LVII Peace; come away: the song of woe Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale ; Yet in these ears, till hearing dies, One set slow bell will seem to toll I hear it now, and o'er and o'er, 66 LVIII In those sad words I took farewell. Of hearts that beat from day to day, Half-conscious of their dying clay, And those cold crypts where they shall cease. The high Muse answer'd: "Wherefore grieve Thy brethren with a fruitless tear? And thou shalt take a nobler leave." LXIV Dost thou look back on what hath been, Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, Who makes by force his merit known And moving up from high to higher, Yet feels, as in a pensive dream, The limit of his narrower fate, While yet beside its vocal springs He play'd at counsellors and kings With one that was his earliest mate; Who ploughs with pain his native lea LXVII When on my bed the moonlight falls, Thy marble bright in dark appears, The mystic glory swims away, And then I know the mist is drawn LXXIV As sometimes in a dead man's face, So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, But there is more than I can see, LXXVIII Again at Christmas did we weave The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost, No wing of wind the region swept, But over all things brooding slept The quiet sense of something lost. As in the winters left behind, Again our ancient games had place, The mimic picture's breathing grace, And dance and song and hoodian-blind. Who show'd a token of distress? No single tear, no mark of pain- O last regret, regret can die! No-mixed with all this mystic frame, Her deep relations are the same, But with long use her tears are dry. 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, 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. LXXXV This truth came borne with bier and pall, O true in word, and tried in deed, 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 expressed And loyal unto kindly laws. My blood an even tenor kept, 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, Where all things round me breathed of him. O friendship, equal-poised control, O heart, with kindliest motion warm, O sacred essence, other form, O solemn ghost, O crowned soul! Yet none could better know than I, How much of act at human hands Whatever way my days decline, A life that all the Muses deck'd And so my passion hath not swerved 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. I woo your love: I count it crime Which masters Time indeed, and is But Summer on the steaming floods, And Spring that swells the narrow brooks, And Autumn, with a noise of rooks, That gather in the waning woods, And every pulse of wind and wave My old affection of the tomb, 66 A part of stillness, yearns to speak: "I watch thee from the quiet shore; And I," Can clouds of nature stain So hold I commerce with the dead; Now looking to some settled end, That those things pass, and I shall prove A meeting somewhere, love with love, I crave your pardon, O my friend; If not so fresh, with love as true, I, clasping brother-hands, aver I could not, if I would, transfer The whole I felt for him to you. For which be they that hold apart The promise of the golden hours? First love, first friendship, equal powers. That marry with the virgin heart. Still mine, that cannot but deplore, That beats within a lonely place, That yet remembers his embrace, But at his footstep leaps no more, My heart, tho' widow'd, may not rest Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring, LXXXVI Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, That rollest from the gorgeous gloom Of evening over brake and bloom And meadow, slowly breathing bare The round of space, and rapt below Thro' all the dewy tassell'd wood, The fever from my cheek, and sigh Ill brethren, let the fancy fly From belt to belt of crimson seas LXXXVII I past beside the reverend walls 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 same gray flats again, and felt 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 labor, and the changing mart, And all the framework of the land; When one would aim an arrow fair, But send it slackly from the string; And one would pierce an outer ring, And one an inner, here and there; And last the master-bowman, he, Would cleave the mark. A willing ear We lent him. Who but hung to hear The rapt oration flowing free From point to point, with power and grace And music in the bounds of law, And seem to lift the form, and glow LXXXVIII Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ Thy spirits in the darkening leaf, And I-my harp would prelude woe- XCVI You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes Are tender over drowning flies, I know not: one indeed I knew Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true; Perplexed in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. He fought his doubts and gather'd strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them; thus he came at length To find a stronger faith his own, And Power was with him in the night, And dwells not in the light alone, XCVII My love has talk'd with rocks and trees; He finds on misty mountain-ground His own vast shadow glory-crown'd; He sees himself in all he sees. Two partners of a married life- I look'd on these and thought of thee In vastness and in mystery, And of my spirit as of a wife. These two-they dwelt with eye on eye. Their hearts of old have beat in tune, Their meetings made December June Their every parting was to die. Their love has never past away; The days she never can forget Are earnest that he loves her yet, Whate'er the faithless people say. Her life is lone, he sits apart; He loves her yet, she will not weep, She keeps the gift of years before, We go, but ere we go from home, One whispers, "Here thy boyhood sung The other answers, "Yea, but here And this hath made them trebly dear." These two have striven half the day, And each prefers his separate claim, Poor rivals in a losing game, That will not yield each other way. I turn to go; my feet are set To leave the pleasant fields and farms; They mix in one another's arms To one pure image of regret. CIV The time draws near the birth of Christ; A single peal of bells below, That wakens at this hour of rest A single murmur in the breast, That these are not the bells I know. Like strangers' voices here they sound, In lands where not a memory strays, Nor landmark breathes of other days, But all is new unhallow'd ground. CVI Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor; Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land. Ring in the Christ that is to be. |