Elizabeth Barrett Browning - The Lay Of The Brown Rosary 1 lyrics

"Onora, Onora, " her mother is calling
She sit's at the lattice and
Hears the dew falling
Drop after drop from the sycamores laden
With dew as with blossom, and
Calls home the maiden
   "Night cometh, Onora"

She looks down the garden-walk
Caverned with trees, to the limes at the end
Where the green arbour is
"Some sweet thought or other may
Keep where it found her
While, forgot or unseen in
The dreamlight around her
   Night cometh Onora!"

She looks up the forest whose alleys shoot on
Like the mute minster-aisles when
The anthem is done
And the choristers sitting with faces aslant
Feel the silence to consecrate
More than the chant
   "Onora, Onora!"

And forward she looketh across
The brown heath
"Onora, art coming?" what is it she seeth?
Nought, nought but the grey
Border-stone that is wist
To dilate and assume a wild shape in the mist
   "My daughter!" Then over

The casement she leaneth, and as she doth so
She is 'ware of her little son playing below:
"Now where is Onora?" He hung down his head
And spake not, then
Answering blushed scarlet-red
   "At the tryst with her lover"

But his mother was wroth: in
A sternness quoth she
"As thou play'st at the ball
Art thou playing with me?
When we know that her lover
To battle is gone
And the saints know above that
She loveth but one
   And will ne'er wed another?"

Then the boy wept aloud 't was
A fair sight yet sad
To see the tears run down
The sweet blooms he had:
He stamped with his foot
Said "The saints know I lied
Because truth that is wicked
Is fittest to hide:
   Must I utter it, mother?"

In his vehement childhood he hurried within
And knelt at her feet as
In prayer against sin
But a child at a prayer never sobbeth as he
"Oh! she sit's with the nun
Of the brown rosary
   At nights in the ruin

"The old convent ruin the ivy rots off
Where the owl hoots by day
And the toad is sun-proof
Where no singing-birds build and the
Trees gaunt and grey
As in stormy sea-coasts appear
Blasted one way
   But is this the wind's doing?

"A nun in the east wall was buried alive
Who mocked at the priest when
He called her to shrive
And shrieked such a curse, as
The stone took her breath
The old abbess fell backwards
And swooned unto death
   With an Ave half-spoken

"I tried once to pass it
Myself and my hound
Till, as fearing the lash
Down he shivered to ground
A brave hound, my mother! a brave hound
Ye wot! And the wolf thought the same with
His fangs at her throat
   In the pass of the Brocken

"At dawn and at eve, mother
Who sitteth there
With the brown rosary never
Used for a prayer?
Stoop low, mother, low! If we
Went there to see
What an ugly great hole in
That east wall must be
   At dawn and at even!

"Who meet there, my mother
At dawn and at even? Who meet by that wall
Never looking to heaven?
O sweetest my sister, what doeth with thee
The ghost of a nun with a brown rosary
   And a face turned from heaven?

"Saint Agnes o'erwatcheth my
Dreams and erewhile
I have felt through mine eyelids
The warmth of her smile
But last night, as a sadness
Like pity came o'er her
She whispered 'Say two prayers
At dawn for Onora:
   The Tempted is sinning'"

"Onora, Onora!" they heard her not coming
Not a step on the grass
Not a voice through the gloaming
But her mother looked up
And she stood on the floor
Fair and still as the moonlight
That came there before
   And a smile just beginning:

It touches her lips but it dares not arise
To the height of the mystical
Sphere of her eyes
And the large musing eyes
Neither joyous nor sorry
Sing on like the angels in separate glory
   Between clouds of amber

For the hair droops in
Clouds amber-coloured till stirred
Into gold by the gesture that
Comes with a word
While O soft! her speaking is so interwound
Of the dim and the sweet
't is a twilight of sound
   And floats through the chamber

"Since thou shrivest my brother, fair mother
" said she "I count on thy priesthood
For marrying of me, and I know by the hills
That the battle is done
That my lover rides on, will
Be here with the sun
   'Neath the eyes that behold thee"

Her mother sat silent too tender, I wis
Of the smile her dead father
Smiled dying to kiss:
But the boy started up pale with tears
Passion-wrought "O wicked fair sister
The hills utter nought!
   If he cometh, who told thee?"

"I know by the hills, "
She resumed calm and clear
"By the beauty upon them, that HE is anear:
Did they ever look so since he bade me adieu?
Oh, love in the waking
Sweet brother, is true
   As Saint Agnes in sleeping!"

Half-ashamed and half-softened the boy
Did not speak, and the blush met the lashes
Which fell on his cheek:
She bowed down to kiss him: dear saints
Did he see
Or feel on her bosom the BROWN ROSARY
   That he shrank away weeping?