Obiit MDCCCXXXIII, XCIII–XCVI

By night we linger’d on the lawn, For underfoot the herb was dry; And genial warmth; and o’er the sky The silvery haze of summer drawn;

And calm that let the tapers burn Unwavering: not a cricket chirr’d: The brook alone far-off was heard And on the board the fluttering urn:

And bats went round in fragrant skies, And wheel’d or lit the filmy shapes That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes And woolly breasts and beaded eyes;

While now we sang old songs that peal’d From knoll to knoll, where, couch’d at ease, The white kine glimmer’d and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field.

But when those others, one by one, Withdrew themselves from me and night, And in the house light after light Went out, and I was all alone,

A hunger seized my heart; I read Of that glad year which once had been, In those fall’n leaves which kept their green, The noble letters of the dead:

And strangely on the silence broke The silent-speaking words, and strange Was love’s dumb cry defying change To test his worth; and strangely spoke

The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell On doubts that drive the coward back, And keen thro’ wordy snares to track Suggestion to her inmost cell.

So word by word, and line by line, The dead man touch’d me from the past, And all at once it seem’d at last His living soul was flash’d on mine,

And mine in his was wound, and whirl’d About empyreal heights of thought, And came on that which is, and caught The deep pulsations of the world,

Æonian music measuring out The steps of Time—the shocks of Chance— The blows of Death. At length my trance Was cancell’d, stricken thro’ with doubt.

Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame In matter-moulded forms of speech, Or ev’n for intellect to reach Thro’ memory that which I became:

Till now the doubtful dusk reveal’d The knolls once more where, couch’d at ease, The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field:

And suck’d from out the distant gloom A breeze began to tremble o’er The large leaves of the sycamore, And fluctuate all the still perfume;

And gathering freshlier overhead, Rock’d the full-foliaged elms, and swung The heavy-folded rose, and flung The lilies to and fro, and said

‘The dawn, the dawn,’ and died away; And East and West, without a breath, Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, To broaden into boundless day.

You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.

I know not: one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touched a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true:

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out, There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.

He fought his doubts and gather’d strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them: thus he came at length

To find a stronger faith his own; And Power was with him in the night, Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone,

But in the darkness and the cloud, As over Sinaï’s peaks of old, While Israel made their gods of gold Altho’ the trumpet blew so loud.

My love has talk’d with rocks and trees, He finds on misty mountain-ground His own vast shadow glory-crown’d, He sees himself in all he sees.

Two partners of a married life— I look’d on these and thought of thee In vastness and in mystery, And of my spirit as of a wife.

These two—they dwelt with eye on eye, Their hearts of old have heat in tune, Their meetings made December June, Their every parting was to die.

Their love has never past away; The days she never can forget Are earnest that he loves her yet, Whate’er the faithless people say.

Her life is lone, he sits apart, He loves her yet, she will not weep, Tho’ rapt in matters dark and deep He seems to slight her simple heart.

He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, He reads the secret of the star, He seems so near and yet so far, He looks so cold: she thinks him kind.

She keeps the gift of years before, A wither’d violet is her bliss; She knows not what his greatness is; For that, for all, she loves him more.

For him she plays, to him she sings Of early faith and plighted vows; She knows but matters of the house, And he, he knows a thousand things.

Her faith is fixt and cannot move, She darkly feels him great and wise, She dwells on him with faithful eyes, ‘I cannot understand: I love.’

You leave us: you will see the Rhine, And those fair hills I sail’d below, When I was there with him; and go By summer belts of wheat and vine

To where he breathed his latest breath, That City. All her splendour seems No livelier than the wisp that gleams On Lethe in the eyes of Death.

Let her great Danube rolling fair Enwind her isles, unmarked of me: I have not seen, I will not see Vienna; rather dream that there,

A treble darkness, evil haunts The birth, the bridal; friend from friend, Is oftener parted, fathers bend Above more graves, a thousand wants

Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey By each cold hearth, and sadness flings Her shadow on the blaze of kings: And yet myself have heard him say,

That not in any mother town With statelier progress to and fro The double tides of chariots flow By park and suburb under brown

Of lustier leaves; nor more content, He told me, lives in any crowd, When all is gay with lamps, and loud With sport and song, in booth and tent,

Imperial halls, or open plain; And wheels the circled dance, and breaks The rocket molten into flakes Of crimson or in emerald rain.