Elizabeth Barrett Browning - The Lost Bower lyrics

In the pleasant orchard-closes
'God bless all our gains, ' say we
But 'May God bless all our losses, '
Better suit's with our degree
Listen, gentle - ay, and simple! listen
Children on the knee!

Green the land is where my daily
Steps in jocund childhood played
Dimpled close with hill and valley
Dappled very close with shade:
Summer-snow of apple-blossoms running up
From glade to glade

There is one hill I see nearer
In my vision of the rest
And a little wood seems clearer
As it climbeth from the west
Sideway from the tree-locked valley
To the airy upland crest



Small the wood is, green with hazels
And, completing the ascent
Where the wind blows and sun dazzles
Thrills in leafy tremblement
Like a heart that after climbing
Beateth quickly through content

Not a step the wood advances
O'er the open hill-top's bound
There, in green arrest, the branches
See their image on the ground:
You may walk beneath them smiling
Glad with sight and glad with sound

For you hearken on your right hand
How the birds do leap and call
In the greenwood, out of sight and
Out of reach and fear of all
And the squirrels crack the filberts
Through their cheerful madrigal

On your left, the sheep are cropping
The slant grass and daisies pale
And five apple-trees stand dropping
Separate shadows toward the vale
Over which, in choral silence
The hills look you their 'All hail!'

Far out, kindled by each other
Shining hills on hills arise
Close as brother leans to brother
When they press beneath the eyes
Of some father praying blessings from
The gifts of paradise

While beyond, above them mounted
And above their woods also
Malvern hills, for mountains counted
Not unduly, loom a-row -
Keepers of Piers Plowman's visions through
The sunshine and the snow

Yet, in childhood, little prized I
That fair walk and far survey
'Twas a straight walk unadvised by
The least mischief worth a nay
Up and down - as dull as
Grammar on the eve of holiday

But the wood, all close and clenching
Bough in bough and root in root, -
No more sky (for overbranching)
At your head than at your foot, -
Oh, the wood drew me within it
By a glamour past dispute!

Few and broken paths showed through it
Where the sheep had tried to run, -
Forced with snowy wool to strew it
Round the thickets, when anon
They with silly thorn-pricked noses
Bleated back into the sun

But my childish heart beat stronger
Than those thickets dared to grow:
I could pierce them! I could longer
Travel on, methought, than so:
Sheep for sheep paths! braver children climb
And creep where they would go

And the poets wander, said I
Over places all as rude:
Bold Rinaldo's lovely lady
Sat to meet him in a wood:
Rosalinda, like a fountain
Laughed out pure with solitude

And if Chaucer had not travelled
Through a forest by a well
He had never dreamt nor marvelled
At those ladies fair and fell
Who lived smiling without loving
In their island-citadel

Thus I thought of the old singers
And took courage from their song
Till my little struggling fingers
Tore asunder gyve and thong
Of the brambles which entrapped me
And the barrier branches strong

On a day, such pastime keeping
With a fawn's heart debonair
Under-crawling, overleaping
Thorns that prick and boughs that bear
I stood suddenly astonied -
I was gladdened unaware

From the place I stood in, floated
Back the covert dim and close
And the open ground was coated
Carpet-smooth with grass and moss
And the blue-bell's purple presence
Signed it worthily across

Here a linden-tree stood, bright'ning
All adown it's silver rind
For as some trees draw the lightning
So this tree, unto my mind
Drew to earth the blessed sunshine from
The sky where it was shrined

Tall the linden-tree, and near it
An old hawthorn also grew
And wood-ivy like a spirit
Hovered dimly round the two
Shaping thence that bower of beauty which
I sing of thus to you

'Twas a bower for garden fitter
Than for any woodland wide:
Though a fresh and dewy glitter
Struck it through from side to side
Shaped and shaven was the freshness
As by garden-cunning plied

Oh, a lady might have come there
Hooded fairly like her hawk
With a book or lute in summer
And a hope of sweeter talk, -
Listening less to her own music than
For footsteps on the walk!

But that bower appeared a marvel
In the wildness of the place
With such seeming art and travail
Finely fixed and fitted was
Leaf to leaf, the dark-green ivy
To the summit from the base

And the ivy veined and glossy
Was enwrought with eglantine
And the wild hop fibred closely
And the large leaved columbine
Arch of door and window-mullion
Did right sylvanly entwine

Rose-trees either side the door were
Growing lithe and growing tall
Each one set a summer warder
For the keeping of the hall, -
With a red rose and a white rose, leaning
Nodding at the wall

As I entered, mosses hushing
Stole all noises from my foot
And a green elastic cushion
Clasped within the linden's root
Took me in a chair of
Silence very rare and absolute

All the floor was paved with glory
Greenly, silently inlaid
(Through quick motions made before me)
With fair counterparts in shade
Of the fair serrated ivy
Leaves which slanted overhead

'Is such pavement in a palace?'
So I questioned in my thought:
The sun, shining through the chalice
Of the red rose hung without
Threw within a red libation
Like an answer to my doubt

At the same time, on the linen
Of my childish lap there fell
Two white may leaves, downward winning
Through the ceiling's miracle
From a blossom, like an angel
Out of sight yet blessing well

Down to floor and up to ceiling
Quick I turned my childish face
With an innocent appealing
For the secret of the place to the trees
Which surely knew it partaking of the grace

Where's no foot of human creature
How could reach a human hand?
And if this be work of Nature
Why has Nature turned so bland
Breaking off from other wild-work? It
Was hard to understand

Was she weary of rough doing
Of the bramble and the thorn?
Did she pause in tender rueing
Here of all her sylvan scorn?
Or in mock of Art's deceiving
Was the sudden mildness worn?

Or could this same bower (I fancied)
Be the work of Dryad strong
Who, surviving all that chanced
In the world's old pagan wrong, lay hid
Feeding in the woodland on the
Last true poet's song?

Or was this the house of fairies
Left, because of the rough ways
Unassoiled by Ave Marys
Which the passing pilgrim prays
And beyond St catherine's chiming on
The blessed Sabbath days?

So, young muser, I sat listening
To my fancy's wildest word:
On a sudden, through the glistening
Leaves around, a little stirred
Came a sound, a sense of music
Which was rather felt than heard

Softly, finely, it inwound me
From the world it shut me in, -
Like a fountain, falling round me
Which with silver waters thin
Clips a little water Naiad
Sitting smilingly within

Whence the music came, who knoweth?
I know nothing: but indeed
Pan or Faunus never bloweth
So much sweetness from a reed
Which has sucked the milk of waters
At the oldest river head

Never lark the sun can waken
With such sweetness! when the lark
The high planets overtaking
In the half-evanished Dark
Casts his singing to their singing
Like an arrow to the mark

Never nightingale so singeth:
Oh, she leans on thorny tree
And her poet-song she flingeth
Over pain to victory!
Yet she never sings such music
- or she sings it not to me

Never blackbirds, never thrushes
Nor small finches sing as sweet
When the sun strikes through the bushes
To their crimson clinging feet
And their pretty eyes look sideways
To the summer heavens complete

If it were a bird, it seemed
Most like Chaucer's, which, in sooth
He of green and azure dreamed
While it sat in spirit-ruth
On that bier of a crowned lady
Singing nigh her silent mouth

If it were a bird? - ah, sceptic
Give me 'yea' or give me 'nay' -
Though my soul were nympholeptic
As I heard that virelay
You may stoop your pride to pardon
For my sin is far away!

I rose up in exaltation
And an inward trembling heat
And (it seemed) in geste of passion
Dropped the music to my feet
Like a garment rustling downwards! -
Such a silence followed it!

Heart and head beat through the quiet
Full and heavily, though slower:
In the song, I think, and by it
Mystic Presences of power
Had up-snatched me to the Timeless
Then returned me to the Hour

In a child-abstraction lifted
Straightway from the bower I past
Foot and soul being dimly drifted
Through the greenwood, till, at last
In the hill-top's open sunshine I
All consciously was cast

Face to face with the true mountains
I stood silently and still
Drawing strength from fancy's dauntings
From the air about the hill
And from Nature's open mercies
And most debonair goodwill

Oh, the golden hearted daisies
Witnessed there, before my youth
To the truth of things, with praises
Of the beauty of the truth
And I woke to Nature's real
Laughing joyfully for both

And I said within me, laughing
I have found a bower to day
A green lusus, fashioned half in
Chance and half in Nature's play
And a little bird sings nigh it
I will nevermore missay

Henceforth, I will be the fairy
Of this bower not built by one
I will go there, sad or merry
With each morning's benison
And the bird shall be my harper in
The dream hall I have won

So I said but the next morning
(- Child, look up into my face -
'Ware, oh sceptic, of your scorning!
This is truth in it's pure grace)
The next morning, all had vanished
Or my wandering missed the place

Bring an oath most sylvan-holy
And upon it swear me true -
By the wind-bells swinging slowly
Their mute curfews in the dew
By the advent of the snowdrop
By the rosemary and rue, -

I affirm by all or any
Let the cause be charm or chance
That my wandering searches many
Missed the bower of my romance -
That I nevermore upon it
Turned my mortal countenance

I affirm that, since I lost it
Never bower has seemed so fair
Never garden-creeper crossed it
With so deft and brave an air
Never bird sung in the summer
As I saw and heard them there

Day by day, with new desire
Toward my wood I ran in faith
Under leaf and over brier
Through the thickets, out of breath
Like the prince who rescued Beauty from
The sleep as long as death

But his sword of mettle clashed
And his arm smote strong, I ween
And her dreaming spirit flashed
Through her body's fair white screen
And the light thereof might guide him
Up the cedar alleys green:

But for me, I saw no splendor -
All my sword was my child heart
And the wood refused surrender
Of that bower it held apart
Safe as Oedipus's grave-place
'mid Colonos' olives swart

As Aladdin sought the basements
His fair palace rose upon
And the four-and-twenty casements
Which gave answers to the sun
So, in 'wilderment of gazing
I looked up and I looked down

Years have vanished since, as wholly
As the little bower did then
And you call it tender folly
That such thoughts should come again?
Ah, I cannot change this
Sighing for your smiling, brother men!

For this loss it did prefigure
Other loss of better good
When my soul, in spirit-vigor
And in ripened womanhood
Fell from visions of more beauty than
An arbor in a wood

I have lost - oh, many a pleasure
Many a hope and many a power -
Studious health, and merry leisure
The first dew on the first flower!
But the first of all my losses
Was the losing of the bower

I have lost the dream of Doing
And the other dream of Done
The first spring in the pursuing
The first pride in the Begun, -
First recoil from incompletion
In the face of what is won -

Exaltations in the far light
Where some cottage only is
Mild dejections in the starlight
Which the sadder hearted miss
And the child-cheek blushing scarlet for
The very shame of bliss

I have lost the sound child-sleeping
Which the thunder could not break
Something too of the strong leaping
Of the staglike heart awake
Which the pale is low for keeping in
The road it ought to take

Some respect to social fictions
Has been also lost by me
And some generous genuflexions
Which my spirit offered free
To the pleasant old conventions
Of our false humanity

All my losses did I tell you
Ye perchance would look away -
Ye would answer me, 'Farewell! you
Make sad company to day
And your tears are falling faster than
The bitter words you say'

For God placed me like a dial
In the open ground with power
And my heart had for it's trial
All the sun and all the shower:
And I suffered many losses
- and my first was of the bower

Laugh you? If that loss of mine be
Of no heavy-seeming weight -
When the cone falls from the pine-tree
The young children laugh thereat
Yet the wind that struck it, riseth
And the tempest shall be great

One who knew me in my childhood
In the glamour and the game
Looking on me long and mild, would
Never know me for the same
Come, unchanging recollections
Where those changes overcame!

By this couch I weakly lie on
While I count my memories, -
Through the fingers which, still sighing
I press closely on mine eyes, -
Clear as once beneath the sunshine
I behold the bower arise

Springs the linden-tree as greenly
Stroked with light adown it's rind
And the ivy leaves serenely
Each in either intertwined
And the rose-trees at the doorway
They have neither grown nor pined

From those overblown faint roses
Not a leaf appeareth shed
And that little bud discloses
Not a thorn's-breadth more of red
For the winters and the summers
Which have passed me overhead

And that music overfloweth
Sudden sweet, the sylvan eaves:
Thrush or nightingale - whoknoweth?
Fay or Faunus - who believes?
But my heart still trembles in me
To the trembling of the leaves

Is the bower lost, then? who sayeth
That the bower indeed is lost?
Hark! my spirit in it prayeth
Through the sunshine and the frost, -
And the prayer preserves it greenly
To the last and uttermost

Till another open for me
In God's Eden land unknown
With an angel at the doorway
White with gazing at His Throne
And a saint's voice in the palm-trees
Singing - 'All is lost and won!'