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.

IX

Fair ship, that from the Italian shore

Sailest the placid ocean-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 favorable 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.

ΧΙ

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.

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;

Which weep a loss for ever new,
A void where heart on heart reposed;
And, where warm hands have prest
and closed,
Silence, till I be silent too;

Which weep the comrade of my choice
An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,
A Spirit, not a breathing voice.

Come, Time, and teach me, many years, I do not suffer in a dream ;

For now so strange do these things

seem,

Mine eyes have leisure for their tears,

My fancies time to rise on wing,

And glance about the approaching sails,

As tho' they brought but merchants' bales,

And not the burthen that they bring.

XIV

If one should bring me this report, That thou hadst touch'd the land today,

And I went down unto the quay, And found thee lying in the port;

And standing, muffled round with woe, Should see thy passengers in rank Come stepping lightly down the plank,

And beckoning unto those they know;

And if along with these should come
The man I held as half-divine,
Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
And ask a thousand things of home;

And I should tell him all my pain,

And how my life had droop'd of late, And he should sorrow o'er my state And marvel what possess'd my brain;

And I perceived no touch of change,
No hint of death in all his frame,
But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.

XVIII

"T is well; 't is something; we may stand

Where he in English earth is laid, And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land.

"T is 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,

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 leaped 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.

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;
"T is 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.

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 gamboll'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.

66

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 neighbors 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?

ХХХІІІ

O thou that after toil and storm Mayst seem to have reach'd a puret 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.
O, 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 even for want of such a type.

XL

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 dott. rise

To take her latest leave of home, And hopes and light regrets that com 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 giver
A life that bears immortal fruit
In those great offices that 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.

XLVIII

If these brief lays, of Sorrow born, Were taken to be such as closed Grave doubts and answers here proposed,

Then these were such as men might

scorn.

Her care is not to part and prove;

She takes, when harsher moods remit,

What slender shade of doubt may flit, And makes it vassal unto love;

And hence, indeed, she sports with words, But better serves a wholesome law, And holds it sin and shame to draw The deepest measure from the chords; Nor dare she trust a larger lay,

But rather loosens from the lip Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away.

LIV

O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall
At last-far off-at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.

LV

The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life,
That I, considering every where
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

LVI

"So careful of the type?" but no.

From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, A thousand types are gone; I care for nothing, all shall go. "Thou makest thine appeal to me: I bring to life, I bring to death;

The spirit does but mean the breath: I know no more." And he, shall he, Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation's final lawTho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creedWho loved, who suffer'd countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or seal'd within the iron hills? No more? A monster then, a dream, A discord. Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime, Were mellow music match'd with him O life as futile, then, as frail!

O for thy voice to soothe and bless í What hope of answer, or redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil.