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But, since it pleased a vanished 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 favorable speed

Ruffle thy mirrored mast, and lead
Through prosperous floods his holy urn.

All night no ruder air perplex

Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, through 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 widowed 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 traveled men from foreign lands,
And letters unto trembling hands,
And thy dark freight, - a vanished life.

So bring him. We have idle dreams :
This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies: oh! 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 clasped 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 through 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.

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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.

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, even yet, if this might be,
I, falling on his faithful heart,

Would, breathing through 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 can not find,
The words that are not heard again.

XIX.

THE Danube to the Severn gave

The darkened 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 hushed, nor moved along ;
And hushed my deepest grief of all,
When, filled with tears that can not 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.

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,
Unfettered 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.

CV.

RING out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new;
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, - let him go:
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor;
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly-dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness, of the times; Ring out, ring out, my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right;
Ring in the common love of good.

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