Sonnet V

Aghast, I look upon the steaming plain
Where Love doth stride, a ruthless fire-footed thing
To blacken bone in wash of flaming wing:
There, be neither shelter nor shield from pain
Seared flowers wither in its burning mane.
I turn my streaming face away, and cling
To lesser thing and stop my ears lest hear it sing
Its ringing gimlet cry to blight the sane
And set us trembling at its seeming rage
Or, ripping chin to stern in bleeding rite
It eats the flinching heart and strews but jumbled cage
Of ribs to rattle in its wrenching flight
And so consumes the wailing babe and blinded sage,
Till naught be left but ash and wholly joyous light.

                               ~  Isabelle Rathbone Greene,  c. 1894

Sonnet I

For every lovely ordinary thing
My heart would do with thee apace each hour:
Because these cannot be, Beloved, no bower
Holds that bright true center, and spread of wing
O’er tossing hollows blown doth truer sing
Our tale than nested wren or nightingale's lure;
Let us embrace the harsh high cry, grieved pure
Call of sea bird bowed in wind, and wring
From aerie solitude a liquid silver link
So bright and darting strange that none may sunder
This heart from thine, though tumbling chasm brink
Should yawn between. Thus sleep quiet, wonder
Of the daily round, dear in fading ink,
Whilst Love doth run the racing salt-sewn thunder...

                              ~ Isabelle Rathbone Greene,  c. 1894

Sonnet II

Were my soul a land and sea, and thou begun
A wild climb ‘twixt the lichened stones to find
Midst tiny blossoms starred, bright fruits of mind
On thornèd tree, with much to seek and naught to shun:
Then deep thy reach, beyond the pale spines of sun
To salt anemone with fingered weed entwined,
And high, to arc of bird and leap of hind
The gentle shadow of thy hand would run.
But soft in human body snared and tied,
A single separate shade set ‘round with wrong,
I fold my beating heart within and, thus denied,
Shall be to thee but unexpected song
A dim and solitary stranger cried
Upon the road: I loved, I loved thee long.

Sonnet III

I shall not burden thee, nor bind, nor crush
Nor blunt thy spreading wing beneath soft loving blows:
Nor sew with threads however bright, nor close
The windows of thy swerving flight, sweet wild thrush;
I shall not encircle thee, and so eschew the lush,
The cumbered bough, the weighty scent of rose
The heavy cherry, bound with fluttered bows.
Rather, scrubbing clean my heart with new stiff-bristled brush,
Now in the frothing river stand, to wring
The need from Love amidst the scraping sand;
A strapping, sturdy laundress’ song I sing
And shake that free which can withstand
Thus pure translucent, clear and fair, and bring
My love for thee to rest near weightless in thy hand.

Sonnet IV

Thou sayest thou wast better in every way ‘before:’
In childhood’s flight the moon thou tossed, and tall
The tree of youth did stand before its seeming fall
To woes and fears and losses gone that tore
Green hopes and bruised the glossy fruits they bore.
Yet, coulds’t thou but see a sliver sheer of all
I see in thee, through vine and web and caul
Of years, we might stand before new opened door
And, as students of thy downturned face, disclose
That spreading lines, harsh and fair, have long outshone
The bright years flown and speak, Beloved, to those
Who see, a language deep and singing grown.
So keep thy years, with tangled thistle, thorn and rose,
Keep thy wounds, and let thy seeing heart be known.

~ Isabelle Rathbone Greene,  c. 1894