IN MEMORIAM. 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; But vaster. We are fools and slight; forgive my grief for one removed, Forgive these wild and wandering cries, IN MEMORIAM. A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII. I. I HELD it truth, with him who sings And find in loss a gain to match? Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, 66 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, To touch thy thousand years of gloom : Nor branding summer suns avail 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; | That loss is common would not make "And all the phantom, Nature, stands - IV. To Sleep I give my powers away; O heart, how fares it with thee now, 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 But, for the unquiet heart and brain, In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, 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. My own less bitter, rather more : Too common! Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break. A hand that can be clasp'd no more, 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, IX. FAIR ship, that from the Italian shore So draw him home to those that mourn 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; My Arthur, whom I shall not see X. I HEAR the noise about thy keel; Thou bringest 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 : 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 and deep peace on this 'high wold, 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, Lo, as a dove when up she springs To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe, I leave this mortal ark behind, And reach the glow of southern skies, 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 Which weep a loss for ever new, Which weep 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 burden that they bring. XIV. IF one should bring me this report, That thou hadst touch'd the land today, 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 I perceived no touch of change, XV. TO-NIGHT the winds begin to rise 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 I scarce could brook the strain and stir That makes the barren branches loud; That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire. XVI. WHATWords 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 tothink 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 mayst 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, |