Elizabeth Barrett Browning

6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861 / Durham / England

Sonnet 03 - Unlike Are We, Unlike, O Princely Heart!

III

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,β€”on mine, the dew,β€”
And Death must dig the level where these agree.
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