And deepens on and up! the gates
Roll back, and far within

For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin.
The sabbaths of Eternity,

One sabbath deep and wide—
A light upon the shining sea—
The Bridegroom with his bride!

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

[From The Princess]

I

THE SPLENDOUR FALLS ON CASTLE Walls

The splendour falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story:

The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow for ever and for ever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

II

TEARS, IDLE TEARS

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

[From In Memoriam]

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.

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.

LIV

Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

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;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;

That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

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.

CIX

Heart-affluence in discursive talk

From household fountains never dry; The critic clearness of an eye, That saw thro' all the Muses' walk;

Seraphic intellect and force

To seize and throw the doubts of man; Impassion❜d logic, which outran The hearer in its fiery course;

High nature amorous of the good,

But touch'd with no ascetic gloom; And passion pure in snowy bloom Thro' all the years of April blood;

A love of freedom rarely felt,

Of freedom in her regal seat

Of England; not the schoolboy heat,

The blind hysterics of the Celt;

And manhood fused with female grace
In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face;

All these have been, and thee mine eyes Have look'd on: if they look'd in vain, My shame is greater who remain,

Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.