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Alfred Lord Tennyson - In Memoriam A. H. H.
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OBIIT 
MDCCCXXXIII
[Preface]
   Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
     Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
     By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
   Believing where we cannot prove;
   Thine are these orbs of light and shade; 
     Thou madest Life in man and brute;
     Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
   Is on the skull which thou hast made.
   Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
    Thou madest man, he knows not why,
    He thinks he was not made to die;
  And thou hast made him: thou art just.

  Thou seemest human and divine,
    The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
    Our wills are ours, we know not how;
  Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

  Our little systems have their day;
    They have their day and cease to be:
    They are but broken lights of thee,
  And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

  We have but faith: we cannot know;
    For knowledge is of things we see;
    And yet we trust it comes from thee,
  A beam in darkness: let it grow.

  Let knowledge grow from more to more,
    But more of reverence in us dwell;
    That mind and soul, according well,
  May make one music as before,

  But vaster. We are fools and slight; 
    We mock thee when we do not fear: 
    But help thy foolish ones to bear;
  Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

  Forgive what seem`d my sin in me;
    What seem`d my worth since I began;
    For merit lives from man to man,
  And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

  Forgive my grief for one removed,
    Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
    I trust he lives in thee, and there
  I find him worthier to be loved.

  Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
    Confusions of a wasted youth;
    Forgive them where they fail in truth,
  And in thy wisdom make me wise. 
                                   1849.

I
   I held it truth, with him who sings
     To one clear harp in divers tones,
     That men may rise on stepping-stones 
   Of their dead selves to higher things.
   But who shall so forecast the years
     And find in loss a gain to match?
     Or reach a hand thro` time to catch 
   The far-off interest of tears?
   Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown`d,
    Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
    Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
  To dance with death, to beat the ground,

  Than that the victor Hours should scorn
    The long result of love, and boast,
    `Behold the man that loved and lost,
  But all he was is overworn.`
II
   Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
     That name the under-lying dead,
     Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
   Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
   The seasons bring the flower again,
     And bring the firstling to the flock;
     And in the dusk of thee, the clock
   Beats out the little lives of men.
   O, not for thee the glow, the bloom,
    Who changest not in any gale,
    Nor branding summer suns avail
  To touch thy thousand years of gloom:

  And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
    Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
    I seem to fail from out my blood
  And grow incorporate into thee.
III
   O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
     O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
     O sweet and bitter in a breath,
   What whispers from thy lying lip?
   `The stars,` she whispers, `blindly run; 
     A web is wov`n across the sky;
     From out waste places comes a cry,
   And murmurs from the dying sun:
   "And all the phantom, Nature, stands — 
    With all the music in her tone,
    A hollow echo of my own, — 
  A hollow form with empty hands."

  And shall I take a thing so blind,
    Embrace her as my natural good;
    Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
  Upon the threshold of the mind?
IV
   To Sleep I give my powers away;
     My will is bondsman to the dark;
     I sit within a helmless bark,
   And with my heart I muse and say:
   O heart, how fares it with thee now,
     That thou should`st fail from thy desire,
     Who scarcely darest to inquire,
   "What is it makes me beat so low?"
   Something it is which thou hast lost,
    Some pleasure from thine early years.
    Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
  That grief hath shaken into frost!

  Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
    All night below the darken`d eyes;
    With morning wakes the will, and cries,
  "Thou shalt not be the fool of loss."
V
   I sometimes hold it half a sin
     To put in words the grief I feel;
     For words, like Nature, half reveal 
   And half conceal the Soul within.
   But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
     A use in measured language lies;
     The sad mechanic exercise,
   Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
   In words, like weeds, I`ll wrap me o`er,
    Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
    But that large grief which these enfold
  Is given in outline and no more.
VI
   One writes, that `Other friends remain,`
     That `Loss is common to the race` — 
     And common is the commonplace,
   And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
   That loss is common would not make
     My own less bitter, rather more:
     Too common! Never morning wore
   To evening, but some heart did break.
   O father, wheresoe`er thou be,
    Who pledgest now thy gallant son;
    A shot, ere half thy draught be done, 
  Hath still`d the life that beat from thee.

  O mother, praying God will save
    Thy sailor, — while thy head is bow`d,
    His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
  Drops in his vast and wandering grave.

  Ye know no more than I who wrought
    At that last hour to please him well;
    Who mused on all I had to tell,
  And something written, something thought;

  Expecting still his advent home;
    And ever met him on his way
    With wishes, thinking, "here to-day,"
  Or "here to-morrow will he come."

  O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
    That sittest ranging golden hair;
    And glad to find thyself so fair,
  Poor child, that waitest for thy love!

  For now her father`s chimney glows
    In expectation of a guest;
    And thinking "this will please him best,"
  She takes a riband or a rose;

  For he will see them on to-night;
    And with the thought her colour burns;
    And, having left the glass, she turns
  Once more to set a ringlet right;

  And, even when she turn`d, the curse
    Had fallen, and her future Lord
    Was drown`d in passing thro` the ford,
  Or kill`d in falling from his horse.

  O what to her shall be the end?
    And what to me remains of good?
    To her, perpetual maidenhood,
  And unto me no second friend.
VII
   Dark house, by which once more I stand
     Here in the long unlovely street,
     Doors, where my heart was used to beat
   So quickly, waiting for a hand,
   A hand that can be clasp`d no more — 
     Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
     And like a guilty thing I creep
   At earliest morning to the door.
  He is not here; but far away
    The noise of life begins again,
    And ghastly thro` the drizzling rain
  On the bald street breaks the blank day.
VIII
   A happy lover who has come
     To look on her that loves him well,
     Who `lights and rings the gateway bell,
   And learns her gone and far from home;
   He saddens, all the magic light
     Dies off at once from bower and hall,
     And all the place is dark, and all
   The chambers emptied of delight:
   So find I every pleasant spot
    In which we two were wont to meet,
    The field, the chamber, and the street,
  For all is dark where thou art not.

  Yet as that other, wandering there
    In those deserted walks, may find
    A flower beat with rain and wind,
  Which once she foster`d up with care;

  So seems it in my deep regret,
    O my forsaken heart, with thee
    And this poor flower of poesy
  Which little cared for fades not yet.

  But since it pleased a vanish`d eye,
    I go to plant it on his tomb,
    That if it can it there may bloom,
  Or, dying, there at least may die.
IX
   Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
     Sailest the placid ocean-plains
     With my lost Arthur`s loved remains,
   Spread thy full wings, and waft him o`er.
   So draw him home to those that mourn
     In vain; a favourable speed
     Ruffle thy mirror`d mast, and lead
   Thro` prosperous floods his holy urn.
   All night no ruder air perplex
    Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright
    As our pure love, thro` early light
  Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.

  Sphere all your lights around, above;
    Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;
    Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,
  My friend, the brother of my love;

  My Arthur, whom I shall not see
    Till all my widow`d race be run;
    Dear as the mother to the son,
  More than my brothers are to me.
X
   I hear the noise about thy keel;
     I hear the bell struck in the night:
     I see the cabin-window bright;
   I see the sailor at the wheel.
   Thou bring`st the sailor to his wife,
     And travell`d men from foreign lands;
     And letters unto trembling hands;
   And, thy dark freight, a vanish`d life.
   So bring him; we have idle dreams:
     This look of quiet flatters thus
     Our home-bred fancies. O to us,
   The fools of habit, sweeter seems

   To rest beneath the clover sod,
     That takes the sunshine and the rains,
     Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
   The chalice of the grapes of God;

   Than if with thee the roaring wells
     Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine;
     And hands so often clasp`d in mine,
   Should toss with tangle and with shells.
XI
   Calm is the morn without a sound,
     Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
     And only thro` the faded leaf
   The chestnut pattering to the ground:
   Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
     And on these dews that drench the furze,
     And all the silvery gossamers
   That twinkle into green and gold:
   Calm and still light on yon great plain
    That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
    And crowded farms and lessening towers,
  To mingle with the bounding main:

  Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
    These leaves that redden to the fall;
    And in my heart, if calm at all,
  If any calm, a calm despair:

  Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
    And waves that sway themselves in rest,
    And dead calm in that noble breast
  Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
XII
   Lo, as a dove when up she springs
     To bear thro` Heaven a tale of woe,
     Some dolorous message knit below 
   The wild pulsation of her wings;
   Like her I go; I cannot stay;
     I leave this mortal ark behind,
     A weight of nerves without a mind,
   And leave the cliffs, and haste away
   O`er ocean-mirrors rounded large,
    And reach the glow of southern skies,
    And see the sails at distance rise,
  And linger weeping on the marge,

  And saying; `Comes he thus, my friend?
    Is this the end of all my care?`
    And circle moaning in the air:
  `Is this the end? Is this the end?`

  And forward dart again, and play
    About the prow, and back return
    To where the body sits, and learn
  That I have been an hour away.
XIII
   Tears of the widower, when he sees
     A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
     And moves his doubtful arms, and feels 
   Her place is empty, fall like these;
   Which weep a loss for ever new,
     A void where heart on heart reposed;
     And, where warm hands have prest and closed, 
   Silence, till I be silent too.
   Which weep the comrade of my choice,
    An awful thought, a life removed,
    The human-hearted man I loved, 
  A Spirit, not a breathing voice.

  Come, Time, and teach me, many years,
    I do not suffer in a dream;
    For now so strange do these things seem,
  Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;

  My fancies time to rise on wing,
    And glance about the approaching sails,
    As tho` they brought but merchants` bales, 
  And not the burthen that they bring.
XIV
   If one should bring me this report,
     That thou hadst touch`d the land to-day,
     And I went down unto the quay,
   And found thee lying in the port;
   And standing, muffled round with woe,
     Should see thy passengers in rank
     Come stepping lightly down the plank,
   And beckoning unto those they know;
   And if along with these should come
    The man I held as half-divine;
    Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
  And ask a thousand things of home;

  And I should tell him all my pain,
    And how my life had droop`d of late,
    And he should sorrow o`er my state
  And marvel what possess`d my brain;

  And I perceived no touch of change,
    No hint of death in all his frame,
    But found him all in all the same,
  I should not feel it to be strange.
XV
   To-night the winds begin to rise
     And roar from yonder dropping day:
     The last red leaf is whirl`d away,
   The rooks are blown about the skies;
   The forest crack`d, the waters curl`d,
     The cattle huddled on the lea;
     And wildly dash`d on tower and tree
   The sunbeam strikes along the world:
   And but for fancies, which aver
    That all thy motions gently pass
    Athwart a plane of molten glass,
  I scarce could brook the strain and stir

  That makes the barren branches loud;
    And but for fear it is not so,
    The wild unrest that lives in woe
  Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

  That rises upward always higher,
    And onward drags a labouring breast,
    And topples round the dreary west,
  A looming bastion fringed with fire.
XVI
   What words are these have fall`n from me?
     Can calm despair and wild unrest
     Be tenants of a single breast,
   Or sorrow such a changeling be?
   Or doth she only seem to take
     The touch of change in calm or storm;
     But knows no more of transient form
   In her deep self, than some dead lake
   That holds the shadow of a lark
    Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
    Or has the shock, so harshly given,
  Confused me like the unhappy bark

  That strikes by night a craggy shelf,
    And staggers blindly ere she sink?
    And stunn`d me from my power to think
  And all my knowledge of myself;

  And made me that delirious man
    Whose fancy fuses old and new,
    And flashes into false and true,
  And mingles all without a plan?
XVII
   Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
     Compell`d thy canvas, and my prayer
     Was as the whisper of an air
   To breathe thee over lonely seas.
   For I in spirit saw thee move
     Thro` circles of the bounding sky, 
     Week after week: the days go by: 
   Come quick, thou bringest all I love.
   Henceforth, wherever thou may`st roam,
    My blessing, like a line of light,
    Is on the waters day and night,
  And like a beacon guards thee home.

  So may whatever tempest mars
    Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
    And balmy drops in summer dark
  Slide from the bosom of the stars.

  So kind an office hath been done,
    Such precious relics brought by thee;
    The dust of him I shall not see
  Till all my widow`d race be run.
XVIII
   `Tis well; `tis something; we may stand 
     Where he in English earth is laid, 
     And from his ashes may be made 
   The violet of his native land.
   `Tis little; but it looks in truth 
     As if the quiet bones were blest 
     Among familiar names to rest 
   And in the places of his youth.
   Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
    That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,
    And come, whatever loves to weep, 
  And hear the ritual of the dead.

  Ah yet, ev`n yet, if this might be, 
    I, falling on his faithful heart, 
    Would breathing thro` his lips impart 
  The life that almost dies in me;

  That dies not, but endures with pain, 
    And slowly forms the firmer mind, 
    Treasuring the look it cannot find, 
  The words that are not heard again.
XIX
   The Danube to the Severn gave
     The darken`d heart that beat no more;
     They laid him by the pleasant shore, 
   And in the hearing of the wave.
   There twice a day the Severn fills;
     The salt sea-water passes by,
     And hushes half the babbling Wye, 
   And makes a silence in the hills.
   The Wye is hush`d nor moved along,
    And hush`d my deepest grief of all,
    When fill`d with tears that cannot fall, 
  I brim with sorrow drowning song.

  The tide flows down, the wave again
    Is vocal in its wooded walls;
    My deeper anguish also falls, 
  And I can speak a little then.
XX
   The lesser griefs that may be said,
     That breathe a thousand tender vows,
     Are but as servants in a house
   Where lies the master newly dead;
   Who speak their feeling as it is,
     And weep the fulness from the mind:
     "It will be hard," they say, "to find
   Another service such as this."
   My lighter moods are like to these,
    That out of words a comfort win;
    But there are other griefs within,
  And tears that at their fountain freeze;

  For by the hearth the children sit
    Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
    And scarce endure to draw the breath,
  Or like to noiseless phantoms flit;

  But open converse is there none,
    So much the vital spirits sink
    To see the vacant chair, and think,
  "How good! how kind! and he is gone."
XXI
   I sing to him that rests below,
     And, since the grasses round me wave,
     I take the grasses of the grave,
   And make them pipes whereon to blow.
   The traveller hears me now and then,
     And sometimes harshly will he speak:
     "This fellow would make weakness weak,
   And melt the waxen hearts of men."
   Another answers, `Let him be,
    He loves to make parade of pain
    That with his piping he may gain
  The praise that comes to constancy.`

  A third is wroth: "Is this an hour
    For private sorrow`s barren song,
    When more and more the people throng
  The chairs and thrones of civil power?

  "A time to sicken and to swoon,
    When Science reaches forth her arms
    To feel from world to world, and charms
  Her secret from the latest moon?"

  Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
    Ye never knew the sacred dust:
    I do but sing because I must,
  And pipe but as the linnets sing:

  And one is glad; her note is gay,
    For now her little ones have ranged;
    And one is sad; her note is changed,
  Because her brood is stol`n away.
XXII
   The path by which we twain did go,
     Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
     Thro` four sweet years arose and fell,
   From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
   And we with singing cheer`d the way,
     And, crown`d with all the season lent,
     From April on to April went,
   And glad at heart from May to May:
   But where the path we walk`d began
    To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
    As we descended following Hope,
  There sat the Shadow fear`d of man;

  Who broke our fair companionship,
    And spread his mantle dark and cold,
    And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
  And dull`d the murmur on thy lip,

  And bore thee where I could not see
    Nor follow, tho` I walk in haste,
    And think, that somewhere in the waste
  The Shadow sits and waits for me.
XXIII
   Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
     Or breaking into song by fits,
     Alone, alone, to where he sits,
   The Shadow cloak`d from head to foot,
   Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
     I wander, often falling lame,
     And looking back to whence I came,
   Or on to where the pathway leads;
   And crying, How changed from where it ran
    Thro` lands where not a leaf was dumb;
    But all the lavish hills would hum
  The murmur of a happy Pan:

  When each by turns was guide to each,
    And Fancy light from Fancy caught,
    And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
  Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech;

  And all we met was fair and good,
    And all was good that Time could bring,
    And all the secret of the Spring
  Moved in the chambers of the blood;

  And many an old philosophy
    On Argive heights divinely sang,
    And round us all the thicket rang
  To many a flute of Arcady.
XXIV
   And was the day of my delight
     As pure and perfect as I say?
     The very source and fount of Day
   Is dash`d with wandering isles of night.
   If all was good and fair we met,
     This earth had been the Paradise
     It never look`d to human eyes
   Since our first Sun arose and set.
   And is it that the haze of grief
    Makes former gladness loom so great?
    The lowness of the present state,
  That sets the past in this relief?

  Or that the past will always win
    A glory from its being far;
    And orb into the perfect star
  We saw not, when we moved therein?
XXV
   I know that this was Life, — the track
     Whereon with equal feet we fared;
     And then, as now, the day prepared
   The daily burden for the back.
   But this it was that made me move
     As light as carrier-birds in air;
     I loved the weight I had to bear,
   Because it needed help of Love:
   Nor could I weary, heart or limb,
    When mighty Love would cleave in twain
    The lading of a single pain,
  And part it, giving half to him.
XXVI
   Still onward winds the dreary way; 
     I with it; for I long to prove 
     No lapse of moons can canker Love, 
   Whatever fickle tongues may say.
   And if that eye which watches guilt
     And goodness, and hath power to see
     Within the green the moulder`d tree,
   And towers fall`n as soon as built — 
   Oh, if indeed that eye foresee
    Or see (in Him is no before) 
    In more of life true life no more
  And Love the indifference to be,

  Then might I find, ere yet the morn
    Breaks hither over Indian seas,
    That Shadow waiting with the keys, 
  To shroud me from my proper scorn.
XXVII
   I envy not in any moods
     The captive void of noble rage,
     The linnet born within the cage,
   That never knew the summer woods:
   I envy not the beast that takes
     His license in the field of time,
     Unfetter`d by the sense of crime,
   To whom a conscience never wakes;
   Nor, what may count itself as blest,
    The heart that never plighted troth
    But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
  Nor any want-begotten rest.

  I hold it true, whate`er befall;
    I feel it, when I sorrow most;
    `Tis better to have loved and lost
  Than never to have loved at all.
XXVIII
   The time draws near the birth of Christ:
     The moon is hid; the night is still;
     The Christmas bells from hill to hill 
   Answer each other in the mist.
   Four voices of four hamlets round,
     From far and near, on mead and moor,
     Swell out and fail, as if a door
   Were shut between me and the sound:
   Each voice four changes on the wind,
    That now dilate, and now decrease,
    Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
  Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.

  This year I slept and woke with pain,
    I almost wish`d no more to wake,
    And that my hold on life would break
  Before I heard those bells again:

  But they my troubled spirit rule,
    For they controll`d me when a boy;
    They bring me sorrow touch`d with joy,
  The merry merry bells of Yule.
XXIX
   With such compelling cause to grieve
     As daily vexes household peace,
     And chains regret to his decease,
   How dare we keep our Christmas-eve;
   Which brings no more a welcome guest
     To enrich the threshold of the night
     With shower`d largess of delight
   In dance and song and game and jest?
   Yet go, and while the holly boughs
    Entwine the cold baptismal font,
    Make one wreath more for Use and Wont,
  That guard the portals of the house;

  Old sisters of a day gone by,
    Gray nurses, loving nothing new;
    Why should they miss their yearly due
  Before their time? They too will die.
XXX
   With trembling fingers did we weave
     The holly round the Chrismas hearth;
     A rainy cloud possess`d the earth,
   And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.
   At our old pastimes in the hall
     We gambol`d, making vain pretence
     Of gladness, with an awful sense
   Of one mute Shadow watching all.
   We paused: the winds were in the beech:br>

    We heard them sweep the winter land;br>

    And in a circle hand-in-hand
  Sat silent, looking each at each.

  Then echo-like our voices rang;
    We sung, tho` every eye was dim,
    A merry song we sang with him
  Last year: impetuously we sang:

  We ceased: a gentler feeling crept
    Upon us: surely rest is meet:
    "They rest," we said, "their sleep is sweet,"
  And silence follow`d, and we wept.

  Our voices took a higher range;
    Once more we sang: "They do not die
    Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
  Nor change to us, although they change;

  "Rapt from the fickle and the frail
    With gather`d power, yet the same,
    Pierces the keen seraphic flame
  From orb to orb, from veil to veil."

  Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
    Draw forth the cheerful day from night:
    O Father, touch the east, and light
  The light that shone when Hope was born.
XXXI
   When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,
     And home to Mary`s house return`d,
     Was this demanded — if he yearn`d
   To hear her weeping by his grave?
   "Where wert thou, brother, those four days?"
     There lives no record of reply,
     Which telling what it is to die
   Had surely added praise to praise.
   From every house the neighbours met,
    The streets were fill`d with joyful sound,
    A solemn gladness even crown`d
  The purple brows of Olivet.

  Behold a man raised up by Christ!
    The rest remaineth unreveal`d;
    He told it not; or something seal`d
  The lips of that Evangelist.
XXXII
   Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
     Nor other thought her mind admits
     But, he was dead, and there he sits,
   And he that brought him back is there.
   Then one deep love doth supersede
     All other, when her ardent gaze
     Roves from the living brother`s face,
   And rests upon the Life indeed.
   All subtle thought, all curious fears,
    Borne down by gladness so complete,
    She bows, she bathes the Saviour`s feet
  With costly spikenard and with tears.

  Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,
    Whose loves in higher love endure;
    What souls possess themselves so pure, 
  Or is there blessedness like theirs?
XXXIII
   O thou that after toil and storm
     Mayst seem to have reach`d a purer air,
     Whose faith has centre everywhere,
   Nor cares to fix itself to form,
   Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
     Her early Heaven, her happy views;
     Nor thou with shadow`d hint confuse
   A life that leads melodious days.
   Her faith thro` form is pure as thine,
    Her hands are quicker unto good:
    Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
  To which she links a truth divine!

  See thou, that countess reason ripe
    In holding by the law within,
    Thou fail not in a world of sin,
  And ev`n for want of such a type.
XXXIV
   My own dim life should teach me this, 
     That life shall live for evermore, 
     Else earth is darkness at the core, 
   And dust and ashes all that is;
   This round of green, this orb of flame, 
     Fantastic beauty; such as lurks 
     In some wild Poet, when he works 
   Without a conscience or an aim.
   What then were God to such as I? 
    `Twere hardly worth my while to choose 
    Of things all mortal, or to use 
  A tattle patience ere I die;

  `Twere best at once to sink to peace, 
    Like birds the charming serpent draws, 
    To drop head-foremost in the jaws 
  Of vacant darkness and to cease.
XXXV
   Yet if some voice that man could trust
     Should murmur from the narrow house,
     `The cheeks drop in; the body bows;
   Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:`
   Might I not say? "Yet even here,
     But for one hour, O Love, I strive
     To keep so sweet a thing alive."
   But I should turn mine ears and hear
   The moanings of the homeless sea,
    The sound of streams that swift or slow
    Draw down Æonian hills, and sow
  The dust of continents to be;

  And Love would answer with a sigh,
    "The sound of that forgetful shore
    Will change my sweetness more and more,
  Half-dead to know that I shall die."

  O me, what profits it to put
    An idle case? If Death were seen
    At first as Death, Love had not been,
  Or been in narrowest working shut,

  Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,
    Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape
    Had bruised the herb and crush`d the grape,
  And bask`d and batten`d in the woods.
XXXVI
   Tho` truths in manhood darkly join,
     Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
     We yield all blessing to the name
   Of Him that made them current coin;
   For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
     Where truth in closest words shall fail,
     When truth embodied in a tale
   Shall enter in at lowly doors.
   And so the Word had breath, and wrought
    With human hands the creed of creeds
    In loveliness of perfect deeds,
  More strong than all poetic thought; 

  Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
    Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
    And those wild eyes that watch the wave
  In roarings round the coral reef.
XXXVII
   Urania speaks with darken`d brow:
     `Thou pratest here where thou art least;
     This faith has many a purer priest, 
   And many an abler voice than thou.
   `Go down beside thy native rill,
     On thy Parnassus set thy feet,
     And hear thy laurel whisper sweet
   About the ledges of the hill.`
   And my Melpomene replies,
    A touch of shame upon her cheek:
    `I am not worthy ev`n to speak 
  Of thy prevailing mysteries;

  `For I am but an earthly Muse,
    And owning but a little art
   To lull with song an aching heart, 
  And render human love his dues;

  "But brooding on the dear one dead,
    And all he said of things divine, 
    (And dear to me as sacred wine
  To dying lips is all he said), 

  "I murmur`d, as I came along,
    Of comfort clasp`d in truth reveal`d;
    And loiter`d in the master`s field,
  And darken`d sanctities with song."
XXXVIII
   With weary steps I loiter on,
     Tho` always under alter`d skies
     The purple from the distance dies, 
   My prospect and horizon gone.
   No joy the blowing season gives,
     The herald melodies of spring,
     But in the songs I love to sing 
   A doubtful gleam of solace lives.
   If any care for what is here
    Survive in spirits render`d free,
    Then are these songs I sing of thee 
  Not all ungrateful to thine ear.XXXIX
   Old warder of these buried bones,
     And answering now my random stroke
     With fruitful cloud and living smoke,
   Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
   And dippest toward the dreamless head,
     To thee too comes the golden hour
     When flower is feeling after flower;
   But Sorrow — fixt upon the dead,
   And darkening the dark graves of men, —  
    What whisper`d from her lying lips? 
    Thy gloom is kindled at the tips, 
  And passes into gloom again.
XL
   Could we forget the widow`d hour
     And look on Spirits breathed away,
     As on a maiden in the day
   When first she wears her orange-flower!
   When crown`d with blessing she doth rise
     To take her latest leave of home,
     And hopes and light regrets that come
   Make April of her tender eyes;
   And doubtful joys the father move,
    And tears are on the mother`s face,
    As parting with a long embrace
  She enters other realms of love;

  Her office there to rear, to teach,
    Becoming as is meet and fit
    A link among the days, to knit
  The generations each with each;

  And, doubtless, unto thee is given
    A life that bears immortal fruit
    In those great offices that suit
  The full-grown energies of heaven.

  Ay me, the difference I discern!
    How often shall her old fireside
    Be cheer`d with tidings of the bride,
  How often she herself return,

  And tell them all they would have told,
    And bring her babe, and make her boast,
    Till even those that miss`d her most
  Shall count new things as dear as old:

  But thou and I have shaken hands,
    Till growing winters lay me low;
    My paths are in the fields I know.
  And thine in undiscover`d lands.
XLI
   Thy spirit ere our fatal loss 
     Did ever rise from high to higher;
     As mounts the heavenward altar-fire, 
   As flies the lighter thro` the gross.
   But thou art turn`d to something strange, 
     And I have lost the links that bound 
     Thy changes; here upon the ground, 
   No more partaker of thy change.
   Deep folly! yet that this could be — 
    That I could wing my will with might
    To leap the grades of life and light,
  And flash at once, my friend, to thee.

  For tho` my nature rarely yields 
    To that vague fear implied in death; 
    Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath, 
  The howlings from forgotten fields;

  Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor
    An inner trouble I behold,
    A spectral doubt which makes me cold,
  That I shall be thy mate no more,

  Tho` following with an upward mind 
    The wonders that have come to thee, 
    Thro` all the secular to-be, 
  But evermore a life behind.
XLII
   I vex my heart with fancies dim:
     He still outstript me in the race;
     It was but unity of place
   That made me dream I rank`d with him.
   And so may Place retain us still,
     And he the much-beloved again,
     A lord of large experience, train
   To riper growth the mind and will:
   And what delights can equal those
    That stir the spirit`s inner deeps,
    When one that loves but knows not, reaps
  A truth from one that loves and knows?
XLIII
   If Sleep and Death be truly one,
     And every spirit`s folded bloom
     Thro` all its intervital gloom
   In some long trance should slumber on;
   Unconscious of the sliding hour,
     Bare of the body, might it last,
     And silent traces of the past
   Be all the colour of the flower:
   So then were nothing lost to man;
    So that still garden of the souls
Source
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