CV IN MEMORIAM A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII STRONG Son of God, immortal Love, 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; Let knowledge grow from more to more, May make one music as before, But vaster. 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, Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in thy wisdom make me wise. I I HELD it truth, with him who sings But who shall so forecast the years And find in loss a gain to match? 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 II OLD Yew, which graspest at the stones The seasons bring the flower again, O not for thee the glow, the bloom, Nor branding summer suns avail And gazing on thee, sullen tree, Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, III O SORROW, cruel fellowship, O Priestess in the vaults of Death "The stars," she whispers, "blindly run ; "And all the phantom, Nature, stands- And shall I take a thing so blind, Embrace her as my natural good; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind? IV To Sleep I give my powers away; O heart, how fares it with thee now, That thou should'st fail from thy desire, "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." 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, 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 would not make O father, wheresoe'er thou be, That pledgest now thy gallant son; 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 And something written, something thought; Expecting still his advent home; With wishes, thinking, here to-day, O somewhere, meek unconscious dove, For now her father's chimney glows 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; Once more to set a ringlet right; And, even when she turn'd, the curse 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? And unto me, no second friend. VII DARK house, by which once more I stand Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, |