or losing, except what time has made in the fashions of art between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. ”

“ Before it is too late he would pluck her from her “temporary bed of earthly pleasure”—she whom Love stands ready to transform into the glory of her sex. The world, he tells her, is a bad school, with all its deceits, rivalries, and petty selfishness, and he who sees her comeliness would protect it from ruin in the “garden of his heart.” ”

“ The solace he takes in rhyme is like an open sluice for the pent-up emotions which he has not been allowed to pour directly into the harbor of her affections. But time goes on and finds her, he declares, “false in thy profession of love’s leaven,” and ever escaping from the persistent assaults of a determined but irreproachable wooing. ”

“ The flower of this lover’s heart is one nurtured by the sunlight of the world’s opinion. It is not sheltered in the quiet nook of pastoral inexperience with the ways of the urban world. Morally unspotted, it is ethically tainted with all the sophistication of its environment. ”

“ The world of action is merely the concrete presentation of the illimitable cosmos of ideas;{xxxii} passion and pain, joy and sorrow,—the emotions dramatized into comic or tragic speech,—are the symbols of the phenomena of instinct, somewhere actively concealed in the vague origins of the human family. Afloat on the swirling current of existence, man’s soul is tossed and buffeted by the contrary influences of a rebellious primality. ”

“ Doth usher in the flow’ring ears of corn,
To wave in glory, ere the wind hath torn
Their emerald leaves, beneath the harvest moon:
Like this whole pageant of the season’s time,
With all its glories rollèd into one,
Art thou: the fairest treasure nature bringeth,
Through every year and every age sublime:
For in thine eyes the radiance of the sun
Could warm each flower and every bird that wingeth.
{82} LXXXII
COLD heart, that hath not felt some passing pain ”

“ Apart from any consideration of the perfection of art in which any series of related love-sonnets may be dressed, this question of the personal attitude compels interest. It is the private chamber of a human heart opened without reserve, for the intrusion of strangers to behold the truth of a bitter or joyous experience, as fate may decree.{xv}
In this book of sonnets, there is touched a deep note of pathos in the unrequited passion of a man who tells the circumstances of his own love. It is so before all things, because it is the direct speech of a heart without subtlety. ”

“ Its forces in the development and growth of civilization are recorded by history, demonstrated by science, and analyzed by philosophy. But art alone expresses and interprets it. Art alone contains that contagious spirit which underlies truth and beauty. ”