Obiit MDCCCXXXIII, LXVI–LXXIII

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 Which makes me sad I know not why, Nor can my dream resolve the doubt:

But ere the lark hath left the lea I wake, and I discern the truth; It is the trouble of my youth That foolish sleep transfers to thee.

I dream’d there would be Spring no more, That Nature’s ancient power was lost: The streets were black with smoke and frost, They chatter’d trifles at the door.

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.

I met with scoffs, I met with scorns From youth and babe and hoary hairs: They call’d me in the public squares The fool that wears a crown of thorns.

They call’d me fool, they call’d me child: I found an angel of the night: The voice was low, the look was bright, He look’d upon my crown and smiled:

He reach’d the glory of a hand, That seem’d to touch it into leaf: The voice was not the voice of grief; The words were hard to understand.

I cannot see the features right, When on the gloom I strive to paint The face I know; the hues are faint And mix with hollow masks of night:

Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought, A gulf that ever shuts and gapes, A hand that points, and palled shapes In shadowy thoroughfares of thought;

And crowds that stream from yawning doors, And shoals of pucker’d faces drive; Dark bulks that tumble half alive, And lazy lengths on boundless shores:

Till all at once beyond the will I hear a wizard music roll, And thro’ a lattice on the soul Looks thy fair face and makes it still.

Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance And madness, thou hast forged at last A night-long Present of the Past In which we went through summer France.

Hadst thou such credit with the soul? So bring an opiate treble-strong, Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong That thus my pleasure might be whole;

While now we talk as once we talk’d Of men and minds, the dust of change, The days that grow to something strange, In walking as of old we walk’d

Beside the river’s wooded reach, The fortress, and the mountain ridge, The cataract flashing from the bridge, The breaker breaking on the beach.

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, And howlest, issuing out of night, With blasts that blow the poplar white, And lash with storm the streaming pane?

Day, when my crown’d estate begun To pine in that reverse of doom, Which sickened every living bloom, And blurr’d the splendour of the sun;

Who usherest in the dolorous hour With thy quick tears that make the rose Pull sideways, and the daisy close Her crimson fringes to the shower;

Who might’st have heaved a windless flame Up the deep East, or, whispering, play’d A chequer-work of beam and shade From hill to hill, yet look’d the same,

As wan, as chill, as wild as now; Day, mark’d as with some hideous crime, When the dark hand struck down thro’ time. And cancell’d nature’s best: but thou,

Lift as thou may’st thy burthen’d brows Thro’ clouds that drench the morning star, And whirl the ungarner’d sheaf afar, And sow the sky with flying boughs,

And up thy vault with roaring sound Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day; Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray, And hide thy shame beneath the ground.

So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be, How know I what had need of thee, For thou wert strong as thou wert true?

The fame is quench’d that I foresaw, The head hath miss’d an earthly wreath: I curse not nature; no, nor death, For nothing is that errs from law.

We pass: the path that each man trod Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds: What fame is left for human deeds In endless age? It rests with God.

O hollow wraith of dying fame, Fade wholly, while the soul exults, And self-infolds the large results Of force that would have forged a name.

As sometimes in a dead man’s face, To those that watch it more and more, A likeness hardly seen before Comes out—to some one of his race:

So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, I see thee what thou art, and know Thy likeness to the wise below, Thy kindred with the great of old.

But there is more than I can see, And what I see I leave unsaid, Nor speak it, knowing Death has made His darkness beautiful with thee.

I leave thy praises unexpress’d In verse that brings myself relief, And by the measure of my grief I leave thy greatness to be guess’d;

What practice howsoe’er expert In fitting aptest words to things, Or voice the richest-toned that sings, Hath power to give thee as thou wert?

I care not in these fading days To raise a cry that lasts not long, And round thee with the breeze of song To stir a little dust of praise.

Thy leaf has perish’d in the green, And, while we breathe beneath the sun, The world which credits what is done Is cold to all that might have been.

So here shall silence guard thy fame; But somewhere, out of human view, Whate’er thy hands are set to do Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.