Who show'd 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-mixt with all this mystic frame, Her deep relations are the same, But with long use her tears are dry.

LXXIX.

• 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 in fee.

But thou and I are one in kind,

As moulded 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 curl'd

Thro' all his eddying coves; the same All winds that roam the twilight came In whispers of the beauteous world.

At one dear knee we proffer'd vows,

One lesson from one book we learn'd, Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turn'd 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.

LXXX.

If any vague desire should rise,

That holy Death ere Arthur died Had moved me kindly from his side, And dropt 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 stay'd in peace with God and man.

I make a picture in the brain;

I hear the sentence that he speaks; He bears the burthen of the weeks But turns his burthen 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.

LXXXI.

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.'

LXXXII.

I wage not any feud with Death

For changes 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 shatter'd stalks, Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.

Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
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.

LXXXIII.

Dip down upon the northern shore,

O sweet new-year delaying long; Thou doest 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 orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
The little speedwell's darling blue,
Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew,
Laburnums, 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.

LXXXIV.

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 crown'd 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'st link thy life
with one

Of mine own house, and boys of thine
Had babbled Uncle' on my knee;

But that remorseless iron hour Made cypress of her orange flower, Despair of Hope, and earth of thee.

I seem to meet their least desire,

Toclap their cheeks, to call them mine. I see their unborn faces shine Beside the never-lighted fire. I see myself an honour'd 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;

Till slowly worn 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 link'd with thine in love and fate, And, hovering o'er the dolorous 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 leant?

Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake The old bitterness again, and break The low beginnings of content.

LXXXV.

This truth came borne with bier and pall,
I felt it, when I sorrow'd most,
'Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all-

O true in word, and tried in deed,

Demanding, so to bring relief To this which is our common grief, What kind of life is that I lead ;

And whether trust in things above

Be dimm'd of sorrow, or sustain'd; And whether love for him have drain'd My capabilities of love;

Your words have virtue such as draws

A faithful answer from the breast, Thro' light reproaches, half exprest. 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 touch'd him, and he slept.

The great Intelligences fair

That range above our mortal state, In circle round the blessed gate, Received and gave him welcome there;

And led him thro' the blissful climes,

And show'd him in the fountain fresh All knowledge that the sons of flesh Shall gather in the cycled times.

But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim, Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth,

To wander on a darken'd earth,

I woo your love: I count it crime
To mourn for any overmuch;
I, the divided half of such
A friendship as had master'd 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 a noise of rooks,

him.

O friendship, equal-poised control,

O heart, with kindliest motion warm, O sacred essence, other form, 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, tho' left alone, His being working in mine own, The footsteps of his life in mine;

A life that all the Muses deck'd

With gifts of grace, that might ex

press

All-comprehensive tenderness, All-subtilising intellect :

And 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, Diffused the shock thro' all my life, But in the present broke the blow.

My pulses therefore beat again

For other friends that once I met ; Nor can it suit me to forget The mighty hopes that make us men.

And every pulse of wind and wave

Recalls, in 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 two 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 methinks the dead would say;

Or so shall grief with symbols 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;

LXXXVII.

I past beside the reverend walls

In which of old I wore the gown ; I roved at random thro' the town, And saw the tumult of the halls;

And heard once more in college fanes The storm their high-built organs make,

And thunder-music, rolling, shake The prophet blazon'd on the panes ;

And caught once 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

Up that long walk of limes I past To see the rooms in which he dwelt. Another name was on the door :

I linger'd; all within was noise Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys That crash'd 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;