Part 2

The forest crack’d, the waters curl’d, The cattle huddled on the lea; And wildly dash’d on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world:

And but for fancies, which aver That all thy motions gently pass Athwart a 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, The wild unrest that lives in woe Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a labouring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.

XVI.

What words are these have fall’n 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, Confus’d me like the unhappy bark

That strikes by night a craggy shelf, And staggers blindly ere she sink? And stunn’d me from my power to think And all my knowledge of myself;

And made me that delirious man Whose fancy fuses old and new, And flashes into false and true, And mingles all without a plan?

XVII.

Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze Compell’d 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 Thro’ circles of the bounding sky; Week after week: the days go by: Come quick, thou bringest all I love.

Henceforth, wherever thou may’st roam, My blessing, like a line of light, Is on the waters 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 widow’d race be run.

XVIII.

’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 blest Among familiar names to rest And in the places of his youth.

Come then, pure hands, and bear the head That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep, And come, whatever loves to weep, And hear the ritual of the dead.

Ah! yet, ev’n yet, if this might be, I, falling on his faithful heart, Would breathing thro’ his lips impart The life that almost dies in me:

That dies not, but endures with pain, And slowly forms the firmer mind, Treasuring the look it cannot find, The words that are not heard again.

XIX.

The Danube to the Severn gave The darken’d heart that beat no more; They laid him by the pleasant shore, And in the hearing of the wave.

There twice a day the Severn fills, The salt sea-water passes by, And hushes half the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills.

The Wye is hush’d nor moved along; And hush’d my deepest grief of all, When fill’d with tears that cannot fall, I brim with sorrow drowning song.

The tide flows down, the wave again Is vocal in its wooded walls: My deeper anguish also falls, And I can speak a little then.

XX.

The lesser griefs that may be said, That breathe a thousand tender vows, Are but as servants in a house Where lies the master newly dead;

Who speak their feeling as it is, And weep the fulness from the mind: ‘It will be hard’ they say ‘to find Another service such as this.’

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;

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:

But open converse is there none, So much the vital spirits sink To see the vacant chair, and think, ‘How good! how kind! and he is gone.’

XXI.

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 waxen 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 wroth, ‘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, ye speak an idle thing: Ye never knew the sacred dust: I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing:

And unto one her note is gay, For now her little ones have ranged; And unto one her note is changed, Because her brood is stol’n away.

XXII.

The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, Thro’ four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to flower, from snow to snow:

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

But where the path we walk’d began To slant the fifth autumnal slope, As we descended following Hope, There sat the Shadow fear’d of man;

Who broke our fair companionship, And spread his mantle dark and cold; And wrapped thee formless in the fold, And dull’d the murmur on thy lip;

And bore thee where I could not see Nor follow, tho’ I walk in haste; And think that, somewhere in the waste, The Shadow sits and waits for me.

XXIII.

Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut, Or breaking into song by fits; Alone, alone, to where he sits, The Shadow cloak’d from head 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 Thro’ lands where not a leaf was dumb; But all the lavish hills would hum The murmur of a happy Pan:

When each by turns was guide to each, And Fancy light from Fancy caught, 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:

And many an old philosophy On Argive heights divinely sang, And round us all the thicket rang To many a flute of Arcady.

XXIV.

And was the day of my delight As pure and perfect as I say? The very source and fount of Day Is dash’d with wandering isles of night.

If all was good and fair we met, This earth had been the Paradise It never look’d to human eyes Since Adam left his garden yet.

And is it that the haze of grief Hath stretch’d my former joy so great? The lowness of the present state, That sets the past in this relief?

Or that the past will always win A glory from its being far; And orb into the perfect star We saw not, when we moved therein?

XXV.

I know that this was Life,--the track Whereon with equal feet we fared; And then, as now, the day prepared The daily burden for the back.

But this it was that made me move As light as carrier-birds in air; I loved the weight I had to bear, Because it needed help of Love:

Nor could I weary, heart or limb, When mighty Love would cleave in twain The lading of a single pain, And part it, giving half to him.

XXVI.

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

And if that eye which watches guilt And goodness, and hath power to see Within the green the moulder’d tree, And towers fall’n as soon as built--

Oh, if indeed that eye foresee Or see (in Him is no before) In more of life true life no more, And Love the indifference to be,

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

XXVII.

I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time, Unfetter’d by the sense of crime, To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest, The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth, Nor any want-begotten rest.

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.

XXVIII.

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 wish’d 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 controll’d me when a boy; They bring me sorrow touch’d with joy, The merry merry bells of Yule.

XXIX.

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 shower’d largess of delight, In dance and song and game and jest.

Yet go, and while the holly boughs Entwine the cold baptismal font, Make one wreath more for Use and Wont That guard the portals of the house;

Old sisters of a day gone by, Gray nurses, loving nothing new; Why should they miss their yearly due Before their time? They too will die.

XXX.

With trembling fingers did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth; A rainy cloud possess’d the earth, And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.

At our old pastimes in the hall We gambol’d, making vain pretence Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute Shadow watching all.

We paused: the winds were in the beech: We heard them sweep the winter land; And in a circle hand-in-hand Sat silent, looking each at each.

Then echo-like our voices rang; We sung, tho’ every eye was dim, A merry song we sang with him Last year: impetuously we sang:

We ceased: a gentler feeling crept Upon us: surely rest is meet: ‘They rest,’ we said, ‘their sleep is sweet,’ And silence follow’d, and we wept.

Our voices took a higher range; Once more we sang: ‘They do not die Nor lose their mortal sympathy, Nor change to us, although they change;

Rapt from the fickle and the frail With gather’d power, yet the same, Pierces the keen seraphic flame From orb to orb, from veil to veil.

Rise, happy morn, rise holy morn, Draw forth the cheerful day from night: O Father! touch the east, and light The light that shone when Hope was born.’

XXXI.

When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, And home to Mary’s house return’d, Was this demanded--if he yearn’d To hear her weeping by his grave?

‘Where wert thou, brother, those four days?’ There lives no record of reply, Which telling what it is to die Had surely added praise to praise.

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

Behold a man raised up by Christ! The rest remaineth unreveal’d; He told it not; or something seal’d The lips of that Evangelist.

XXXII.

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

Then one deep love doth supersede All other, when her ardent gaze Roves from the living brother’s face. And rests upon the Life indeed.

All subtle thought, all curious fears, Borne down by gladness so complete, She bows, she bathes the Saviour’s feet With costly spikenard and with tears.

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, Whose loves in higher love endure; What souls possess themselves so pure, Or is there blessedness like theirs?

XXXIII.

O thou that after toil and storm Mayst seem to have reach’d a purer air, Whose faith has centre everywhere, Nor cares to fix itself to form,

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

Her faith thro’ form is pure as thine, Her hands are quicker unto good. Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood To which she links a truth divine!

See, thou that countest reason ripe In holding by the law within, Thou fail not in a world of sin, And ev’n for want of such a type.

XXXIV.

My own dim life should teach me this, That life shall live for evermore, Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is;

This round of green, this orb of flame, Fantastic beauty; such as lurks In some wild Poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim.

What then were God to such as I? ’Twere hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use A little patience ere I die;

’Twere best at once to sink to peace, Like birds the charming serpent draws, To drop head-foremost in the jaws Of vacant darkness and to cease.

XXXV.

Yet if some voice that man could trust Should murmur from the narrow house: The cheeks drop in; the body bows; Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:

Might I not say, yet even here, But for one hour, O Love, I strive To keep so sweet a thing alive? But I should turn mine ears and hear

The moanings of the homeless sea, The sound of streams that swift or slow Draw down Æonian hills, and sow The dust of continents to be;

And Love would answer with a sigh, ‘The sound of that forgetful shore Will change my sweetness more and 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 in narrowest working shut,

Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape Had bruised the herb and crush’d the grape, And bask’d and batten’d in the woods.

XXXVI.

Tho’ 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 words 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 roarings round the coral reef.

XXXVII.

Urania speaks with darken’d brow: ‘Thou pratest 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 Melpomene replies, A touch of shame upon her cheek: ‘I am not worthy but to speak Of thy prevailing mysteries;

For I am but an earthly Muse, And owning but a little art To lull with song an aching heart, And render human love his dues;

But brooding on the dear one dead, And all he said of things divine, (And dear as sacramental wine To dying lips is all he said),

I murmur’d, as I came along, Of comfort clasp’d in truth reveal’d; And loiter’d in the master’s field, And darken’d sanctities with song.’

XXXVIII.

With weary steps I loiter on, Tho’ always under alter’d 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 render’d free, Then are these songs I sing of thee Not all ungrateful to thine ear.

XXXIX.

Could we forget the widow’d hour And look on Spirits breathed away, As on a maiden in the day When first she wears her orange-flower!

When crown’d 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 is meet 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 such great offices as suit The full-grown energies of heaven.

Ay me, the difference I discern! How often shall her old fireside Be cheer’d 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 miss’d 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 undiscover’d lands.

XL.

Thy spirit ere our fatal loss Did ever rise from high to higher; As mounts the heavenward altar-fire, As flies the lighter thro’ the gross.

But thou art turn’d 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 shudders 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,

Tho’ following with an upward mind The wonders that have come to thee, Thro’ all the secular to be, But evermore a life behind.

XLI.

I vex my heart with fancies dim: He still outstript me in the race; It was but unity of place That made me dream I rank’d with him.

And so may Place retain us still, And he the much-beloved again, A lord of large experience, train To riper growth the mind and will:

And what delights can equal those That stir the spirit’s inner deeps, When one that loves but knows not, reaps A truth from one that loves and knows?

XLII.

If Sleep and Death be truly one, And every spirit’s folded bloom Thro’ 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 colour of the flower:

So then were nothing lost to man; But that still garden of the souls In many a figured leaf enrolls The total world since life began:

And love would last as pure and whole As when he loved me here in Time, And at the spiritual prime Rewaken with the dawning soul.

XLIII.

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 vanish’d, 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 taste Lethean springs) May some dim touch of earthly things Surprise thee ranging with thy peers.

If such a dreamy touch should fall, O turn thee round, resolve the doubt, My guardian angel will speak out In that high place, and tell thee all.

XLIV.

The baby new to earth and sky, What time his tender palm is prest 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, As thro’ 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.

XLV.

We ranging down this lower track, The path we came by, thorn and flower, Is shadow’d 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 lifelong tract of time reveal’d; The fruitful hours of still increase; Days order’d in a wealthy peace, And those five years its richest field.

O 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.

XLVI.

That each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall Remerging 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: