XVIII.

Tis well; t is 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 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.

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.

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,"

And we with singing cheer'd the way,
And, crown'd with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:

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.

If all was good and fair we met,

This earth had been the Paradise It never look'd to human eyes Since Adam left his garden yet.

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;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein ?

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

As light as carrier-birds in air;
I loved the weight I had to bear,
Because it needed help of Love:

Nor could I weary, heart or limb,
When mighty Love would cleave in
twain

The lading of a single pain, And part it, giving half to him.

XXVI.

STILL onward winds the dreary way;
I with it; for I long to prove
No lapse of moons can canker Love,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.

And if that eye which watches guilt

And goodness, and hath power to see Within the green the moulder'd tree, And towers fall'n as soon as built

O, if indeed that eye foresee

Or see (in Him is no before)

In more of life true life no more
And Love the indifference to be,

Then might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To shroud me from my proper scorn.

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;

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 gamboll'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.

Our voices took a higher range;

Once more we sang: "They do not die Nor lose their mortal sympathy, Nor change to us, although they change;

"Rapt from the fickle and the frail

With gather'd power, yet the same, Pierces the keen seraphic flame From orb to orb, from veil to veil."

Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,

Draw forth the cheerful day from night: O Father, touch the east, and light The light that shone when Hope was born.

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, Which telling what it is to die Had surely added praise to praise.

From every house the neighbors met,
The streets were fill'd with joyful sound,
A solemn gladness even crown'd
The purple brows of Olivet.

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.

XXXII.

HER eyes are homes of silent prayer, Nor other thought her mind admits But, he was dead, and there he sits, And he that brought him back is there.

Then one deep love doth supersede

All other, when her ardent gaze Roves from the living brother's face, And rests upon the Life indeed.

All subtle thought, all curious fears,

Borne down by gladness so complete, She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet With costly spikenard and with tears.

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,

Whose loves in higher love endure ; What souls possess themselves so pure, Or is there blessedness like theirs?

XXXIII.

O THOU that after toil and storm

Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air, Whose faith hath centre everywhere, Nor cares to fix itself to form,

Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.

Her faith thro' form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good:
O, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev'n for want of such a type.

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;

"T were 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,

The sound of streams that swift or slow Draw down Eonian 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 Half-dead to know that I shall die." more,