Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnet III: Unlike Are We
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]1 can make mine, to ply 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, — on mine, the dew, —
And Death must dig the level where these agree