Part 2

Clouds of undefined trouble, such as "dreams are made of," pass "below the darken'd eyes," that is, figure themselves on the brain under the eyelids; but on awaking, the will reasserts its power, and protests against the folly of such mourning. He would therefore dismiss the phantom, Sorrow.

V.

He sometimes hesitates, as at something half sinful, when giving expression to his sadness; because words at best only partially declare what the Soul feels; just as outward Nature cannot fully reveal the inner life.

But "after all" words act like narcotics, and numb pain: so, as if putting on "weeds," the garb of mourning, he will wrap himself over in words; though these, like coarse clothes on the body, give no more than an outline of his "large grief."

VI.

The "common" expressions of sympathy with our trouble are very "commonplace"--

"Vacant chaff well-meant for grain."

A friend asks, "Why grieve?" "Other friends remain;" "Loss is common to the race;" as Hamlet's mother says, "All that live must die." Is this comfort? rather the contrary. We know it is so--

"Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break."

The father drinks his son's health at the war, in the moment when that son is shot.

The mother prays for her sailor-boy when

"His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave."

The girl is dressing before the glass, and strives to array herself most becomingly for her expected lover; and he meanwhile is either drowned in the ford, or killed by a fall from his horse--

"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."

These were all as unconscious of disaster as was the Poet, who, "to please him well," was writing to Hallam in the very hour that he died.

There is a fine passage in Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Dying," which contains a like rumination on the uncertainty of life.

"The wild fellow in _Petronius_ that escaped upon a broken table from the furies of a shipwreck, as he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore, espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves, ballasted with sand in the folds of his garments, and carried by his civil enemy the sea towards the shore to find a grave; and it cast him into some sad thoughts; that peradventure this man's wife in some part of the Continent, safe and warm, looks next month for the good man's return; or it may be his son knows nothing of the tempest; or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss which still is warm upon the good old man's cheek ever since he took a kind farewell, and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his father's arms.

"These are the thoughts of mortals, this is the end and sum of all their designs; a dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, an hard rock and a rough wind dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole family, and they that shall weep loudest for the accident, are not yet entered into the storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck."

VII.

He persists in indulging his melancholy, and so creeps, "like a guilty thing," at early morning to the door of the house in London where Hallam had lived--Wimpole Street--but this only serves to remind him that

"He is not here; but far away."

The revival of busy movement on a wet morning in "the long unlovely street,"[8] is vividly described--

"The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day."

VIII.

He next compares himself to the disappointed lover who "alights" from his horse, calls at the home of his mistress,

"And learns her gone and far from home."

So, as the disappointed lover, to whom the whole place has at once become a desert, wanders into the garden, and culls a rain-beaten flower, which she had fostered; even thus will he cherish and plant "this poor flower of poesy" on Hallam's tomb,[9] because his friend when alive had been pleased with his poetic power.

IX.

This poem commences an address to the ship that brings Hallam's body from Vienna to England--

"My lost Arthur's loved remains."

No words can be more touching than his appeal to the vessel,[10] for care and tenderness in transporting its precious freight. He bids it come quickly; "spread thy full wings," hoist every sail; "ruffle thy mirror'd mast;" for the faster the ship is driven through the water, the more will the reflected mast be "ruffled" on its agitated surface. May no rude wind "perplex thy sliding keel," until Phosphor the morning star, Venus shines; and during the night may the lights[11] above and the winds around be gentle as the sleep of him--

"My Arthur, whom I shall not see, Till all my widow'd race be run--"

until my life, bereaved of its first affection, be over.

In Poem xvii., 5, the same line occurs--"Till all my widow'd race be run," and it agrees with St. Paul's declaration, 2 Tim., iv., 7, "I have finished my course." The words _race_ and _course_ are synonymous, and refer to the foot-races of the ancients. "More than my brothers are to me," is repeated in P. lxxix., 1.

X.

Very beautifully is the picture continued of the ship's passage, and he appeals to it for safely conducting

"Thy dark freight, a vanish'd life."

The placid scene, which he had imagined as attending the vessel, harmonizes with the home-bred fancy, that it is sweeter

"To rest beneath the clover sod, That takes the sunshine and the rains;"

that is, to be buried in the open churchyard;

"Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God."[12]

that is, in the chancel of the church, near the altar rails; than if, together with the ship, "the roaring wells" of the sea

"Should gulf him fathom deep in brine; And hands so often clasp'd in mine, Should toss with tangle[13] and with shells."

XI.

This Poem would describe a calm and quiet day in October--late autumn.

No doubt, the scenery described _does not refer to Clevedon, but to some Lincolnshire wold, from which the whole range from marsh to the sea was visible_.

The stillness of the spot is just broken by the sound of the horse chestnut falling[14] through the dead leaves, and these are reddening to their own fall. No time of the year is more quiet, not even is the insect abroad: the waves just swell and fall noiselessly, and this reminds him of

"The dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep."

XII.

An ecstacy follows: in which the soul of the Poet seems to mount, like a dove rising into the heavens with a message of woe tied under her wings; and so the disembodied soul leaves its "mortal ark"--"our earthly house of this tabernacle"--(2 Cor. v., 1) and flees away

"O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large"

(the sea line constantly expanding and always being circular), until the ship comes in sight, when it lingers "on the marge," the edge of the sea, weeping with the piteous cry--

"Is this the end of all my care? Is this the end? Is this the end?"

Then it flies in sport about the prow of the vessel, and after this seems to

"return To where the body sits, and learn, That I have been an hour away."

XIII.

The tears shed by the widower, when he wakes from a dream of his deceased wife, and "moves his doubtful arms" to find her place empty; are like the tears he himself is weeping over "a loss for ever new," a terrible void where there had been social intercourse, and a "silence" that will never be broken. For he is lamenting

"the comrade of my choice, An awful thought, a life removed, The human-hearted man I loved, A Spirit, not a breathing voice."

Hallam is now only a remembrance--no longer endowed with bodily functions, and the survivor cannot quite accept what has happened.

He therefore asks Time to teach him "many years"--for years to come--the real truth, and make him feel that these strange things, over which his tears are shed, are not merely a prolonged dream; and he begs that his fancies, hovering over the approaching ship, may quite realise that it brings no ordinary freight, but actually the mortal remains of his friend.

XIV.

The difficulty in apprehending his complete loss is further shown by his address to the ship, saying, that if it had arrived in port, and he saw the passengers step across the plank to shore; and amongst them came Hallam himself, and they renewed all their former friendship; and Hallam, unchanged in every respect, heard his tale of sorrow with surprise:

"I should not feel it to be strange."

Both this and the previous Poem express the difficulty we feel in realising the death of some one who is dear to us. So Cowper wrote, after losing his mother, and in expectation that she would yet return:

"What ardently I wish'd, I long believed, And disappointed still, was still deceived."

XV.

A stormy change in the weather occurs: the winds "roar from yonder dropping day," that is, from the west, into which the daylight is sinking. And all the sights and sounds of tempest alarm him for the safety of the ship, and

"But for fancies which aver That all thy motions gently pass Athwart a plane of molten glass,[15] I scarce could brook the strain and stir That makes the barren branches loud."

Yet, in fear that it may not be so--the sea calm and the wind still--"the wild unrest" would lead him to "dote and pore on" the threatening cloud, and the fiery sunset.

XVI.

This Poem is highly metaphysical. He asks whether Sorrow, which is his abiding feeling, can be such a changeling, as to alternate in his breast betwixt "calm despair" (see P. xi., 4) and "wild unrest?" (see P. xv., 4); or does she only just take this "touch of change," as calm or storm prevails? knowing no more of transient form, than does a lake that holds "the shadow of a lark," when reflected on its surface.

Being distinct from bodily pain, Sorrow is more like the reflection than the thing reflected. But the shock he has received has made his mind confused, and he is like a ship that strikes on a rock and founders. He becomes a

"delirious man, Whose fancy fuses old and new, And flashes into false and true, And mingles all without a plan."[16]

XVII.

He hails the ship--"thou comest"--and feels as if his own whispered prayer for its safety, had been helping to waft it steadily across the sea. In spirit, he had seen it move

"thro' circles of the bounding sky"--

the horizon at sea being always circular (see P. xii., 3)--and he would wish its speedy arrival, inasmuch as it brings "all I love."

For doing this, he invokes a blessing upon all its future voyages. It is now bringing

"The dust of him I shall not see Till all my widowed race be run."[17]

XVIII.

The ship arrives, the "dear remains" are landed, and the burial is to take place.

It is something, worth the mourner's having, that he can stand on English ground where his friend has been laid, and know that the violet will spring from his ashes.

Laertes says of Ophelia,

"Lay her in the earth And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring!"

A beautiful invitation follows to those, who are sometimes irreverent bearers:

"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."[18]

Even yet, before the grave is closed, he would like, as Elisha did on the Shunammite woman's child, to cast himself, and

"thro' his lips impart The life that almost dies in me;"

but still he resolves to form the firmer resolution, and to submit; though meanwhile treasuring the look and words that are past and gone for ever.

XIX.

From the Danube to the Severn--from Vienna to Clevedon--the body has been conveyed, and was interred by the estuary of the latter river, where the village of Clevedon stands.[19]

The Wye, a tributary of the Severn, is also tidal; and when deepened by the sea flowing inward, its babbling ceases; but the noise recurs when the sea flows back.

So does the Poet's power of expressing his grief alternate: at times he is too full in heart to find utterance; he "brims with sorrow"--but after awhile, as when "the wave again is vocal in its wooded" banks,

"My deeper anguish also falls, And I can speak a little then."

XX.

He knows the "lesser grief" that can be told, also the "deeper anguish which cannot be spoken:" his spirits are thus variably affected.

In his lighter mood, he laments as servants mourn for a good master who has died:

"It will be hard, they say, to find Another service such as this."

But he is also visited by a sense of deeper deprivation, such as children feel when they lose a father, and

"see the vacant chair, and think, How good! how kind! and he is gone."

XXI.

This Poem opens as if Hallam's grave was in the churchyard, where grasses waved; but it was not so, he was buried inside Clevedon church.

The Poet imagines the reproofs, with which passers-by will visit him for his unrestrained grief. He would "make weakness weak:" would parade his pain to court sympathy, and gain credit for constancy; and another says, that a display of private sorrow is quite inappropriate at times, when great political changes impend, and Science every month is evolving some new secret.

He replies, that his song is but like that of the linnet--joyous indeed when her brood first flies, but sad when the nest has been rifled of her young.

XXII.

For "four sweet years," from flowery spring to snowy winter, they had lived in closest friendship;

"But where the path we walk'd began To slant the fifth autumnal slope,"

"the Shadow fear'd of man," grim Death, "broke our fair companionship."

Hallam died on the 15th September, 1833, and the survivor, eagerly pursuing, can find him no more, but

"thinks, that somewhere in the waste The Shadow sits and waits for me."

His own spirit becomes darkened by gloomy apprehensions of superimpending calamity.

XXIII.

Feeling his extreme loneliness, yet "breaking into songs by fits" (which proves that _In Memoriam_ was written at intervals),[20] he wanders sometimes to where the cloaked Shadow is sitting--Death,

"Who keeps the keys of all the creeds"--

inasmuch as only when we die shall we know the whole truth; and "falling lame" on his way, that is, stumbling in his vain enquiries as to whence he came and whither he is going, he can only grasp one feeling, which is, that all is miserably changed since they were in company--friends enjoying life together, travelling in foreign lands, and indulging in scholarly communion on classic subjects.

XXIV.

But, after all, was their happiness perfect? No, the very sun, the "fount of Day," has spots on its surface--"wandering isles of night." If all had been wholly good and fair, this earth would have remained the Paradise it has never looked, "since Adam left his garden," as appears in the earlier editions; but now the line runs,

"Since our first sun arose and set."

Does "the haze of grief" then magnify the past, as things look larger in a fog?[21] Or does his present lowness of spirits set the past in relief, as projections are more apparent when you are beneath them? Or is the past from being far off always in glory, as distance lends enchantment to the view; and so the world becomes orbed

"into the perfect star We saw not, when we moved therein?"

We are told that, if we were placed in the moon, we should see the Earth as--"the perfect star"--having a shining surface, and being thirteen times larger than the moon itself.

XXV.

All he knows is, that whilst with Hallam, there was Life. They went side by side, and upheld the daily burden.

He himself moved light as a carrier bird in air, and delighted in the weight he bore because Love shared it; and since he transferred half of every pain to his dear companion, he himself was never weary in either heart or limb.

XXVI.

Dismal and dreary as life has become, he nevertheless wishes to live, if only to prove the stedfastness of his affection. And he asks that if the all-seeing Eye, which already perceives the future rottenness of the living tree, and the far off ruin of the now standing tower, can detect any coming indifference in him--any failure of Love--then may the "Shadow waiting with the keys" "shroud me from my proper scorn;"[22] may Death hide me from my own self-contempt!

"In Him is no before." Jehovah is simply, _I am_, to whom foresight and foreknowledge cannot be attributed, since past and future are equally present.

The morn breaks over Indian seas, because they are to the east of us.

XXVII.

He neither envies the cage-born bird "that never knew the summer woods," and is content without liberty; nor the beast that lives uncontrolled by conscience; nor the heart that never loved; "nor any want-begotten rest," that is, repose arising from defective sensibility.

On the contrary,

"I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all."

Seneca in Epistle 99 says, _Magis gauderes quod habueras quam maereres quod amiseras_.--See P. lxxxv., 1.

The Poem seems to halt here, and begin afresh with a description of Christmastide.

XXVIII.

Christmas Eve at Somersby, and possibly at the end of the year 1833. If so, throughout the year he had been at ease, until the blow came--he had "slept and woke with pain," and then he almost wished he might never more hear the Christmas bells.

But a calmer spirit seems to come over him: as he listens to the Christmas peals rung at four neighbouring[23] churches, and the sound soothes him with tender associations:

"But they my troubled spirit rule, For they controll'd me when a boy; They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy, The merry, merry bells of Yule."

Yule is Christmas, a jubilee which brings glad tidings of great joy to all people.

XXIX.

Having such "compelling cause to grieve" over the decease of Hallam,

"as daily vexes household peace"--

for death is ever invading some home--how can they venture to keep Christmas Eve as usual? He is absent, who when amongst them was so eminently social. But it must be done. "Use and wont," "old sisters of a day gone by," still demand what has been customary. "They too will die," and new habits succeed.

To the fourteenth chapter of Walter Scott's "Pirate," there is the following motto from "Old Play," which meant Scott's own invention:

"We'll keep our customs. What is law itself But old establish'd custom? What religion (I mean with one half of the men that use it) Save the good use and wont that carries them To worship how and where their fathers worshipp'd? All things resolve to custom. We'll keep ours."

XXX.

The Christian festival proceeds, and there is the family gathering, with such games as are common at this season; but sadness weighs on all, for they entertain "an awful sense of one mute shadow"--Hallam's wraith--being present and watching them.

They sit in silence, then break into singing

"A merry song we sang with him Last year."

This seems to identify the time to be Christmas, 1833, as Hallam died on 15th September, 1833, but was not buried until January, 1834.

They comfort themselves with the conviction that the dead retain "their mortal sympathy," and still feel with those they have left behind. The soul, a "keen seraphic flame," pierces

"From orb to orb, from veil to veil,"

and so traverses the universe.

Was the anniversary of our Saviour's birth ever hailed in terms more sublime and beautiful!

"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.

The mind of the poet has now taken a more strictly religious view of the situation; and he would like to learn the secrets of the grave from the experience of Lazarus.

Did Lazarus in death yearn to hear his sister Mary weeping for him? If she asked him, when restored to life, where he was during his four days of entombment;

"There lives no record of reply,"

which, if given, might have "added praise to praise"--that is, might have sealed and confirmed the promise that "blessed are the dead which die in the Lord."

As it was, the neighbours met and offered congratulations, and their cry was,

"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."

It is only St. John who records the miracle.

XXXII.

At a subsequent visit to Simon's house in Bethany, where both Lazarus and Mary were present, Mary's eyes, looking alternately at her brother who had been restored to life, and at our Lord who had revived him, are "homes of silent prayer;" and one strong affection overpowers every other sentiment, when her "ardent gaze" turns from the face of Lazarus, "and rests upon the Life"--Christ, the author and giver of life. _Vita vera, vita ipsa._

Her whole spirit is then so "borne down by gladness," that

"She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet With costly spikenard and with tears."[24]

No lives are so blessed as those which consist of "faithful prayers:" no attachments so enduring as those which are based on the higher love of God.

But are there any souls so pure as to have reached this higher range of feeling; or, if there be, what blessedness can equal theirs?

XXXIII.

This Poem is abstruse, and requires thought and care for the interpretation of the Poet's meaning.

It seems to be an address of warning and reproof to a moral pantheist, who fancies that he has attained a higher and purer air, by withholding his faith from all "form," and recognising Deity in everything--his faith having "centre everywhere."

This sceptic is warned from disturbing the pious woman, who is happy in her prayers to a personal God; for they bring an "early heaven" on her life. Her faith is fixed on "form;" and to flesh and blood she has linked a truth divine, by seeing God incarnate in the person of Christ.

The pantheist must take care for himself, that, whilst satisfied

"In holding by the law within,"

the guidance of his own reason, he does not after all fail in a sinful world, "for want of such a type," as the life of Christ on earth affords.

"A life that leads melodious days," is like that of Vopiscus, in his Tiburtine villa, as described by his friend, Statius, I., iii., 20.

--_ceu veritus turbare Vopisci Pieriosque dies et habentes carmina somnos._

XXXIV.

His own dim consciousness should teach him thus much, that Life will never be extinguished. Else all here is but dust and ashes. The earth, "this round of green," and sun, "this orb of flame," are but "fantastic beauty"--such as a wild Poet might invent, who has neither conscience nor aim.

Even God can be nothing to the writer, if all around him is doomed to perish; and he will not himself wait in patience, but rather "sink to peace;" and, like the birds that are charmed by the serpent[25] into its mouth, he will "drop head-foremost in the jaws of vacant darkness," and so cease to exist.

XXXV.

And yet, if a trustworthy voice from the grave should testify, that there is no life beyond this world; even then he would endeavour to keep alive so sweet a thing as Love, during the brief span of mortal existence.

But still there would come

"The moanings of the homeless sea,"

and the sound of streams disintegrating and washing down the rocks to form future land surfaces--"AEonian hills," the formations of whole aeons being thus dissolved--and Love itself would languish under

"The sound of that forgetful shore,"

those new lands in which all things are obliterated and forgotten--knowing that its own death was impending.