Prometheus Bound and Other Poems Author:Elizabeth Barrett Browning Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A SABBATH MORNING AT SEA. TTHE ship went on with solemn face: To meet the darkness on the deep, The solemn ship went onward. I bowed down weary in the place; ... more »For parting tears and present sleep Had weighed mine eyelids downward. Thick sleep, which shut all dreams from me, And kept my inner self apart, And quiet from emotion, Then brake away and left me free, Made conscious of a human heart Betwixt the heaven and ocean. The new sight, the new wondrous sight! The waters round me, turbulent, The skies, impassive o'er me, Gilm in a moonless, sunless light, As glorified by even the intent Of holding the day-glory! Two pale thin clouds did stand upon The meeting line of sea and sky, With aspect still and mystic. I think they did foresee the sun, And rested on their prophecy In quietude majestic; Then flushed to radiance where they stood, Like statues by the open tomb Of shining saints half risen.— The sun!—he came up to be viewed; And sky and sea made mighty room To inaugurate the vision ! I oft had seen the dawnlight run, As red wine, through the hills, and break Through many a mist's inurning; But, here, no earth profaned the sun! Heaven, ocean, did alone partake The sacrament of morning. Away with joys fantastical! I would be humble to my worth, Self-guarded if self-doubted. Though here no earthly shadows fall, I, joying, grieving without earth, May desecrate without it. God's sabbath morning sweeps the waves: I would not praise the pageant high, And miss the dedicature: I, drawn down toward the sunless graves By force of natural things,—should I Exult in only nature ? I could not bear to sit alone In nature's fixed benignities, While my warm pulse was moving. Too dark thou art, O glittering sun, Too strait ye are, capac...« less