As wan, 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, Life as thou mayst thy burdened brows Through clouds that drench the morning star, And whirl the ungarnered sheaf afar, And up thy vault with roaring sound LXXII. So many worlds, so much to do, 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 errs from law. : We pass the path that each man trod O hollow wraith of dying fame, Fade wholly, while the soul exults, LXXIII. As sometimes in a dead man's face, To those that watch it more and more, 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. LXXIV. I LEAVE thy praises unexpressed What practice, howsoe'er expert 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, Is cold to all that might have been. So here shall silence guard thy fame ; LXXV. TAKE wings of fancy, and ascend, Take wings of foresight; lighten through And lo! thy deepest lays are dumb Before the mouldering of a yew; And if the matin 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 Mays, thy songs are vain; And what are they when these remain The ruined shells of hollow towers? LXXVI. WHAT hope is here for modern rhyme 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 changed to something else, Sung by a long forgotten mind. But what of that? My darkened ways LXXVII. AGAIN at Christmas did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth, And calmly fell our Christmas eve ; The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost, 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, But with long use her tears are dry. LXXVIII. 59 "MORE than my brothers are to me," 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 curled At one dear knee we proffered vows, One lesson from one book we learned, Ere 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. LXXIX. Ir 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. |