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DEDICATION.

HESE to His Memory—since he held

them dear,

Perchance as finding there uncon

sciously

Some image of himself-I dedicate,

I dedicate, I consecrate with tears

These Idylls.

And indeed He seems to me

Scarce other than my own ideal knight,

'Who reverenced his conscience as his king;

Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;

B

Who spake no slander, no, nor listen'd to it;

Who loved one only and who clave to her

Her-over all whose realms to their last isle,

Commingled with the gloom of imminent war, The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse,

Darkening the world. We have lost him he is

gone:

We know him now: all narrow jealousies
Are silent; and we see him as he moved,
How modest, kindly, all-accomplish'd, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself,
And in what limits, and how tenderly;
Not swaying to this faction or to that;
Not making his high place the lawless perch
Of wing'd ambitions, nor a vantage-ground
For pleasure; but thro' all this tract of years
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,
Before a thousand peering littlenesses,

In that fierce light which beats upon a throne,

And blackens every blot for where is he,