Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sonnets from the Portuguese

ii

UNLIKE are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
    Unlike our uses and our destinies.
    Our ministering 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.