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 madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust :

Thou madest man, he knows not why,

He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him: thou art just.

Thou seemest 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.

17yrs communes 3

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 seem'd my sin in me ;

What seem'd 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.

I HELD it truth, with him who sings

To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things. But who shall so forecast the years

And find in loss a gain to match? Or reach a hand thro' time to catch The far-off interest of tears?

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, Let darkness keep her raven gloss : Ah, 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.'

II.

Old Yew, which graspest at the stones

That name the under-lying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. 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.

O not for thee the glow, the bloom, Who changest 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 hardihood, I seem to fail from out my blood And grow incorporate into thee.

III.

O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,

O Priestess in the vaults of Death, O sweet and bitter in a breath, What whispers from thy lying lip? 'The stars,' she whispers, blindly run; A web is wov'n 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.' And shall I take a thing so blind,

Embrace her as my natural good; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Con the threshold of the mind?

IV.

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:

O heart, how fares it with thee now, That thou should'st fail from thy desire,

Who scarcely darest to inquire, 'What is it makes me beat so low?'

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 !

Such clouds of nameless trouble cross

All night below the darken'd eyes; With morning wakes the will, and cries,

'Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.'

V.

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.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
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 in outline and no more.

VI.

One writes, that 'Other friends remain,' That Loss is common to the race'And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain. That loss is common would not make

My own less bitter, rather more : Too common! Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break. O father, wheresoe'er thou be,

Who pledgest now thy gallant son; A shot, ere half thy draught be done, Hath still'd the life that beat from thee.

O mother, praying God will save

Thy sailor, while thy head is bow'd,

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

Ye know no more than I who wrought At that last hour to please him well; Who mused 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.'

O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove, That sittest ranging golden hair; And glad to find thyself so fair, Poor child, that waitest for thy love! For now her father's chimney glows

In expectation of a guest;

And thinking 'this will please him best,'

She takes a riband 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 turn'd, the curse Had fallen, and her future Lord Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford,

Or kill'd in falling 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.

VII.

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,

A hand that can be clasp'd no more-
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away

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

VIII.

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;

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: So find I every pleasant spot

In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber and the street, For all is dark where thou art not. Yet as that other, wandering there

In those deserted walks, may find A flower beat with rain and wind, Which once she foster'd up with care; So seems it in my deep regret,

O my forsaken heart, with thee And this poor flower of poesy Which little cared for fades not yet. But since it pleased a vanish'd eye, I go to plant it on his tomb, That if it can it there may bloom, Or dying, there at least may die.

IX.

Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-j
n-plains
With my lost Arthur's loved remains,
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favourable speed
Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead
Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.

All night no ruder air perplex

Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, thro' early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. 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 widow'd race be run; Dear as the mother to the son, More than my brothers are to me.

X.

I hear the noise about thy keel;

I hear the bell struck in the night:
I see the cabin-window bright;

I see the sailor at the wheel.
Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife,

And travell❜d men from foreign lands;
And letters unto trembling hands;
And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life.
So bring him we have idle dreams :

This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies: O 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;
Than if with thee the roaring wells

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

XI.

Calm is the morn without a sound,

Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only thro' the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to the ground: Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the furze,

And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold:

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 main :

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:

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.

XII.

Lo, as a dove when up she springs

To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe, Some dolorous message knit below The wild pulsation of her wings;

Like her I go; I cannot stay;

I leave this mortal ark behind, A weight of nerves without a mind, And leave the cliffs, and haste away O'er 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.

XIII.

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;