 Introduction to In Memoriam A.H.H. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elizabeth Klett. In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Introduction. 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 mate'st life in man and brute, thou mate'st death, and lo thy foot is on the skull which thou hast made. Thou wilt not leave us in the dust, thou mate'st man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die, and thou hast made him, thou art just. Thou seamest 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, for knowledge is of things we see, and yet we trust it comes from thee, a beam in darkness, let it grow. Let knowledge grow from more to more, but more of reverence in us dwell, that mind and soul, according well, may make one music as before, but vaster. We are fools and slight, we mock thee when we do not fear, but help thy foolish ones to bear, help thy vain worlds to bear thy light. Forgive what seemed my sin in me, what seemed my worth since I began, for merit lives from man to man, and not from man, O Lord, to thee. Forgive my grief for one removed, thy creature, whom I found so fair. I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved. Forgive these wild and wandering cries, confusions of a wasted youth, forgive them where they fail in truth, and in thy wisdom make me wise. 1849 End of the introduction to In Memoriam Verses 1 through 20 of In Memoriam A H H This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Elizabeth Klett In Memoriam A H H By Alfred Lord Tennyson Verses 1 through 20 1 I held at truth with him who sings to one clear harp in diverse tones, that men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to hire things. But who shall so forecast the years, and find in loss a gain to match, or reach a hand through time to catch the far-off interest of tears? Let love clasp grief, lest both be drowned. Let darkness keep her raven gloss. Ha! sweeter to be drunk with loss, to dance with death, to beat the ground, than that the victor hours should scorn the long result of love and boast. Behold the man that loved and lost, but all he was is overworn. 2. Old you, which graspest at the stones that name the underlying dead, thy fibres net the dreamless head, thy roots are wrapped about the bones. 3. 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. 4. O not for thee the glow, the bloom, who changes not in any gale, nor branding summer suns avail to touch thy thousand years of gloom, and gazing on thee, sullen tree, sick for thy stubborn hardy-hood, I seem to fail from out my blood, and grow in corporate into thee. 3. O sorrow, cruel fellowship, O priestess in the vaults of death, O sweet and bitter in a breath, what whispers from thy lying lip? 4. The stars, she whispers, blindly run, a web is woven across the sky, from out-waste places comes a cry, and murmurs from the dying sun, and all the phantom nature stands, with all the music in her tone, a hollow echo of my own, a hollow form with empty hands. 5. And shall I take a thing so blind, embrace her as my natural good, or crush her like a vice of blood upon the threshold of the mind? 4. To sleep I give my powers away, my will is bondsman to the dark, I sit within a helmless bark, and with my heart I muse and say, 5. O heart, how fares it with thee now, that thou shouldst fail from thy desire, who scarcely darest to inquire, what is it makes me beat so low? 6. 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. 7. Such clouds of nameless troubles cross all night below the darkened eyes, with morning wakes the will and cries, thou shalt not be the fool of loss. 5. I sometimes hold it half a sin, to put in words the grief I feel, for words like nature half reveal and half conceal the soul within. 6. But for the unquiet heart and brain, a use in measured language lies, the sad mechanic exercise like dull narcotics numbing pain. 7. In words like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, like coarsest clothes against the cold, but that large grief which these enfold is given an outline, and no more. 6. One writes, that other friends remain, that loss is common to the race, and common is the common place, and vacant chaff well meant for grain. That loss is common would not make my own less bitter, rather more, too common, never mourning war to evening, but some heart did break. 7. O father, where so where thou be, who pledged now thy gallant son, a shot ere half thy draught be done hath still the life that beat from thee. 8. O mother, praying God will save thy sailor, while thy head is bowed, his heavy-shotted hammock shroud drops in his vast and wandering grave. 9. He know no more than I, who wrought at that last hour to please him well, whom used on all I had to tell, and something written, something thought, expecting still his advent home, and ever met him on his way with wishes thinking, here to-day, or here to-morrow will he come. 10. O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove, that sittest, ranging golden hair, and glad to find thyself so fair, poor child, that waitest for thy love. 11. For now her father's chimney glows in expectation of a guest, and thinking, this will please him best. She takes a ribbon, or a rose, for he will see them on to-night, and with the thought her colour burns, and having left the glass, she turns once more to set a ringlet right, and even when she turned, the curse had fallen, and her future lord was drowned in passing through the Ford, or killed in falling from his horse. 12. O what to her shall be the end, and what to me remains of good, to her perpetual maidenhood, and unto me no second friend. 7. Dark house, by which once more I stand, here in the long unlovely street, doors, where my heart was used to beat so quickly, waiting for a hand. 8. A hand that can be clasped no more. Behold me, for I cannot sleep, and like a guilty thing I creep at earliest morning to the door. 9. He is not here, but far away the noise of life begins again, and ghastly through the drizzling rain, on the bald street breaks the blank day. 8. 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. 9. 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. 10. So find I every pleasant spot in which we too were won't to meet, the field, the chamber, and the street, for all is dark were thou art not. 11. Yet as that other, wandering there in those deserted walks, may find a flower beat with rain and wind, which once she fostered up with care, so seems it in my deep regret. 12. O my forsaken heart, with thee, and this poor flower of poetry, which little cared for, fades not yet. 13. 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. 9. Fair ship, that from the Italian shore salist the placid ocean plains, with my lost Arthur's loved remains, spread thy full wings, and waft him oar. 13. So draw him home to those that mourn in vain. A favourable speed ruffle thy mirrored mast, and lead through prosperous floods his holy urn. 14. All night no rudor air perplex thy sliding keel, till phosphor, bright as our pure love, through early light shall glimmer on the dewy decks. 15. 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. 10. I hear the noise about thy keel, I hear the bells struck in the night, I see the cabin window bright, I see the sailor at the wheel, thou brinks the sailor to his wife, and travelled men from foreign lands, and letters unto trembling hands, and thy dark freight of vanished life. 11. So bring him. We have idle dreams. This look of quiet flatters thus our home-bread 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. Then if with thee the roaring wells should gulf him fathom deep in brine, and hand so often clasped in mine, should toss with tangle, and with shells. 11. Calm is the mourn 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 furs, and all the silvery gossimmers that twinkle into green and gold. 12. 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 mane. 13. 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. 14. 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. 12. Low as a dove when up she springs to bear through heaven a tale of woe, some dolerous message knit below the wild pulsation of her wings. Like her I go. I cannot stay. I leave this mortal arc behind, a weight of nerves without a mind, and leave the cliffs and haste away, or ocean mirrors rounded large, and reach the glow of southern skies, and see the sails at distance rise, and linger weeping on the marge, and saying, Comes he thus, my friend? Is this the end of all my care, and circle moaning in the air? Is this the end? Is this the end? 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. 13. Tears of the widower, when he sees a late lost form that sleep reveals, and moves his doubtful arms, and feels her place is empty, fall like these. 14. Which weep a loss for ever new, avoid where heart on heart reposed, and where warm hands have pressed and closed, silence till I be silent too. 15. Which weeps the comrade of my choice, an awful thought, a lie formoved, the human-hearted man I loved, a spirit, not a breathing voice. 16. Come, time, and teach me, many years, I do not suffer in a dream. For now so strange do these things seem, mine eyes have leisure for their tears. 17. My fancies time to rise on wing, and glance about the approaching sails, as though they brought but merchants' bails, and not the burden that they bring. 14. If one should bring me this report, that thou hadst touched the land to-day, 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, 15. 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 how my life had drooped of late, and he should sorrow o'er my state and marvel what possessed my brain, and I perceived no touch of change, no hint of death in all his frame, but found him all in all the same. I should not feel it to be strange. 15. Tonight the winds begin to rise, and roar from yonder dropping day. The last red leaf is whirled away, the rooks are blown about the skies. 16. The forest cracked, the waters curled, the cattle huddled on the lee, and wildly dashed on tower and tree, the sun-beam strikes along the world. 17. And but for fancies, which aver that all thy motions gently pass at the water-plane of molten glass, I scarce could brook the strain and stir that makes the barren branches loud, and but for fear it is not so. 18. The wild unrest that lives in woe would doat and pour on yonder cloud that rises upward always higher, and onward drags a laboring breast, and topples round the dreary west, a looming bastion fringed with fire. 16. What words are these have fallen 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 stunned me from my power to think, and all my knowledge of myself, and made me that delirious man whose fancy fuse is old and new, and flashes into false and true, and mingles all without a plan? 17. Thou comest, much wept for, such a breeze compelled 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 through circles of the bounding sky, week after week, the days go by, come quick, thou bringest all I love. 18. Henceforth, whoever thou mayest roam, my blessing, like a line of light, is on the water's 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, such precious relics brought by thee, the dust of him I shall not see, till all my widowed race be run. 18. 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 blessed among familiar names to rest and in the places of his youth. 19. 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 cannot find, the words that are not heard again. 19. 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 whey, and makes a silence in the hills. The whey is hushed, nor moved along, and hushed my deepest grief of all, when filled 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. 20. The lesser griefs that may be said, that breathe a thousand tender vows, are but a servants in a house where lies the master newly dead, who speak their feeling as it is, and weep the fullness from the mind. 21. It will be hard, they say, to find another service such as this. 22. My lighter moods are like to these, that out of words a comfort win, but there are other griefs within, and tears that at their fountain freeze. 23. For by the hearth the children sit, cold in that atmosphere of death, and scarce endure to draw the breath, or like to noiseless phantoms flit. 24. But open converse is there none, so much the vital spirits sink, to see the vacant chair, and to think, how good, how kind, and he is gone. End of verses 1 through 20. Verses 21 through 40 of in memoriam A-H-H. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elizabeth Klett. In memoriam A-H-H by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Verses 21 through 40. 21. I sing to him that rests below, and since the grasses round me wave, I take the grasses of the grave, and make them pipes whereon to blow. The traveller hears me now and then, and sometimes harshly will he speak. This fellow would make weakness weak, and melt the wax and hearts of men. Another answers. Let him be. He loves to make parade of pain, that with his piping he may gain the praise that comes to constancy. A third is Roth. Is this an hour for private sorrow's barren song, when more and more the people throng the chairs and thrones of civil power? A time to sicken and to swoon, when science reaches forth her arms to feel from world to world, and charms her secret from the latest moon. Behold. He speak an idle thing. He never knew the sacred dust. I do but sing because I must, and pipe but as the linets sing. And one is glad, her note is gay, for now her little ones have ranged, and one is sad, her note has changed, because her brood has stolen away. 22. The path by which we twain did go, which led by tracts that pleased us well, through four sweet years arose and fell, from flower to flower, from snow to snow. And we with singing cheered the way, and crowned with all the season-lent, from April on to April went, and glad at heart from May to May. But where the path we walked began to slant the fifth autumnal slope, as we descended following hope, there sat the shadow feared of man. Who broke our fair companionship, and spread his mantle dark and cold, and wrapped thee formless in the fold, and dulled the murmur on thy lip, and bore thee where I could not see nor follow, though I walk in haste, and think that somewhere in the waste the shadow sits, and waits for me. 23. Now sometimes in my sorrow shut, or breaking into song by fits, alone, alone to where he sits the shadow cloaked from hedge to foot, who keeps the keys of all the creeds, I wander, often falling lame, and looking back to whence I came, or on to where the pathway leads, and crying, how changed from where it ran, through lands where not a leaf was dumb, but all the lavish hills would hum the murmur of a happy pan. Where each by turns was guide to each, and fancy light from fancy cot, and thought leapt out to wed with thought, ere thought could wed itself with speech. And all we met was fair and good, and all was good that time could bring, and all the secret of the spring moved in the chambers of the blood, had many an old philosophy on Argyve Heights divinely sang, and round us all the thicket rang to many a flute of Arcady. 24. And was the day of my delight as pure and perfect as I say? The very source and fount of day is dashed with wandering aisles of night. If all was good and fair we met, this earth had been the paradise, it never looked to human eye since our first son arose and set. And is it that the haze of grief makes former gladness loom so great, the loneness of the present state that sets the past in this relief? Or that the past will always win a glory from its being far, an orb into the perfect star we saw not when we moved therein? 25. 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. 26. 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 I which watches guilt and goodness, and hath power to see within the green the mouldered tree, and towers fallen as soon as built, oh if indeed that I foresee, or see, in him is know 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. 27. 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 blessed, the heart that never plight a truth, but stagnates in the weeds of sloth, nor any want begotten rest. I hold it true, what ere befall, I feel it when I sorrow most, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. 28. The time draws near the birth of Christ, the moon is hid, the night is still, the Christmas bells from hill to hill answer each other in the mist. Four voices of four hamlets round, from far and near on mead and moor, swell out and fail, as if a door were shut between me and the sound. Each voice four changes on the wind, that now dilate and now decrease, peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace, peace and goodwill to all mankind. This year I slept and woke with pain. I almost wished no more to wake, and that my hold on life would break before I heard those bells again. But they, my troubled spirit, rule, for they controlled me when a boy. They bring me sorrow touched with joy, the merry, merry bells of yule. 29. With such compelling cause to grieve as daily vexes household peace, and chains regret to his decease, how dare we keep our Christmas Eve, which brings no more a welcome guest to enrich the threshold of the night, with showered largesse of delight in dance and song and game and jest. Yet go, and while the holly boughs and twine the cold baptismal font, make one wreath more for use, and won't, that guards the portals of the house. Old sisters of a day gone by, grey nurses, loving nothing new, why should they miss their yearly due before their time? They too will die. 30. With trembling fingers did we weave the holly round the Christmas hearth, a rainy cloud possessed the earth, and sadly fell our Christmas Eve. At our old pastimes in the hall we gambled, making vain pretence of gladness, with an awful sense of one mute shadow watching all. We paused, the winds were in the beach, 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, though 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 meat. They rest, we said. Their sleep is sweet. And silence followed, 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. Wrapped from the fickle and the frail with gathered power, yet the same pierces the keen, syraphic 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. 31. When Lazarus left his charnel cave, and home to Mary's house returned, was this demanded, if he yearned to hear her weeping by his grave? Where were 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 filled with joyful sound, a solemn gladness even crowned the purple brows of Olivet. Behold a man raised up by Christ! The rest remaineth unrevealed. He told it not, or something sealed the lips of that evangelist. 32. 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, born down by gladness so complete, she bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet with costly spikennard and with tears. Thrice blessed whose lives are faithful prayers, whose loves in higher love endure, what souls possess themselves so pure, or is there blessedness like theirs? 33. O thou that after toil and storm mayst seem to have reached pure air, whose faith has sent her everywhere, nor cares to fix itself to form, leave thou thy sister when she prays, her early heaven, her happy views, nor thou with shadowed hint confuse a life that leads melodious days. Her faith through 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 even for want of such a type. 34. 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? To her hardly worth my while to choose of all things mortal, or to use a little patience ere I die. To her 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. 35. 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 Ionian hills, and so 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 more, half-dead to know that I shall die. O me, what profits it to put an idle case? If death were seen at first as death, love had not been, or been a narrowest working shut, mere fellowship of sluggish moods, or in his coarsest satyr shape had bruised the herb and crushed the grape, and basked and battened in the woods. 36. Though truths in manhood darkly join, deep-seated in our mystic frame, we yield all blessing to the name of him that made them current coin, for wisdom dealt with mortal powers, where truth in closest word shall fail, when truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors. And so the word had breath, and wrought with human hands the creed of creeds, in loveliness of perfect deeds, more strong than all poetic thought, which he may read that binds the sheaf, or builds the house, or digs the grave, and those wild eyes that watch the wave in roaring's round the coral reef. 37. Urania speaks with darkened brow. 37. Thou praetist here where thou art least, this faith has many a purer priest, and many an abler voice than thou. Go down beside thy native rill, on thy parnassus set thy feet, and hear thy laurel whisper sweet about the ledges of the hill. And my melpomani replies, a touch of shame upon her cheek. I am not worthy even to speak of thy prevailing mysteries, for I am but an earthly muse, and owning but a little art to lull with song and aching heart, and render human love his dues. But brooding on the dear one dead, and all he said of things divine, and dear to me a sacred wine to dying lips is all he said, I murmured as I came along of comfort clasped in truth revealed, and loitered in the master's field, and darkened sanctities with song. 38. With weary steps I loiter on, though always under altered skies, the purple from the distance dies, my prospect and horizon gone. No joy the blowing season gives, the herald melodies of spring, but in the songs I love to sing, a doubtful gleam of solace lives. If any care for what is here survive in spirits rendered free, then are these songs I sing of thee not all ungrateful to thine ear. 39. Old warder of these buried bones, and answering now my random stroke with fruitful cloud and living smoke, dark you, that graspest at the stones and dipest toward the dreamless head, to thee too comes the golden hour when flower is feeling after flower, but sorrow fixed upon the dead, and darkening the dark graves of men, what whispered from her lying lips, thy gloom is kindled at the tips, and passes into gloom again. 40. Could we forget the widowed hour, and look on spirits breathed away, as on a maiden in the day when first she wears her orange flower, when crowned with blessing she doth rise to take her latest leave of home, and hopes and light regrets that come make April of her tender eyes, and doubtful joys the father move, and tears are on the mother's face, as parting with a long embrace she enters other realms of love. Her office there to rear, to teach, becoming as his meat and fit a link among the days, to knit the generations each with each, and doubtless unto thee is given a life that bears immortal fruit in those great offices that suit the full-grown energies of heaven. I me, the difference I discern, how often shall her old fireside be cheered with tidings of the bride, how often she herself return, and tell them all they would have told, and bring her babe, and make her boast, till even those that missed her most shall count new things as dear as old. But thou and I have shaken hands, till growing winters lay me low, my paths are in the fields I know, and thine in undiscovered lands. End of verses twenty-one through forty. Verses forty-one through sixty of in memoriam A H H This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elizabeth Clatt. In memoriam A H H by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Verses forty-one through sixty. Forty-one. The path by which we twain did go, which led by tracts that pleased us well, through four sweet years arose and fell, from flower to flower, from snow to snow, and we with singing cheered the way, and crowned with all the season lent from April on to April went, and glad at heart from May to May. But where the path we walked began to slant the fifth autumnal slope, as we descended following hope, there sat the shadow feared of man. The spirit ere our fatal loss did ever rise from high to higher, as mounts the heavenward altar fire, as flies the lighter through the gross. But thou art turned to something strange, and I have lost the links that bound thy changes, here upon the ground no more partaker of thy change. Deep folly, yet that this could be, that I could wing my will with might to leap the grades of life and light, and flash at once, my friend, to thee. For though my nature rarely yields to that vague fear implied in death, nor shutters at the gulfs beneath the howlings from forgotten fields, yet oft when sundown skirts the moor, an inner trouble, I behold, a spectral doubt which makes me cold, that I shall be thy mate no more. Though following with an upward mind the wonders that have come to thee through all the secular to be, but evermore a life behind. 42. I vexed my heart with fancy's dim. He still outstripped me in the race. It was but a unity of place that made me dream I ranked with him. And so may place retain us still, and he the much beloved again, a lord of large experience, trained to ripe a growth the mind and will. And what delights can equal those that stir the spirits in her deeps, when one that loves but knows not, reaps a truth from one that loves and knows? 43. If sleep and death be truly one, and every spirit's folded bloom through all its intervital gloom in some long trance should slumber on, unconscious of the sliding hour, bare of the body might it last, and silent traces of the past be all the color of the flower. So then were nothing lost to man, so that still garden of the souls in many a-figured leaf enrolls the total world since life began. And love will last as pure and whole as when he loved me here in time, and at the spiritual prime reawaken with the dawning soul. 44. How fares it with the happy dead? For here the man is more and more. But he forgets the days before God shut the doorways of his head. The days have vanished, tone and tint. And yet perhaps the hoarding sense gives out at times, he knows not whence, a little flash, a mystic hint. And in the long harmonious years, if death so tastes lethian springs, may some dim touch of earthly things surprise thee ranging with thy peers. If such a dreamy touch should fall, oh turn thee round, resolve the doubt, my guardian angel will speak out in that high place, and tell thee all. 45. The baby new to earth and sky, what time his tender palm is pressed against the circle of the breast, has never thought that this is I. But as he grows he gathers much, and learns the use of I and me, and finds I am not what I see, and other than the things I touch. So rounds he to a separate mind from whence clear memory may begin, and through the frame that binds him in his isolation grows defined. This use may lie in blood and breath, which else were fruitless of their due, had man to learn himself anew beyond the second birth of death. 46. We ranging down the slower track, the path we came by, thorn and flower, is shadowed by the growing hour, lest life should fail in looking back. So be it, there no shade can last in that deep dawn behind the tomb, but clear from Marge to Marge shall bloom the eternal landscape of the past. A life-long tract of time revealed the fruitful hours of still increase, days ordered in a wealthy peace, and those five years its richest field. Oh, love, thy province were not large, a bounded field nor stretching far, look also, love, a brooding star, a rosy warmth from Marge to Marge. 47. That each who seems a separate whole should move his rounds and fusing all the skirts of self again, should fall re-merging in the general soul, is faith as vague as all unsweet. Eternal form shall still divide the eternal soul from all beside, and I shall know him when we meet, and we shall sit at endless feast, enjoying each the other's good. What vaster dream can hit the mood of love on earth? He seeks at least upon the last and sharpest height, before the spirits fade away, some landing place to clasp and say, farewell, we lose ourselves in light. 48. If these brief lays of sorrow-born were taken to be such as closed grave doubts and answers here proposed, then these were such as men might scorn. Her care is not to part and prove. She takes, when harsher moods remit, what slender shade of doubt may flit, and makes it vassal unto love. And hence indeed she sports with words, but better serves a wholesome law, to aim to draw the deepest measure from the cords. Nor dare she trust a larger lay, but rather loosens from the lip short swallow flights of song that dip their wings in tears and skim away. 49. From art, from nature, from the schools, let random influences glance, like light in many a shivered lance that breaks about the dappled pools. From art shall lisp, the fancies tenderest eddy wreath, the slightest air of song shall breathe to make the sullen surface crisp. And look thy look, and go thy way, but blame not thou the winds that make the seeming wanton ripple break, the tender penciled shadow play. Beneath all fancied hopes and fears, I me, the sorrow deepens down, whose muffled motions blindly drown the bases of my life in tears. 50. Be near me when my light is low, when the blood creeps and the nerves prick and tingle, and the heart is sick and all the wheels of being slow. Be near me when the sensuous frame is wracked with pangs that conquer trust, and time, a maniac scattering dust, and life, a fury slinging flame. Be near me when my faith is dry, and men the flies of latter spring that lay their eggs and sting and sing and weave their petty cells and die. Be near me when I fade away to point the term of human strife and on the low dark verge of life the twilight of eternal day. 51. Do we indeed desire the dead should still be near us at our side? Is there no baseness we would hide? No inner vileness that we dread? Shall he for whose applause I strove I had such reverence for his blame see with clear eye some hidden shame and I be lessened in his love? I wrong the grave with fears untrue. Shall love be blamed for want of faith? There must be wisdom with great death. The dead shall look me through and through. Be near us when we climb or fall. Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours with larger other eyes than ours, to make allowance for us all. 52. I cannot love thee as I ought, for love reflects the thing beloved. My words are only words and moved upon the topmost froth of thought. Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song, the spirit of true love replied. Thou canst not move me from thy side, nor human frailty do me wrong. What keeps a spirit wholly true to that ideal which he bears? What record? Not the sinless years that breathed beneath the Syrian blue. So fret not, like an idle girl, that life is dashed with flecks of sin. Abide! Thy wealth is gathered in. When time hath sundered shell from pearl. 53. How many a father have I seen, a sober man among his boys, whose youth was full of foolish noise, who wears his manhood hail and green. And dare we to this fancy give that had the wild oat not been sown, the soil left barren, scarce had grown the grain by which a man may live? Or if we held the doctrine sound for life outliving heats of youth, yet who would preach it as a truth to those that eddy round and round? Hold thou the good, define it well, for fear divine philosophy should push beyond her mark, and be procurious to the lords of hell. 54. Oh, yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill, to pangs of nature, sins of will, defects of doubt and taints of blood, that nothing walks with aimless feet, that not one life shall be destroyed, or cast as rubbish to the void when God hath made the pile complete, that not a worm is cloven in vain, that not a moth with vain desire is shriveled in a fruitless fire, or but subserves another's gain. Behold! We know not anything. I can but trust that good shall fall at last, far off, at last to all, and every winter change to spring. So runs my dream. But what am I? An infant crying in the night, an infant crying for the light, and with no language but a cry. 55. The wish that of the living whole no life may fail beyond the grave derives it not from what we have the likeest God within the soul. Our God and nature then at strife that nature lends such evil dreams, so careful of the type she seems, so careless of the single life, that I, considering everywhere her secret meaning in her deeds, and finding that a fifty seed she often brings but one to bear, I falter where I firmly trod, and falling with my weight of cares upon the great world's altar stairs that slope through darkness up to God, I stretch lame hands of faith and grope, and gather dust and chaff, and call to what I feel is Lord of all, and faintly trust the larger hope. 56. So careful of the type, but no, from scarped cliff and quarried stone she cries, a thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, all shall go, thou makest thine appeal to me, I bring to life, I bring to death, the spirit does but mean the breath, I know no more, and he, shall he, man, and the work who seemed so fair, such splendid purpose in his eyes, who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, who built him faines of fruitless prayer, who trusted God was love indeed, and love creation's final law, though nature, red in tooth and claw, with raven shrieked against his creed, who loved, who suffered countless ills, who battled for the true, the just, be blown about the desert dust, or sealed within the iron hills. No more, a monster then, a dream, a discord, dragons of the prime, that tear each other in their slime, were mellow music matched with him, O life as futile then, as frail, O for thy voice to soothe and bless, what hope of answer or redress, behind the veil, behind the veil, fifty-seven. Peace! Come away! The song of woe is after all an earthly song. Peace! Come away! We do him wrong to sing so wildly. Let us go. Come! Let us go! Your cheeks are pale. But half my life I leave behind. Me thinks my friend is richly shrined, but I shall pass. My work will fail. Yet in these ears till hearing dies one set slow bell will seem to toll the passing of the sweetest soul that ever looked with human eyes. I hear it now. And oar, and oar, eternal greetings to the dead. And ave, ave, ave said, adieu, Adieu! Adieu! For evermore! Fifty-eight. In those sad words I took farewell, like echoes in sepulchral halls, as drop by drop the water falls in vaults and catacombs they fell, and falling idly broke the peace of hearts that beat from day to day, half conscious of their dying clay, and those cold crypts where they shall cease. The high muse answered, wherefore grieve thy brethren with a fruitless tear, abide a little longer here, and thou shalt take a nobler leave. Fifty-nine. O sorrow, wilt thou live with me? No casual mistress, but a wife, my bosom friend and half of life, as I confess it needs must be. O sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood, be sometimes lovely like a bride, and put thy harsher moods aside if thou wilt have me wise and good? My centred passion cannot move, nor will it lessen from to-day, but I'll have leave at times to play as with the creature of my love. And set thee forth, for thou art mine, with so much hope for years to come, that how so where I know thee some could hardly tell what name were thine. Sixty. He passed, a soul of nobler tone. My spirit loved and loves him yet, like some poor girl whose heart is set on one whose rank exceeds her own. He mixing with his proper sphere, she finds the baseness of her lot, half jealous of she knows not what, and envying all that meet him there. The little village looks forlorn. She sighs amid her narrow days, moving about the household ways in that dark house where she was born. The foolish neighbours come and go, and tease her till the day draws by. At night she weeps. How vain am I! How should he love a thing so low? End of verses forty-one through sixty. Verses sixty-one through eighty of in memoriam A-H-H. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elizabeth Klett. In memoriam A-H-H. By Alfred Lord Tennyson. Verses sixty-one through eighty. Sixty-one. If in thy second state sublime, thy ransomed reason change replies with all the circle of the wise, the perfect flower of human time. And if thou cast thine eyes below, how dimly charactered and slight, how dwarfed a growth of cold and night, how blanched with darkness must I grow. Let turn thee to the doubtful shore, where thy first form was made a man. I loved thee, spirit, and love, nor can the soul of Shakespeare love thee more. Sixty-two. Though if an eye that's downward cast could make thee somewhat blench or fail, then be my love an idle tale, and fading legend of the past. And thou as one that once declined, when he was little more than boy, on some unworthy heart with joy, but lives to wed an equal mind. And breathes a novel world, the while his other passion wholly dies, or in the light of deeper eyes is matter for a flying smile. Sixty-three. Yet pity for a horse or driven, and love in which my hound has part, can hang no weight upon my heart in its assumptions up to heaven. And I am so much more than these, as thou, perchance, art more than I. And yet I spare them sympathy, and I would set their pains at ease. So mayest thou watch me where I weep, as, unto vaster motions bound, the circuits of thine orbit round a higher height, a deeper deep. Sixty-four. Thus thou look back on what hath been, as some divinely gifted man, whose life in low estate began and on a simple village green, who breaks his birth's invidious bar, and grasps the skirts of happy chance, and breasts the blows of circumstance, and grapples with his evil star, who makes by force his merit known, and lives to clutch the golden keys, to mold a mighty state's decrees, and shape the whisper of the throne. And moving up from high to higher, becomes, on fortune's crowning slope, the pillar of a people's hope, the center of a world's desire. Yet feels, as in a pensive dream, when all his active powers are still, a distant dearness in the hill, a secret sweetness in the stream, the limit of his narrower fate, while yet beside its vocal springs, he played at counsellors and kings, with one that was his earliest mate, who plows with pain his natively, and reaps the labor of his hands, or in the furrow musing stands, does my old friend remember me? Sixty-five. Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt. I lull a fancy, troubled toast, with loves too precious to be lost, and little grain shall not be spilt. And in that solace can I sing, till out of painful phases wrought, there flutters up a happy thought, self-balanced on a lightsome wing. Since we deserved the name of friends, and thine effect so lives in me, a part of mine may live in thee, and move thee on to noble ends. Sixty-six. You thought my heart too far diseased, you wonder when my fancies play to find me gay among the gay, like one with any trifle pleased. The shade by which my life was crossed, which makes a desert in the mind, has made me kindly with my kind, and like to him whose sight is lost, whose feet are guided through the land, whose jest among his friends is free, who takes the children on his knee and whines their curls about his hand. He plays with threads, he beats his chair for pastime dreaming of the sky. His inner day can never die, his night of loss is always there. Sixty-seven. When on my bed the moonlight falls, I know that in thy place of rest by that broad water of the west, there comes a glory on the walls. Thy marble bright in dark appears, as slowly steals a silver flame along the letters of thy name, and o'er the number of thy years. The mystic glory swims away, from off my bed the moonlight dies, and closing eaves of wearied eyes I sleep till dusk is dipped in gray. And then I know the mist is drawn, a lucid veil from coast to coast, and in the dark church like a ghost thy tablet glimmers to the dawn. Sixty-eight. 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 walked for Lorne, when all our path was fresh with dew, and all the bugle breezes blew revely 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 log hath left the lee I wake, and I discern the truth, it is the trouble of my youth that foolish sleep transfers to thee. Sixty-nine. I dreamed there would be spring no more, that nature's ancient power was lost. The streets were black with smoke and frost, they chattered trifles at the door. I wandered 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 called me in the public squares the fool that wears a crown of thorns. They called me fool, they called me child. I found an angel of the night. The voice was low, the look was bright. He looked upon my crown, and smiled. He reached the glory of a hand that seemed to touch it into leaf. The voice was not the voice of grief, the words were hard to understand. Seventy. I cannot see the features right, when on the gloom I strive to paint the face I know. The hues are faint, and mixed with hollow masks of night. Cloud towers by ghostly mason's rot, a gulf that ever shuts and gapes, a hand that points, and pallid shapes and shadowy thoroughfares of thought, and crowds that stream from yawning doors, and shoals of puckered 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 through 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. Hats thou such credit with the soul? Then bring an opiate, trebly strong, drug down the blindfold sense of wrong, that so my pleasure may be whole. Till now we talk as once we talked, of men and minds, the dust of change, the days that grow to something strange in walking as of old we walked beside the river's wooded reach, the fortress and the mountain ridge, the cataract flashing from the bridge, the breaker breaking on the beach. 72. Rises thou thus dim dawn again, and howlest, issuing out of night, with blasts that blow the poplar white and lash with storm the streaming pain. Day when my crowned estate begun to pine in that reverse of doom, which sickened every living bloom, and blurred the splendor of the sun. Who usherest in the dolerous hour with thy quick tears that make the rose pull sideways, and the daisy close her crims and fringes to the shower? Who mightst have heaved a windless flame up the deep east, or, whispering, played a checkerwork of beam and shade along the hills, yet looked the same. As one, as chill, as wild as now, day marked as with some hideous crime, when the dark hand struck down through time and cancelled nature's best. But thou, lift as thou mace thy burdened brows through clouds that drench the morning star, and whirl the un-garnered sheaf afar, and sow the sky with flying boughs, and up thy vault with roaring sound climb thy thick noon disastrous day. Such thy dull goal of joyless gray, and hide thy shame beneath the ground. 73. So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be, how know I what had need of thee, for thou werest strong as thou were't true. The fame is quenched that I foresaw, the head hath missed an earthly wreath. I curse not nature, no, nor death, for nothing is that airs 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 exalts, and self-infolds the large results of force that would have forged a name. 74. 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. 75. I leave thy praises unexpressed, in verse that brings myself relief, and by the measure of my grief I leave thy greatness to be guessed. But practice how so ere expert in fitting aptest words to things, or voice the richest tone 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 perished 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, what ere thy hands are set to do, is wrought with tumult of acclaim. 76. Take wings of fancy, and ascend, and in a moment set thy face where all the starry heavens of space are sharpened to a needle's end. Take wings of foresight, lighten through the secular abyss to come, and lo, thy deepest lays are dumb before the mouldering of a ewe. And if the mattin' songs that woke the darkness of our planet last, thine own shall wither in the vast ere half the lifetime of an oak. ere these have clothed their branchy bowers with fifty maize, thy songs are vain. And what are they when these remain the ruined shells of hollow towers? 77. What hope is here from modern rhyme to him who turns amusing eye on songs and deeds and lives that lie foreshortened in the tract of time? These mortal lullabies of pain may bind a book, may line a box, may serve to curl a maiden's locks, or when a thousand moons shall wane a man upon a stall may find, and passing turn the page that tells a grief, then change to something else, sung by a long forgotten mind. But what of that? My darkened ways shall ring with music all the same. To breathe my loss is more than fame, to utter love more sweet than praise. 78. Again at Christmas did we weave the holly round the Christmas hearth, the silent snow possessed the earth, and calmly fell our Christmas eve. The yule-clogs sparkled keen with frost, no wing of wind the region swept, but over all things brooding slept, the quiet scents of something lost. As in the winters left behind, again our ancient games had place. The mimic pictures breathing grace, and dance and song and hoodman blind. Who showed a token of distress? No single tear, no mark of pain. O sorrow, then can sorrow wane? O grief, can grief be changed to less? O last regret, regret can die. No, mixed with all this mystic frame her deep relations are the same, but with long use her tears are dry. 79. More than my brothers are to me. Let this not vex thee, noble heart. I know thee of what force thou art to hold the costliest love and fee. For thou and I are one in kind, as molded like in nature's mint. And hill and wood and field did print the same sweet forms in either mind. For us the same cold streamlet curled through all his eddying coves, the same all winds that roam the twilight came in whispers of the beauteous world. At one dear knee we proffered vows, one lesson from one book we learned. Where childhood's flaxen ringlet turned to black and brown on kindred brows. And so my wealth resembles thine. But he was rich where I was poor. And he supplied my want the more as his unlikeness fitted mine. 80. If any vague desire should rise, that holy death ere Arthur died had moved me kindly from his side, and dropped the dust on tearless eyes. Then fancy shapes as fancy can, the grief my loss in him had wrought, a grief as deep as life or thought, but stayed in peace with God and man. I make a picture in the brain. I hear the sentence that he speaks. He bears the burden of the weeks, but turns his burden into gain. His credit thus shall set me free, and influence rich to soothe and save, unused example from the grave, reach out dead hands to comfort me. End of verses 61 through 80. Verses 81 through 100 of In Memoriam A.H.H. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elizabeth Clett. In Memoriam A.H.H. By Alfred Lord Tennyson. Verses 81 through 100 81. Could I have said while he was here, my love shall now no further range, there cannot come a mellower change, for now is love mature in ear. Love then had hope of richer store. What end is here to my complaint? This haunting whisper makes me faint. More years had made me love thee more. But death returns an answer sweet. My sudden frost was sudden gain, and gave all ripeness to the grain. It might have drawn from after heat. 82 I wage not any feud with death, for change is wrought on form and face. No lower life that earth's embrace may breed with him can fright my faith. Eternal process moving on, from state to state the spirit walks, and these are but the shattered stalks, or ruined chrysalis of one. Or blame I death, because he bear the use of virtue out of earth. I know transplanted human worth will bloom to profit, other where. For this alone on death I wreak the wrath that garners in my heart. He put our lives so far apart, we cannot hear each other speak. 83 Dip down upon the northern shore, O sweet new year delaying long, thou dust-expectant nature wrong, delaying long, delay no more. What stays thee from the clouded noons thy sweetness from its proper place? Can trouble live with April days or sadness in the summer moons? Bring orchids, bring the fox-glove's spire, the little speedwell's darling blue, deep tulips dashed with fiery dew, the burnum's dropping wells of fire. O thou new year, delaying long, delayest the sorrow in my blood, that longs to burst a frozen bud and flood a fresher throat with song. 84 When I contemplate all alone, the life that had been thine below, and fix my thoughts on all the glow to which thy crescent would have grown. I see thee sitting, crowned with good, a central warmth diffusing bliss in glance and smile, and clasp and kiss, on all the branches of thy blood. Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine, for now the day was drawing on when thou should slink thy life with one of mine own house, and boys of thine had babbled uncle on my knee. As that remorseless iron hour made cypress of her orange flower, despair of hope and earth of thee. I seem to meet their least desire, to clasp their cheeks, to call them mine. I see their unborn faces shine beside the never-lighted fire. I see myself an honoured guest, thy partner in the flowery walk of letters, genial table-talk, or deep dispute and graceful jest. While now thy prosperous labour fills the lips of men with honest praise, and sun by sun the happy days descend below the golden hills, with promise of a morn as fair, and all the train of bounteous hours, conduct by paths of growing powers to reverence and the silver hair. She'll slowly warn her earthly robe, her lavish mission richly wrought, leaving great legacies of thought, thy spirit should fail from off the globe. What time mine own might also flee, as linked with thine in love and fate, and hovering o'er the dolerous strait to the other shore involved in thee, arrive at last the blessed goal, and he that died in holy land would reach us out the shining hand, and take us as a single soul. What reed was that on which I lent? Ah, backward fancy! Wherefore wake the old bitterness again, and break the low beginnings of content. Eighty-five. This truth came born with beer and pawl. I felt it, when I sorrowed most, to his better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. O true in word, and tried indeed, demanding so to bring relief to this which is our common grief, what kind of life is that I lead. And whether trust and things above be dimmed of sorrow, or sustained, and whether love for him have drained my capabilities of love. Your words have virtue, such as draws a faithful answer from the breast, through light reproaches, half expressed, and loyal unto kindly laws. My blood an even tenor kept, till on mine ear this message falls, that in Vienna's fatal walls God's finger touched him, and he slept. The great intelligence is fair, that range above our mortal state, in circle round the blessed gate, received and gave him welcome there, and led him through the blissful climbs, and showed him in the fountain fresh, all knowledge that the sons of flesh shall gather in the cycled times. But I remained, whose hopes were dim, whose life, whose thoughts were little worth, to wander on a darkened earth, where all things round me breathed of him. O friendship, equal, poised control, O heart with kindliest motion warm, O sacred essence, other form, O solemn ghost, O crowned soul! Yet none could better know than I how much of act at human hands, the sense of human will demands by which we dare to live or die, whatever way my days decline. I felt, and feel, though left alone, his being working in mine own, the footsteps of his life in mine, a life that all the muses decked with gifts of grace, that might express all comprehensive tenderness, all subterlizing intellect. For so my passion hath not swerved to works of weakness, but I find an image comforting the mind, and in my grief a strength reserved. Likewise the imaginative woe, that loved to handle spiritual strife, devused the shock through all my life, but in the present broke the blow. My pulses therefore beat again for other friends that once I meant, nor can it suit me to forget the mighty hopes that make us men. I woo your love. I count it crime to mourn for any over much. I the divided half of such a friendship as had mastered time, which masters time indeed, and is eternal, separate from fears. The all-assuming months and years can take no part away from this. But summer on the steaming floods, and spring that swells the narrow brooks, and autumn with the noise of rooks that gather in the waning woods. And every pulse of wind and wave recalls in the change of light or gloom my old affection of the tomb, and my prime passion in the grave. My old affection of the tomb, a part of stillness yearns to speak, arise, and get thee forth, and seek a friendship for the years to come. I watch thee from the quiet shore, thy spirit up to mine can reach, but in dear words of human speech we too communicate no more. And I, can clouds of nature stain the starry clearness of the free? How is it, canst thou feel for me some painless sympathy with pain? And lightly does the whisper fall, tis hard for thee to fathom this. I triumph in conclusive bliss, and that serene result of all. So hold I commerce with the dead, or so me thinks the dead would say, or so shall grief with cymbals play, and pining life be fancy-fed. Now looking to some settled end that these things pass, and I shall prove a meeting somewhere, love with love, I crave your pardon, O my friend. If not so fresh with love is true, I, clasping brother hands, aver I could not, if I would, transfer the whole I felt for him to you. For which be they that hold apart the promise of the golden hours? First love, first friendship, equal powers that marry with the virgin heart. No mine that cannot but deplore, that beats within a lonely place, that yet remembers his embrace, but at his footstep leaps no more. My heart, though widowed, may not rest quite in the love of what is gone, but seeks to beat in time with one that warms another living breast. Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring, knowing the primrose yet is dear, the primrose of the later year, as not unlike to that of spring. 86. Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, that rolless from the gorgeous gloom of evening over break and bloom and meadow, slowly breathing bare the round of space, and wrapped below through all the dewy tassled wood, and shadowing down the hornet flood in ripples, fan my brows and blow the fever from my cheek, and sigh the full new life that feeds thy breath throughout my frame, till doubt and death ill-breath'ren, let the fancy fly from belt to belt of crimson seas, on leagues of odour streaming far, to wear in yonder-orient star a hundred spirits whisper, 87. I passed beside the reverend walls in which of old I wore the gown, I roved at random through the town, and saw the tumult of the halls, and heard one more in college feigns the storm their high-built organs make, and thunder music rolling shake the prophet blazoned on the panes, and caught one more the distant shout, the measured pulse of racing oars among the willows, paced the shores and many a bridge, and all about the same gray flats again, and felt the same, but not the same, and last upon that long walk of limes I passed to see the rooms in which he dwelt. Another name was on the door. I lingered. All within was noise of songs and clapping hands, and boys that crashed the glass and beat the floor, where once we held debate, a band of youthful friends, on mind and art, and labour, and the changing mart, and all the framework of the land, when one would aim an arrow fair, but send it slackly from the string, and one would pierce an outer ring, and one an inner here and there, and lest a master bowman he would cleave the mark, a willing ear we lent him, who but hung to hear the rapt oration flowing free from point to point, with power and grace, and music and the bounds of law, to those conclusions when we saw the God within him light his face, and seemed to lift the form and glow in azure orbits heavenly wise, and over those ethereal eyes the bar of Michelangelo. 88. Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, rings Eden through the budded quicks, O tell me where the senses mix, O tell me where the passions meet, whence radiate, fierce extremes employ thy spirits and the darkening leaf, and in the midmost heart of grief thy passion clasps a secret joy. And I, my harp would prelude woe, I cannot all command the strings, the glory of the sum of things will flash along the cords and go. 89. Which elms that counter-changed the floor of this flat lawn with dusk and bright, and thou with all thy breadth and height of foliage towering sycamore? How often hither wandering down, my Arthur found your shadows fair, and shook to all the liberal air the dust and din and steam of town? He brought an eye for all he saw. He mixed in all our simple sports. They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts and dusty perlews of the law. O joy to him in this retreat, in mantled and ambrosial dark, to drink the cooler air and mark the landscape winking through the heat. O sound to rout the brood of cares, the sweep of scythe and mourning dew, the gust that round the garden flew and tumbled half the mellowing pairs. O bliss, when all encircled drawn about him, heart and ear were fed to hear him, as he lay and read the tuskin poets on the lawn. Or in the all-golden afternoon, a guest or happy sister sung, or here she brought the harp and flung a ballad to the brightening moon. Nor less it pleased in livelier moods beyond the bounding hill to stray, and to break the live-long summer day with banquet in the distant woods. Where at we glanced from theme to theme, discussed the books to love or hate, or touched the changes of the state, or threaded some socratic dream. But if I praised the busy town, he loved to rail against it still. For ground in yonder social mill we rub each other's angles down. And merge, he said, in form and gloss the picturesque of man and man. We talked, the stream beneath us ran, the wine-flask lying couched in moss, or cooled within the glooming wave, and last returning from afar before the crimson circled star had fallen into her father's grave, and brushing ankle-deep in flowers, we heard behind the wood-bine veil the milk that bubbled in the pale, and buzzings at the honeyed hours. Ninety. He tasted love with half his mind, nor ever drank the inviolate spring where niest heaven, who first could fling this bitter seed among mankind. That could the dead, whose dying eyes were closed with wail, resume their life they would but find in child and wife an iron welcome when they rise. T'was well, indeed, when warm with wine, to pledge them with a kindly tear, to talk them o'er, to wish them here, to count their memories half-divine. But if they came who passed away, behold their brides in other hands, the hard air strides about their lands, and will not yield them for a day. Yea, though their sons were none of these, not lest the yet-loved Zire would make confusion worse than death, and shake the pillars of domestic peace. Ah, dear! But come thou back to me! Whatever change the years have wrought, I find not yet one lonely thought that cries against my wish for thee. Ninety one. When rosy plumlets tuft the larch, and rarely pipes the mounted thrush, or underneath the barren bush flits by the sea-blue bird of March, come, wear the form by which I know thy spirit and time among thy peers, the hope of unaccomplished years be large and lucid round thy brow. When summer's hourly mellowing change may breathe, with many roses sweet, upon the thousand waves of wheat that ripple round the lonely Grange. Come, not in watches of the night, but wear the sun-beam broodeth warm. Come, beauteous in thine after-form, and like a finer light in light. Ninety two. If any vision should reveal thy likeness, I might count it vain as but the canker of the brain. Yea, though it's spake and made appeal to chances where our lots were cast together and the days behind, I might but say, I hear a wind of memory murmuring the past. Yea, though it's spake and bared to view a fact within the coming year, and though the months revolving near should prove the phantom warning true, they might not seem thy prophecies, but spiritual presentiments, and such refraction of events as often rises ere they rise. Ninety three. I shall not see thee. Dare I say, no spirit ever break the band that stays him from the native land, where first he walked when clasped in clay. No visual shade of someone lost, but he, the spirit himself, may come where all the nerve of sense is numb, spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost. O, therefore, from thy sightless range with gods an unconjectured bliss, O, from the distance of the abyss of tenfold complicated change, descend, and touch, and enter. Hear the wish too strong for words to name, that in this blindness of the frame my ghost may feel that thine is near. Ninety four. How pure at heart and sound in head, with what divine affections bold should be the man whose thought would hold an hour's communion with the dead. In vain shall thou or any call the spirits from their golden day, except like them thou too canst say, my spirit is at peace with all. They haunt the silence of the breast, imaginations calm and fair, the memory like a cloudless air, the conscience as a sea at rest. But when the heart is full of din, and doubt beside the portal waits, they can but listen at the gates, and hear the household jar within. Ninety five. By night we lingered 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 on wavering, not a cricket churred. The brook alone far off was heard, and on the board the fluttering urn. And bats went round in fragrant skies, and wheeled 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 peeled from knoll to knoll, where couched at ease the white kind glimmered, 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 fallen 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 vigor, bold to dwell on doubts that drive the coward back, and keen through wordy snares to track suggestion to her inmost cell. So word by word, and line by line, the dead man touched me from the past, and all at once it seemed at last the living soul was flashed on mine. And mine and this was wound, and world about imperial heights of thought, and came on that which is, and caught the deep pulsations of the world, Ionian music measuring out, the steps of time, the shocks of chance, the blows of death. At length my trance was cancelled, stricken through with doubt. Vague words, but ah, how hard to frame in matter-molded forms of speech, or even for intellect to reach through memory that which I became. Till now the doubtful dusk revealed the knolls once more where, couched at ease, the white kind glimmered, and the trees laid their dark arms about the field. And sucked from out the distant gloom a breeze began to tremble over the large leaves of the sycamore, and fluctuate all the still perfume. And gathering freshlier overhead, rocked the full foliageed 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, mixed their dim lights, like life and death, to broaden into boundless day. Ninety-six. 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 liar at first, but ever strove to make it true. Perplexed 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 gathered strength. He would not make his judgment blind. He faced the specters 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 cyanized peaks of old, while Israel made their gods of gold, although the trumpet blew so loud. My love has talked with rocks and trees. He finds on misty mountain ground his own vast shadow-glory crown. He sees himself in all he sees. Two partners of a married life. I looked on these in 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 beaten tune. Their meetings made December, June. Their every parting was to die. Their love has never passed away. The days she never can forget are earnest that he loves her yet, what ere the faithless people say. Her life is lone. He sits apart. He loves her yet. She will not weep, though wrapped in matters dark and deep he seems to slight her simple heart. He threads 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 withered 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 fixed and cannot move. She darkly feels him great and wise. She dwells on him with faithful eyes. I cannot understand. I love. Twenty-eight. You leave us. You will see the Rhine. And those fair hills I sailed 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 Lethy in the eyes of death. Let her great Danube rolling fair in wind her aisles 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 often her parted. Fathers bend above more graves. A thousand wants gnaw at the heels of man, and pray by each cold hearth and sadness blings her shadow on the blaze of kings. And yet myself have heard him say that not in any mother-town with statelyer progress to and fro the double tides of chariots flow by pock 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. Ninety-nine. Riseest thou thus dim dawn again, so loud with voices of the birds, so thick with lowings of the herds, day when I lost the flower of men, who tremblest through thy darkling red on yon swollen brook that bubbles fast by meadows breathing of the past, and woodlands holy to the dead, who murmurest in the foliageed eaves a song that slights the coming care, and autumn laying here and there a fiery finger on the leaves, who wakenest with thy balmy breath to myriads on the genial earth, memories of bridle or of birth, and unto myriads more of death. Awaresoever those may be betwixt the slumber of the poles, today they count as kindred souls, they know me not, but mourn with thee. One hundred. I climb the hill, from end to end of all the landscape underneath, I find no place that does not breathe some gracious memory of my friend. No grey old grains or lonely fold, or low morass and whispering reed, or simple style from mead to mead, or sheep-walk up the windy wold, nor hoary knoll of ash and haw that hears the latest linnet-trill, nor quarry trenched along the hill and haunted by the wrangling dull, nor runlet tinkling from the rock, nor pastoral rivulet that swerves to left and right through meadowy curves that feed the mothers of the flock. But each has pleased a kindred eye, and each reflects a kindlier day, and leaving these to pass away, I think once more he seems to die. End of verses 81 through 100.