Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?

No she never loved me truly love is love for evermore.

Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings,

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.1

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,

In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,

Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall. 80

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,

To thy widow'd marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.

Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whisper'd by the phantom years,

And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain.

Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow: get thee to thy rest again.

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry.

'Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat

Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle1 fell my father evil-starr'd;

I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.

Or to burst all links of habit there to wander far away,

On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,

Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.

1 See above, p. 331, n. 3.

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I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,

Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!

Mated with a squalid savage –

were sun or clime?

- what to me

Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,

The silver vessels sparkle clean,
The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,
And solemn chants resound between.

Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres
I find a magic bark;

I'leap on board: no helmsman steers:
I float till all is dark.

A gentle sound, an awful light!

Three angels bear the holy Grail:
With folded feet, in stoles of white,
On sleeping wings they sail.
Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!
My spirit beats her mortal bars,
As down dark tides the glory slides,

And star-like mingles with the stars.

When on my goodly charger borne
Thro' dreaming towns I go,

The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,
The streets are dumb with snow.
The tempest crackles on the leads,

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50

And, ringing, springs from brand and mail;
But o'er the dark a glory spreads,
And gilds the driving hail.

I leave the plain, I climb the height;
No branchy thicket shelter yields;
But blessed forms in whistling storms
Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields.

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And, stricken by an angel's hand,

This mortal armour that I wear,

70

This weight and size, this heart and eyes, Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air.

Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.

THE HIGHER PANTHEISM

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains

Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?

Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems?

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not

live in dreams?

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