And tell them all they would have told, 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. XL. 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, Deep folly! yet that this could be,- 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 XLI. I VEX my heart with fancies dim: That made me dream I rank'd with him. And so may Place retain us still, 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? XLII. IF Sleep and Death be truly one, 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 color of the flower: So then were nothing lost to man; And love will last as pure and whole XLIII. How fares it with the happy dead? The days have vanish'd, tone and tint, 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, THE baby new to earth and sky, But as he grows he gathers much, So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, As thro' the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined. This use may lie in blood and breath, Which else were fruitless of their due, Had man to learn himself anew Beyond the second birth of Death. XLV. WE ranging down this lower track, 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; O Love, thy province were not large, XLVI. THAT each, who seems a separate whole, Is faith as vague as all unsweet: And we shall sit at endless feast, Enjoying each the other's good: What vaster dream can hit the mood Of Love on earth? He seeks at least Upon the last and sharpest height, Before the spirits fade away, Some landing-place to clasp and say, "Farewell! We lose ourselves in light." XLVII. Ir these brief lays of Sorrow born, Her care is not to part and prove; She takes, when harsher moods remit, What slender shade of doubt may flit, And makes it vassal unto love: And hence, indeed, she sports with words, But rather loosens from the lip XLVIII. FROM art, from nature, from the schools, The lightest wave of thought shall lisp, The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe, The slightest air of song shall breathe To make the sullen surface crisp. And look thy look, and go thy way, But blame not thou the winds that make Beneath all fancied hopes and fears, XLIX. 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.. L. 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 wrong the grave with fears untrue: Be near us when we climb or fall: LI. I CANNOT love thee as I ought, For love reflects the thing beloved: My words are only words, and moved Upon the topmost froth of thought. "Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song," The Spirit of true love replied; "Thou canst not move me from thy side, Nor human frailty do me wrong. "What keeps a spirit wholly true To that ideal which he bears? "So fret not, like an idle girl, That life is dash'd with flecks of sin. Abide: thy wealth is gather'd in, When Time hath sunder'd shell from pearl." LII. How many a father have I seen, And dare we to this fancy give, That had the wild-oat not been sown, The soil, left barren, scarce had grown The grain by which a man may live? O, if we held the doctrine sound Hold thou the good: define it well: LIII. O YET We trust that somehow good To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not a worm is cloven in vain; Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance, And grapples with his evil star; Who makes by force his merit known, And moving up from high to higher, Yet feels, as in a pensive dream, While yet beside its vocal springs Who ploughs with pain his native lea LXIV. SWEET Soul, do with me as thou wilt; And in that solace can I sing, Till out of painful phases wrought There flutters up a happy thought, Self-balanced on a lightsome wing: And thine effect so lives in me, A part of mine may live in thee, And move thee on to noble ends. LXV. You thought my heart too far diseased; The shade by which my life was crost, Whose feet are guided thro' the land, Whose jest among his friends is free, Who takes the children on his knee, And winds their curls about his hand : He plays with threads, he beats his chair His night of loss is always there." LXVI. WHEN on my bed the moonlight falls, Thy marble bright in dark appears, 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 LXVII. 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: I walk as ere I walk'd forlorn, When all our path was fresh with dew, And all the bugle breezes blew Reveillée to the breaking morn. But what is this? I turn about, I find a trouble in thine eye, But ere the lark hath left the lea LXVIII. I DREAM'D there would be Spring no more, I wander'd from the noisy town, I found a wood with thorny boughs: I took the thorns to bind my brows, I wore them like a civic crown: |