In Memoriam
I.
I held it truth...
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...
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....
... in the dusk of thee, the clock
beats out the little lives of men.
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...
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
iIs 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 today,"
or "here tomorrow 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...
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.
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 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,
...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
...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 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 weeps 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...
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.
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 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...?
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...
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 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....
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....
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,
...thro’ four sweet years arose and fell,
from flower to flower, from snow to snow...
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...
XXIV
...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...?
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...
I loved the weight I had to bear,
because it needed help of Love...
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 hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
't is 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...
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.
XXX
With trembling fingers did we weave
the holly round the Christmas 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:
we heard them sweep the winter land;
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...
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...
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.
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 little 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...
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."...
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...
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!
...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...
to knit
The generations each with each;
And, doubtless, unto thee is given
a life that bears immortal fruit...
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
...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...
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....
...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...
So then were nothing lost to man;
so that still garden of the souls
in many a figured leaf enrolls
the total world since life began;
and love will last as pure and whole
as when he loved me here in Time...
XLIV
How fares it with the happy dead?
For here the man is more and more;
but he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.
The days have vanish’d,...
and in the long harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs),
may some dim touch of earthly things
surprise thee ranging with thy peers.
If such a dreamy touch should fall,
O turn thee round, resolve the doubt;
my guardian angel will speak out
in that high place, and tell thee all.
XLVI
...The path we came by, thorn and flower,
is shadow’d by the growing hour...
So be it: there no shade can last
in that deep dawn behind the tomb,
but clear from marge to marge shall bloom
the eternal landscape of the past;
a lifelong tract of time reveal’d...
XLIX
...Beneath all fancied hopes and fears
ay me, the sorrow deepens down,
whose muffled motions blindly drown
the bases of my life in tears.
L
Be near me when my light is low,
when the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
and tingle; and the heart is sick,
and all the wheels of Being slow.
Be near me when the sensuous frame
is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
and Time, a maniac scattering dust,
and Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Be near me when my faith is dry...
be near me when I fade away,
to point the term of human strife,
and on the low dark verge of life
the twilight of eternal day.
LI
Do we indeed desire the dead
should still be near us at our side?
is there no baseness we would hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?
Shall he for whose applause I strove,
I had such reverence for his blame,
see with clear eye some hidden shame
and I be lessen’d in his love?
I wrong the grave with fears untrue:
shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death:
the dead shall look me thro’ and thro’.
Be near us when we climb or fall:
ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
with larger other eyes than ours,
to make allowance for us all.
LIV
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
will be the final goal of ill...
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
that not one life shall be destroy’d,
or cast as rubbish to the void,
when God hath made the pile complete...
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
at last–far off–at last, to all,
and every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
an infant crying in the night:
an infant crying for the light:
and with no language but a cry.
LV
...Are God and Nature then at strife,
that Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
so careless of the single life;
that I, considering everywhere
her secret meaning in her deeds,
and finding that of fifty seeds
she often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
and falling with my weight of cares
upon the great world’s altar-stairs
that slope thro’ darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith,...
and call
to what I feel is Lord of all,
and faintly trust the larger hope.
LVI
"So careful of the type?" but no.
from scarped cliff and quarried stone
she cries, "A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
"Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
the spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more." And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
such splendid purpose in his eyes...
who trusted God was love indeed
and love Creation’s final law--
tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
with ravine, shriek’d against his creed--
who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
who battled for the True, the Just,
be blown about the desert dust,
or seal’d within the iron hills?
...O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.
LVII
Peace; come away: the song of woe
is after all an earthly song:
peace; come away: we do him wrong
to sing so wildly: let us go.
Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;
but half my life I leave behind:
methinks my friend is richly shrined;
but I shall pass; my work will fail.
Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,
one set slow bell will seem to toll
the passing of the sweetest soul
that ever look’d with human eyes.
I hear it now, and o’er and o’er,
eternal greetings to the dead;
and "Ave, Ave, Ave," said,
"Adieu, adieu" for evermore.
LVII
In those sad words I took farewell:
like echoes in sepulchral halls,
as drop by drop the water falls
in vaults and catacombs, they fell...
LIX
O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me
no casual mistress, but a wife,
my bosom-friend and half of life;
as I confess it needs must be;
O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood,
be sometimes lovely like a bride,
and put thy harsher moods aside,
if thou wilt have me wise and good...
LX
He past; a soul of nobler tone:
my spirit loved and loves him yet,
like some poor girl whose heart is set
on one whose rank exceeds her own.
He mixing with his proper sphere,
she finds the baseness of her lot,
half jealous of she knows not what,
and envying all that meet him there.
The little village looks forlorn;
she sighs amid her narrow days,
moving about the household ways,
in that dark house where she was born.
The foolish neighbours come and go,
and tease her till the day draws by:
at night she weeps, "How vain am I!
How should he love a thing so low?"
LXVII
When on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest
by that broad water of the west,
there comes a glory on the walls:
thy marble bright in dark appears,
as slowly steals a silver flame
along the letters of thy name,
and o’er the number of thy years.
The mystic glory swims away;
from off my bed the moonlight dies;
and closing eaves of wearied eyes
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray:
and then I know the mist is drawn
a lucid veil from coast to coast,
and in the dark church like a ghost
thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.
LXVIII
When in the down I sink my head,
Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, times my breath;
Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, knows not Death,
nor can I dream of thee as dead...
But what is this? I turn about,
I find a trouble in thine eye,
which makes me sad I know not why,
nor can my dream resolve the doubt....
LXIX
I dream’d there would be Spring no more,
that Nature’s ancient power was lost:
the streets were black with smoke and frost...
I wander’d from the noisy town,
I found a wood with thorny boughs:
I took the thorns to bind my brows...
They call’d me in the public squares
the fool that wears a crown of thorns:
they call’d me fool, they call’d me child:
I found an angel of the night;
the voice was low, the look was bright;
he look’d upon my crown and smiled:
he reach’d the glory of a hand,
that seem’d to touch it into leaf:
the voice was not the voice of grief,
the words were hard to understand.
LXX
I cannot see the features right,
when on the gloom I strive to paint
the face I know; the hues are faint
and mix with hollow masks of night...
LXXIII
So many worlds, so much to do,
so little done, such things to be,
how know I what had need of thee,
for thou wert strong as thou wert true?
The fame is quench’d that I foresaw,
the head hath miss’d an earthly wreath:
I curse not nature, no, nor death;
for nothing is that errs from law.
We pass; the path that each man trod
is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:
what fame is left for human deeds
in endless age? It rests with God...
LXXIV
As sometimes in a dead man’s face,
to those that watch it more and more,
a likeness, hardly seen before,
comes out–to some one of his race:
so, dearest, now thy brows are cold,
I see thee what thou art, and know
thy likeness to the wise below,
thy kindred with the great of old.
But there is more than I can see,
and what I see I leave unsaid,
nor speak it, knowing Death has made
his darkness beautiful with thee.
LXXV
I leave thy praises unexpress’d
in verse that brings myself relief,
and by the measure of my grief
I leave thy greatness to be guess’d...
Thy leaf has perish’d in the green,
and, while we breathe beneath the sun,
the world which credits what is done
is cold to all that might have been.
So here shall silence guard thy fame;
but somewhere, out of human view,
whate’er thy hands are set to do
is wrought with tumult of acclaim.
LXXVIII
Again at Christmas did we weave
the holly round the Christmas hearth;
the silent snow possess’d the earth,
and calmly fell our Christmas-eve...
The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost...
but over all things brooding slept
the quiet sense of something lost.
As in the winters left behind,
again our ancient games had place...
Who show’d a token of distress?
No single tear, no mark of pain:
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?
O last regret, regret can die!
No--mixed with all this mystic frame,
her deep relations are the same,
but with long use her tears are dry.
LXXXV
This truth came borne with bier and pall,
I felt it, when I sorrow’d most,
'Tis better to have loved and lost,
than never to have loved at all--
...every pulse of wind and wave
recalls, in change of light or gloom,
my old affection of the tomb,
and my prime passion in the grave:
my old affection of the tomb,
a part of stillness, yearns to speak:
"Arise, and get thee forth and seek
A friendship for the years to come.
"Iwatch thee from the quiet shore;
thy spirit up to mine can reach;
but in dear words of human speech
we two communicate no more."
XCVI
You say, but with no touch of scorn,
sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
are tender over drowning flies,
you tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
I know not: one indeed I knew
in many a subtle question versed,
who touch’d a jarring lyre at first,
but ever strove to make it true:
perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
at last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gather’d strength,
he would not make his judgment blind,
he faced the spectres of the mind
and laid them: thus he came at length
to find a stronger faith his own;
and Power was with him in the night,
which makes the darkness and the light,
and dwells not in the light alone,
but in the darkness and the cloud,
as over Sinaï’s peaks of old,
while Israel made their gods of gold,
altho’ the trumpet blew so loud.
CXXX
Thy voice is on the rolling air;
Ihear thee where the waters run;
thou standest in the rising sun,
and in the setting thou art fair.
...
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho’ I die.
CXXXI
O true and tried, so well and long,
demand not thou a marriage lay;
in that it is thy marriage day
is music more than any song.
Nor have I felt so much of bliss
since first he told me that he loved
a daughter of our house; nor proved
since that dark day a day like this;
tho’ I since then have number’d o’er
some thrice three years: they went and came,
remade the blood and changed the frame,
and yet is love not less, but more,
no longer caring to embalm
in dying songs a dead regret...
Regret is dead, but love is more
than in the summers that are flown,
for I myself with these have grown
to something greater than before;
which makes appear the songs I made
as echoes out of weaker times...
But where is she, the bridal flower,
that must he made a wife ere noon?
She enters, glowing like the moon
of Eden on its bridal bower:
on me she bends her blissful eyes
and then on thee; they meet thy look
and brighten like the star that shook
betwixt the palms of paradise.
O when her life was yet in bud,
he too foretold the perfect rose...
But now set out: the noon is near,
and I must give away the bride;
she fears not, or with thee beside
and me behind her, will not fear.
For I that danced her on my knee,
that watch’d her on her nurse’s arm,
that shielded all her life from harm
at last must part with her to thee;
now waiting to be made a wife,
her feet, my darling, on the dead;
their pensive tablets round her head,
and the most living words of life
breathed in her ear. The ring is on,
the "Wilt thou" answer’d, and again
the "Wilt thou" ask’d, till out of twain
her sweet "I will" has made you one...
O happy hour, behold the bride
with him to whom her hand I gave.
They leave the porch, they pass the grave
that has to-day its sunny side.
To-day the grave is bright for me,
for them the light of life increased,
who stay to share the morning feast,
who rest to-night beside the sea...
...drinking health to bride and groom
we wish them store of happy days.
Nor count me all to blame if I
conjecture of a stiller guest,
perchance, perchance, among the rest,
and, tho’ in silence, wishing joy...
A soul shall draw from out the vast
and strike his being into bounds,
and, moved thro’ life of lower phase,
result in man, be born and think,
and act and love, a closer link
betwixt us and the crowning race
of those that, eye to eye, shall look
on knowledge; under whose command
is Earth and Earth’s, and in their hand
is Nature like an open book;
no longer half-akin to brute,
for all we thought and loved and did,
and hoped, and suffer’d, is but seed
of what in them is flower and fruit;
whereof the man, that with me trod
this planet, was a noble type
appearing ere the times were ripe,
that friend of mine who lives in God,
that God, which ever lives and loves,
one God, one law, one element,
and one far-off divine event,
to which the whole creation moves.
