A Sonnet

To the Beloved Memory of Robert Browning

SERENE, translucent as yon Maytime star

In sanctuary of its bliss superb,

Accept, O Bard! a sprig of Israel’s herb,

In bitterness no less familiar

To you, than is the knell of surging bar,

When night-winds raving, dreamer’s peace perturb,

With blood and fire, and hell-groans from the curb,

Shrined in the tales you wrote in days afar,

Brave sharer in our nether fates, you bore

Israel’s death-crown, voiced his feeble rights,

Stood weeping by his side, and mourning wore,

In those black days, whose memory still frights,

Still casts its spectral hue athwart the brain,

And feeds the heart with hopeless endless pain.