HE tasted love with half his mind, This bitter seed among mankind; They would but find in child and wife An iron welcome when they rise: 'Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine, To pledge them with a kindly tear, To talk them o'er, to wish them here, To count their memories half divine; But if they came who past away. Behold their brides in other hands; The hard heir strides about their lands, And will not yield them for a day. Yea, tho' their sons were none of these, Not less the yet-loved sire would XCI. WHEN rosy plumelets tuft the larch, And rarely pipes the mounted thrush; Or underneath the barren bush Flits by the sea blue bird of March; Come, wear the form by which I know Thy spirit in time among thy peers, The hope of unaccomplish'd years Be large and lucid round thy brow. When summer's hourly-mellowing change May breathe, with many roses sweet, Upon the thousand waves of wheat, That ripple round the lonely grange; Come not in watches of the night, But when the sunbeam broodeth warm, Come, beauteous in thine after form, And like a finer light in light. XCII. 1F any vision should reveal Thy likeness, I might count it vain They might not seem thy prophecies, XCIII. I SHALL not see thee. Dare I say No visual shade of some one lost, But he, the Spirit himself, may come Where all the nerve of sense is numb: Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost. That in this blindness of the frame My Ghost may feel that thine is near. XCIV. How pure at heart and sound in head, With what divine affections bold Should be the man whose thought would hold An hour's communion with the dead. In vain shalt thou, or any, call The spirits from their golden day, Except, like them, thou too canst say, My spirit is at peace with all. They haunt the silence of the breast, Imaginations calm and fair, The memory like a cloudless air, The conscience as a sea at rest: But when the heart is full of din, And doubt beside the portal waits, They can but listen at the gates, And hear the household jar within. XCV. By night we linger'd on the lawn, sky Unwavering: not a cricket chirr'd: The brook alone far-off was heard, And on the board the fluttering urn: And bats went round in fragrant skies, And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes And woolly breasts and beaded eyes; While now we sang old songs that peal'd From knoll to knoll, where, couch'd at ease, The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field. But when those others, one by one, Withdrew themselves from me and night, And in the house light after light Went out, and I was all alone, A hunger seized my heart; I read Of that glad year which once had been, In those fall'n leaves which kept The noble letters of the dead: Was love's dumb cry defying change To test his worth; and strangely spoke The faith, the vigor, bold to dwell On doubts that drive the coward back, And keen thro' wordy snares to track Suggestion to her inmost cell. So word by word, and line by line, The dead man touch'd me from the past, And all at once it seem'd at last His living soul was flash'd on mine, Laid their dark arms about the field: The heavy-folded rose, and flung "The dawn, the dawn," and died away; And East and West, without a breath, Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, To broaden into boundless day. XCVI. You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light blue eyes Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. I know not: one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true: Perplext 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, eye, Their hearts of old have beat in tune, Their meetings made December Their every parting was to die. The days she never can forget He loves her yet, she will not weep, Tho'rapt in matters dark and deep He seems to slight her simple heart. He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, He reads the secret of the star, He seems so near and yet so far, He looks so cold: she thinks him kind. She keeps the gift of years before, A wither'd violet is her bliss: She knows not what his greatness is: For that, for all, she loves him more. For him she plays, to him she sings; Of early faith and plighted yows; She knows but matters of the house, And he, he knows a thousand things. Her faith is fixt and cannot move, She darkly feels him great and wise, She dwells on him with faithful eyes, "I cannot understand; I love." XCVIII. You leave us you will see the Rhine, A treble darkness, Evil haunts The birth, the bridal; friend from friend Is oftener parted, fathers bend Above more graves, a thousand wants Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey By each cold hearth, and sadness Hlings Her shadow on the blaze of kings: And yet myself have heard him say, That not in any mother town With statelier progress to and fro The double tides of chariots flow By park and suburb under brown Of lustier leaves; no more content, He told me, lives in any crowd, When all is gay with lamps, and loud With sport and song, in booth and tent, Imperial halls, or open plain; And wheels the circled dance, and breaks The rocket molten into flakes Of crimson or in emerald rain. XCIX. RISEST thou thus, dim dawn, again, On yon swoll'n brook that bubbles fast By meadows breathing of the past, And woodlands holy to the dead; Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves Who wakenest with thy balmy breath Betwixt the slumber of the poles, me. C. I CLIMB the hill; from end to end Or low morass and whispering reed, Or simple stile from mead to mead, Or sheepwalk up the windy wold; Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw That hears the latest linnet trill, Nor quarry trench'd along the hill, And haunted by the wrangling daw; Nor runlet tinkling from the rock; Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves |