Enoch Arden and In memoriam, annotated by Alfred Lord Tennyson,

edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson

Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892.
London : Macmillan and Co., 1908.

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N

SON

EN

AM

&CO
Ernst R. Behrend
[ HIS BOOK ]
If thou art borrowed by a friend,
Right welcome shall he be,
To read , to study , not to lend,
But to return to me.

WCHWEND COLLEGE
The Eversley Edition

ENOCH ARDEN
AND

IN MEMORIAM
 MACMILLAN AND CO. , LIMITED
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK BOSTON. CHICAGO
ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO . OF CANADA , LTD .

TORONTO
ENOCH ARDEN
AND

IN MEMORIAM

ANNOTATED
BY

ALFRED
LORD TENNYSON

EDITED BY

HALLAM , LORD TENNYSON

MACMILLAN AND CO ., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET , LONDON
1909
PR5556
1908
рес8-23-06

The Notes are copyright in the U.S. of America.

First Eversley Edition 1908
Reprinted 1909
 CONTENTS
PAGE
ENOCH ARDEN . I
IN MEMORIAM . 39

APPENDIX-
SPEAK TO ME 187

NOTES 189
 ENOCH ARDEN .

LONG lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm ;

And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands ;

Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf

In cluster ; then a moulder'd church ; and higher
A long street climbs to one tall- tower'd mill ;

And high in heaven behind it a gray down

With Danish barrows ; and a hazelwood ,
By autumn nutters haunted , flourishes
Green in a cuplike hollow of the down .

Here on this beach a hundred years ago ,

Three children of three houses , Annie Lee ,
The prettiest little damsel in the port ,

And Philip Ray the miller's only son ,

And Enoch Arden , a rough sailor's lad
Made orphan by a winter shipwreck , play'd

Among the waste and lumber of the shore ,

Hard coils of cordage , swarthy fishing- nets ,
D B
2 ENOCH ARDEN .

Anchors of rusty fluke , and boats updrawn ;

And built their castles of dissolving sand
To watch them overflow'd , or following up

And flying the white breaker , daily left

The little footprint daily wash'd away .

A narrow cave ran in beneath the cliff :

In this the children play'd at keeping house .
Enoch was host one day , Philip the next ,
While Annie still was mistress ; but at times
Enoch would hold possession for a week :
' This is my house and this my little wife .'
' Mine too ' said Philip ' turn and turn about :'

When , if they quarrell'd , Enoch stronger - made

Was master : then would Philip , his blue eyes
All flooded with the helpless wrath of tears ,
I
Shriek out ' hate you , Enoch , ' and at this
The little wife would weep for company ,
And pray them not to quarrel for her sake ,
And say she would be little wife to both .

But when the dawn of rosy childhood past ,

And the new warmth of life's ascending sun
Was felt by either , either fixt his heart
On that one girl Enoch spoke his love ,
; and

But Philip loved in silence ; and the girl

Seem'd kinder unto Philip than to him ;
 ENOCH ARDEN . 3

But she loved Enoch ; tho ' she knew it not ,

And would if ask'd deny it . Enoch set
A purpose evermore before his eyes ,
To hoard all savings to the uttermost ,

To purchase his own boat , and make a home

For Annie and so prosper'd that at last

A luckier or a bolder fisherman ,
A carefuller in peril, did not breathe
For leagues along that breaker - beaten coast
Than Enoch . Likewise had he served a year
On board a merchantman , and made himself
Full sailor ; and he thrice had pluck'd a life
From the dread sweep of the down - streaming seas :

And all men look'd upon him favourably :

And ere he touch'd his one -and -twentieth May
He purchased his own boat , and made a home
For Annie , neat and nestlike , halfway up

The narrow street that clamber'd toward the mill .

Then , on a golden autumn eventide ,

The younger people making holiday ,

With bag and sack and basket , great and small ,

Went nutting to the hazels . Philip stay'd
(His father lying sick and needing him )
An hour behind ; but as he climb'd the hill ,
Just where the prone edge of the wood began
To feather toward the hollow, saw the pair ,
 ENOCH ARDEN .

Enoch and Annie , sitting hand -in -hand ,

His large gray eyes and weather - beaten face
All-kindledby a still and sacred fire ,
That burn'd as on an altar . Philip look'd ,
And in their eyes and faces read his doom ;
Then , as their faces drew together , groan'd ,

And slipt aside , and like a wounded life

Crept down into the hollows of the wood ;
There , while the rest were loud in merrymaking ,

Had his dark hour unseen , and rose and past

Bearing a lifelong hunger in his heart .

So these were wed , and merrily rang the bells ,

And merrily ran the years , seven happy years ,
Seven happy years of health and competence ,
And mutual love and honourable toil ;
With children ; first a daughter . In him woke ,
With his first babe's first cry , the noble wish
To save all earnings to the uttermost ,
And give his child a better bringing- up
Than his had been , or hers ; a wish renew'd ,

When two years after came a boy to be

The rosy idol of her solitudes ,
While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas ,

Or often journeying landward ; for in truth

Enoch's white horse , and Enoch's ocean - spoil
In ocean - smelling osier , and his face ,
 ENOCH ARDEN . 5

Rough - redden'd with a thousand winter gales ,

Not only to the market - cross were known ,
But in the leafy lanes behind the down ,

Far as the portal - warding lion - whelp ,

And peacock -yewtree of the lonely Hall ,

Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering.

Then came a change , as all things human

change .

Ten miles to northward of the narrow port

Open'd a larger haven : thither used
Enoch at times to go by land or sea ;
And once when there , and clambering on a mast
In harbour , by mischance he slipt and fell :
A limb was broken when they lifted him ;
And while he lay recovering there , his wife
Bore him another son , a sickly one :

Another hand crept too across his trade

Taking her bread and theirs and on him fell ,
Altho ' a grave and staid God -fearing man ,
Yet lying thus inactive , doubt and gloom .
He seem'd , as in a nightmare of the night,
To see his children leading evermore
Low miserable lives of hand -to - mouth ,
And her, he loved , a beggar : then he pray'd

' Save them from this , whatever comes to me .'

And while he pray'd , the master of that ship

6 ENOCH ARDEN .

Enoch had served in , hearing his mischance ,

Came , for he knew the man and valued him ,

Reporting of his vessel China -bound ,
And wanting yet a boatswain . Would he go ?

There yet were many weeks before she sail'd ,

Sail'd from this port . Would Enoch have the place ?
And Enoch all at once assented to it ,
Rejoicing at that answer to his prayer .

So now that shadow of mischance appear'd

No graver than as when some little cloud
Cuts off the fiery highway of the sun ,
And isles a light in the offing : yet the
-
wife-
When he was gone the children— what to do ?

-
Then Enoch lay long - pondering on his plans ;

To sell the boat and yet he loved her well—

How many a rough sea had he weather'd in her !

-
He knew her, as a horseman knows his horse-

-
And yet to sell her then with what she brought
Buy goods and stores set Annie forth in trade
With all that seamen needed or their wives—
So might she keep the house while he was gone .
Should he not trade himself out yonder ? go
This voyage more than once ? yea twice or thrice-
As oft as needed —last , returning rich ,
Become the master of a larger craft ,

With fuller profits lead an easier life ,

 ENOCH ARDEN. 7

Have all his pretty young ones educated ,

And pass his days in peace among his own .

Thus Enoch in his heart determined all :

Then moving homeward came on Annie pale ,

Nursing the sickly babe , her latest -born .
Forward she started with a happy cry,
And laid the feeble infant in his arms ;
Whom Enoch took , and handled all his limbs ,

Appraised his weight and fondled fatherlike ,

But had no heart to break his purposes

To Annie , till the morrow, when he spoke .

Then first since Enoch's golden ring had girt

Her finger , Annie fought against his will :

Yet not with brawling opposition she ,

But manifold entreaties , many a tear ,
Many a sad kiss by day by night renew'd
(Sure that all evil would come out of it )
Besought him , supplicating , if he cared
For her or his dear children , not to go .

He not for his own self caring but her ,

Her and her children , let her plead in vain ;

So grieving held his will , and bore it thro'.

For Enoch parted with his old sea - friend ,

Bought Annie goods and stores , and set his hand
8 ENOCH ARDEN .

To fit their little streetward sitting -room

With shelf and corner for the goods and stores .

So all day long till Enoch's last at home ,
Shaking their pretty cabin , hammer and axe ,
Auger and saw , while Annie seem'd to hear
Her own death - scaffold raising , shrill'd and rang ,
Till this was ended , and his careful hand , -
The space was narrow , -having order'd all
Almost as neat and close as Nature packs
Her blossom or her seedling , paused ; and he ,
Who needs would work for Annie to the last ,
Ascending tired , heavily slept till morn .

And Enoch faced this morning of farewell

Brightly and boldly . All his Annie's fears ,
Save , as his Annie's , were a laughter to him .
Yet Enoch as a brave God -fearing man
Bow'd himself down , and in that mystery
Where God -in- man is one with man -in - God ,
Pray'd for a blessing on his wife and babes
Whatever came to him : and then he said
' Annie , this voyage by the grace of God
Will bring fair
weather yet to all of us .
Keep a clean hearth and a clear fire for me ,
For I'll be back , my girl, before you know it.'
Then lightly rocking baby's cradle ' and he ,

This pretty , puny , weakly little one , —

 ENOCH ARDEN.

Nay - for I love him all the better for it--

God bless him , he shall sit upon my knees
And I will tell him tales of foreign parts ,
And make him merry , when I come home again .
Come, Annie , come , cheer up before I go .'

Him running on thus hopefully she heard ,

And almost hoped herself ; but when he turn'd
The current of his talk to graver things
In sailor fashion roughly sermonizing
On providence and trust in Heaven , she heard ,
Heard and not heard him ; as the village girl,
Who sets her pitcher underneath the spring ,
Musing on him that used to fill it for her ,
Hears and not hears , and lets it overflow .

At length she spoke ' O Enoch , you are wise ;

And yet for all your wisdom well know I

I
That shall look upon your face no more .'

'Well then, ' said Enoch , ' I shall look on yours .

Annie , the ship I sail in passes here
(He named the day ) get you a seaman's glass ,
Spy out my face , and laugh at all your fears . '

But when the last of those last moments came ,

' Annie , my girl , cheer up, be comforted ,
ΙΟ ENOCH ARDEN .

Look to the babes , and till I come again

Keep everything shipshape , for I must go .
And fear no more for me ; or if you fear
Cast all your cares on God ; that anchor holds .
Is He not yonder in those uttermost

Parts of the morning ? if I flee to these

Can I go from Him ? and the sea is His ,
The sea is His : He made it . '

Enoch rose ,
Cast his strong arms about his drooping wife ,
And kiss'd his wonder -stricken little ones ;
But for the third , the sickly one , who slept
After a night of feverous wakefulness ,
When Annie would have raised him Enoch said
'Wake him not ; let him sleep ; how should the
child
Remember this ? ' and kiss'd him in his cot .
But Annie from her baby's forehead clipt
A tiny curl, and gave it : this he kept
Thro ' all his future ; but now hastily caught
His bundle , waved his hand , and went his way .

She when the day , that Enoch mention'd , came ,

Borrow'd a glass , but all in vain : perhaps

She could not fix the glass to suit her eye ;
Perhaps her eye was dim , hand tremulous ;
 ENOCH ARDEN . II
She saw him not and while he stood on deck

Waving , the moment and the vessel past .

Ev'n to the last dip of the vanishing sail

She watch'd it, and departed weeping for him ;
Then , tho ' she mourn'd his absence as his grave ,
Set her sad will no less to chime with his ,

But throve not in her trade , not being bred

To barter , nor compensating the want
By shrewdness , neither capable of lies ,
Nor asking overmuch and taking less ,
And still foreboding ' what would Enoch say ? '
For more than once , in days of difficulty
And pressure , had she sold her wares for less
Than what she gave in buying what she sold :
She fail'd and sadden'd knowing it ; and thus ,
Expectant of that news which never came ,
Gain'd for her own a scanty sustenance ,
And lived a life of silent melancholy .

Now the third child was sickly -born and grew

Yet sicklier, tho ' the mother cared for it
With all a mother's care : nevertheless ,

Whether her business often call'd her from it ,

Or thro' the want of what it needed most ,

-
Or means to pay the voice who best could tell
What most it needed howsoe'er it was ,
12 ENOCH ARDEN .

After a lingering , -ere she was aware , —

Like the caged bird escaping suddenly ,
The little innocent soul flitted away .

In that same week when Annie buried it,

Philip's true heart , which hunger'd for her peace
(Since Enoch left he had not look'd upon her ),
Smote him , as having kept aloof so long .
' Surely,' said Philip , ' I may see her now ,

May be some little comfort ; ' therefore went ,

Past thro' the solitary room in front,

Paused for a moment at an inner door,
Then struck it thrice , and, no one opening ,

Enter'd ; but Annie , seated with her grief,

Fresh from the burial of her little one ,
Cared not to look on any human face ,
But turn'd her own toward the wall and wept .
Then Philip standing up said falteringly
' Annie , I came to ask a favour of you .'

He spoke ; the passion in her moan'd reply

' Favour from one so sad and so forlorn
As I am ! ' half abash'd him ; yet unask'd ,
His bashfulness and tenderness at war ,

He set himself beside her , saying to her :

' I came to speak to you of what he wish'd ,

 ENOCH ARDEN . 13

Enoch , your husband : I have ever said

You chose the best among us — a strong man :
For where he fixt his heart he set his hand

To do the thing he will'd , and bore it thro'.

And wherefore did he go this weary way ,

And leave you lonely ? not to see the world-

For pleasure ? -nay , but for the wherewithal
To give his babes a better bringing -up
Than his had been , or yours : that was his wish .
And if he come again , vext will he be
To find the precious morning hours were lost .
And it would vex him even in his grave ,
Ifhe could know his babes were running wild
Like colts about the waste . So, Annie , now-
Have we not known each other all our lives ?
I do beseech you by the love you bear
Him and his children not to say me nay-
For, if you will , when Enoch
-if
comes again

-
Why then he shall repay me you will ,
Annie for I am rich and well -to - do .
Now let me put the boy and girl to school :
This is the favour that I
came to ask . '

Then Annie with her brows against the wall

Answer'd ' I cannot look you in the face ;
I seem so foolish and so broken down .

When you came in my sorrow broke me down ;

14 ENOCH ARDEN .

And now I think your kindness breaks me down ;

But Enoch lives ; that is borne in on me :

He will repay you : money can be repaid ;

Not kindness such as yours .'

And Philip ask'd

'Then you will let me , Annie ? '

There she turn'd,

She rose , and fixt her swimming eyes upon him ,
And dwelt a moment on his kindly face ,
Then calling down a blessing on his head .
Caught at his hand , and wrung it passionately ,

And past into the little garth beyond .

So lifted up in spirit he moved away .

Then Philip put the boy and girl to school ,

And bought them needful books , and everyway ,

Like one who does his duty by his own ,
Made himself theirs ; and tho ' for Annie's sake ,
Fearing the lazy gossip of the port ,
He oft denied his heart his dearest wish ,
And seldom crost her threshold , yet he sent
Gifts by the children , garden - herbs and fruit ,
The late and early roses from his wall ,
Or conies from the down , and now and then ,
With some pretext of fineness in the meal
 ENOCH ARDEN . 15

To save the offence of charitable , flour

From his tall mill that whistled on the waste .

But Philip did not fathom Annie's mind :

Scarce could the woman when he came upon her ,

Out of full heart and boundless gratitude
Light on a broken word to thank him with .
But Philip was her children's all -in -all ;

From distant corners of the street they ran

To greet his hearty welcome heartily ;

Lords of his house and of his mill were they ;

Worried his passive ear with petty wrongs
Or pleasures , hung upon him , play'd with him
And call'd him Father Philip . Philip gain'd
As Enoch lost ; for Enoch seem'd to them
Uncertain as a vision or a dream ,

Faint as a figure seen in early dawn

Down at the far end of an avenue ,
Going we know not where : and so ten years ,
Since Enoch left his hearth and native land ,

Fled forward , and no news of Enoch came .

It chanced one evening Annie's children long'd

To go with others , nutting to the wood,

And Annie would go with them ; then they begg'd

For Father Philip (as they call'd him ) too :

Him , like the working bee in blossom -dust ,
16 ENOCH ARDEN .

Blanch'd with his mill , they found ; and saying to him

'Come with us Father Philip ' he denied ;
But when the children pluck'd at him to go ,
He laugh'd , and yielded readily to their wish ,

For was not Annie with them ? and they went .

But after scaling half the weary down ,

Just where the prone edge of the wood began
To feather toward the hollow, all her force

Fail'd and sighing , ' Let me rest ' she said

her ; :

So Philip rested with her well -content ;

While all the younger ones with jubilant cries
Broke from their elders , and tumultuously
Down thro ' the whitening hazels made a plunge
To the bottom , and dispersed , and bent or broke
The lithe reluctant boughs to tear away
Their tawny clusters , crying to each other
And calling, here and there , about the wood .

But Philip sitting at her side forgot

Her presence , and remember'd one dark hour
Here in this wood , when like a wounded life
He crept into the shadow : at last he said ,
Lifting his honest forehead , ' Listen , Annie ,
How merry they are down yonder in the wood .

Tired , Annie ? ' for she did not speak a word .

'Tired ?' but her face had fall'n upon her hands ;
 ENOCH ARDEN. 17

At which , as with a kind of anger in him ,

' The ship was lost , ' he said , ' the ship was lost !
No more of that ! why should you kill yourself
And make them orphans quite ? ' And Annie said
'I thought not of it : but — I know not why—
Their voices make me feel so solitary .'

Then Philip coming somewhat closer spoke .

' Annie , there is a thing upon my mind ,
And it has been upon my mind so long,
I
That tho' know not when it first came there ,
I know that it will out at last . O Annie ,
It is beyond all hope , against all chance ,
That he who left you ten long years ago
Should still be living ; well then let me speak - :

I grieve to see you poor and wanting help :

I cannot help you as I wish to do
Unless they say that women are so quick-
Perhaps you know what I would have you know-
I wish you for my wife I fain would prove
.

A father to your children : I do think

They love me as a father : I am sure
That I love them as if they were mine own ;
And I believe , if you were fast my wife ,
That after all these sad uncertain years ,
We might be still as happy as God grants
Το any of his creatures . Think upon it :
C
18 ENOCH ARDEN .

For I am well-to -do - no kin , no care ,

No burthen , save my care for you and yours :
And we have known each other all our lives ,
And I have loved you longer than you know .'

Then answer'd Annie ; tenderly she spoke :

' You have been as God's good angel in our house .

God bless you for it , God reward you for it ,
Philip , with something happier than myself .
Can one love twice ? can you be ever loved
As Enoch was ? what is it that you ask ? '
' I am content ' he answer'd ' to be loved
A little after Enoch . ' ' O ' she cried,
Scared as it were , ' dear Philip , wait a while :
If Enoch comes - but Enoch will not come ---

Yet wait a year , a year is not so long :

Surely I shall be wiser in a year :
O wait a little ! ' Philip sadly said
' Annie , as I have waited all my life

I well may wait a little . ' ' Nay ' she cried
' I am bound : you have my promise -- in a year :
Will you not bide your year as I bide mine ? '
And Philip answer'd ' I will bide my year .'

Here both were mute , till Philip glancing up

Beheld the dead flame of the fallen day
Pass from the Danish barrow overhead ;
 ENOCH ARDEN . 19

Then fearing night and chill for Annie , rose

And sent his voice beneath him thro ' the wood .

Up came the children laden with their spoil ;

Then all descended to the port , and there
At Annie's door he paused and gave his hand ,
Saying gently ' Annie , when I
spoke to you ,

That was your hour of weakness . was wrong , I

I am always bound to you , but you are free . '
Then Annie weeping answer'd ' I am bound .'

She spoke ; and in one moment as it were ,

While yet she went about her household ways ,
Ev'n as she dwelt upon his latest words ,

That he had loved her longer than she knew ,

That autumn into autumn flash'd again ,
And there he stood once more before her face ,
Claiming her promise . ' Is it a year ? ' she ask'd .

'
-
Yes , if the nuts ' he said ' be ripe again :

-
Come out and see .' But she she put him off—
So much to look to
Give her a month -
- such a change
she knew that she was
a month-
bound-
A month - no more . Then Philip with his eyes

Full of that lifelong hunger , and his voice

Shaking a little like a drunkard's hand ,

'Take your own time , Annie , take your own time . '
And Annie could have wept for pity of him ,
And yet she held him on delayingly
20 ENOCH ARDEN .

With many a scarce - believable excuse ,

Trying his truth and his long -sufferance ,
Till half-another year had slipt away .

By this the lazy gossips of the port,

Abhorrent of a calculation crost ,

Began to chafe as at a personal wrong.

Some thought that Philip did but trifle with her ;

Some that she but held off to draw him on ;

And others laugh'd at her and Philip too ,

As simple folk that knew not their own minds ,

And one , in whom all evil fancies clung

Like serpent eggs together , laughingly
Would hint at worse in either . Her own son
Was silent , tho' he often look'd his wish ;
But evermore the daughter prest upon her
To wed the man so dear to all of them
And lift the household out of poverty ;
And Philip's rosy face contracting grew
Careworn and wan ; and all these things fell on her
Sharp as reproach .

At last one night it chanced

That Annie could not sleep , but earnestly
Pray'd for a sign ' my Enoch is he gone ?'
Then compass'd round by the blind wall of night
Brook'd not the expectant terror of her heart ,
 ENOCH ARDEN. 21
27

Started from bed , and struck herself a light,

Then desperately seized the holy Book ,

Suddenly set it wide to find a sign ,
Suddenly put her finger on the text ,
' Under the palm -tree .' That was nothing to her :
No meaning there : she closed the Book and slept :
When lo her Enoch sitting on a height ,
Under a palm -tree , over him the Sun :
'He is gone ' she thought
, , he is happy , he is singing
Hosanna in the highest : yonder shines
The Sun of Righteousness , and these be palms

Whereof the happy people strowing cried

" Hosanna in the highest "
"
Here she woke ,
!

Resolved, sent for him and said wildly to him .

' There is no reason why we should not wed .'
' Then for God's sake , ' he answer'd , ' both our sakes ,

So you will wed me , let it be at once . '

So these were wed and merrily rang the bells ,

Merrily rang the bells and they were wed .
But never merrily beat Annie's heart .
A footstep seem'd to fall beside her path ,
She knew not whence ; a whisper on her ear ,
She knew not what ; nor loved she to be left
Alone at home , nor ventured out alone .
What ail'd her then , that ere she enter'd , often
Her hand dwelt lingeringly on the latch ,
22 ENOCH ARDEN .

Fearing to enter : Philip thought he knew :

Such doubts and fears were common to her state ,
Being with child : but when her child was born ,

Then her new child was as herself renew'd ,

Then the new mother came about her heart ,
Then her good Philip was her all - in -all ,
And that mysterious instinct wholly died .

And where was Enoch ? prosperously sail'd

The ship ' Good Fortune , ' tho ' at setting forth

The Biscay, roughly ridging eastward , shook

And almost overwhelm'd her, yet unvext
She slipt across the summer of the world ,
Then after a long tumble about the Cape
And frequent interchange of foul and fair,
She passing thro ' the summer world again ,
The breath of heaven came continually
And sent her sweetly by the golden isles ,
Till silent in her oriental haven .

There Enoch traded for himself, and bought

Quaint monsters for the market of those times ,
A gilded dragon , also , for the babes .

Less lucky her home - voyage : at first indeed

Thro' many a fair sea -circle , day by day ,
Scarce - rocking , her full - busted figure - head
 ENOCH ARDEN . 23

Stared o'er the ripple feathering from her bows :

Then follow'd calms , and then winds variable ,
Then baffling , a long course of them ; and last

Storm , such as drove her under moonless heavens

Till hard upon the cry of ' breakers ' came
The crash of ruin , and the loss of all
But Enoch and two others . Half the night,
Buoy'd upon floating tackle and broken spars ,
These drifted , stranding
on an isle at morn
Rich , but the loneliest in a lonely sea .

No want was there of human sustenance ,

Soft fruitage , mighty nuts , and nourishing roots ;

Nor save for pity was it hard to take
The helpless life so wild that it was tame .
There in a seaward -gazing mountain -gorge
They built , and thatch'd with leaves of palm , a hut ,
Half hut, half native cavern . So the three ,
Set in this Eden of all plenteousness ,

Dwelt with eternal summer

ill

, content
-

For one the youngest hardly more than boy

,

Hurt in that night of sudden ruin and wreck

,

Lay lingering out five years death

in

life
a

-
-

.
-

'

They could not leave him After he was gone

.

The two remaining found fallen stem

a

And Enoch's comrade careless of himself

,

,
24 ENOCH ARDEN.

Fire -hollowing this in Indian fashion , fell

Sun- stricken , and that other lived alone .

In those two deaths he read God's warning ' wait .'

The mountain wooded to the peak , the lawns

And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven ,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes ,
The lightning flash of insect and of bird ,
The lustre of the long convolvuluses
That coil'd around the stately stems , and ran
Ev'n to the limit of the land , the glows
And glories of the broad belt of the world,
All these he saw ; but what he fain had seen
He could not see , the kindly human face ,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice , but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean - fowl ,

The league - long roller thundering on the reef,

The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd
And blossom'd in the zenith , or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave ,
As down the shore he ranged , or all day long
Sat often in the seaward -gazing gorge ,
A shipwreck'd sailor , waiting for a sail :
No sail from day to day , but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices ;
The blaze upon the waters to the east ;
 ENOCH ARDEN. 25

The blaze upon his island overhead ;

The blaze upon the waters to the west ;

Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven ,

The hollower- bellowing

-
ocean , and again
The scarlet shafts of sunrise but no sail.

There often as he watch'd or seem'd to watch ,

So still , the golden lizard on him paused ,
A phantom made of many phantoms moved
Before him haunting him , or he himself
Moved haunting people , things and places , known
Far in a darker isle beyond the line ;
The babes , their babble , Annie , the small house ,
The climbing street , the mill , the leafy lanes ,
The peacock -yewtree and the lonely Hall ,
The horse he drove , the boat he sold , the chill
November dawns and dewy - glooming downs ,

The gentle shower , the smell of dying leaves ,

And the low moan of leaden -colour'd seas .

-
Once likewise , in the ringing of his ears ,
Tho ' faintly, merrily far and far away—
He heard the pealing of his parish bells ;

Then , tho ' he knew not wherefore , started up

Shuddering , and when the beauteous hateful isle

Return'd upon him , had not his poor heart

Spoken with That , which being everywhere
26 ENOCH ARDEN .

Lets none , who speaks with Him , seem all alone ,

Surely the man had died of solitude .

Thus over Enoch's early - silvering head

The sunny and rainy seasons came and went

Year after year . His hopes to see his own ,

And pace the sacred old familiar fields ,
Not yet had perish'd , when his lonely doom

Came suddenly to an end . Another ship

(She wanted water ) blown by baffling winds ,
Like the Good Fortune , from her destined course ,
Stay'd by this isle , not knowing where she lay :

For since the mate had seen at early dawn

Across a break on the mist - wreathen isle
The silent water slipping from the hills ,
They sent a crew that landing burst away
In search of stream or fount , and fill'd the shores
With clamour Downward from his mountain gorge
.

Stept the long -hair'd long-bearded solitary ,

Brown , looking hardly human , strangely clad ,

Muttering and mumbling , idiotlike it seem'd ,
With inarticulate rage , and making signs
They knew not what : and yet he led the way
To where the rivulets of sweet water ran ;

And ever as he mingled with the crew ,

And heard them talking, his long -bounden tongue
Was loosen'd , till he made them understand ;
 ENOCH ARDEN . 27

Whom , when their casks were fill'd they took aboard :

And there the tale he utter'd brokenly,

Scarce - credited at first but more and more ,
Amazed and melted all who listen'd to it :
And clothes they gave him and free passage home ;
But oft he work'd among the rest and shook
His isolation from him . None of these
Came from his country , or could answer him ,

If question'd , aught of what he cared to know.

And dull the voyage was with long delays ,

The vessel scarce sea -worthy ; but evermore

His fancy fled before the lazy wind

Returning , till beneath a clouded moon
He like a lover down thro' all his blood
Drew in the dewy meadowy morning-breath
Of England , blown across her ghostly wall :
And that same morning officers and men
Levied a kindly tax upon themselves ,
Pitying the lonely man , and gave him it :

Then moving up the coast they landed him ,

Ev'n in that harbour whence he sail'd before .

But homeward - -
There Enoch spoke no word to any one ,
home what home ? had he a home ?

His home , he walk'd . Bright was that afternoon ,

Sunny but chill ; till drawn thro' either chasm ,

Where either haven open'd on the deeps ,
28 ENOCH ARDEN.

Roll'd a sea -haze and whelm'd the world in gray ;

Cut off the length of highway on before ,

And left but narrow breadth to left and right

Of wither'd holt or tilth or pasturage .
On the nigh -naked tree the robin piped
Disconsolate , and thro ' the dripping haze
The dead weight of the dead leaf bore it down :
Thicker the drizzle grew , deeper the gloom ;
Last , as it seem'd , a great mist - blotted light
Flared on him , and he came upon the place .

Then down the long street having slowly stolen ,

His heart foreshadowing all calamity ,

His eyes upon the stones , he reach'd the home

Where Annie lived and loved him , and his babes
In those far -off seven happy years were born ;

But finding neither light nor murmur there

(A bill of sale gleam'd thro' the drizzle ) crept
Still downward thinking ' dead or dead to me ! '

Down to the pool and narrow wharf he went ,

Seeking a tavern which of old he knew ,
A front of timber -crost antiquity,

So propt , worm - eaten , ruinously old ,

He thought it must have gone ; but he was gone

Who kept it ; and his widow Miriam Lane ,

With daily- dwindling profits held the house ;
 ENOCH ARDEN . 29

A haunt of brawling seamen once , but now

Stiller , with yet a bed for wandering men .
There Enoch rested silent many days .

But Miriam Lane was good and garrulous ,

Nor let him be , but often breaking in,

Told him , with other annals of the port ,

Not knowing - Enoch was so brown , so bow'd ,

So broken - all the story of his house .

His baby's death , her growing poverty ,

How Philip put her little ones to school ,

And kept them in it, his long wooing her,

Her slow consent , and marriage , and the birth
Of Philip's child : and o'er his countenance

No shadow past , nor motion : any one ,

Regarding , well had deem'd he felt the tale

Less than the teller : only when she closed

' Enoch , poor man , was cast away and lost '
He, shaking his gray head pathetically ,
Repeated muttering ' cast away and lost ; '
Again in deeper inward whispers ' lost ! '

But Enoch yearn'd to see her face again ;

' If I might look on her sweet face again
And know that she is happy .' So the thought
Haunted and harass'd him , and drove him forth ,
At evening when the dull November day
30 ENOCH ARDEN .

Was growing duller twilight , to the hill .

There he sat down gazing on all below ;
There did a thousand memories roll upon him ,
Unspeakable for sadness . By and by
The ruddy square of comfortable light,
Far -blazing from the rear of Philip's house ,
Allured him, as the beacon - blaze allures
The bird of passage , till he madly strikes
Against it, and beats out his weary life .

For Philip's dwelling fronted on the street ,

The latest house to landward ; but behind,
With one small gate that open'd on the waste ,
Flourish'd a little garden square and wall'd :
And in it throve an ancient evergreen ,
A yewtree , and all round it ran a walk

Of shingle , and a walk divided it :

But Enoch shunn'd the middle walk and stole
Up by the wall , behind the yew ; and thence
That which he better might have shunn'd , if griefs
Like his have worse or better , Enoch saw .

For cups and silver on the burnish'd board

Sparkled and shone ; so genial was the hearth :

And on the right hand of the hearth he saw

Philip , the slighted suitor of old times ,
Stout , rosy , with his babe across his knees ;
 ENOCH ARDEN . 31

And o'er her second father stoopt a girl ,

A later but a loftier Annie Lee ,
Fair -hair'd and tall , and from her lifted hand
Dangled a length of ribbon and a ring
To tempt the babe , who rear'd his creasy arms ,
Caught at and ever miss'd it , and they laugh'd ;
And on the left hand of the hearth he saw
The mother glancing often toward her babe ,
But turning now and then to speak with him ,
Her son , who stood beside her tall and strong ,

And saying that which pleased him , for he smiled .

Now when the dead man come to life beheld

His wife his wife no more , and saw the babe

Hers , yet not his , upon the father's knee ,

And all the warmth , the peace , the happiness ,

And his own children tall and beautiful ,

And him , that other , reigning in his place ,

Lord of his rights and of his children's love , —
Then he , tho ' Miriam Lane had told him all ,
Because things seen are mightier than things heard ,
Stagger'd and shook , holding the branch , and fear'd
To send abroad a shrill and terrible cry ,

Which in one moment , like the blast of doom ,

Would shatter all the happiness of the hearth .

He therefore turning softly like a thief,

32 ENOCH ARDEN .

Lest the harsh shingle should grate underfoot ,

And feeling all along the garden -wall ,

Lest he should swoon and tumble and be found ,

Crept to the gate , and open'd it , and closed ,

As lightly as a sick man's chamber -door,

Behind him , and came out upon the waste .

And there he would have knelt , but that his knees

Were feeble , so that falling prone he dug
His fingers into the wet earth , and pray'd .

'Too hard to bear ! why did they take me thence ?

O God Almighty , blessed Saviour , Thou

That didst uphold me on my lonely isle ,
Uphold me , Father , in my loneliness
A little longer ! aid me , give me strength

Not to tell her, never to let her know.

Help me not to break in upon her peace .
My children too ! must I not speak to these ?
They know me not . I should betray myself .

Never No father's kiss for me-

-the girl
So like her mother , and the boy , my son. '

There speech and thought and nature fail'd a little ,

And he lay tranced ; but when he rose and paced

Back toward his solitary home again ,
All down the long and narrow street he went
 ENOCH ARDEN . 33

Beating it in upon his weary brain ,

As tho ' it were the burthen of a song ,
' Not to tell her , never to let her know .'

He was not all unhappy . His resolve

Upbore him , and firm faith , and evermore
Prayer from a living source within the will ,
And beating up thro' all the bitter world ,
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
Kept him a living soul . This miller's wife '
He said to Miriam ' that you spoke about ,
Has she no fear that her first husband lives ? '
' Ay, ay , poor soul ' said Miriam , ' fear enow !

If you could tell her you had seen him dead ,

Why, that would be her comfort ; ' and he thought
' After the Lord has call'd me she shall know ,
I wait His time , ' and Enoch set himself,
Scorning an alms , to work whereby to live .
Almost to all things could he turn his hand .
Cooper he was and carpenter , and wrought
To make the boatmen fishing - nets , or help'd

At lading and unlading the tall barks ,

That brought the stinted commerce of those days ;

Thus earn'd a scanty living for himself :

Yet since he did but labour for himself,
Work without hope , there was not life in it
Whereby the man could live ; and as the year

D
34 ENOCH ARDEN .

Roll'd itself round again to meet the day

When Enoch had return'd , a languor came
Upon him , gentle sickness , gradually
Weakening the man , till he could do no more ,
But kept the house , his chair, and last his bed .
And Enoch bore his weakness cheerfully .

For sure no gladlier does the stranded wreck

See thro ' the gray skirts of a lifting squall
The boat that bears the hope of life approach
To save the life despair'd of, than he saw
Death dawning on him , and the close of all .

For thro' that dawning gleam'd a kindlier hope

On Enoch thinking ' after I am gone ,
Then may she learn I lov'd her to the last .'
He call'd aloud for Miriam Lane and said
'Woman , I have -
-
a secret only swear ,
Before I tell you swear upon the book
Not to reveal it , till you see me dead .'
' Dead,' clamour'd the good woman , ' hear him talk !
I warrant , man , that we shall bring you round .'
' Swear ,' added Enoch sternly ' on the book . '
And on the book, half- frighted , Miriam swore .
Then Enoch rolling his gray eyes upon her,
' Did you know Enoch Arden of this town ? '
' Know him ? ' she said ' I knew him far away .
Ay, ay , I mind him coming down the street ;
 ENOCH ARDEN . 35

Held his head high, and cared for no man , he .'

Slowly and sadly Enoch answer'd her ;
' His head is low, and no man cares for him .
I think I have not three days more to live;;
I am the man .' At which the woman gave
A half-incredulous , half- hysterical cry .
'You Arden , you ! nay , —sure he was a foot
Higher than you be . ' Enoch said again .
' My God has bow'd me down to what I am ;
My grief and solitude have broken me ;

Nevertheless ,
Who married -
know you that
but
I
am he
that name has twice been
changed-
I married her who married Philip Ray .

Sit, listen . ' Then he told her of his voyage ,

His wreck , his lonely life, his coming back ,
His gazing in on Annie , his resolve ,

And how he kept it . As the woman heard ,

Fast flow'd the current of her easy tears ,

While in her heart she yearn'd incessantly

To rush abroad all round the little haven ,
Proclaiming Enoch Arden and his woes ;
But awed and promise - bounden she forbore ,

Saying only ' See your bairns before you go !

Eh , let me fetch 'em , Arden , ' and arose

Eager to bring them down , for Enoch hung
A moment on her words , but then replied :
36 ENOCH ARDEN .

'Woman , disturb me not now at the last ,

But let me hold my purpose till I die .
Sit down again ; mark me and understand ,

While I have power to speak . I charge you

now,
When you shall see her , tell her that I died
Blessing her , praying for her , loving her ;

Save for the bar between us , loving her

As when she laid her head beside my own .
And tell my daughter Annie , whom I saw
So like her mother , that my latest breath
Was spent in blessing her and praying for her .
And tell my son that I died blessing him .
And say to Philip that I blest him too ;
He never meant us any thing but good .
But if my children care to see me dead ,
Who hardly knew me living , let them come ,
I am their father ; but she must not come ,
For my dead face would vex her after -life .
And now there is but one of all my blood
Who will embrace me in the world -to -be :

This hair is his she cut it off and gave it,

And I have borne it with me all these years .

And thought to bear it with me to my grave ;

But now my mind is changed , for I shall see him,

My babe in bliss : wherefore when I am gone ,
Take , give her this , for it may comfort her :
 ENOCH ARDEN . 37

It will moreover be a token to her ,

That I am he.'

He ceased ; and Miriam Lane

Made such a voluble answer promising all ,
That once again he roll'd his eyes upon her
Repeating all he wish'd , and once again

She promised .

Then the third night after this ,

While Enoch slumber'd motionless and pale ,
And Miriam watch'd and dozed at intervals ,

There came so loud a calling of the sea ,

That all the houses in the haven rang .
He woke , he rose , he spread his arms abroad
Crying with a loud voice ' A sail ! a sail !
I am saved ; ' and so fell back and spoke no more .

So past the strong heroic soul away .

And when they buried him the little port
Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.
 IN MEMORIAM A. H. H.
OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII .

STRONG Son of God , immortal Love ,

Whom we , that have not seen thy face ,
By faith, and faith alone , embrace ,
Believing where we cannot prove ;

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 .
40 IN MEMORIAM.
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 ;

For knowledge is of things we see ;

And yet we trust it comes from thee ,
A beam in darkness : let it grow .

Let knowledge grow from more to more ,

But more of reverence in us dwell ;
That mind and soul , according well,
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 began I ;
For merit lives from man to man ,

And not from man , O Lord , to thee .

 IN MEMORIAM. 41

Forgive my grief for one removed ,

Thy creature , whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee , and there
I find him worthier to be loved .

Forgive these wild and wandering cries ,

Confusions of a wasted youth ;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise .
1849 .

I.

I HELD it truth , with him who sings

To one clear harp in divers tones ,
That men may rise on stepping - stones
Of their dead selves to higher things .

But who shall so forecast the years

And find in loss a gain to match ?

Or reach a hand thro ' time to catch

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 ,
42 IN MEMORIAM.
Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love , and boast ,
' Behold the man that loved and lost ,
But all he was is overworn . '

II.
OLD Yew , which graspest at the stones
That name the under - lying dead ,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head ,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones .

The seasons bring the flower again ,

And bring the firstling to the flock ;

And in the dusk of thee , the clock

Beats out the little lives of men .

O not for thee the glow, the bloom ,

Who changest not in any gale ,
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom :

And gazing on thee , sullen tree ,

Sick for thy stubborn hardihood ,
I seem to fail from out my blood
And grow incorporate into thee .
 IN MEMORIAM.

133
43

III

.
O SORROW cruel fellowship

,
O O

in
Priestess the vaults of Death

,
in
sweet and bitter breath

,
What whispers from thy lying lip

?
The stars she whispers blindly run
'

',

;
'
A

web wov'n across the sky

is

;
From out waste places comes cry

,
And murmurs from the dying sun

And all the phantom :

stands-

-
Nature
,

,
'

With all the music in her tone

,
A

hollow echo
of

my own
,
-
A

hollow form with empty hands

.'

thing
so

And shall take blind

I

,
as

Embrace her my natural good

;

Or crush her like vice of blood

a
,

Upon the threshold

of

the mind
?

IV
.

To Sleep give my powers away

I

My will
to

bondsman the dark

is

sit within helmless bark

a
I

And with my heart muse and say

I

:
44 IN MEMORIAM.
O heart , how fares it with thee now ,
That thou should'st fail from thy desire ,
Who scarcely darest to inquire ,

'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 .'

V.

I SOMETIMES hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel ;

For like
words , Nature , half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

But , for the unquiet heart and brain,

A use in measured language lies ;
The sad mechanic exercise ,
Like dull narcotics , numbing pain .
 IN MEMORIAM . 45

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 to the race ' -
And common is the commonplace ,

And vacant chaff well meant for grain .

That loss is common would not make

My own less bitter , rather more :
Too common ! Never morning wore
To evening , but some heart did break .

O father , wheresoe'er thou be ,

Who pledgest now thy gallant son ;
A shot , ere half thy draught be done ,
Hath still'd the life that beat from thee .

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 .
46 IN MEMORIAM.
Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well ;
Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written , something thought ;

Expecting still his advent home ;

And ever met him on his way
With wishes , thinking , ' here to -day ,'
Or ' here
to -morrow will he come .'

O somewhere , meek , unconscious dove ,

That sittest ranging golden hair ;
And glad to find thyself so fair ,
Poor child , that waitest for thy love !

For now her father's chimney glows

In expectation of a guest ;

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 ;

And, having left the glass , she turns

Once more to set a ringlet right ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 47

And , even when she turn'd , the curse

Had fallen , and her future Lord

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 ?

To her , perpetual maidenhood ,
And unto me no second friend .

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 .
48 IN MEMORIAM.

VIII .
A HAPPY lover who has come

To look on her that loves him well ,

Who 'lights and rings the gateway bell
And learns her gone and far from home ;

He saddens , all the magic light

Dies off at once from bower and hall ,
And all the place is dark , and all
The chambers emptied of delight :

So find I every pleasant spot

In which we two were wont to meet ,

The field , the chamber and the street

For all is dark where thou art not.

Yet as that other , wandering there

In those deserted walks , may find
A flower beat with rain and wind ,
Which once she foster'd up with care ;

So seems it in my deep regret ,

O my forsaken heart , with thee
And this poor flower of poesy
Which little cared for fades not yet .
 IN MEMORIAM. 49.

But since it pleased a vanish'd eye ,

I go to plant it on his tomb ,
That if it can it there may bloom,
Or dying, there at least may die .

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 favourable 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 ;
E
50 IN MEMORIAM.
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 ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 51

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 .

XI.
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 :

52 IN MEMORIAM.
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 .

XII.
Lo , as a dove when up she springs

To bear thro ' Heaven a tale of woe ,

Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings ;

Like her I go ; I cannot stay ;

I leave this mortal ark behind ,

A weight of nerves without a mind ,

And leave the cliffs , and haste away

O'er ocean -mirrors rounded large ,

And reach the glow of southern skies ,
And see the sails at distance rise ,
And linger weeping on the marge ,

And saying ; ' Comes he thus , my friend ?

Is 1
this the end of all my care ?'
And circle moaning in the air :
' Is this the end ? Is this the end ?'
 IN MEMORIAM. 53

And forward dart again , and play

About the prow, and back return
To where the body sits , and learn
That I have been an hour away .

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 ;
54 IN MEMORIAM.
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 to -day ,

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

And standing round with woe ,

, muffled

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 ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 55

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 .

XV .

TO - NIGHT the winds begin to rise

And roar from yonder dropping day :
The last red leaf is whirl'd away ,
The rooks are blown about the skies ;

The forest crack'd , the waters curl'd ,

The cattle huddled on the lea ;

And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world :

And but for fancies , which aver

That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass ,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir

That makes the barren branches loud ;

And but for fear it is not`so ,

The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
56 IN MEMORIAM.
That rises upward always higher ,

And onward drags a labouring breast ,

And
topples round the dreary west ,

A looming bastion fringed with fire.

XVI .
WHAT words are these have fall'n from me ?
Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast ,
Or sorrow such a changeling be ?

Or doth she only seem to take

The touch of change in calm or storm ;

But knows no more of transient form

In her deep self , than some dead lake

That holds the shadow of a lark

Hung in the shadow of a heaven ?
Or has the shock , so harshly given ,

Confused me like the unhappy bark

That strikes by night a craggy shelf ,

And staggers blindly ere she sink ?

And stunn'd me from my power to think
And all my knowledge of myself ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 57

And made me that delirious man

Whose fancy fuses old and new ,
And flashes into false and true ,
And mingles all without a plan ?

XVII .

THOU Comest , much wept for : such a breeze

Compell'd thy canvas , and my prayer

Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas .

For I in spirit saw thee move

Thro' circles of the bounding sky ,
Week after week : the days go by :
I
Come quick , thou bringest all love .

Henceforth , wherever thou may'st roam ,

My blessing , like a line of light,
Is on the waters day and night ,
And like a beacon guards thee home .

So may whatever tempest mars

Mid-ocean , spare thee , sacred bark ;

And balmy drops in summer dark

Slide from the bosom of the stars .
58 IN MEMORIAM.
So kind an office hath been done ,
Such precious relics brought by thee ;
The dust of him I shall not see
Till all my widow'd race be run .

XVIII .

'Tis well ; ' tis something ; we may stand

Where he in English earth is laid ,

And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land .

'Tis 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 .

Ah yet , ev'n yet , if this might be ,

I , falling on his faithful heart ,

Would breathing thro ' his lips impart
The life that almost dies in me ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 59

That dies not, but endures with pain ,

And slowly forms the firmer mind ,
Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again .

XIX .

THE Danube to the Severn gave

The darken'd heart that beat no more ;
They laid him by the pleasant shore ,
And in the hearing of the wave .

There twice a day the Severn fills ;

The salt sea-water passes by,

And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills .

The Wye is hush'd nor moved along ,

And hush'd my deepest grief of all ,
When fill'd with tears that cannot fall ,
I brim with sorrow drowning song .

The tide flows down , the wave again

Is vocal in its wooded walls ;
My deeper anguish also falls ,

And I can speak a little then .

60 IN MEMORIAM.

XX .

THE lesser griefs that may be said ,

That breathe a thousand tender vows ,
Are but as servants in a house
Where lies the master newly dead ;

Who speak their feeling as it is ,

And weep the fulness from the mind :

'It will be hard , ' they say , ' to find

Another service such as this .'

My lighter moods are like to these ,

That out of words a comfort win ;
But there are other griefs within ,

And tears that at their fountain freeze ;

For by the hearth the children sit

Cold in that atmosphere of Death ,
And scarce endure to draw the breath ,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit :

But open converse is there none ,

So much the vital spirits sink
To see the vacant chair, and think , "

' How good ! how kind ! and he is gone . '

 IN MEMORIAM. 61

XXI .

I SING to him that rests below,

And , since the grasses round me wave ,
I take the grasses of the grave ,

And make them pipes whereon to blow.

The traveller hears me now and then ,

And sometimes harshly will he speak :
"This fellow would make weakness weak ,
And melt the waxen hearts of men .'

Another answers , ' Let him be ,

He loves to make parade of pain
That with his piping he may gain
The praise that comes to constancy .'

A third is wroth : ' Is this an hour

For private sorrow's barren song ,

When more and more the people throng

The chairs and thrones of civil power ?

'A time to sicken and to swoon ,

When Science reaches forth her arms
To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon ?
62 IN MEMORIAM.
Behold , ye speak an idle thing :

Ye never knew the sacred dust :

I do but sing because I must ,

And pipe but as the linnets sing :

And one is glad ; her note is gay ,

For now her little ones have ranged ;

And one is sad ; her note is changed ,

Because her brood is stol'n away .

XXII .

THE path by which we twain did go ,

Which led by tracts that pleased us well ,

Thro ' four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower , from snow to snow :

And we with singing cheer'd the way ,

And , crown'd with all the season lent ,
From April on to April went ,
And glad at heart from May to May :

But where the path we walk'd began

To slant the fifth autumnal slope ,

As we descended following Hope ,

There sat the Shadow fear'd of man ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 63

Who broke our fair companionship ,

And spread his mantle dark and cold ,

And wrapt thee formless in the fold ,
And dull'd the murmur on thy lip ,

And bore thee where I could not see

Nor follow , tho ' I walk in haste ,
And think , that somewhere in the waste
The Shadow sits and waits for me .

XXIII .

Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut ,

Or breaking into song by fits,

Alone , alone , to where he sits ,

The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot,

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 :
64 IN MEMORIAM.
When each by turns was guide to each ,
And Fancy light from Fancy caught ,
And Thought leapt 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 .

XXIV .

AND was the day of my delight

As pure and perfect as I say ?
The very source and fount of Day
Is dash'd with wandering isles of night .

If all was good and fair we met ,

This earth had been the Paradise
It never look'd to human eyes
Since our first Sun arose and set.
 IN MEMORIAM. 65

And is it that the haze of grief

Makes former gladness loom so great ?
The lowness of the present state ,

That sets the past in this relief ?

Or that the past will always win

A gloryfrom its being far ;

And orb into the perfect star
We saw not , when we moved therein ?

XXV .

I KNOW that this was Life , -the track

Whereon with equal feet we fared ;
And then , as now, the day prepared
The daily burden for the back.

But this it was that made me move

As light as carrier -birds in air ;
I loved the weight I had to bear ,
Because it needed help of Love :

Nor could I weary , heart or limb ,

When mighty Love would cleave in twain

The lading of a single pain ,
And part it , giving half to him .
F
66 IN MEMORIAM.

XXVI .

STILL onward winds the dreary way ;

I with it ; for I long to prove
No lapse of moons can canker Love ,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.

And if that eye which watches guilt

And goodness , and hath power to see

Within the green the moulder'd tree ,
And towers fall'n as soon as built-

Oh , if indeed that eye foresee

Or see (in Him is no before )
In more of life true life no more

And Love the indifference to be ,

Then might I find , ere yet the morn

Breaks hither over Indian seas ,

That Shadow waiting with the keys ,

To shroud me from my proper scorn .

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 :
 IN MEMORIAM. 67

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 ;
'Tis 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 :
68 IN MEMORIAM .
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 .

XXIX .

WITH Such compelling cause to grieve

As daily vexes household peace ,
And chains regret to his decease ,
How dare we keep our Christmas - eve ;

Which brings no more a welcome guest

To enrich the threshold of the night
With shower'd largess of delight
In dance and song and game and jest ?
 IN MEMORIAM . 69

Yet go , and while the holly boughs

Entwine the cold baptismal font,

Make one wreath more for Use and Wont ,
That guard the portals of the house ;

Old sisters of a day gone by ,

Gray nurses , loving nothing new ;

Why should they miss their yearly due

Before their time ? They too will die .

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 gambol'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 .
70 IN MEMORIAM.
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 :

' 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 .
 IN MEMORIAM. 71

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 neighbours 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 .
 IN MEMORIAM

122
72

.
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

,
in

Whose loves higher love endure

;
What souls possess themselves

so
pure

,
Or there blessedness like theirs
is

XXXIII
.

O THOU that after toil and storm

Mayst seem purer air

to

have reach'd
a

Whose faith has centre everywhere

,

Nor
to

fix itself
to

cares form
,

Leave thou thy sister when she prays

,

Her early Heaven her happy views

;
,

Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse

S
A

life that leads melodious days

.
 IN MEMORIAM.

133
73

Her faith thro form

as
pure thine

is

,
'
Her hands are quicker unto good

:
Oh sacred be the flesh and blood

,
To which she links truth divine

!
See thou that countest reason ripe
,

In holding by the law within

,
Thou fail not in world of sin
a

,
And ev'n for want of such type

.
XXXIV
.

My own dim life should teach me this

,

That life shall live for evermore

,

Else earth the core

at

darkness
is

And dust and ashes all that

is
;

This round of green this orb

as of

flame
,

Fantastic beauty such lurks

;

In some wild Poet when he works

,

Without conscience or an aim

a

What then were God to such as

I?

Twere hardly worth my while

to

choose
"

Of things all or
to

mortal use
,
A

little patience ere die

I
;
74 IN MEMORIAM.
"Twere best at once to sink to peace ,
Like birds the charming serpent draws ,

To drop head -foremost in the jaws

Of vacant darkness and to cease .

XXXV .

YET if some voice that man could trust

Should murmur from the narrow house ,
"The cheeks drop in ; the body bows ;
Man dies nor is there hope in dust : '

Might I not say ? ' Yet even here ,

But for one hour, O Love , I strive

To keep so sweet a thing alive : '

But I should turn mine ears and hear

The moanings of the homeless sea ,

The sound of streams that swift or slow
Draw down Æonian hills , and sow
The dust of continents to be ;

And Love would answer with a sigh ,

'The sound of that forgetful shore
Will change my sweetness more and more , >

Half-dead to know that I shall die .'

 IN MEMORIAM. 75

O me , what profits it to put

An idle case ? If Death were seen
At first as Death , Love had not been ,
Or been in narrowest working shut ,

Mere fellowship of sluggish moods ,

Or in his coarsest Satyr - shape

Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape ,
And bask'd and batten'd in the woods .

XXXVI .

THO ' truths in manhood darkly join ,

Deep - seated in our mystic frame ,

We yield all blessing to the name

Of Him that made them current coin ;

For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers ,

Where truth in closest words shall fail ,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors .

And so the Word had breath , and wrought

With human hands the creed of creeds

In loveliness of perfect deeds ,
More strong than all poetic thought ;
76 IN MEMORIAM.
Which he may read that binds the sheaf ,
Or builds the house , or digs the grave ,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave

In roarings round the coral reef .

XXXVII .

URANIA speaks with darken'd brow :

' Thou pratest here where thou art least ;

This faith has many a purer priest ,

And many an abler voice than thou .

'Go down beside thy native rill,

On thy Parnassus set thy feet ,
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet
About the ledges of the hill . '

And my Melpomene replies ,

A touch of shame upon her cheek :
' I am not worthy ev'n to speak

Of thy prevailing mysteries ;

' For I ambut an earthly Muse ,

And owning but a little art
To lull with song an aching heart ,

And render human love his dues ;

 IN MEMORIAM. 77

' But brooding on the dear one dead ,

And all he said of things divine ,

(And dear to me as sacred wine

To dying lips is all he said ) ,

' I murmur'd , as I came along ,

Of comfort clasp'd in truth reveal'd ;

And loiter'd in the master's field ,
And darken'd sanctities with song .'

XXXVIII .

WITH weary steps I loiter on,

Tho' always under alter'd skies
The purple from the distance dies ,
My prospect and horizon gone .

No joy the blowing season gives ,

The herald melodies of spring ,
But in the songs I love to sing
A doubtful gleam of solace lives .

If any care for what is here

Survive in spirits render'd free ,
Then are these songs I sing of thee

Not all ungrateful to thine ear .

78 IN MEMORIAM.

XXXIX .

OLD warder of these buried bones ,

And answering now my random stroke

With fruitful cloud and living smoke ,
Dark yew , that graspest at the stones

And dippest toward the dreamless head ,

To thee too comes the golden hour

-
When flower is feeling after flower ;

But Sorrow fixt upon the dead ,

And darkening the dark graves of men, -

What whisper'd from her lying lips ?
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips ,
And passes into gloom again .

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 doth rise

To take her latest leave of home ,

And hopes and light regrets that come

Make April of her tender eyes ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 79

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 ,

fit
Becoming as is meet and
link

to
among the days
A

knit

,
The generations each with each

;
And doubtless unto thee given
is
,

life that bears immortal fruit

A

In those great offices that suit

The full grown energies of heaven

-

Ay me the difference discern

I

!
,

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

as

Shall count new things old

as

dear
:
80 IN MEMORIAM.
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 .

XLI .

THY spirit ere our fatal loss

Did ever rise from high to higher ;

As mounts the heavenward altar -fire ,

As flies the lighter thro ' the gross .

But thou art turn'd to something strange ,

And I have lost the links that bound
Thy changes ; here upon the ground ,

No more partaker of thy change .

Deep folly ! yet that this could be—

That I could wing my will with might
To leap the grades of life and light ,
And flash at once , my friend , to thee .

For tho ' my nature rarely yields

To that vague fear implied in death ;

Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath ,

The howlings from forgotten fields ;

 IN MEMORIAM. 81

Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor

An inner trouble I behold,
A spectral doubt which makes me cold ,
That I shall be thy mate no more ,

Tho' following with an upward mind

The wonders that have come to thee ,
Thro ' all the secular to -be ,
But evermore a life behind .

XLII .
I VEX my heart with fancies dim :

He still outstript me in the race ;

It was but unity of place
That made me dream I rank'd with him .

And so may Place retain us still,

And he the much -beloved again ,

A lord of large experience , train

To riper growth the mind and will :

And what delights can equal those

That stir the spirit's inner deeps ,
When one that loves but knows not , reaps
A truth from one that loves and knows ?

G
82 IN MEMORIAM.

XLIII .
IF Sleep and Death be truly one ,

And every spirit's folded bloom

Thro' all its intervital gloom

In some long trance should slumber on ;

Unconscious of the sliding hour,

Bare of the body , might it last ,
And silent traces of the past
Be all the colour of the flower :

So then were nothing lost to man ;

So that still garden of the souls

In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since life began ;

And love will last as pure and whole

As when he loved me here in Time ,

And at the spiritual prime
Rewaken with the dawning soul .

XLIV.
How fares it with the happy dead ?
For here the man is more and more ;

But he forgets the days before

God shut the doorways of his head .
 IN MEMORIAM. 83

The days have vanish'd , tone and tint ,

And yet perhaps the hoarding sense

Gives out at times (he knows not whence )
A little flash , a mystic hint ;

And in the long harmonious years

(If Death so taste Lethean springs ) ,

May some dim touch of earthly things
Surprise thee ranging with thy peers .

If such a dreamy touch should fall ,

O turn thee round, resolve the doubt ;
My guardian angel will speak out
In that high place , and tell thee all .

XLV .

THE baby new to earth and sky ,

What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast ,
Has never thought that ' this is I :'

But as he grows he gathers much ,

And learns the use of ' I , ' and ' me ,'

And finds ' I am not what I see ,
And other than the things I touch .'
84 IN MEMORIAM .
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin ,
As thro' the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined .

This use may lie in blood and breath ,

Which else were fruitless of their due ,

Had man to learn himself anew
Beyond the second birth of Death .

XLVI .

WE ranging down this lower track ,

The path we came by , thorn and flower ,
Is shadow'd by the growing hour,
Lest life should fail in looking back .

So be it : there no shade can last

In that deep dawn behind the tomb,
But clear from marge to marge shall bloom
The eternal landscape of the past ;

A lifelong tract of time reveal'd ;

The fruitful hours of still increase ;

Days order'd in a wealthy peace ,

And those five years its richest field.

 IN MEMORIAM . 85

O Love , thy province were not large ,

A bounded field, nor stretching far ;
Look also , Love , a brooding star ,
A rosy warmth from marge to marge .

XLVII .

THAT each , who seems a separate whole ,

Should move his rounds , and fusing all

The skirts of self again , should fall
Remerging in the general Soul ,

Is faith as vague as all unsweet :

Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside ;

And I shall know him when we meet :

And we shall sit at endless feast ,

Enjoying each the other's good :

What vaster dream can hit the mood

Of Love on earth ? He seeks at least

Upon the last and sharpest height ,

Before the spirits fade away ,

Some landing- place , to clasp and say,
' Farewell ! We lose ourselves in light . '
86 IN MEMORIAM.

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 .

XLIX.
FROM art, from nature , from the schools ,
Let random influences glance ,
Like light in many a shiver'd lance
That breaks about the dappled pools :
 IN MEMORIAM. 87

The lightest wave of thought shall lisp,

The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe ,
The slightest air of song shall breathe
To make the sullen surface crisp .

And look thy look , and go thy way ,

But blame not thou the winds that make
The seeming - wanton ripple break ,

The tender - pencil'd shadow play .

Beneath all fancied hopes and fears

Ay me , the sorrow deepens down ,
Whose muffled motions blindly drown
The bases of my life in tears .

L.

Be near me when my light is low ,

When the blood creeps , and the nerves prick
And tingle ; and the heart is sick ,
And all the wheels of Being slow .

Be near me when the sensuous frame

Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust ;

And Time , a maniac scattering dust ,

And Life , a Fury slinging flame .

88 IN MEMORIAM.
Be near me when my faith is dry ,
And men the flies of latter spring ,

That lay their eggs, and sting and sing

And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away ,

To point the term of human strife ,

And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day .

LI.
Do we indeed desire the dead 1

Should still be near us at our side ?

Is there no baseness we would hide ?
No inner vileness that we dread ?

Shall he for whose applause I strove ,

I had such reverence for his blame ,

See with clear eye some hidden shame

And I be lessen'd in his love ?

I wrong the grave with fears untrue :

Shall love be blamed for want of faith ?

There must be wisdom with great Death :
The dead shall look me thro ' and thro ' .
 IN MEMORIAM. 89

Be near us when we climb or fall :

Ye watch , like God , the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours ,
To make allowance for us all .

LII .
I CANNOT love thee as I ought ,

For love reflects the thing beloved ;

My words are only words , and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought .

" Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song , '

The Spirit of true love replied ;

' Thou canst not move me from thy side ,
Nor human frailty do me wrong.

'What keeps a spirit wholly true

To that ideal which he bears ?
What record ? not the sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue :

' So fretnot , like an idle girl ,

That life is dash'd with flecks of sin .
Abide : thy wealth is gather'd in ,
When Time hath sunder'd shell from pearl .'
90 IN MEMORIAM .

LIII .
How many a father have I seen ,
A sober man , among his boys ,
Whose youth was full of foolish noise ,
Who wears his manhood hale and green :

And dare we to this fancy give ,

That had the wild oat not been sown ,
The soil , left barren , scarce had grown

The grain by which a man may live ?

Or , if we held the doctrine sound

For life outliving heats of youth ,
Yet who would preach it as a truth

To those that eddy round and round ?

Hold thou the good : define it well :

For fear divine Philosophy

Should push beyond her mark , and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell .

LIV .
OH yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of
of ill
,
of

To pangs nature sins will

,
,

Defects of doubt and taints of blood

;
,
 IN MEMORIAM. 91

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
At last - -
can but trust that good shall fall
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 ?
92 IN MEMORIAM.
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 everywhere

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

.go
all

, shall
 IN MEMORIAM. 93

'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 law-
Tho ' Nature , red in tooth and claw

With ravine , shriek'd against his creed—

Who 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 .
94 IN MEMORIAM.
O life as futile , then, as frail !

O for thy voice to soothe and bless !

What hope of answer , or redress ?

Behind the veil , behind the veil .

LVII .

PEACE ; come away : the song of woe

Is after all an earthly song :

Peace ; come away : we do him wrong

To sing so wildly : let us go .

Come ; let us go : your cheeks are pale ;

But half my life I leave behind :

Methinks my friend is richly shrined ;

But I shall pass ; my work will fail .

Yet in these ears , till hearing dies ,

One set slow bell will seem to toll
The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever look'd with human eyes .

I hear it now, and o'er and o'er ,

Eternal greetings to the dead ;
And Ave , Ave , Ave , ' said ,
' Adieu , adieu ' for evermore .
 IN MEMORIAM. 95
56

LVIII .
IN those sad words I took farewell :
Like echoes in sepulchral halls ,

As drop by drop the water falls

In vaults and catacombs , they fell ;

And , falling , idly broke the peace

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 ?
Abide a little longer here ,
And thou shalt take a nobler leave . '

LIX .
O SORROW , wilt thou live with me
No casual mistress , but a wife ,
My bosom-friend and half of life ;

As I confess it needs must be ;

O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood ,

Be sometimes lovely like a bride,
And put thy harsher moods aside ,
If thou wilt have me wise and good .
96 IN MEMORIAM.
My centred passion cannot move ,
Nor will it lessen from to -day ;

But I'll have leave at times to play

As with the creature of my love ;

And set thee forth , for thou art mine ,

With so much hope for years to come ,
That , howsoe'er I know thee , some
Could hardly tell what name were thine .

LX .

HE past ; a soul of nobler tone :

Myspirit loved and loves him yet ,

Like some poor girl whose heart is set

On one whose rank exceeds her own .

He mixing with his proper sphere ,

She finds the baseness of her lot ,
Half jealous of she knows not what ,

And envying all that meet him there .

The little village looks forlorn ;

She sighs amid her narrow days ,

Moving about the household ways ,
In that dark house where she was born.
 IN MEMORIAM. 97

The foolish neighbours come and go ,

And tease her till the day draws by :
At night she weeps , ' How vain am I!
How should he love a thing so low ? '

LXI .
IF, in thy second state sublime ,
Thy ransom'd reason change replies
With all the circle of the wise ,
The perfect flower of human time ;

And if thou cast thine eyes below ,

How dimly character'd and slight ,
How dwarf'd a growth of cold and night ,
How blanch'd with darkness must I grow !
Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore ,
Where thy first form was made a man ;

I
loved thee , Spirit , and love , nor can
The soul of Shakspeare love thee more .

LXII .
THO' if an eye that's downward cast
Could make thee somewhat blench or fail ,
Then be my love an idle tale ,
And fading legend of the past ;
H
98 IN MEMORIAM .
And thou , as one that once declined ,

When he was little more than boy,

On some unworthy heart with joy,
But lives to wed an equal mind ;

And breathes a novel world, the while

His other passion wholly dies ,
Or in the light of deeper eyes
Is matter for a flying smile .

LXIII .
YET pity for a horse o'er - driven ,
And love in which my hound has part ,
Can hang no weight upon my heart
In its assumptions up to heaven ;

And I am so much more than these ,

As thou, perchance , art more than I,
And yet I spare them sympathy ,

And I would set their pains at ease .

So mayst thou watch me where I weep ,

As , unto vaster motions bound ,

The circuits of thine orbit round

A higher height , a deeper deep .
 IN MEMORIAM. 99

LXIV.
Dost thou look back on what hath been ,
As some divinely gifted man ,
Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green ;

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar ,

And grasps the skirts of happy chance ,

And breasts the blows of circumstance ,

And grapples with his evil star ;

Who makes by force his merit known

And lives to clutch the golden keys ,
To mould a mighty state's decrees ,
And shape the whisper of the throne ;

And moving up from high to higher ,

Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope

The pillar of a people's hope ,

The centre of a world's desire ;

Yet feels , as in a pensive dream ,

When all his active powers are still ,
A distant dearness in the hill ,
A secret sweetness in the stream ,
 1

100 IN MEMORIAM.
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

And reaps the labour of his hands ,
Or in the furrow musing stands ;

Does my old friend remember me ? '

LXV .

SWEET Soul , do with me as thou wilt ;

I lull a fancy trouble -tost
With 'Love's too precious to be lost ,
A little grain shall not be spilt . '

And in that solace can I sing ,

Tillout of painful phases wrought
There flutters up a happy thought ,

Self-balanced on a lightsome wing :

Since we deserved the name of friends ,

And thine effect so lives in me ,

A part of mine may live in thee

And move thee on to noble ends .
 IN MEMORIAM. ΠΟΙ

LXVI .

You thought my heart too far diseased ;

You wonder when my fancies play
To find me gay among the gay ,
Like one with any trifle pleased .

The shade by which my life was crost ,

Which makes a desert in the mind ,
Has made me kindly with my kind ,
And like to him whose sight is lost ;

Whose feet are guided thro ' the land ,

Whose jest among his friends is free ,

Who takes the children on his knee ,
And winds their curls about his hand :

He plays with threads , he beats his chair

For pastime , dreaming of the sky ;
His inner day can never die ,

His night of loss is always there .

LXVII .
WHEN on my bed the moonlight falls ,
I
know that in thy place of rest
By that broad water of the west ,
There comes a glory on the walls ;
102 IN MEMORIAM.
Thy marble bright in dark appears ,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name ,
And o'er the number of thy years .

The mystic glory swims away ;

From off my bed the moonlight dies ;

And closing eaves of wearied eyes
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray :

And then I know the mist is drawn

A lucid veil from coast to coast ,
And in the dark church like a ghost
Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn .

LXVIII .
WHEN in the down I sink my head ,
Sleep , Death's twin - brother , times my breath ;
Sleep , Death's twin - brother , knows not Death ,
Nor can I dream of thee as dead :

I walk as ere I walk'd forlorn ,

When all our path was fresh with dew ,

And all the bugle breezes blew
Reveillée to the breaking morn .
 IN MEMORIAM. 103

But what is this ? I turn about ,

I find a trouble in thine eye ,
Which makes me sad I know not why,
Nor can my dream resolve the doubt :

But ere the lark hath left the lea

I wake , and I discern the truth ;
It is the trouble of my youth
That foolish sleep transfers to thee .

LXIX .

I DREAM'D there would be Spring no more ,

That Nature's ancient power was lost :
The streets were black with smoke and frost ,
They chatter'd trifles at the door :

I wander'd from the noisy town ,

I found a wood with thorny boughs :
I took the thorns to bind my brows ,

I wore them like a civic crown :

I met with scoffs , I met with scorns

From youth and babe and hoary hairs :

They call'd me in the public squares

The fool that wears a crown of thorns :
104 IN MEMORIAM.
They call'd me fool , they call'd me child :

I found an angel of the night ;

The voice was low, the look was bright ;

He look'd upon my crown and smiled :

He reach'd the glory of a hand ,

That seem'd to touch it into leaf :
The voice was not the voice of grief,
The words were hard to understand .

LXX .

I CANNOT See the features right ,

When on the gloom I strive to paint

The face I know ; the hues are faint
And mix with hollow masks of night ;

Cloud -towers by ghostly masons wrought ,

A gulf that ever shuts and gapes ,

A hand that points , and palled shapes

In shadowy thoroughfares of thought ;

And crowds that stream from yawning doors ,

And shoals of pucker'd faces drive ;

Dark bulks that tumble half alive ,

And lazy lengths on boundless shores ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 105

Till all at once beyond the will

I hear a wizard music roll ,
And thro ' a lattice on the soul
Looks thy fair face and makes it still .

LXXI .

SLEEP , kinsman thou to death and trance

And madness , thou hast forged at last
A night -long Present of the Past
In which we went thro' summer France .

Hadst thou such credit with the soul ?

Then bring an opiate trebly strong ,
Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong
That so my pleasure may be whole ;

While now we talk as once we talk'd

Of men and minds , the dust of change ,
The days that grow to something strange ,
In walking as of old we walk'd

Beside the river's wooded reach ,

The fortress , and the mountain ridge ,

The cataract flashing from the bridge ,

The breaker breaking on the beach .
106 IN MEMORIAM.

LXXII .

RISEST thou thus , dim dawn , again ,

And howlest , issuing out of night ,

With blasts that blow the poplar white ,

And lash with storm the streaming pane ?

Day, when my crown'd estate begun

To pine in that reverse of doom ,

Which sicken'd every living bloom ,

And blurr'd the splendour of the sun ;

Who usherest in the dolorous hour

With thy quick tears that make the rose
Pull sideways , and the daisy close

Her crimson fringes to the shower ;

Who might'st have heaved a windless flame

Up the deep East , or , whispering , play'd

A chequer -work of beam and shade

Along the hills , yet look'd the same .

As wan , as chill , as wild as now ;

Day, mark'd as with some hideous crime ,
When the dark hand struck down thro ' time ,
And cancell'd nature's best : but thou ,
 IN MEMORIAM . 107

Lift as thou may'st thy burthen'd brows

Thro ' clouds that drench the morning star ,
And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar ,
And sow the sky with flying boughs ,

And up thy vault with roaring sound

Climb thy thick noon , disastrous day ;

Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray ,

And hide thy shame beneath the ground .

LXXIII .

So many worlds , so much to do ,

So little done , such things to be,
How know I what had need of thee ,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true ?

The fame is quench'd that I foresaw ,

The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath :
I curse not nature , no , nor death ;
For nothing is that errs from law.

We pass ; the path that each man trod

Is dim , or will be dim, with weeds :
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age ? It rests with God .
108 IN MEMORIAM.
O hollow wraith of dying fame ,
Fade wholly, while the soul exults ,
And self-infolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a name .

LXXIV .

As sometimes in a dead man's face ,

To those that watch it more and more ,

A likeness , hardly seen before ,

Comes out - to some one of his race :

So , dearest , now thy brows are cold ,

I see thee what thou art , and know
Thy likeness to the wise below ,
Thy kindred with the great of old .

But there is more than I can see,

And what I see I leave unsaid ,
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made
His darkness beautiful with thee .

LXXV .

I LEAVE thy praises unexpress'd

In verse that brings myself relief,
And by the measure of my grief
I leave thy greatness to be guess'd ;
 IN MEMORIAM . 109

What practice howsoe'er expert

In fitting aptest words to things ,

Or voice the richest -toned that sings ,

Hath power to give thee as thou wert ?

I care not in these fading days

To raise a cry that lasts not long,
And round thee with the breeze of song
To stir a little dust of praise .

Thy leaf has perish'd in the green ,

And, while we breathe beneath the sun ,
The world which credits what is done
Is cold to all that might have been .

So here shall silence guard thy fame ;

But somewhere , out of human view ,
Whate'er thy hands are set to do
Is wrought with tumult of acclaim .

LXXVI .

TAKE wings of fancy , and ascend ,

And in a moment set thy face
Where all the starry heavens of space
Are sharpen'd to a needle's end ;
110 IN MEMORIAM.
Take wings of foresight ; lighten thro '
The secular abyss to come ,
And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb
Before the mouldering of a yew ;

And if the matin songs , that woke

The darkness of our planet , last ,
Thine own shall wither in the vast ,
Ere half the lifetime of an oak .

Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers

With fifty Mays , thy songs are vain ;

And what are they when these remain

The ruin'd shells of hollow towers ?

LXXVII .

WHAT hope is here for modern rhyme

To him , who turns a musing eye

On songs , and deeds , and lives , that lie

Foreshorten'd in the tract of time ?

These mortal lullabies of pain

May bind a book , may line a box ,

May serve to curl a maiden's locks ;

Or when a thousand moons shall wane

 IN MEMORIAM. III
A man upon a stall may find ,
And , passing , turn the page that tells
A grief, then changed to something else ,
Sung by a long-forgotten mind .

But what of that ? My darken'd ways

Shall ring with music all the same ;
To breathe my loss is more than fame ,

To utter love more sweet than praise .

LXXVIII .
AGAIN at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth ;

The silent snow possess'd the earth ,

And calmly fell our Christmas -eve :

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 hoodman - blind .

112 IN MEMORIAM.
Who show'd a token of distress ?
No single tear , no mark of pain :
O sorrow , then can sorrow wane ?

O grief, can grief be changed to less ?

-
O last regret , regret can die !
No mixt with all this mystic frame .
Her deep relations are the same ,

But with long use her tears are dry .

LXXIX .

→→→
' MORE than my brothers are to me ,'
Let this not vex thee noble heart
,

!
know thee of what force thou art
I

To hold the costliest love in fee

.

But thou and

in in

are one kind

I

As moulded like Nature's mint

;

And hill and wood and field did print

The same sweet forms in either mind
.

For us the same cold streamlet curl'd

Thro all his eddying coves the same

;
'

All winds that roam the twilight came

In whispers of the beauteous world
.
 IN MEMORIAM. 113

At one dear knee we proffer'd vows ,

One lesson from one book we learn'd ,

Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turn'd

To black and brown on kindred brows .

And so my wealth resembles thine ,

But he was rich where I was poor ,
And he supplied my want the more
As his unlikeness fitted mine .

LXXX .

If any vague desire should rise ,

That holy Death ere Arthur died
Had moved me kindly from his side ,
And dropt the dust on tearless eyes ;

Then fancy shapes , as fancy can ,

The grief my loss in him had wrought ,

A grief as deep as life or thought ,

But stay'd in peace with God and man .

I make a picture in the brain ;

I hear the sentence that he speaks ;
He bears the burthen of the weeks

But turns his burthen into gain .

114 IN MEMORIAM .
His credit thus shall set me free ;

And , influence -rich to soothe and save ,

Unused example from the grave
Reach out dead hands to comfort me.

LXXXI .

COULD I have said while he was here ,

' My love shall now no further range ;

There cannot come a mellower change ,
For now is love mature in ear .'

Love , then , had hope of richer store :

What end is here to my complaint ?

This haunting whisper makes me faint,
' More years had made me love thee more .'

But Death returns an answer sweet :

' My sudden frost was sudden gain ,
And gave all ripeness to the grain ,
It might have drawn from after - heat .'

LXXXII .

I WAGE not any feud with Death

For changes wrought on form and face ;
No lower life that earth's embrace
May breed with him , can fright my faith .
 IN MEMORIAM. 115

Eternal process moving on,

From state to state the spirit walks ;

And these are but the shatter'd stalks ,

Or ruin'd chrysalis of one .

Nor blame I Death , because he bare

The use of virtue out of earth :
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit , otherwhere .

For this alone on Death I wreak

The wrath that garners in my heart ;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak .

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 ,

Thy sweetness from its proper place ?
Can trouble live with April days ,
Or sadness in the summer moons ?
116 IN MEMORIAM.
Bring orchis , bring the foxglove spire ,
The little speedwell's darling blue ,
Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew ,
Laburnums , dropping - wells of fire .

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 .

LXXXIV .

WHEN I Contemplate all alone

The life that had been thine below ,

And fix my thoughts on all the glow

To which thy crescent would have grown ;

I see thee sitting crown'd with good ,

A central warmth diffusing bliss

In glance and smile , and clasp and kiss ,

On all the branches of thy blood ;

Thy blood , my friend, and partly mine ;

For now the day was drawing on ,
When thou should'st link thy life with one
Of mine own house , and boys of thine
 IN MEMORIAM. 117

Had babbled ' Uncle ' on my knee ;

But that remorseless iron hour

Made cypress of her orange flower ,
Despair of Hope , and earth of thee .

I seem to meet their least desire ,

To clap their cheeks , to call them mine .

I see their unborn faces shine
Beside the never - lighted fire .

I see myself an honour'd guest ,

Thy partner in the flowery walk
Of letters , genial table - talk,

Or deep dispute , and graceful jest ;

While now thy prosperous labour fills

The lips of men with honest praise ,
And sun by sun the happy days
Descend below the golden hills

With promise of a morn as fair ;

And all the train of bounteous hours
Conduct by paths of growing powers ,
To reverence and the silver hair ;
118 IN MEMORIAM .
Till slowly worn her earthly robe ,
Her lavish mission richly wrought ,
Leaving great legacies of thought ,

Thy spirit should fail from off the globe ;

What time mine own might also flee ,

As link'd with thine in love and fate ,
And , hovering o'er the dolorous strait
To the other shore , involved in thee ,

Arrive at last the blessed goal ,

And He that died in Holy Land
Would reach us out the shining hand ,
And take us as a single soul .

What reed was that on which I leant ?

Ah, backward fancy , wherefore wake
The old bitterness again , and break
The low beginnings of content .

LXXXV .

THIS truth came borne with bier and pall,

I felt it , when I sorrow'd most ,
'Tis better to have loved and lost ,
Than never to have loved at all-
 IN MEMORIAM. 119

O true in word, and tried in deed ,

Demanding, so to bring relief
To this which is our common grief ,
What kind of life is that I lead ;

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 exprest ,
And loyal unto kindly laws .

My blood an even tenor kept ,

Tillon mine ear this message falls ,
That in Vienna's fatal walls
God's finger touch'd him , and he slept .

The great Intelligences fair

That range above our mortal state ,
In circle round the blessed gate ,
Received and gave him welcome there ;
120 IN MEMORIAM.
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
The sense of human will demands
By which we dare to live or die .

Whatever way my days decline ,

I felt and feel , tho ' left alone ,

His being working in mine own ,

The footsteps of his life in mine ;

 IN MEMORIAM. 121

A life that all the Muses deck'd

With gifts of grace , that might express
All -comprehensive tenderness ,

All -subtilising intellect :

And so my passion hath not swerved

To works of weakness , but I find
An image comforting the mind ,
And in my grief a strength reserved .

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

:

To mourn for any overmuch ;

I, the divided half of such

A friendship as had master'd Time ;
122 IN MEMORIAM.
Which masters Time indeed , and is

Eternal , separate from fears :

The all - assuming months and years
Can take no part away from this :

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

Recalls , in change of light or gloom ,

My old affection of the tomb ,

And my prime passion in the grave :

My old affection of the tomb,

A part of stillness , yearns to speak :

' Arise , and get thee forth and seek

A friendship for the years to come .

' I watch thee from the quiet shore ;

Thy spirit up to mine can reach ;

But in dear words of human speech

We two communicate no more .'
 IN MEMORIAM . 123

And I, ' Can clouds of nature stain

The starry clearness of the free ?

How is it ? Canst thou feel for me
Some painless sympathy with pain ? '

And lightly does the whisper fall ;

"
Tis hard for thee to fathom this ;
I triumph in conclusive bliss ,
And that serene result of all .'

So hold I commerce with the dead ;

Or so methinks the dead would say ;

Or so shall grief with symbols play

And pining life be fancy -fed .

Now looking to some settled end ,

That these 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 .
124 IN MEMORIAM.
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

Quite in the love of what is gone ,
But seeks to beat in time with one
That warms another living breast .

Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring ,

Knowing the primrose yet is dear ,

The primrose of the later year ,
As not unlike to that of Spring .

LXXXVI .

SWEET after showers , ambrosial air ,

That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom

And meadow , slowly breathing bare

 IN MEMORIAM. 125

The round of space , and rapt below

Thro ' all the dewy -tassell'd wood ,

And shadowing down the horned flood

In ripples , fan my brows and blow

The fever from my cheek , and sigh

The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame , till Doubt and Death ,

Ill brethren , let the fancy fly

From belt to belt of crimson seas

On leagues of odour streaming far ,

To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper ' Peace . '

LXXXVII.
I PAST beside the reverend walls
In which of old I wore the gown ;

I roved at random thro ' the town ,

And saw the tumult of the halls ;

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 ;
126 IN MEMORIAM.
And caught once more the distant shout ,
The measured pulse of racing oars
Among the willows ; paced the shores

And many a bridge , and all about

The same gray flats again , and felt

The same , but not the same ; and last

Up that long walk of limes I past

To see the rooms in which he dwelt .

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 labour , 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 ;
 IN MEMORIAM . 127

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 ,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face ,

And seem to lift the form , and glow

In azure orbits heavenly - wise ;
And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo .

LXXXVIII .
WILD bird , whose warble , liquid sweet ,
Rings Eden thro ' the budded quicks ,

O tell me where the senses mix ,

O tell me where the passions meet ,

Whence radiate : fierce extremes employ

Thy spirits in the darkening leaf ,

And in the midmost heart of grief
Thy passion clasps a secret joy :
128 IN MEMORIAM.
And I - my harp would prelude woe-
I cannot all command the strings ;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go .

LXXXIX .

WITCH - ELMS that counterchange the floor

Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright ;

And thou , with all thy breadth and height

Of foliage , towering sycamore ;

How often , hither wandering down ,

My Arthur found your shadows fair ,
And shook to all the liberal air
The dust and din and steam of town :

He brought an eye for all he saw ;

He mixt in all our simple sports ;
They pleased him , fresh from brawling courts
And dusty purlieus of the law.

O joy to him in this retreat ,

Immantled in ambrosial dark ,
To drink the cooler air , and mark

The landscape winking thro ' the heat :

 IN MEMORIAM. 129

O sound to rout the brood of cares ,

The sweep of scythe in morning dew ,

The gust that round the garden flew ,
And tumbled half the mellowing pears !

O bliss , when all in circle drawn

About him , heart and ear were fed
To hear him , as he lay and read
The Tuscan poets on the lawn :

Or in the all -golden afternoon

A guest , or happy sister , sung ,
Or here she brought the harp and flung
A ballad to the brightening moon :

Nor less it pleased in livelier moods ,

Beyond the bounding hill to stray ,
And break the livelong summer day
With banquet in the distant woods ;

Whereat we glanced from theme to theme ,

Discuss'd the books to love or hate ,

Or touch'd the changes of the state ,

Or threaded some Socratic dream ;
K
130 IN MEMORIAM.
But if I praised the busy town,
He loved to rail against it still ,

For 'ground in yonder social mill

We rub each other's angles down ,

' And merge ' he said ' in form and gloss

The picturesque of man and man .'
We talk'd : the stream beneath us ran ,
The wine- flask lying couch'd in moss ,

Or cool'd within the glooming wave ;

And last , returning from afar ,
Before the crimson -circled star
Had fall'n into her father's grave ,

And brushing ankle - deep in flowers ,

We heard behind the woodbine veil ·

The milk that bubbled in the pail ,

And buzzings of the honied hours .

XC.

HE tasted love with half his mind ,

Nor ever drank the inviolate spring

Where nighest heaven , who first could fling
This bitter seed among mankind ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 131

That could the dead , whose dying eyes

Were closed with wail , resume their life ,
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 make
Confusion worse than death , and shake
The pillars of domestic peace .

Ah dear , but come thou back to me :

Whatever change the years have wrought ,

I find not yet one lonely thought

That cries against my wish for thee .
132 IN MEMORIAM .

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 where the sunbeam broodeth warm ,
Come, beauteous in thine after form ,

And like a finer light in light .

XCII .
IF any vision should reveal
Thy likeness , I might count it vain
As but the canker of the brain ;
Yea , tho ' it spake and made appeal
 IN MEMORIAM. 133

To chances where our lots were cast

Together in the days behind ,

I might but say, I hear a wind

Of memory murmuring the past .

Yea , tho ' it spake and bared to view

A fact within the coming year ;
And tho' the months , revolving near ,
Should prove the phantom - warning true ,

They might not seem thy prophecies ,

But spiritual presentiments ,

And such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise .

XCIII .
I SHALL not see thee . Dare I say
No spirit ever brake the band
That stays him from the native land
Where first he walk'd when claspt in clay ?

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 .

134 IN MEMORIAM.
O, therefore from thy sightless range
With gods in unconjectured bliss ,
O , from the distance of the abyss
Of tenfold - complicated change ,

Descend , and touch , and enter ; hear

The wish too strong for words to name ;
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 :
 IN MEMORIAM. 135

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 ,

For underfoot the herb was dry ;

And genial warmth ; and o'er the sky

The silvery haze of summer drawn ;

And calm that let the tapers burn

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 the filmy shapes
lit

That haunt the dusk with ermine capes

,

And woolly breasts and beaded eyes

;

While now we sang old songs that peal'd

From knoll knoll where couch'd
to

at

ease
,

The white kine glimmer'd and the trees

,

Laid their dark arms about the field

.
136 IN MEMORIAM.
1
But when those others , one by one ,
Withdrew themselves from me and night , E

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 their green ,
The noble letters of the dead :

And strangely on the silence broke

The silent - speaking words , and strange

Was love's dumb cry defying change

To test his worth ; and strangely spoke

The faith, the vigour , 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
The living soul was flash'd on mine ,
 IN MEMORIAM. 137

And mine in this was wound , and whirl'd

About empyreal heights of thought ,

And came on that which is , and caught

The deep pulsations of the world ,

-
Æonian music measuring out
The steps of Time the shocks of Chance-
The blows of Death . At length my trance

Was cancell'd , stricken thro ' with doubt .

Vague words ! but ah , how hard to frame

In matter - moulded forms of speech ,
Or ev'n for intellect to reach
Thro ' memory that which I became :

Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd

The knolls once more where , couch'd at ease ,

The white kine glimmer'd , and the trees

Laid their dark arms about the field :

And suck'd from out the distant gloom

A breeze began to tremble o'er
The large leaves of the sycamore ,
And fluctuate all the still perfume ,
138 IN MEMORIAM.
And gathering freshlier overhead ,

Rock'd the full - foliaged elms , and swung

The heavy -folded rose , and flung
The lilies to and fro , and said

"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 .
 IN MEMORIAM. 139

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 ,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone ,

But in the darkness and the cloud ,

As over Sinaï's peaks of old ,

While Israel made their gods of gold ,
Altho ' the trumpet blew so loud .

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 .

140 IN MEMORIAM.
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 ,

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 .

 IN MEMORIAM. 141

For him she plays , to him she sings

Of early faith and plighted vows ;
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 ,

And those fair hills I sail'd below ,

When I was there with him ; and go

By summer belts of wheat and vine

To where he breathed his latest breath ,

That City . All her splendour seems

No livelier than the wisp that gleams

On Lethe in the eyes of Death .

Let her great Danube rolling fair

Enwind her isles , unmark'd of me :

I have not seen , I will not see

Vienna ; rather dream that there ,
142 IN MEMORIAM.
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 flings
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 ; nor 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 .
 IN MEMORIAM. 143

XCIX .

RISEST thou thus , dim dawn , again ,

So loud with voices of the birds ,

So thick with lowings of the herds ,

Day , when I lost the flower of men ;

Who tremblest thro ' thy darkling red

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

A song that slights the coming care ,

And Autumn laying here and there

A fiery finger on the leaves ;

Who wakenest with thy balmy breath

To myriads on the genial earth ,
Memories of bridal , or of birth ,

And unto myriads more , of death .

O wheresoever those may be,

Betwixt the slumber of the poles ,

To -day they count as kindred souls ;

They know me not, but mourn with me .
144 IN MEMORIAM.

C.

I CLIMB the hill : from end to end

Of all the landscape underneath ,

I find no place that does not breathe

Some gracious memory of my friend ;

No gray old grange , or lonely fold ,

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
To left and right thro ' meadowy curves ,
That feed the mothers of the flock ;

But each has pleased a kindred eye ,

And each reflects a kindlier day ;

And , leaving these , to pass away ,
I think once more he seems to die .
 IN MEMORIAM. 145

CI.

UNWATCH'D , the garden bough shall sway ,

The tender blossom flutter down ,

Unloved , that beech will gather brown ,

This maple burn itself away ;

Unloved , the sun - flower , shining fair ,

Ray round with flames her disk of seed ,
And many a rose - carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air ;

Unloved , by many a sandy bar ,

The brook shall babble down the plain ,

At noon or when the lesser wain

Is twisting round the polar star ;

Uncared for , gird the windy grove ,

And flood the haunts of hern and crake ;
Or into silver arrows break
The sailing moon in creek and cove ;

Till from the garden and the wild

A fresh association blow ,

And year by year the landscape grow

Familiar to the stranger's child ;
L
146 IN MEMORIAM.
As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe , or lops the glades ;

And year by year our memory fades

From all the circle of the hills .

CII .

WE leave the well -beloved place

Where first we gazed upon the sky ;
The roofs , that heard our earliest cry ,
Will shelter one of stranger race .

We go , but ere we go from home ,

As down the garden - walks I move ,
Two spirits of a diverse love

Contend for loving masterdom .

One whispers , ' Here thy boyhood sung

Long since its matin song , and heard
The low love - language of the bird
In native hazels tassel - hung .'

The other answers , ' Yea , but here

Thy feet have stray'd in after hours
With thy lost friend among the bowers ,

And this hath made them trebly dear . '

 IN MEMORIAM. 147

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 .

CIII .
On that last night before we went
From out the doors where I was bred ,
I dream'd a vision of the dead ,

Which left my after - morn content .

Methought I dwelt within a hall ,

And maidens with me : distant hills
From hidden summits fed with rills
A river sliding by the wall .

The hall with harp and carol rang .

They sang of what is wise and good
And graceful . In the centre stood
A statue veil'd , to which they sang ;
148 IN MEMORIAM .

And which , tho ' veil'd , was known to me ,

The shape of him I loved, and love
For ever : then flew in a dove
And brought a summons from the sea :

And when they learnt that I must go

They wept and wail'd , but led the way
To where a little shallop lay
At anchor in the flood below ;

And on by many a level mead ,

And shadowing bluff that made the banks ,
We glided winding under ranks
Of iris , and the golden reed ;

And still as vaster grew the shore

And roll'd the floods in grander space ,
The maidens gather'd strength and grace
And presence , lordlier than before ;

And I myself , who sat apart

And watch'd them , wax'd in every limb ;

I felt the thews of Anakım ,

The pulses of a Titan's heart ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 149

As one would sing the death of war ,

And one would chant the history
Of that great race , which is to be ,
And one the shaping of a star ;

Until the forward - creeping tides

Began to foam , and we to draw

From deep to deep , to where we saw

A great ship lift her shining sides .

The man we loved was there on deck ,

But thrice as large as man he bent

To greet us . Up the side I went ,
And fell in silence on his neck :

Whereat those maidens with one mind

Bewail'd their lot ; I did them wrong :
'We served thee here , ' they said , ' so long ,
And wilt thou leave us now behind ? '

So rapt I was , they could not win

An answer from my lips , but he
6
Replying , Enter likewise ye
And go with us : ' they enter'd in .
150 IN MEMORIAM.
And while the wind began to sweep
A music out of sheet and shroud ,
We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud
That landlike slept along the deep .

CIV .

THE time draws near the birth of Christ ;

The moon is hid , the night is still ;

A single church below the hill
Is pealing , folded in the mist .

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 .

CV.

TO -NIGHT ungather'd let us leave

This laurel , let this holly stand :

We live within the stranger's land ,

And strangely falls our Christmas - eve.
 IN MEMORIAM. 151

Our father's dust is left alone

And silent under other snows :

There in due time the woodbine blows ,

The violet comes , but we are gone .

No more shall wayward grief abuse

The genial hour with mask and mime ;

For change of place , like growth of time ,

Has broke the bond of dying use .

Let cares that petty shadows cast ,

By which our lives are chiefly proved ,

A little spare the night I loved ,

And hold it solemn to the past .

But let no footstep beat the floor ,

Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm ;
For who would keep an ancient form
Thro ' which the spirit breathes no more ?

Be neither song , nor game , nor feast ;

Nor harp be touch'd , nor flute be blown ;

No dance , no motion , save alone

What lightens in the lucid east

152 IN MEMORIAM.
Of risingworlds by yonder wood.
Long sleeps the summer in the seed ;
Run out your measured arcs , and lead
The closing cycle rich in good .

CVI .

RING Out , wild bells , to the wild sky ,

The flying cloud , the frosty light :

The year is dying in the night ;

Ring out, wild bells , and let him die .

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 .
 IN MEMORIAM. 153

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 ,

The civic slander and the spite ;

Ring in the love of truth and right ,
Ring in the common love of good .

Ring out old shapes of foul disease ;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ;

Ring out the thousand wars of old ,

Ring in the thousand years of peace . •

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 .

CVII .

It is the day when he was born,

A bitter day that early sank

Behind a purple-frosty bank
Of vapour , leaving night forlorn .
154 IN MEMORIAM.
The time admits not flowers or leaves
To deck the banquet . Fiercely flies
The blast of North and East , and ice
Makes daggers at the sharpen'd eaves ,

And bristles all the brakes and thorns

To yon hard crescent , as she hangs

Above the wood which grides and clangs

Its leafless ribs and iron horns

Together , in the drifts that pass

To darken on the rolling brine
That breaks the coast . But fetch the wine ,
Arrange the board and brim the glass ;

Bring in great logs and let them lie ,

To make a solid core of heat ;

Be cheerful -minded , talk and treat

Of all things ev'n as he were by ;

We keep the day . With festal cheer ,

With books and music , surely we
Will drink to him, whate'er he be ,

And sing the songs he loved to hear .

 IN MEMORIAM. 155

CVIII .
I WILL not shut me from my kind ,
And , lest I stiffen into stone ,
I will not eat my heart alone ,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind :

What profit lies in barren faith ,

And vacant yearning , tho ' with might
To scale the heaven's highest height ,
Or dive below the wells of Death ?

What find I in the highest place ,

But mine own phantom chanting hymns ?

And on the depths of death there swims

The reflex of a human face .

I'll rather take what fruit may be

Of sorrow under human skies :
'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise ,

Whatever wisdom sleep with thee .

CIX .
HEART-AFFLUENCE in discursive talk
From household fountains never dry ;

The critic clearness of an eye,

That saw thro ' all the Muses ' walk ;
156 IN MEMORIAM.
Seraphic intellect and force
To seize and throw the doubts of man
Impassion❜d logic , which outran
The hearer in its fiery course ;

High nature amorous of the good ,

But touch'd with no ascetic gloom ;
And passion pure in snowy bloom
Thro' all the years of April blood ;

A love of freedom rarely felt ,

Of freedom in her regal seat

Of England ; not the schoolboy heat ,

The blind hysterics of the Celt ;

And manhood fused with female grace

In such a sort , the child would twine
A trustful hand , unask'd , in thine ,
And find his comfort in thy face ;

All these have been , and thee mine eyes

Have look'd on : if they look'd in vain ,

My shame is greater who remain ,
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise .
 IN MEMORIAM . 157

CX .

THY Converse drew us with delight ,

The men of rathe and riper years :

The feeble soul , a haunt of fears ,
Forgot his weakness in thy sight .

On thee the loyal- hearted hung ,

The proud was half disarm'd of pride ,

Nor cared the serpent at thy side

To flicker with his double tongue .

The stern were mild when thou wert by,

The flippant put himself to school
And heard thee , and the brazen fool
Was soften'd , and he knew not why ;

While I , thy nearest , sat apart ,

And felt thy triumph was as mine ;

And loved them more , that they were thine ,

The graceful tact , the Christian art ;

Nor mine the sweetness or the skill ,

But mine the love that will not tire ,
And , born of love , the vague desire
That spurs an imitative will .
158 IN MEMORIAM.

CXI .

THE churl in spirit, up or down

Along the scale of ranks , thro ' all ,
To him who grasps a golden ball ,
By blood a king, at heart a clown ;

The churl in spirit , howe'er he veil

His want in forms for fashion's sake ,
Will let his coltish nature break

At seasons thro ' the gilded pale :

For who can always act ? but he ,

To whom a thousand memories call ,
Not being less but more than all
The gentleness he seem'd to be,

Best seem'd the thing he was , and join'd

Each office of the social hour
To noble manners , as the flower

And native growth of noble mind ;

Nor ever narrowness or spite ,

Or villain fancy fleeting by ,

Drew in the expression of an eye,

Where God and Nature met in light ;

 IN MEMORIAM . 159

And thus he bore without abuse

The grand old name of gentleman ,

Defamed by every charlatan ,

And soil'd with all ignoble use .

CXII .

HIGH wisdom holds my wisdom less ,

That I, who gaze with temperate eyes

On glorious insufficiencies ,
Set light by narrower perfectness .

But thou , that fillest all the room

Of all my love , art reason why

I seem to cast a careless eye

On souls , the lesser lords of doom .

For what wert thou ? some novel power

Sprang up for ever at a touch ,

And hope could never hope too much ,

In watching thee from hour to hour ,

Large elements in order brought ,

And tracts of calm from tempest made ,

And world-wide fluctuation sway'd

In vassal tides that follow'd thought.

160 IN MEMORIAM .

CXIII .

'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise ;

Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee

Which not alone had guided me ,
But served the seasons that may rise ;

For can I doubt , who knew thee keen

In intellect, with force and skill
To strive , to fashion , to fulfil—
I doubt not what thou wouldst have been :

A life in civic action warm ,

A soul on highest mission sent ,

A potent voice of Parliament ,

A pillar steadfast in the storm ,

Should licensed boldness gather force

,

Becoming when
, the time has birth ,

A lever to uplift the earth

And roll it in another course ,

go ,
With thousand shocks that come and
With agonies , with energies ,

With overthrowings , and with cries

.

And undulations to and fro .

 IN MEMORIAM. 161

CXIV .

WHO loves not Knowledge ? Who shall rail

Against her beauty ? May she mix
With men and prosper ! Who shall fix
Her pillars ? Let her work prevail .

But on her forehead sits a fire :

She sets her forward countenance

And leaps into the future chance ,

Submitting all things to desire .

Half-grown as yet , a child , and vain-

She cannot fight the fear of death .
What is she , cut from love and faith ,
But some wild Pallas from the brain

Of Demons ? fiery -hot to burst

All barriers in her onward race

For power. Let her know her place ;

She is the second , not the first .

A higher hand must make her mild ,

If all be not in vain ; and guide
Her footsteps , moving side by side

With wisdom , like the younger child :

M
162 IN MEMORIAM.
For she is earthly of the mind ,
But Wisdom heavenly of the soul.
O, friend , who camest to thy goal
So early , leaving me behind ,

I would the great world grew like thee ,

Who grewest not alone in power
And knowledge , but by year and hour
In reverence and in charity .

CXV .

Now fades the last long streak of snow ,

Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares , and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long,

The distance takes a lovelier hue ,
And drown'd in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song .

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea ,

The flocks are whiter down the vale ,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 163

Where now the seamew pipes , or dives

In yonder greening gleam , and fly

The happy birds , that change their sky

To build and brood ; that live their lives

From land to land ; and in my breast

Spring wakens too ; and my regret
Becomes an April violet ,
And buds and blossoms like the rest .

CXVI .

Is it, then, regret for buried time

That keenlier in sweet April wakes ,
And meets the year , and gives and takes
The colours of the crescent prime ?

Not all the songs , the stirring air ,

The life re -orient out of dust ,
Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair .

Not all regret the face will shine

Upon me , while I muse alone ;

And that dear voice , I once have known ,

Still speak to me of me and mine :

164 IN MEMORIAM.
Yet less of sorrow lives in me
For days of happy commune dead ;
Less yearning for the friendship fled ,

Than some strong bond which is to be .

CXVII .

O DAYS and hours , your work is this

To hold me from my proper place ,
A little while from his embrace ,

For fuller gain of after bliss :

That out of distance might ensue

Desire of nearness doubly sweet ;
And unto meeting when we meet ,
Delight a hundredfold accrue ,

For every grain of sand that runs ,

And every span of shade that steals ,

And every kiss of toothed wheels ,
And all the courses of the suns .

CXVIII .
CONTEMPLATE all this work of Time ,
The giant labouring in his youth ;
Nor dream of human love and truth ,
As dying Nature's earth and lime ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 165

But trust that those we call the dead

Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends . They say ,
The solid earth whereon we tread

In tracts of fluent heat began ,

And grew to seeming - random forms ,

The seeming prey of cyclic storms ,

Till at the last arose the man ;

Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime ,

The herald of a higher race ,

And of himself in higher place ,
If so he type this work of time

Within himself, from more to more ;

Or , crown'd with attributes of woe
Like glories , move his course , and show
That life is not as idle ore ,

But iron dug from central gloom ,

And heated hot with burning fears ,

And dipt in baths of hissing tears ,
And batter'd with the shocks of doom
166 IN MEMORIAM.
To shape and use . Arise and fly
The reeling Faun , the sensual feast ;
Move upward , working out the beast ,
And let the ape and tiger die .

CXIX .

DOORS , where my heart was used to beat

So quickly , not as one that weeps

I come once more ; the city sleeps ;

I smell the meadow in the street ;

I hear a chirp of birds ; I see

Betwixt the black fronts long - withdrawn

A light -blue lane of early dawn ,

And think of early days and thee ,

And bless thee , for thy lips are bland ,

And bright the friendship of thine eye ;
And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh
I take the pressure of thine hand .

CXX .

I TRUST I have not wasted breath :

I think we are not wholly brain ,

Magnetic mockeries ; not in vain ,

Like Paul with beasts , I fought with Death ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 167

Not only cunning casts in clay :

Let Science prove we are , and then

What matters Science unto men ,
At least to me ? I would not stay .

Let him , the wiser man who springs

Hereafter , up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape ,
But I was born to other things .

CXXI .

SAD Hesper o'er the buried sun

And ready , thou , to die with him ,

Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer , and a glory done :

The team is loosen'd from the wain ,

The boat is drawn upon the shore ;
Thou listenest to the closing door ,
And life is darken'd in the brain .

Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night ,

By thee the world's great work is heard
Beginning, and the wakeful bird ;
Behind thee comes the greater light :
168 IN MEMORIAM.
The market boat is on the stream ,
And voices hail it from the brink ;
Thou hear'st the village hammer clink ,
And see'st the moving of the team .

Sweet Hesper - Phosphor , double name

For what is one , the first , the last ,
Thou , like my present and my past ,
Thy place is changed ; thou art the same .

CXXII .

OH , wast thou with me , dearest , then ,

While I
rose up against my doom ,

And yearn'd to burst the folded gloom ,

To bare the eternal Heavens again ,

To feel once more , in placid awe ,

The strong imagination roll

A sphere of stars about my soul ,
In all her motion one with law ;

If thou wert with me , and the grave

Divide us not, be with me now ,
And enter in at breast and brow ,
Till all my blood, a fuller wave ,
 IN MEMORIAM. 169

Be quicken'd with a livelier breath ,

And like an inconsiderate boy,
As in the former flash of joy ,
I slip the thoughts of life and death ;

And all the breeze of Fancy blows ,

And every dew -drop paints a bow,
The wizard lightnings deeply glow ,
And every thought breaks out a rose .

CXXIII .
THERE rolls the deep where grew the tree .
O earth , what changes hast thou seen !
There where the long street roars , hath been
The stillness of the central sea.

The hills are shadows , and they flow

From form to form, and nothing stands ;

They melt like mist , the solid lands ,

Like clouds they shape themselves and go .

But in my spirit will I dwell ,

And dream my dream , and hold it true ;

For tho ' my lips may breathe adieu ,

I cannot think the thing farewell .
170 IN MEMORIAM.

CXXIV .

THAT which we dare invoke to bless ;

Our dearest faith ; our ghastliest doubt ;
He , They , One , All ; within , without ;
The Power in darkness whom we guess ;

I found Him not in world or sun ,

Or eagle's wing , or insect's eye ;

Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun :

If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep ,

I heard a voice ' believe no more '

And heard an ever - breaking shore

That tumbled in the Godless deep ;

A warmth within the breast would melt

The freezing reason's colder part ,

And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer'd ' I have felt .'

No , like a child in doubt and fear :

But that blind clamour made me wise ;

Then was I as a child that cries ,

But , crying , knows his father near ;

 IN MEMORIAM. 171

And what I am beheld again

What is , and no man understands ;
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro' nature , moulding men .

CXXV .

WHATEVER I have said or sung ,

Some bitter notes my harp would give ,
Yea, tho' there often seem'd to live
A contradiction on the tongue ,

Yet Hope had never lost her youth ;

She did but look through dimmer eyes ;

Or Love but play'd with gracious lies ,

Because he felt so fix'd in truth :

And if the song were full of care ,

He breathed the spirit of the song ;
And if the words were sweet and strong
He set his royal signet there ;

Abiding with me till I sail

To seek thee on the mystic deeps ,
And this electric force , that keeps
A thousand pulses dancing , fail.
172 IN MEMORIAM.

CXXVI .
LOVE is and was my Lord and King,
And in his presence I attend
To hear
the tidings of my friend ,

Which every hour his couriers bring.

Love is and was my King and Lord,

And will be , tho ' as yet I keep
Within his court on earth , and sleep
Encompass'd by his faithful guard ,

And hear at times a sentinel

Who moves about from place to place ,

And whispers to the worlds of space ,
In the deep night , that all is well.

CXXVII .

AND all is well , tho ' faith and form

Be sunder'd in the night of fear ;
Well roars the storm to those that hear
A deeper voice across the storm ,

Proclaiming social truth shall spread ,

And justice , ev'n tho ' thrice again

The red fool -fury of the Seine

Should pile her barricades with dead .
 IN MEMORIAM. 173

But ill for him that wears a crown ,

And him, the lazar , in his rags :

They tremble , the sustaining crags ;

The spires of ice are toppled down ,

And molten up, and roar in flood ;

The fortress crashes from on high,

The brute earth lightens to the sky ,
And the great on sinks in blood ,

And compass'd by the fires of Hell ;

While thou , dear spirit, happy star ,

O'erlook'st the tumult from afar ,

And smilest , knowing all is well .

CXXVIII .
THE love that rose on stronger wings ,
Unpalsied when he met with Death ,

Is comrade of the lesser faith

That sees the course of human things .

No doubt vast eddies in the flood

Of onward time shall yet be made ,

And throned races may degrade ;
Yet O ye mysteries of good ,
174 IN MEMORIAM.
Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear ,

Ifall your office had to do

With old results that look like new ;
If this were all your mission here ,

To draw, to sheathe a useless sword ,

To fool the crowd with glorious lies ,
To cleave a creed in sects and cries ,
To change the bearing of a word ,

To shift an arbitrary power ,

To cramp the student at his desk ,

To make old bareness picturesque
And tuft with grass a feudal tower ;

Why then my scorn might well descend

On you and yours . see in partI
That all , as in some piece of art ,
Is toil cooperant to an end .

CXXIX .

DEAR friend, far off, my lost desire ,

So far , so near in woe and weal ;

O loved the most , when most I feel

There is a lower and a higher ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 175

Known and unknown ; human , divine ;

Sweet human hand and lips and eye ;

Dear heavenly friend that canst not die ,

Mine , mine, for ever , ever mine ;

Strange friend, past , present , and to be ;

Loved deeplier , darklier understood ;

Behold , I dream a dream of good ,

And mingle all the world with thee .

CXXX .

THY Voice is on the rolling air ;

I hear thee where the waters run ;
Thou standest in the rising sun ,
And in the setting thou art fair.

What art thou then ? I cannot guess ;

But tho' I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power ,
I do not therefore love thee less :

My love involves the love before ;

My love is vaster passion now ;
Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou ,
I seem to love thee more and more .
176 IN MEMORIAM.
Far off thou art , but ever nigh ;
I have thee still , and I rejoice ;
I prosper, circled with thy voice ;

I shall I
not lose thee tho ' die.

CXXXI .

O LIVING will that shalt endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock ,

Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro ' our deeds and make them pure ,

That we may lift from out of dust

A voice as unto him that hears ,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works , and trust ,

With faith that comes of self - control ,

The truths that never can be proved

Until we close with all we loved ,

And all we flow from , soul in soul .

 IN MEMORIAM. 177

O TRUE and tried , so well and long,

Demand not thou a marriage lay ;
In that it is thy marriage day
Is music more than any song .

Nor have I felt so much of bliss

Since first he told me that he loved

A daughter of our house ; nor proved

Since that dark day a day like this ;

Tho' I since then have number'd o'er

Some thrice three years : they went and came ,

Remade the blood and changed the frame ,
And yet is love not less , but more ;

No longer caring to embalm

In dying songs a dead regret ,

But like a statue solid -set ,
And moulded in colossal calm .
N
178 IN MEMORIAM.
Regret is dead , but love is more
Than in the summers that are flown ,
For I myself with these have grown
To something greater than before ;

Which makes appear the songs I made

As echoes out of weaker times ,
As half but idle brawling rhymes ,

The sport of random sun and shade .

But where is she , the bridal flower ,

That must be made a wife ere noon ?
She enters , glowing like the moon
Of Eden on its bridal bower :

On me she bends her blissful eyes

And then on thee ; they meet thy look
And brighten like the star that shook
Betwixt the palms of paradise .

O when her life was yet in bud ,

He too foretold the perfect rose .
For thee she grew , for thee she grows

For ever , and as fair as good.

 IN MEMORIAM. 179

And thou art worthy ; full of power ;

As gentle ; liberal - minded , great ,

Consistent ; wearing all that weight

Of learning lightly like a flower .

But now set out : the noon is near ,

And I must give away the bride ;

She fears not , or with thee beside

And me behind her , will not fear .

For I that danced her on my knee ,

That watch'd her on her nurse's arm ,
That shielded all her life from harm
At last must part with her to thee ;

Now waiting to be made a wife ,

Her feet , my darling, on the dead
Their pensive
tablets round her head ,
And the most living words of life

Breathed in her ear . The ring is on,

The ' wilt thou ' answer'd , and again

The ' wilt thou ' ask'd , till out of twain

Her sweet ' I will ' has made you one .
180 IN MEMORIAM.
Now sign your names , which shall be read ,
Mute symbols of a joyful morn,
By village eyes as yet unborn ;
The names are sign'd , and overhead

Begins the clash and clang that tells

The joy to every wandering breeze ;

The blind wall rocks , and on the trees
The dead leaf trembles to the bells .

O happy hour, and happier hours

Await them . Many a merry face
-
Salutes them maidens of the place ,

That pelt us in the porch with flowers .

O happy hour, behold the bride

With him to whom her hand I gave .
They leave the porch , they pass the grave

That has to -day its sunny side .

To -day the grave is bright for me ,

For them the light of life increased ,

Who stay to share the morning feast ,
Who rest to- night beside the sea .
 IN MEMORIAM. 181

Let all my genial spirits advance

To meet and greet a whiter sun ;
My drooping memory will not shun

The foaming grape of eastern France .

It circles round , and fancy plays ,

And hearts are warm'd and faces bloom ,

As drinking health to bride and groom

We wish them store of happy days .

Nor count me all to blame if I

Conjecture of a stiller guest ,
Perchance , perchance , among the rest ,
And, tho ' in silence , wishing joy .

But they must go , the time draws on ,

And those white -favour'd horses wait ;

They rise , but linger ; it is late ;

Farewell, we kiss , and they are gone .

A shade falls on us like the dark

From little cloudlets on the grass ,
But sweeps away as out we pass

To range the woods , to roam the park ,

182 IN MEMORIAM.
Discussing how their courtship grew ,
And talk of others that are wed ,
And how she look'd , and what he said ,
And back we come at fall of dew .

Again the feast , the speech , the glee ,

The shade of passing thought , the wealth

Of words and wit , the double health ,

The crowning cup , the three - times - three ,

And last the dance ; -till I retire :

Dumb is that tower which spake so loud ,
And high in heaven the streaming cloud ,
And on the downs a rising fire :

And rise , O moon , from yonder down ,

Till over down and over dale

All night the shining vapour sail

And pass the silent -lighted town ,

The white - faced halls , the glancing rills ,

And catch at every mountain head ,
And o'er the friths that branch and spread
Their sleeping silver thro' the hills ;
 IN MEMORIAM. 183

And touch with shade the bridal doors ,

With tender gloom the roof, the wall ;

And breaking let the splendour fall

To spangle all the happy shores

By which they rest , and ocean sounds ,

And , star and system rolling past ,
A soul shall draw from out the vast

And strike his being into bounds ,

And , moved thro ' life of lower phase ,

Result in man , be born and think ,
And act and love , a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race

Of those that , eye to eye , shall look

On knowledge ; under whose command

Is Earth and Earth's , and in their hand

Is Nature like an open book ;

No longer half- akin to brute ,

For all we thought and loved and did ,

And hoped , and suffer'd , is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit ;
184 IN MEMORIAM.
Whereof the man , that with me trod
This planet , was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe ,
That friend of mine who lives in God ,

That God , which ever lives and loves ,

One God , one law , one element ,
And one far - off divine event ,
To which the whole creation moves .
APPENDIX .
 SPEAK TO ME .

SPEAK to me from the stormy sky !

The wind is loud in holt and hill ,
It is not kind to be so still :
Speak to me, dearest , lest I die

Speak to me , let me hear or see !

Alas , my life is frail and weak :
Seest thou my faults and wilt not speak ?
They are not want of love for thee .

[ I do not know when these verses were written . The

first written sections of In Memoriam were :—

Fair ship that from the Italian shore .

Thou comest , much wept for .
'Tis well ; ' tis something .
When Lazarus left his charnel cave .
This truth came borne with bier and pall .
It draweth near the birth of Christ .

In the same manuscript -book were the earliest drafts of

the Morte d'Arthur and The Two Voices , begun under the
cloud of the overwhelming sorrow of Arthur Hallam's death ,
which , as my father told me , blotted out all joy from his
life , and made him long for death . But such a first friend-
ship and such a loss helped to reveal himself to himself ,
while he enshrined his sorrow in his song.-ED. ]
187
NOTES
 NOTES .
p. 1. ENOCH Arden. [Written in a little summer-
house in the meadow called Maiden's Croft
looking over Freshwater Bay and toward the
downs . First published in 1864.-ED. ]
Enoch Arden (like Aylmer's Field) is founded
on a theme given me by the sculptor Woolner .
I believe that his particular story came out of
Suffolk, but something like the same story is
told in Brittany and elsewhere .
I have had several similar true stories sent
me since I wrote Enoch Arden.
[ Of this poem there are nine German trans-
lations, eight French , as well as Italian , Dutch ,

p.
Spanish ,
versions . -
Danish , Hungarian and
ED .]
Bavarian

1. line 7. Danish barrows . [Cf. Tithonus :

And grassy barrows of the happier dead .
There are several on the Freshwater downs .

-ED . ]
p. -
5. line 5. peacock yewtree . Cut in the form of a pea-
cock .
191
192 ENOCH ARDEN .

p. 6. line 12. And isles a light in the offing. This line

was made at Brighton , from the islands of
light on the sea on a day of sunshine and
clouds .

p. 16. line 13. whitening . When the breeze blows , it

turns upward the silvery under - part of the leaf.

p. 22. line 12 .
She slipt across the summer of the world .
The Equator .

p. 25. line 16. dewy -glooming , dewy and dark .

p. 25. line 19. in the ringing of his ears. (Cf. Eothen ,

chap . xvii .)
Mr. Kinglake told me that he had heard
his own parish bells in the midst of an Eastern
desert , not knowing at the time that it was
Sunday , when they would have been ringing
I
the bells at home ; and added , " might have
had a ringing in my ears, and the imaginative
memory did the rest . "
[ My father would say that there is nothing
really supernatural , mechanically or otherwise ,
in Enoch Arden's hearing bells ; tho ' he
most probably did intend the passage to tell
upon the reader mystically . — ED . ]

p. 26. line 23. sweet water . Cf.

Intus aquae dulces vivoque sedilia saxo .

Virgil, Aen . i . 167 .
 NOTES. 193

p. 28. line 9 .
Last , as it seem'd , a great mist -blotted light.
From Philip's house , the latest house to land-
ward .

p. 37. line 9 .
There came so loud a calling of the sea .

" The calling

of the sea , " a term used ,
I believe , chiefly in the western parts of
England , to signify a ground swell . When
this occurs on a windless night , the echo of it
rings thro ' the timbers of old houses in a
haven , and is often heard many miles inland .

P. 37. line 16 .
Had seldom seen a costlier funeral .
The costly funeral is all that poor Annie
could do for him after he was gone . This is
entirely introduced for her sake , and , in my
opinion , quite necessary to the perfection of
the Poem and the simplicity of the narrative .
 IN MEMORIAM .

INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR .

Unborn , undying Love ,

Thou foldest like a golden atmosphere
The very Throne of the Eternal God .

HALF a mile to the south of Clevedon in Somersetshire

stands Clevedon Church , " obscure and solitary ," on
a lonely hill overlooking a wide expanse of water ,
where the Severn flows into the Bristol Channel . It is
dedicated to St. Andrew , the chancel being the original
fishermen's chapel .
From the graveyard you can hear the music of the
tide as it washes against the low cliffs not a hundred
yards away . In the manor aisle of the church , under
which is the vault of the Hallams , may be read this
epitaph to Arthur Hallam , written by his father :

ΤΟ
THE MEMORY OF
ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM
ELDEST SON OF HENRY HALLAM ESQUIRE
AND OF JULIA MARIA HIS WIFE
DAUGHTER OF SIR ABRAHAM ELTON BARONET
OF CLEVEDON COURT
194
 NOTES . 195

WHO WAS SNATCHED AWAY BY SUDDEN DEATH

AT VIENNA ON SEPTEMBER 15TH 1833
IN THE TWENTY - THIRD YEAR OF HIS AGE
AND NOW IN THIS OBSCURE AND SOLITARY CHURCH
REPOSE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF
ONE TOO EARLY LOST FOR PUBLIC FAME
BUT ALREADY CONSPICUOUS AMONG HIS CONTEMPORARIES
FOR THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS GENIUS
THE DEPTH OF HIS UNDERSTANDING
THE NOBLENESS OF HIS DISPOSITION
THE FERVOUR OF HIS PIETY
AND THE PURITY OF HIS LIFE

VALE DULCISSIME
VALE DILECTISSIME DESIDERATISSIME
REQUIESCAS IN PACE
PATER AC MATER HIC POSTHAC REQUIESCAMUS TECUM
USQUE AD TUBAM

In this part of the church there is also another tablet

to the memory of Henry Hallam , the epitaph written by
my father : who thought the simpler the epitaph , the
better it would become the simple and noble man ,
whose work speaks for him :
HERE WITH HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN RESTS
HENRY HALLAM THE HISTORIAN
It was not until May 1850 that In Memoriam was
printed and given to a few friends . Shortly afterwards
the poem was published , first of all anonymously , but
the authorship was soon discovered .
The earliest jottings, begun in 1833 , of the Elegies ,
as they were then called , were nearly lost in a London
lodging, for my father was always careless about his
manuscripts .
196 IN MEMORIAM.
At first the reviews of the volume were not on the
whole sympathetic . One critic in a leading journal , for
instance , considered that " a great deal of poetic feeling
had been wasted , " and " much shallow art spent on the
tenderness shown to an Amaryllis of the Chancery Bar . "
Another referred to the poem as follows : " These
touching lines evidently come from the full heart of the
widow of a military man . " However , men like Maurice
and Robertson thought that the author had made a
definite step the unification of the highest
towards
religion and philosophywith the progressive science of
the day ; and that he was the one poet who " through
almost the agonies of a death - struggle " had made an
effective stand against his own doubts and difficulties
""
and those of the time , on behalf of those first
principles which underlie all creeds , which belong to
our earliest childhood , and on which the wisest and best
have rested through all that all is right ; that
ages ;

darkness shall be clear ; God and Time are the

that
only interpreters ; that Love is King ; that the Immortal
is in us ; that, which is the keynote of the whole , ' All
is well , tho' Faith and Form be sundered in the night
of Fear .999
' Scientific leaders like Herschel , Owen ,
Sedgwick and Tyndall regarded him as a champion of
Science , and cheered him with words of genuine
admiration for his love of Nature , for the eagerness with
which he welcomed all the latest scientific discoveries ,
and for his trust in truth . Science indeed in his
opinion was one of the main forces tending to disperse
the superstition that still darkens the world . A review
which he thought one of the ablest was that by Mr.
 NOTES. 197

Gladstone . From this review I

quote the following to
show that in Gladstone's opinion my father had not
over - estimated Arthur Hallam :

In 1850Mr. Tennyson gave to the world under the

title of In
Memoriam , perhaps the richest oblation ever
offered by the affection of friendship at the tomb of the
departed . The memory of Arthur Henry Hallam , who died
suddenly in 1833 , at the age of twenty - two , will doubtless
live chiefly in connection with this volume . But he is well
known to have been one who if the term of his days had
,

been prolonged , would have needed no aid from a friendly

hand , would have built his own enduring monument , and
would have bequeathed to his country a name in all likeli-
hood greater than that of his very distinguished father .
The writer of this paper was , more than half a century ago,
in a condition to say
I
marked him
As a far Alp ; and loved to watch the sunrise

Dawn on his ample brow.1

There perhaps was no one among those who were blessed

with his friendship , nay , as we see , not even Mr. Tennyson , 2
who did not feel at once bound closely to him by com-
manding affection , and left far behind by the rapid , full
and rich development of his ever - searching mind ; by his

All - comprehensive tenderness ,

All- subtilising intellect .
It would be easy to show what in the varied forms of
human excellence , he might , had life been granted him ,

1 De Vere's Mary Tudor, iv. 1.

2 See In Memoriam , CIX . , CX. , CXI . , CXII . , CXIII .
198 IN MEMORIAM .
have accomplished ; much more difficult to point the finger
and to say, "
This he never could have done . " Enough
remains from among his early efforts , to accredit whatever
mournful witness may now be borne of him . But what
can be a nobler tribute than this , that for seventeen years
after his death a poet , fast rising towards the lofty summits
of his art , found that young fading image the richest source
of his inspiration , and of thoughts that gave him buoyancy
for a flight such as he had not hitherto attained.1

The late Bishop Westcott and Professor Henry

Sidgwick wrote me interesting letters which respectively
give the impressions the poem made on Cambridge men
in 1850 , and in 1860 , and I quote them in extenso .
The Bishop writes :

When In Memoriam appeared , I felt (as I feel if possible

more strongly now ) that the hope of man lies in the historic
realization of the Gospel . I
rejoiced in the Introduction ,
which appeared to me to be the mature summing up after
an interval of the many strains of thought in the Elegies .
Now the stress of controversy is over , I think so still . As
I look at my original copy of In Memoriam , I recognise
that what impressed me most was your father's splendid
faith ( in the face of the frankest acknowledgment of every
difficulty ) in the growing purpose of the sum of life , and in
the noble destiny of the individual man as he offers himself
for the fulfilment of his little part ( LIV . , LXXXI . , LXXXII .
and the closing stanzas ) . This faith has now largely
entered into our common life , and it seems to me to express
a lesson of the Gospel which the circumstances of all time
encourage us to master .

1 Gladstone's Gleanings of Past Years , vol . ii . pp . 136, 137.

 NOTES. 199

Professor Sidgwick writes :

After thinking over the matter , it has seemed to me

better to write to you a somewhat different kind of letter
from that which I originally designed a letter not primarily
intended for publication , though I wish you to feel at
liberty to print any part of it which you may find suitable ,
but primarily intended to serve rather as a " document " on
which you may base any statements you may wish to make
as to the impression produced by In Memoriam . Ihave
decided to adopt this course : because I want to write with
rather more frank egotism than Ishould otherwise like
to show . I want to do this , because in describing the
impression made on me by the poem , I ought to make
clear the point of view from which I approached it , and the
attitude of thought which I retained under its influence .
In what follows I shall be describing chiefly my own
experiences ; but I shall allow myself sometimes to say
"we " rather than " I , " meaning by " we " my generation ,
as known to me , through converse with intimate friends .

To begin , then our views on religious matters were not ,

at any rate after a year or two of the discussion started in
1860 by Essays and Reviews , really in harmony with those
which we found suggested by In Memoriam . They were
more sceptical and less Christian , in any strict sense of the
word : certainly this was the case with myself : I remember
feeling that Clough represented my individual habits of
thought and sentiment more than your father , although as
a poet he moved me less . And this more sceptical attitude
has remained mine through life ; while at the same time I
feel that the beliefs in God and in immortality are vital to
human well - being .
Hence the most important influence of In Memoriam on
200 IN MEMORIAM .
my thought , apart from its poetic charm as an expression
of personal emotion , opened in a region , if I may so say ,
deeper down than the difference between Theism and
Christianity it lay in the unparalleled combination of
intensity of feeling with comprehensiveness of view and
balance of judgment , shown in presenting the deepest needs
and perplexities of humanity . And this influence , I find ,
has increased rather than diminished as years have gone
on , and as the great issues between Agnostic Science and
Faith have become continually more prominent . In the
sixties I should say that these deeper issues were some-
what obscured by the discussions on Christian dogma ,
and Inspiration of Scripture , etc. You may remember
Browning's reference to this period-

The Essays and Reviews debate

Begins to tell on the public mind
And Colenso's words have weight .
During these years we were absorbed in struggling for
freedom of thought in the trammels of a historical religion :
and perhaps what we sympathized with most in In
Memoriam at this time , apart from the personal feeling ,
was the defence of " honest doubt , " the reconciliation of
knowledge and faith in the introductory poem , and the
hopeful trumpet - ring of the lines on the New Year-

Ring out the thousand wars of old ,

Ring in the thousand years of peace ,

and generally the forward movement of the thought .

Well , the years pass , the struggle with what Carlyle
used to call " Hebrew old clothes " is over , Freedom is
won , and what does Freedom bring us to ? It brings us
face to face with atheistic science ; the faith in God and
 NOTES . 2Q1

Immortality , which we had been struggling to clear from

superstition , suddenly seems to be in the air : and in
seeking for a firm basis for this faith we find ourselves in
the midst of the " fight with death " which In Memoriam
so powerfully presents .
What In Memoriam did for us , for me at least , in this
struggle was to impress on us the ineffaceable and ineradic-
able conviction that humanity will not and cannot acquiesce
in a godless world : the " man in men " will not do this ,
whatever individual men may do , whatever they may
temporarily feel themselves driven to do , by following
methods which they cannot abandon to the conclusions to
which these methods at present seem to lead .
The force with which it impressed this conviction was
not due to the mere intensity of its expression of the feelings
which Atheism outrages and Agnosticism ignores : but
rather to its expression of them along with a reverent
docility to the lessons of science which also belongs to the
essence of the thought of our age .
I remember being struck with a note in Nature , at the
time of your father's death , which dwelt on this last-
mentioned aspect of his work , and regarded him as pre-
eminently the Poet of Science . I have always felt this
characteristic important in estimating his effect on his
generation . Wordsworth's attitude towards Nature was
one that , so to say , left Science unregarded : the Nature
for which Wordsworth stirred our feelings was Nature as
known by simple observation and interpreted by religious
and sympathetic intuition . But for your father the physical
world is always the world as known to us through physical
science the scientific view of it dominates his thoughts
about it ; and his general acceptance of this view is real
and sincere , even when he utters the intensest feeling of its
202 IN MEMORIAM.
inadequacy to satisfy our deepest needs . Had it been
otherwise , had he met the atheistic tendencies of modern
Science with more confident defiance , more confident
assertion of an Intuitive Faculty of theological knowledge ,
overriding the results laboriously reached by empirical
science , I thinkhis antagonism to these tendencies would
have been far less impressive .
I
always feel this strongly in reading the memorable lines :

“ If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep " down to "I have
felt. "1
At this point , if the stanzas had stopped here , we should
have shaken our heads and said , " Feeling must not usurp
the function of Reason . Feeling is not knowing . It is the
duty of a rational being to follow truth wherever it leads . "
But the poet's instinct knows this ; he knows that this
usurpation by Feeling of the function of Reason is too bold
and confident ; accordingly in the next stanza he gives the
turn to humility in the protest of Feeling which is required
I
( think) to win the assent of the " man in men at this stage
""

of human thought .
These lines I can never read without tears . I feel in
them the indestructible and inalienable minimum of faith
which humanity cannot give up because it is necessary for
life ; and which I know that I , at least so far as the man in
me is deeper than the methodical thinker , cannot give up .
If the possibility of a " godless world " is excluded , the
faith thus restored is , for the poet , unquestionably a form
of Christian faith : there seems to him then no reason for
doubting that the
sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue ,
1 See CXXIV . iii . iv. and v.
 NOTES. 203

and the marvel of the life continued after the bodily death ,
were a manifestation of the " immortal love " which by faith
we embrace as the essence of the Divine nature . " If the
dead rise not , Christ is not risen " but if we may believe
that they rise , then it seems to him, we may and must
believe the main drift of the Gospel story : though we may
transiently wonder why the risen Lord told His disciples
only of life , and nothing of " what it is to die . " 1
From this point of view the note of Christian faith struck
in the introductory stanzas is in harmony with all that
follows . And yet I have always felt that in a certain sense
the effect of the introduction does not quite represent the
effect of the poem . Faith , in the introduction , is too
completely triumphant . I
think this is inevitable , because
so far as the thought - debate presented by the poem is
summed up , it must be summed up on the side of Faith .
Faith must give the last word : but the last word is not the
whole utterance of the truth : the whole truth is that assur-
ance and doubt must alternate in the moral world in which
we at present live , somewhat as night and day alternate in
the physical world . The revealing visions come and go ;
when they come we feel that we know : but in the intervals
we must pass through states in which all is dark , and in
which we can only struggle to hold the conviction that

power is with us in the night

Which makes the darkness and the light
And dwells not in the light alone .

" It must be remembered , " writes my father , " that

this is a poem , not an actual biography . It is founded
1 See Browning's Epistle containing the Strange Medical Ex-
perience of Karshish .
204 IN MEMORIAM .
on our friendship, on the engagement of Arthur Hallam
to my sister , on his sudden death at Vienna , just before
the time fixed for their marriage , and on his burial at
Clevedon Church . The poem concludes with the
marriage of my youngest sister Cecilia . It was meant
to be a kind of Divina Commedia , ending with happi-
ness . The sections were written at many different
places , and as the phases of our intercourse came to my
memory and suggested them . I
did not write them
with any view of weaving them into a whole , or for
publication , until I
found that I had written so many .
The different moods of sorrow as in a drama are
dramatically given , and my conviction that fear , doubts ,
and suffering will find answer and relief only through
I
Faith in a God of Love . ' ' is not always the author
speaking of himself , but the voice of the human race
speaking thro ' him . After the death of A. H. H. , the
divisions of the poem are made by First Xmas Eve
(Section XXVIII . ) , Second Xmas (LXXVIII.¹ ) , Third Xmas
Eve (civ . and cv . , etc. ) . I myself did not see Clevedon
till years after the burial of A. H. H. (Jan. 3rd , 1834 ) ,
In Memoriam altered the
and then in later editions of I
word ' chancel , ' which was the word used by Mr.
Hallam in his Memoir , to ' dark church . ' As to the
localities in which the poems were written , some were
written in Lincolnshire , some in London , Essex ,
Gloucestershire , Wales , anywhere where I happened
to be.
" And as for the metre of In Memoriam I had no

1 No. LXXII . refers to the first anniversary of the death , Sept. 15th ,
1833. No. CII . to the farewell of the family to Somersby in 1837.
 NOTES . 205

notion till 1880 that Lord Herbert of Cherbury had

written his occasional verses in the same metre . I
believed myself the originator of the metre , until after
In Memoriam came out , when some one told me that
Ben Jonson and Sir Philip Sidney had used it . The
following poems were omitted from In Memoriam when
I published , because I thought them redundant . " 1

THE GRAVE (originally No. LVII . )

(Unpublished )
I keep no more a lone distress ,
The crowd have come to see thy grave ,
Small thanks or credit shall I have ,
But these shall see it none the less .

The happy maiden's tears are free

And she will weep and give them way ;
Yet one unschool'd in want will say
" The dead are dead and let them be. "

Another whispers sick with loss :

" O let the simple slab remain !
The ' Mercy Jesu ' 2 in the rain !
The ' Miserere ' 2 in the moss !

"I love the daisy weeping dew ,

I hate the trim - set plots of art ! "
My friend , thou speakest from the heart ,
But look , for these are nature too .
1 " O Sorrow , wilt thou live with me " was added in 1851.
2 As seen by me in Tintern Abbey .
206 IN MEMORIAM.

TO A. H. H. (originally No. CVIII .)

(Unpublished )
I
Young is the grief entertain ,
And ever new the tale she tells ,
And ever young the face that dwells
With reason cloister'd in the brain :

Yet grief deserves a nobler name ,

She spurs an imitative will ;
'Tis shame to fail so far , and still
My failing shall be less my shame .

Considering what mine eyes have seen ,

And all the sweetness which thou wast ,
And thy beginnings in the past ,
And all the strength thou would'st have been :

A master mind with master minds ,

An orb repulsive of all hate ,

A will concentric with all fate ,
A life four- square to all the winds .

THE VICTOR HOURS (originally No. cxxvII .)

(Unpublished )
Are those the far - famed Victor Hours
That ride to death the griefs of men ?
I fear not , if I fear'd them then ;—
Is this blind flight the wingèd Powers ?
 NOTES. 207

Behold , ye cannot bring but good ,

And see , ye dare not touch the truth ,
Nor Sorrow beauteous in her youth ,
Nor Love that holds a constant mood .

Ye must be wiser than your looks ,

Or wise yourselves or wisdom -led ,
Else this wide whisper round my head
Were idler than a flight of rooks .

Go forward ! crumble down a throne ,

Dissolve a world , condense a star ,
Unsocket all the joints of war ,
And fuse the peoples into one .

That my father was a student of the Bible those who

have read In Memoriam know. He also eagerly read
all notable works within his reach relating to the Bible ,
and traced with deep interest such fundamental truths
as underlie the great religions of the world . He hoped
that the Bible would be more and more studied by all
ranks of people , and expounded simply by their teachers ;
for he maintained that the religion of a people could
never be founded on mere moral philosophy : and that
it could only come home to them in the simple , noble
thoughtsand facts of a Scripture like ours .
Soon after his marriage he took to reading different
systems of philosophy, yet none particularly influenced
him . The result I
think is shown in a more ordered
arrangement of religious , metaphysical and scientific
thought throughout the Idylls and his later works . " In
Poems like De Profundis and The Ancient Sage ," Jowett
208 IN MEMORIAM.
said , " he often brings up metaphysical truths from the
deepest depths . " But as a rule he knew that poetry
must touch on metaphysical topics rather by allusion
than systematically . In the following pages shall notI
give any of his subtler arguments ; but only attempt to
illustrate from In Memoriam, with some of the other
poems , and from his conversation , the general everyday
attitude of his mind toward the highest problems that
confront us . In dealing with these none was readier in
the discovery of fallacies , none was more resolute in
proclaiming what seemed to him realities .
His creed , he always said , he would not formulate ,
for people would not understand him if he did ; but he
considered that his poems expressed the principles at
the foundation of his faith .
He thought , with Arthur Hallam , that " the essential
feelings of religion subsist in the utmost diversity of
forms ," that " different language does not always imply
different opinions, nor different opinions any difference
in real faith ." "
It is impossible
, " he said , " to imagine

that the Almighty will ask you , when you come before
Him in the next life , what your particular form of creed
was but the question will rather be , ' Have you been
true to yourself , and given in My Name a cup of cold
water to one of these little ones ? '"
" This
is a terrible age of unfaith , " he would say. " I
hate utter unfaith, I
cannot endure that men should
sacrifice everything at the cold altar of what with their
imperfect knowledge they choose to call truth and
reason . One can easily lose all belief, through giving
up the continual thought and care for spiritual things . "
 NOTES. 209

Again , " I
-
tell you the nation without faith is
doomed ; mere intellectual life however advanced or
however perfected -
will not fill the void . "
And again , " In this vale of Time the hills of Time
often shut out the mountains of Eternity ."
My father's friend , the Bishop of Ripon , writes :
With those who are impatient of all spiritual truth he
had no sympathy whatever ; but he had a sympathy with
those who were impatient of the formal statement of truth ,
only because he felt that all formal statements of truth
must of necessity fall below the greatness and the grandeur
of the truth itself . There is a reverent impatience of forms ,
and there is an irreverent impatience of them . An irreverent
impatience of formal dogma means impatience of all spiritual
truth ; but a reverent impatience of formal dogma may be
but the expression of the feeling that the truth must be
larger , purer , nobler than any mere human expression or
definition of it. With this latter attitude of mind he had
sympathy , and he expressed that sympathy in song : he
could understand those who seemed
to have reach'd a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere ,
Nor cares to fix itself to form .
He urged men to " cling to faith , beyond the forms of
faith . " 1 But while he did this he also recognised clearly

1 Cf. Memoir, vol . ii . ch. xxiii . In his view of the gospel of

Christ he found his Christianity undisturbed by jarring of sects and
I
of creeds ; but he said , " dread the losing hold of forms . I have
expressed this in my Akbar. There must be forms , but I hate the
need for so many sects and separate shrines ." The life after death ,
Lightfoot and I agreed , is the cardinal point of Christianity . I
be-
lieve that God reveals Himself in every individual soul , and my idea
of heaven is the perpetual ministry of one soul to another . "
Р
210 IN MEMORIAM .
the importance and the value of definitions of truth , and
his counsel to the very man who prided himself upon his
emancipation from forms was :

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 :
Oh , sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine ! 1

He warned the man proud of his emancipation from

formal faith , that in a world of so many confusions he
might meet with ruin , " Ev'n for want of such a type . ”
And we are not surprised , knowing how insidious are the
evil influences which gather round us :

Hold thou the good ; define it well ,

For fear Divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark , and be
Procuress to the lords of Hell .

And thus he had sympathy with those who feel that

faith is larger and nobler than form , and at the same time
¹ Jowett wrote about my father's " defence of honest doubt " as
compared with this passage : Can we find any reconciliation of
these varying utterances of the same mind ? I
think that we may .
For we may argue that truth kept back is the greatest source of
doubt and suspicion that faith cannot survive without enquiry ,
and that the doubt which is raised may be the step upward to a
higher faith . And so we arrive at the conclusion that truth is good ,
and to be received thankfully and fearlessly by all who are capable
of receiving it. But on the other hand it is not always to be
imparted in its entirety to those who cannot understand it , and whose
"
minds would be puzzled and overwhelmed by it .'
 NOTES. 21I

he had tenderness and appreciation for those who find

their faith helped by form . To him, as to so many , truth
is so infinitely great that all we can do with our poor
human utterances is to try and clothe it in such language
as will make it clear to ourselves , and clear to those to

- -
whom God sends us with a message , but meanwhile , above
us and our thoughts above our broken lights God in
His mercy , God in His love , God in His infinite nature is
greater than all .

Assuredly Religion was no nebulous abstraction for

him . He consistently emphasized his own belief in what
he called the Eternal Truths ; in an Omnipotent , Omni-
present and All - loving God , Who has revealed Himself
through the human attribute of the highest self - sacrificing
love ; in the freedom of the human will ; and in the immor-
tality of the But he asserted that " Nothing worthy
soul .
proving can be proven , " and that even as to the great

laws which are the basis of Science , " We have but faith ,
we cannot know." He dreaded the dogmatism of sects
and rash definitions of God . "I dare hardly name His
Name ," he would say, and accordingly he named Him
in The Ancient Sage the " Nameless . " " But take away
belief in the self - conscious personality of God ," he
said , you take away the backbone of the world . "
" and
" On God and God - like men we build our trust . " A
week before his death I
was sitting by him , and he
talked long of the Personality and of the Love of God ,
" That God Whose
, eyes consider the poor ," " Who
catereth even for the sparrow . " " I
should," he said ,
"infinitely rather feel myself the most miserable wretch
on the face of the earth with a God above , than the
212 IN MEMORIAM .
highest type of man standing alone ." He would allow
that God is unknowable in " his whole world -self, and
all -in - all , " and that therefore there was some force in the
objection made by some people to the word " Person-
ality, " as being " anthropomorphic , " and that perhaps
" Self- consciousness " or " Mind " might be clearer to
them but at the same time he insisted that , although
""
man is like a thing of nought " in " the boundless
plan , " our highest view of God must be more or less
anthropomorphic : and that " Personality," as far as our
intelligence goes , is the widest definition and includes
" Mind ," " Self- consciousness , " " Will , " " Love ," and
other attributes of the Real , the Supreme , " the High
and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity Whose name is
Holy."
Jowett asked him to write an anthem about God for
Balliol Chapel , and he wrote The Human Cry :

We feel we are nothing -- for all is Thou and in Thee ,

--
We feel we are something that also has come from Thee ;
We know we are nothing but Thou wilt help us to be.
Hallowed be Thy name Hallelujah !

When his last book was in proof, we spoke together

of the ultimate expression of his own calm faith at the
end of his life :
That Love which is and was
My Father and my Brother and my God .

Everywhere throughout the Universe he saw the glory

and greatness of God , and the science of Nature was
particularly dear to him . Every new fact which came
 NOTES. 213

within his range was carefully weighed . As he exulted

in the wilder aspects of Nature ( see for instance Sect . xv . )
and revelled in the thunderstorm ; so he felt a joy in her
orderliness ; he felt a rest in her steadfastness , patient
progress and hopefulness ; the same seasons ever returned ;
the same stars wheeled in their courses ; the flowers
and trees blossomed and the birds sang yearly in their
appointed months ; and he had a triumphant appreciation
of her ever - new revelations of beauty . One of the In
Memoriam poems , LXXXVI . , written at Barmouth , gives
pre - eminently his sense of the joyous peace in Nature , ¹
and he would quote it in this context along with his
Spring and Bird songs .
But he was occasionally much troubled with the
intellectual problem of the apparent profusion and waste
of life , and by the vast amount of sin and suffering
throughout the world , for these seemed to militate against
the idea of the Omnipotent and All - loving Father .
No doubt in such moments he might possibly have
been heard to say what I myself have heard him say :
" An Omnipotent Creator Who could make such a
painful world is to me sometimes as hard to believe in as
to believe in blind matter behind everything . The
lavish profusion too in the natural world appals me ,
from the growths of the tropical forest to the capacity of
man to multiply , the torrent of babies . "
I
" can almost understand some of the Gnostic
all

heresies , which only after put the difficulty one step

further back
"
:

See also Sections LXXXVIII LXXXIX XCI CXV CXVI

1

CXXI
.,

.,

.,

.,

.,
.

CXXII
.
214 IN MEMORIAM.
O me ! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world ,
But had not force to shape it as he would ,

Till the High God behold it from beyond

And enter it , and make it beautiful ?¹

After one of these moods in the summer of 1892 he

exclaimed : " Yet God is love , transcendent , pervad-

all
-
ing

or
We do not get this faith from Nature the
!

If

world we look

of
Nature alone full perfection
at

,
.

and imperfection she tells us that God

is
disease
,

,
murder and rapine We get this faith from ourselves

,
.

highest within
us
from what which recognizes that
is

not one fruitless pang just

as
there not one
is

there

is
,

lost good
"
.

He had been reading the eighth chapter of the

Epistle the Romans and said that he thought that
to

St. Paul fully recognized

of

Nature and
in

the sorrows
in the miseries of the world stumbling block the to
a

divine idea of God but that they are the preludes

,

things are the higher good For

to
as

necessary
"
,
,

myself the world the shadow of God

is

he said
"
"
"
,

My father invariably believed that humility

is

the
2

only true attitude of the human soul and therefore

,

spoke with the greatest reserve of what he called these

"

He would sometimes put forward the old theory that The

"
1

world part of an infinite plan incomplete because part We

is

is
it

a
,

cannot therefore read the riddle

"
.

Almost the finest summing up Religion do justice to

to
of
"

is
2

,
'

love mercy and walk humbly with God — T.

A
to

"
,

.
'

He often quoted Newton's saying that we are like children picking

up pebbles on the shore of the Infinite Ocean
.
 NOTES . 215

unfathomable mysteries , " as befitting

one who did not
dogmatise , but who knew that the Finite can by no
means grasp the Infinite : " Dark is the world to thee , ¹
thyself art the reason why " ; and yet , he had a profound
trust that when all is seen face to face , all will be seen
as the best . " Fear not thou the hidden purpose of
that Power which alone is great . " "Who knows
whether Revelation be not itself a veil to hide the Glory
of that Love which we could not look upon , without
marring the sight and our onward progress ? "
This faith was to him the breath of life , and never ,
Ifeel , really failed him , or life itself would have failed .
Free - will and its relation to the meaning of human
life and to circumstance was latterly one of his most
common subjects of conversation . Free-will was un-
doubtedly , he said , the " main - miracle , apparently an
actof self-limitation by the Infinite , and yet a revelation
by Himself of Himself . " " Take away the sense of
individual responsibility and men sink into pessimism
and madness ." He wrote at the end of the poem
Despair : " In my boyhood I
came across the Cal-
vinist Creed , and assuredly however unfathomable the
mystery , if one cannot believe in the freedom of the
human will as of the Divine , life is hardly worth having ."
The lines that he oftenest repeated about Free- will were :

This main - miracle , that thou art thou ,

With power on thine own act and on the world.2

1 The real mysteries to him were Time , life , and " finite -infinite "
space and so he talks of the soul " being born and banish'd into
mystery. "
2 De Profundis.
216 IN MEMORIAM. 1

Then he would enlarge upon man's consequent moral

obligations , upon the Law which claims a free obedience ,
and upon the pursuit of moral perfection (in imitation of
the Divine ) to which man is called . "Be ye perfect as
your Father in heaven is perfect . "
And he wrote for me as to man's will being free but
only within certain limits : " Man's Free- will is but a
bird in a cage ; he can stop at the lower perch , or he
can mount to a higher . Then that which is and knows
will enlarge his cage , give him a higher and a higher
perch , and at last break off the top of his cage , and let
him out to be one with the Free - will of the Universe. ”
Then he said earnestly : " If the absorption into the
divine in the after - life be the creed of some , let them at
all events allow us many existences of individuality
before this absorption ; since this short -lived individu-
ality seems to be but too short a preparation for so
mighty a union . " 1
Death's truer name
Is " Onward , " in the roll
no discordance
And march of that Eternal Harmony
Whereto the worlds beat time .

In the same way , "O living will that shalt endure " 2
he explained as that which we know as Free - will , the
higher and enduring part of man . He held that there
was an intimate connexion between the human and the
divine , and that each individual will had a spiritual and
eternal significance with relation to other individual wills
as well as to the Supreme and Eternal Will .
Throughout his life he had a constant feeling of a
1 Cf. In Memoriam , XLVII . 2 In Memoriam , CXXXI .
 NOTES. 217

harmony existing between ourselves and the

spiritual
outward visible Universe , and of the actual Immanence
of God in the infinitesimal atom as in the vastest system.¹
"If God , " he would say,
(C
were to withdraw Himself for
one single instant from this Universe , everything would
vanish into nothingness ." When speaking on that
subject he said to me : " My most passionate desire is
to have a clearer and fuller vision of God . The soul
seems to me one with God , how I cannot tell . I can
sympathize with God in my poor little way . " In some
phases of thought and feeling his idealism tended more
decidedly to mysticism . He wrote : " A kind of waking
trance I have frequently had , quite up from boyhood ,
when I have been all alone . This has generally come
upon me thro ' repeating my own name two or three
times to myself silently , till all at once , as it were out of
the intensity of the consciousness of individuality , the
individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into
boundless being , and this not a confused state , but the
clearest of the clearest , the surest of the surest , the
weirdest of the weirdest , utterly beyond words , where
death was an almost laughable impossibility , the loss of
personality ( if so it were ) seeming no extinction but the
only true life ." 2 " This might , " he said , " be the state

1 He would point out the difficulties of materialism , and would

propound to us , when we were boys , the old puzzle : Look at the "
mystery of a grain of sand ; you can divide it for ever and for ever.
You cannot conceive anything material of which you cannot conceive
the half . " He disliked the Atomic theory : and was taken by the
theory of aboriginal centres offorce .
2 Cf. The Ancient Sage, and the smaller partial anticipation in In
Memoriam , Xcv . ix .
218 IN MEMORIAM .
which St. Paul describes Whether in the body
, ' can- I
not or whether out of the body I cannot tell. ' "
tell ,
I
He continued : " am ashamed of my feeble descrip-
tion . Have I
not said the state is utterly beyond
words ? But in a moment , when I come back to my
normal state of ' sanity , ' I am ready to fight for mein
liebes Ich, and hold that it will last for æons of æons . "

In the same way he said that there might be a more

intimate communion than we could dream of between
the living and the dead , at all events for a time .
May all love ,
His love , unseen but felt , o'ershadow Thee ,
Till God's love set Thee at his side again !

And-
The Ghost in Man , the Ghost that once was Man ,
But cannot wholly free itself from Man ,
Are calling to each other thro ' a dawn
Stranger than earth has ever seen ; the veil
Is rending, and the Voices of the day
Are heard across the Voices of the dark .

I need not enlarge upon his faith in the Immortality

of the Soul as he has dwelt upon that so fully in his
poems . "I can hardly understand , " he said , " how any
great , imaginative man , who has deeply lived , suffered ,
thought and wrought , can doubt of the Soul's continuous
progress in the after -life . " His poem of Wages he liked
to quote on this subject .
He more than once said what he has expressed in
Vastness : " Hast Thou made all this for naught ? Is
all this trouble of life worth undergoing if we only end
 NOTES. 219

in our own corpse - coffins at last ? If you allow a God ,

and God allows this strong instinct and universal yearn-
ing for another life , surely that is in a measure a pre-
sumption of We cannot give up the mighty
its
truth

.
us
hopes that make men

"
.
My own dim life should teach me this

,
That life shall live for evermore

,
Else earth

at
darkness the core
is

,
And dust and ashes all that

is
.
What then were God to such as

I?
have heard him even say that he would rather

"
I

to

know that he was be lost eternally than not know

that the whole human race was live eternally
to

"
.
One day towards the end of his life he bade me
look into the Revised Version and see how the Revisers ye
had translated the passage Depart from me cursed
"
,

,
into everlasting fire His disappointment was keen
"
.

when he found that the translators had not altered

or some such word for
""

everlasting into æonian

"
"

he never would believe that Christ could preach ever-

“

lasting punishment
"
.

Fecemi
la

divina potestate
La somma sapienza primo amore
e
,

,
'l

quoting
of

which he fond this

in

were words was

they were
as

kind of unconscious confession

if

relation
a
,

by Dante that Love must conquer

at

the last
.

to

Letters were not unfrequently addressed him

asking what his opinions were about Evolution about
,

Prayer and about Christ

,

.
220 IN MEMORIAM .
Of Evolution he said : " That makes no difference
to me , even if the Darwinians did not , as they do ,
exaggerate Darwinism . To God all is present . He sees
present , past , and future as one . "
the poem , By an Evolutionist , written in 1888
In
he was dangerously he defined his position

ill
when

;
,
he conceived that the further science progressed the

,
more the Unity Nature and the purpose hidden
of

,
process

of
behind the cosmic and

in
matter motion
changing forms would be apparent
of

life Some one

,

.
asked him whether account for genius

to
was not hard
it

by Evolution He put aside the question for he believed

,
.

to
that genius was the greatest mystery itself

.
To Tyndall he once said No evolutionist able

is
"
,

the mind of Man

or

to explain how any possible

physiological change can produce
of

tissue conscious
thought Yet he was inclined think that the theory
to to
"
.

of Evolution caused the world regard more clearly

Life of Nature
as

the lower stage

in

the manifestation
"

is a

principle which more fully manifested

of

in

the
a

spiritual life this process of

of

man with the idea that

as in
,

Evolution the lower

to

to be regarded means the

is

higher
"
.

In Maud he spoke
of

the making
of

man
:
to

As nine months go the shaping an infant ripe for his

birth
,

the making of
to

So many ages have gone

of

million
a

man
:

He now but he the last

is

first
is

?
,

The answer he would give this query was

to

No
“

,
:
 NOTES . 221

mankind is as yet on one of the lowest rungs of the

ladder , ¹ although every man has and has had from
everlasting his true and perfect being in the Divine
Consciousness . "
About prayer he said : " The reason why men find
it hard to regard prayer in the same light in which it
was formerly regarded is, that we seem to know more of
the unchangeableness of Law : but I
believe that God
reveals Himself in each individual soul . Prayer is , to
take a mundane simile , like opening a sluice between
the great ocean and our little channels when the great
sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide. "
" Prayer on our part is the highest aspiration of the
soul. "
A breath that fleets beyond this iron world
And touches Him who made it.

And
Speak to Him thou for He hears , and Spirit with Spirit
can meet-
Closer is He than breathing , and nearer than hands and
feet .

And
More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of.

He said that "O Thou Infinite , Amen , " was the form
of prayer which he himself used in the time of trouble
and sorrow and that it was better to suffer than to lose
the power of suffering .
1 ""
' The herald of a higher race.'
222 IN MEMORIAM.
When questions were written to him about Christ , he
"
would say to me : Answer for me that have given I
my belief in In Memoriam . >>
"1
As the Master of Balliol wrote :

The In Memoriam records most of his inner nature . It

was the higher and prevailing temper of his mind . He
used to regard it as having said what he had to say on
religion .

The main testimony to Christianity he found not in

miracles but in that eternal witness , the revelation of
what might be called " The Mind of God ," in the
Christian morality , and its correlation with the divine in
man .
He had a measureless admiration for the Sermon on
the Mount and for the Parables- " perfection , beyond
;

compare ," he called them. I

heard a talk on these
between him and Browning , and Browning fully agreed
with my father in his admiration . Moreover my father
expressed his conviction that " Christianity with
its
divine Morality but without the central figure of Christ
,

the Son of Man would become cold and that

is
it
,

fatal for religion lose its warmth that The Son of

to

";

"

Man was the most tremendous title possible

""

that the
;

forms of Christian
religion would alter but that the
;

in
of

to

spirit Christ would still grow from more more

"

the roll of the ages

.
"

Till all men's good

in

each man find his own

,

And all men work in noble brotherhood

.

In Memoriam XXXVI
1

.
 NOTES. 223

" This is one of my meanings , " he said , " of

Ring in the Christ that is to be- (cvI . ) :
when Christianity without bigotry will triumph , when the
controversies of creeds shall have vanished , and

Shall bear false witness , each of each , no more ,

But find their limits by that larger light ,
And overstep them , moving easily
Thro' after -ages in the Love of Truth ,
The truth of Love . " 1

" The most pathetic utterance in all history," he said ,

"is that of Christ on the Cross , ' It is finished , ' after
that passionate cry , ' My God , My God , why hast Thou
forsaken Me ? " " Nevertheless he also recognized the
note of triumph in " It is finished . " "I
am always
amazed when I read the New Testament at the splendour
of Christ'spurity and holiness and at His infinite pity . ” 2
He disliked discussion on the Nature of Christ , " seeing
that such discussion was mostly unprofitable , for none
knoweth the Son but the Father . " "He went about
doing good , " he would say : and one of the traditional
and unwritten sayings of Christ which oftenest came
home to him was , " He that is near Me is near the
fire , " the baptism of the fire of inspiration . For in
In Memoriam the soul , after grappling with anguish and
darkness , doubt and death , emerges with the inspiration
of a strong and steadfast faith in the Love of God for
1 Akbar's Dream .
2 What he called the " man -woman " in Christ , the union of
tenderness and strength .
224 IN MEMORIAM.
man , and in the oneness of man with God , and of man
with man in Him-
That God , which ever lives and loves ,
One God , one law, one element ,
And one far - off divine event ,
To which the whole creation moves .

p. 39. IN Memoriam . [ My father wrote in 1839 :

"We must bear or we must die . It is easier
perhaps to die , but infinitely
less noble . The
immortality of man disdains and rejects the
thought the immortality of man to which
the cycles and æons are as hours and days . "
-ED . ]
p. 39. Introduction . Verse i. immortal Love . [ In answer
to a friend my father said : " This might be
taken in a St. John sense ." Cf. 1 John iv.
•
and v.-ED. ]
p. 39. Introduction . Verse ii .
Thine are these orbs of light and shade.
Sun and moon .

p. 39. Introduction . Verse iv . [An old version of

this verse was left by my father in MS . in a
book of prayers written by my mother :
Thou seemest human and divine ,
Thou madest man , without, within ,
But who shall say thou madest sin ?

For who shall say, ' It is not mine ' ?

ED . ]
 NOTES. 225

p. 40. Introduction . Verse vi .

For knowledge is of things we see.
τὰ φαινόμενα .
p. 40. Introduction . Verse vii .
May make one music as before .
As in the ages of faith .
p. 41. Section 1. Verse alluded to
i . , lines 3 and 4. I
Goethe's Among his last words were
creed .
these : " Von Aenderungen zu höheren Aen-
derungen , " " from changes to higher changes ."

p. 41. Section 1. Verse i. divers tones . [ My father

" Goethe
p.
would often say,
so many different styles . " - is consummate
ED .]
in

41. Section 1. Verse ii .

The far-off interest of tears .
The good that grows for us out of grief.
p.
iii

41. Section 1. Verses Yet better to

is
iv

it
[
.,

bear the wild misery of extreme grief than

that Time should obliterate the sense of loss
and deaden the power love.-ED.
of

Verse
p

II

42. Section
i.
.
.

Thy fibres net the dreamless head

.

Νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα

.

Od 521 etc.
.x

,
.

Verse Cf. XXXIX

iii
.p

42. Section
II

.
.

To touch thy thousand years of gloom

.

No autumn tints ever change the green gloom

[

the yew.-ED.
of

Q
226 IN MEMORIAM.
p.

III

of
43. Section First realization blind sorrow

.
.p 43. Section III Verse

is ii
.
.
A
web wov'n across the sky

.
Cf. cxxII i.-ED.

]
[

.
From out waste places comes cry

,
And murmurs from the dying sun

.
Expresses the feeling that sad things Nature

in
affect him who mourns

.
p

iii
IV

44. Section Verse

.
.
.

chilling tears

of
Break thou deep vase
,

,
That grief hath shaken into frost

.
Water can be brought
- below freezing point

-
and not turn into ice be kept still but
if
it it

;
suddenly turns into ice and
if

be moved
it

may break the vase

.
vi
p

45. Section Verses

ii
,
.
i.
.
.

One writes that Other friends remain

',
,

'

That Loss common to the race'-

is

And common
is

the commonplace
,

And vacant chaff well meant for grain

.

That loss is common would not make

My own less bitter rather more
,

Too common Never morning wore

!

To evening but some heart did break

,

Cf. Lucretius 578

ii
.

Nec nox ulla diem neque noctem Aurora

secuta est
,

Quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris

Ploratus
.
 NOTES. 227

My friend W. G. Ward , the well -known meta-

physician , used to carry these two verses in his
pocket for he said that he felt so keenly that
the vast sorrow in the world made no differ-
ence to his own personal deep sorrows but
through the feeling of his own sorrow he felt
-
the universal sorrow more terribly than could
be conceived . [ Cf. Memoir , i. 202 ; ib . 436 .

-ED . ]
p. 46. Section vi . Verse v . [ My father was writing to
Arthur Hallam in the hour that he died.-ED. ]

p. 47. Section VII . Verse i .

Dark house , by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street .

67 Wimpole Street [ the house of the historian .

Henry Hallam . A. H. H. used to say, " You
will always find us at sixes and sevens . " Cf.
CXIX.-ED. ].

p. Ix . Verse Phosphor
of
iii

49. Section star dawn

,
.

.
p

to

Sphere
IX

Verse
iv

49. Section Addressed

[
.

the starry heavens Cf. Enoch Arden

:
.

Then the great stars that globed themselves

in heaven
.

ED
.
]
.p . p

-
Ix

50. Section Verse See below LXXIX Ed

v

,
[
.

]
.

-
to
iii

50. Section Verse home bred fanciesrefers

x

-
.

the lines that follow

churchyard or -
the wish to rest in the
ED
in

the chancel
.

.
].
228 IN MEMORIAM.
p. 51. Section x . Verse v. tangle , or " oar- weed "
(Laminaria digitata ).

p. 51. Section xi . Verse ii.

Calm and deep peace on this high wold.
A Lincolnshire wold or upland from which
the whole range of marsh to the sea is visible .

p. ii .
I
52. Section XII . Verse
leave this mortal ark behind .
My spirit flies from out my material self .
p. 52. Section XII . Verse iii . ocean - mirrors rounded
large .[ The circles of water which bound the
horizon as seen below in the flight . Cf.
Thro ' many a fair sea - circle , day by day .
Enoch Arden . - ED . ]
p. 53. Section XIII . Verse iv. [ Time will teach him the
full reality of his loss , whereas now he scarce
believes in it , and is like one who between
sleep and waking can weep and has dream-
fancies . ED. ]
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears .
[ Contrast the tearless grief in IV .
iii

and xx
,
.

-ED
]
.
.p

xiv The unreality

of

54. Section Death

]
¹
[
.

.
.p

iii

54. Section XIV Verse

.
.

half divine
as

The man held

I

My He
as

father said was near perfection

"
,
[

—ED
as

mortal man could be

."

]
.

Note by my mother
1

.
 NOTES . 229

p. 55. Sectionxv. [The stormy night, except it were

for my fear for the " sacred bark , " would be
in sympathy with me.-ED. ]

p. 55. Section xv . Verse i.

And roar from yonder dropping day .
From the West .

p. 55. Section xv. Verse iii

.

of
Athwart plane molten glass
a

.
A calm sea
.

xvi He questions himself about these

.p

56. Section
[
.

of

alternations calm despair and wild un-

"

"

"
rest Do these changes only pass over the
"
.

surface of the mind while the depth still

in

or

abides his unchanging sorrow has his

?

reason been stunned by his grief —ED

?

]
.
.p

58. Section XVIII Verse

i.
.

Where he in English earth laid

is

Clevedon
.

The violet of his native land

.

Cf.
Lay her the earth
"

in

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring
"
.

Hamlet 261
.v
,

.i

.
-
p

XIX Written Tintern Abbey ED

at

59. Section
]
[
.

.
230 IN MEMORIAM .
p. 59. Section xix . Verse i.

The Danube to the Severn gave .

He died at Vienna and was brought to

Clevedon to be buried .

p. 59. Section xix . Verse ii .

There twice a day the Severn fills ;
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye ,
And makes a silence in the hills .
Taken from my own observation
of the Wye are stilled by the
the rapids
incoming sea.
-
p. 62. Section XXII . Verse i . four sweet years . [ 1828-
32.-ED. ]
p. 63. Section XXIII . Verse ii .
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds .
After death we shall learn the truth of all
beliefs .

p. 64. Section xxIII . Verse v.

And all the secret of the Spring.
Re -awakening of life .

p. 64. Section XXIV . Verse i. wandering isles of night ,

sun - spots .

p. 65. Section xxiv . Verse iv .

And orb into the perfect star, etc.

[Cf. Locksley Hall Sixty Years After :

 NOTES . 231

Hesper Venus - were we native to that

splendour
or in Mars ,
We should see the Globe we groan in , fairest
of their evening stars .
ED. ]
p. 65. Section xxv . Verse i. this was Life
but the burden was shared .
- chequered ,

p. 66. Section xxvI . Verse ii .

And if that eye which watches guilt , etc.
The Eternal Now . AM . I
p. xxvi . Verse
iii

66. Section
.

And Love the

be
to
indifference

.
-
And that the present Love will end future

in
[

indifference ED
]
.

.
p

xxvi Verse
iv

66. Section
.
.
.

Then might find ere yet the morn

I
,

Breaks hither over Indian seas

.

Cf. Midsummer Night's Dream

10

and
II
ii
[

,
-

.
.

Comus 140
,

Ere the blabbing eastern scout

"

The nice morn on the Indian steep

,

From her cabin'd loophole peep

"
.

Then might the original MS So might

in

was
I

I.-ED.
]

my proper scorn scorn myself

of
,

Verse iii
p

67. Section XXVII want begotten rest

.

-
.

-
means rest — the result of some deficiency
or

narrowness ED
]
.
.
232 IN MEMORIAM.
p. 68. Section xxvIII . Verse v.
The merry merry bells of Yule.
They always used to ring on Xmas Eve .

p. 68. Section XXIX . [ Original reading of first verse

(MS . ) :

With such compelling cause to grieve

As that which drains our days of peace ,
And fetters thought to his decease ,
How dare we keep our Christmas - eve .
ED . ]

p. 69. Section XXIX . [ Original reading of third verse

( MS .) :
But this to keep it like the last ,
To keep it even for his sake ;
Lest one more link should seem to break ,
And Death sweep all into the Past .
ED.]
p. 69. Section xxx . Verse ii. the hall was the dining-
room at Somersby which my father [the Rev.
G. C. Tennyson ] built .

p. 70. Section xxx . Verse vii .

Rapt from the fickle and the frail.
[Cf. The Ring:
No sudden heaven , nor sudden hell , for man ,
But thro ' the Will of One who knows and
rules-
And utter knowledge is but utter love-
Æonian Evolution , swift or slow ,
 NOTES. 233

Thro ' all the Spheres

An ever lessening earth .
- an ever opening height ,

Cf. Memoir, ii . 365.—ED. ]

Rapt , taken .

P. 70. Section xxx . Verse viii . when Hope was born .

[ My father often said : " The cardinal point
of Christianity is the life after death . " ED . ] -
p. 71. Section xxxi . " She goeth unto the grave to
weep there " (St. John xi . 31 ) .

p. 71. Section xxxI . Verse ii .

Had surely added praise to praise .

giving . -
[ Would have doubled
ED . ]
our sense of thanks-

p. 71. Section xxxi . Verse iv. [ He is Lazarus . - Ed . ]

p. 72. Section XXXIII . Verse ii .
A life that leads melodious days .
Cf. Statius , Silv . . 3 :i
ceu veritus turbare Vopisci
Pieriosque dies et habentes carmina somnos .

p. 73. Section xxxIII . Verse iv.

In holding by the law within .

[ In holding an intellectual faith which does.
not care " to fix itself to form .” — ED . ]

p. 73. Section XXXIV . Verse i. [ See Introduction ,

supra , pp. 218 , 219.-ED. ]

p. 74. Section xxxv. Verse i. the narrow house , the

grave .
 •
234 IN MEMORIAM .
p. 74. Section xxxv . Verse iii . Eonian hills , the
everlasting hills .

The vastness of the Ages to come may

seem to militate against that Love . [ Cf.
CXXIII . ii.—ED. ]

P. 74. Section xxxv. Verse iv .

The sound of that forgetful shore .
"The land where all things are forgotten . "

p. 75. Section xxxvI . [ See Introduction , supra , p . 222 .

-ED . ]
p. 75. Section xxxvi . Verse ii .
For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers ,
Where truth in closest words shall fail ,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors .
For divine Wisdom had to deal with the
limited powers of humanity , to which truth
logically argued out would be ineffectual ,
whereas truth coming in the story of the
Gospel can influence the poorest .

p. xxxvi . Verse
iii

75. Section the Word As the

in
[
.
.

first chapter St. John's Gospel

of

the Revela-
tion of the Eternal Thought of the Universe
.

-ED
]
.

By
p

xxxvI wild
iv

76. Section Verse those eyes

.

this intended the Pacific Islanders wild

is

"

"
,
in
of

having sense barbarian

it
"
a

"

.
 NOTES. 235

p. 76. Section XXXVII . The Heavenly muse bids the

poet's muse sing on a less lofty theme .
[ Melpomene , the earthly muse of tragedy ,
answers for the poet : " I
am compelled to
speak as I
think of the dead and of his
words of the comfort in the creed of creeds ,
although I feel myself unworthy to speak of
such mysteries ."] ¹

p. 77. Section xxxvII . Verse v. [ The original reading

in first edition :
And dear as sacramental wine .
ED. ]
p. 77. Section XXXVII . Verse vi . master's field , the
province of Christianity ( see xxxvi .) .

p. 77. Section XXXVIII . Verse ii . the blowing season ,

the blossoming season .

p. 78. Section XXXIX . Verse i . smoke . The yew , when

flowering , in a wind or if struck sends up
its

pollen like smoke Cf. The Holy Grail

[

:
.

Beneath world old yew tree darkening half

a

,
-

The cloisters on gustful April morn

a
,

That puff'd the swaying branches into smoke

.

Cf. Memoir 53.—ED.

ii
,

]
.
.p

78. Section xxxix Verse

is ii.
.

When flower feeling after flower

.
-

The yew ED
is

dioecious
[

]
.
.

Note by my mother
1

.
236 IN MEMORIAM.
p. In

as
xxxIx .

in
iii
Verse Section

II
78. Section

.,
.
this section Sorrow only

of
the two last lines

,
saw the winter gloom of the foliage

.
p

79. Section XL Verse vii would have told means

[
.

.
-would

to
desire be told.-ED.

]
p

80. Section XL Verse viii have parted with thee

I
.

.
until die and my paths are

in
the fields

I
I
, lands which

in
know whilst thine are do

I
,

not know Cf. the undiscovered country

"

",
[
.

i.—Ed.
III

Hamlet
,

]
.
p

80. Section XLI This section alludes

to
the doctrine
[
.

which from first

-
to

so
many ways

in
last and
,
and images my father proclaimed the

"
,

upward and onward progress — ED

of
life

]
”
.

.
p

Section XLI
iv

80. Verse
.
.
.

The howlings from forgotten fields

.
The eternal miseries of the Inferno
.

More especially feel sure reminiscence

a
I

,
,
of [

Dante's Inferno Canto

iii

lines 25-51
,

,
.

which he often quoted giving terribly the

as

horror of all They describe those wretched

it
.

beings who for ever shriek and wail and beat

,

their breasts because they are despised and

,

forgotten and consigned everlasting nothing-

to
,

ness on account of their colourlessness and

indifference during life
:

Fama
di

loro mondo esser non lassa

il

Misericordia giustizia gli sdegna

e

Non ragionam lor ma guarda passa

di

e
,

ED
].
 NOTES. 237

p. 81. Section XLI . Verse vi . secular to -be, xons of the

future . [ Cf. LXXVI . ii . :
The secular abyss to come .
ED . ]

p. 82. Section XLIII . If the immediate life after death

be only sleep , and the spirit between this life

and the next should be folded like a flower in
a night slumber , then the remembrance of
the past might remain , as the smell and colour
do in the sleeping flower ; and in that case
the memory of our love would last as true ,
and would live pure and whole within the
spirit of my friend until it was unfolded at
the breaking of the morn , when the sleep
was over .

p. 82. Section XLIII . Verse i.

Thro' all its intervital gloom .

In the passage between this life and the next .

p. 82. Section XLIII . Verse iv .

And at the spiritual prime .

Dawn of the spiritual life hereafter .

p. 82. Section XLIV . Verse i .

God shut the doorways of his head.
Closing of the skull after babyhood .
The dead after this life may have no re-
membrance of life , like the living babe who
forgets the time before the sutures of the
skull are closed , yet the living babe grows in
238 IN MEMORIAM.
knowledge , and though the remembrance of
his earliest days has vanished , yet with his
increasing knowledge there comes a dreamy
vision of what has been ; it may be so with
the dead ; if so, resolve my doubts , etc.

p. 84. Section XLV . Verse iv .

This use may lie in blood and breath .

[The purpose of the life here may be to realise
personal consciousness , else blood and breath
would not bear their due fruit . ED . ] -
p. XLVI . [ The original reading of first
-
84. Section
verse (MS . ) :
In travellingthro' this lower clime ,
With reason our memorial power
Is shadow'd by the growing hour,
Lest this should be too much for time .
It is better for us who go forward on the path
of life that the past should in the main grow
dim.-ED. ]
p. 85. Section XLVI . Verse iv. Original reading of
first line was :
O me , Love's province were not large .
Love , a brooding star . As if Lord of the whole
life.
[ Memory fails here , but memory in the
next life must have all our being and exist-
ence clearly in view ; and will see Love shine
forth as if Lord of
the whole life (not merely
of those five years of friendship ) , — the wider
 NOTES. 239

landscape aglow
deep dawn behind the tomb . "
with the sunrise of
- ED . ]
" that

p. 85. Section XLVII . The individuality

lasts after
death , andwe are not utterly absorbed into
the Godhead . If
we are to be finally merged
in the Universal Soul , Love asks to have at
least one more parting before we lose our-
selves.1

p.
iii
86. Section XLVIII . Verse
. shame to draw
The deepest measure .

For there are thoughts that do often lie too

"
[

deep for mere poetic words ED -

"

]
.

.
p

87. Section XLIX Verse crisp curl ripple Cf.

ii

,
.

.
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach
The Lotos Eaters - ED
.
.
-

.
].
p

The
LI

See Memoir
iv

89. Section Verse 481.

,
[
.

i.
to

Queen quoted this verse my father about

the Prince Consort just after his death and
,

told him that had brought her great com-

it

fort.-ED.
]

89. Section LII

p

as

cannot love thee ought for

I
I

,
[
.

human nature frail and cannot be perfect

is

like Christ's Yet the ideal and truth

is
it

,
.

to the ideal which make the wealth of life.2

,

The direct line of thought

more that not
is

even the Gospel tale keeps man wholly true

See Introduction supra 216.—ED.
.p
1

Note by my mother
2

.
240 IN MEMORIAM .
to the ideal of Christ .
shortcoming
But nothing no
of frail humanity — can move
-
that Spirit of the highest love from our side
which bids us endure and abide the issue.—
ED. ]
p. 89. Section LII . Verse iv . Abide , wait without
wearying .

p. LIII . Verses ii. ,

to .iii

iv
90. Section

.
And dare we this fancy give

.
passionate heat

of
There

in
nature
is
a

a
rake sometimes The nature that yields
.

emotionally may turn out straighter than

a
prig's Yet we must not be making excuses

,
.

but we must set before us rule of good for

a

young as for old

.

LIII divine Philosophy

.p

Verse
iv

90. Section Cf.

[
.

XXIII vi.-ED. .
]
.

Verse
.p

91. Section LV
i.
.

-
The likest God within the soul
.

The inner consciousness the divine in man

.
iii

Verse
p

92. Section LV
.
.
.

And finding that fifty seeds

of

She often brings but one

to

bear
.

Fifty should be myriad

"

"
"

the larger hope My

.p

92. Section LV Verse

" v

[
.
.

father means by the larger hope that the

"

whole human race would through perhaps

,

length purified and

be
of

ages suffering
at
,
 NOTES. 241

saved , even those who now better not with

time , " so that at the end of The Vision of Sin
we read :
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn .

ED . ]

p. 93. Section LVI . Verse vi . Dragons of the prime.

The geologic monsters of the early ages .

p. 94. Section LVII . [Cf. The Grave. See Introduc-

tion , supra , p . 205.—ED. ]

p. 94. Section LVII . Verse ii. I shall pass ; my work

will fail. The poet speaks of these poems .
Methinks I built a rich shrine to my
have
friend , but it will not last .

p. 94. Section LVII . Verse iv . Ave, Ave. Cf. Catullus,

Carm . ci . 10 , these terribly pathetic lines :
Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu
Atque in perpetuum frater Ave atque Vale .

[ My father wrote : " Nor can any modern

elegy , so long as men retain the least hope
in the after - life of those whom they loved ,

lasting farewell . " ED . ]-

equal in pathos the desolation of that ever-

p. 95. Section LVIII . Ulysses was written soon after

Arthur Hallam's death , and gave my feelings
about the need of going forward and braving
the struggle of life perhaps more simply than
anything in In Memoriam .
R
242 IN MEMORIAM .
p. 95. Section LIX . [ Inserted in 1851 as a pendant to
Section III.-ED. ]
p. 97. Section LXI . In
power of love not even the
greatest dead can surpass the poet .

p. 97. Section LXI . Verse i . [ Cf. xxxviii . iii.—ED. ]

p. Section LXI . Verse

iii
97. doubtful shore Cf.

[
.

.
and that which should be man

,
From that one light no man can look upon

,
Drew to this shore by the suns and moons

lit
And all the shadows
.
De Profundis

.
And
:

And we the poor earth's dying race and yet

,

,
No phantoms watching from phantom shore a
,

,
Await the last and largest sense
to
make
The phantom walls of this illusion fade
,
And show us that the world wholly fair
is

The Ancient Sage.-ED. .

]
.p

99. Section LXIV This section was composed by

[
.

my father when he was walking up and down

the Strand and Fleet Street - ED
]
.

of
p

golden keys
]. iii

99. Section LXIV Verse keys

[
.

.
of

office State ED
.

.
.p

101. Section LXVII Verse

i.
.

By that broad water of the west

.

The Severn
.
.p

LXVII Verse myself did not see

iv

102. Section
I
.

Clevedon till years after the burial of H. H.

A.
 NOTES. 243

(Jan. 3 , 1834 ) , and then in later editions of

In Memoriam I altered the word " chancel "
(which was the word used by Mr. Hallam in
his Memoir) to " dark church . ”

p. 102. Section LXVIII . Verse i . Death's twin - brother .

66
' Consanguineus Leti Sopor " (Aen . vi. 278 ) .
[ Cf. Il. xiv . 231 ; Пl . xvi . 672 and 682.-
-ED . ]
p. 103. Section LXIX . To write poems about death and
grief is " to wear a crown of thorns , " which
the people say ought to be laid aside .

p. 104. Section LXIX . Verse iv .

I found an angel of the night .

But the Divine Thing in the gloom brought
comfort .

p. 105. Section LXXI . [ The original reading of first

verse (MS .) :
Old things are clear in waking trance ,
And thou , O Sleep , hast made at last
A night -long Present of the Past
In which we went thro' sunny France .
ED.]
we went [ in 1832 (see Memoir , i . 51 foll .,
and the poem In the Valley of Cauteretz ).
-ED . ].
p. 105. Section LXXI . [ The original reading of last verse
(MS . ) :
244 IN MEMORIAM.
Beside the river's wooded reach ,
The meadow set with summer flags ,
The cataract clashing from the crags ,
The breaker breaking on the beach .
ED.]
p. 105. Section LXXI . Verse iv .
The cataract flashing from the bridge .
[ That is, from under the bridge . — ED . ]

p. 106. Section LXXII . Hallam's death - day , September

the 15th . [ Cf. XCIX.-ED. ]

-
p. 106. Section LXXII . Verse iv . yet look'd . [ Yet wouldst
have looked . Ed . ]
p.
-
107. Section LXXII . Verse vii . thy dull goal ofjoyless
gray [the dull sunset . ED . ] .

p. 107. Section LXXIII . Verse ii .

For nothing is that errs from law .
Cf. Zoroaster's saying , " Nought errs from law ."

p. 108. Section LXXIII . Verse iv .

And self-infolds the large results
Offorce that would have forged a name.
[And conserves the strength which would have
gone to the making of a name . Cf. Ode on
the Death of the Duke of Wellington :
Gone ; but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own
Being here ,
and foll.-ED. ]
 NOTES . 245

p. 109. Section LXXV . Verse of song Cf.

iii
the breeze

.
Pindar Pyth

iv
ovpov vpvwv

3
,

:
.

.
iv
.p

109. Section LXXV Verse

.
.
Thy leaf has perish'd

in
the green

.
At twenty three

.
-
.p

109. Section LXXVI Verse

i.
.

Take wings a of
fancy and ascend

,
in

And moment set thy face

Where all the starry heavens

of
space

Are sharpen'd needle's end

to
a

.
in

So distant void space that all our firmament

would appear needle point thence
to

be
a

.
.p

110. Section LXXVI Verse

ii
.
.

The secular abyss

to

come
= the
cf.
to

ages upon ages be Sect XLI vi

=

.
).

The
.p

the matin songs

iii

110. Section LXXVI Verse

.

great early poets

.
p

110. Section LXXVI The yew

iv

Verse these remain

.

[
.

and oak.-ED.
]

III
iii

Verse
.p

Section LXXVII then changed to

-
.
.

something else The grief that no longer

is

a
[
.

grief ED
]
.

III
p

Section LXXVIII
iii

Verse
.
.
.

The mimic picture's breathing grace

.

Tableaux vivants
.
246 IN MEMORIAM .
p. III Section LXXVIII . Verse hoodman blind blind

iii
.

,
-
.
man's buff Cf.

[
.
What devil was't

"
That thus hath you

at
cozen'd hoodman-

""
blind

III
Hamlet 77.—ED.

iv

]
,

.
The section addressed to
.p

is
112. Section LXXIX

.
my brother Charles ennyson Turner

).
(T
My father wrote Mr. Gladstone He

to

"
:
[

was almost the most lovable human being

I
have ever met —ED
”

]
.

.
p

Section LXXIX Verse possession

in

in
112. fee

[
.

i.

.
Cf. Wordsworth's sonnet on Venice

:
Once did she hold the gorgeous East

in
"

fee

"
.
ED

]..
p

LXXIX Verse kindred brows was

iv

113. Section
.
.
.

originally brother brows

"

"
.

Section LXXXI
p

114. Verse
i.
.
.

Could have said while he was here

I

= Would that could have said etc.

I

printed this explanatory note which my

I
[

father read and did not alter and he told

;

note of ex-
as

me as far remember that

a
I

,
,

clamation had been omitted by accident after

in

ear James Spedding

"

thus ear
"

"
(

a
,

,
").

pencil note on the MS of In Memoriam

,
.

writes Could
-
have said -meaning
"

I
"
I
,

"
,

wish could Ed
I

"

]
.

.
p

114. Section LXXXI Love

at

Verse Love then

ii

[
.

that time.-ED.
]
 NOTES. 247

p. 115. Section LXXXII . Verse ii .

From state to state the spirit walks .

[ Cf. Sect . xxx . vi . and vii . , and

Some draught of Lethe might await
The slipping thro ' from state to state .
The Two Voices . ED . ] -
p. Section LXXXIV. Verse

iii
116.

.
When thou should'st link thy life with one
Of mine own house .
The projected marriage of A. H. H. with
Emily Tennyson
.
.p

xi

118. Section LXXXIV Verse

.

.
at

Arrive last the blessed goal

.
Cf. Milton Paradise Lost Bk
ii
,

:
.
.

ere he arrive
"

The happy isle

"
.
p

118. Section LXXXIV Verse xii backward Look-

[
.

ing back on what might have been.-ED.

]

-
to

Edmund Lush-
.p

118. Section LXXXV Addressed

[
.

·
ington ED
]
.

.
p

vi

119. Section LXXXV Verse

.
.
.

The great Intelligences fair

.

Cf. Lycidas
There entertain him all the Saints above
"

In solemn troops and sweet societies

,

That sing and singing their glory move

in
,

And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes

"
.
248 IN MEMORIAM.
[Cf. Milton , Par . Lost, v . 407 , and Dante ,
Il Convito , ii 5 :
.

Intelligenze, le quali la volgare gente chiama

Angeli .
ED. ]
p.
periods . -
120. Section LXXXV . Verse
ED . ] .
vii . cycled times [ earthly

p. 120. Section LXXXV . Verse x.

Yet none could better know than I,

How much of act at human hands

The sense of human will demands .
Yet Iknow that the knowledge that we have
free will demands from us action .

p. 121. Section LXXXV . Verse xiv . imaginative woe .

[The imaginative and speculative sorrow of
the poet . Cf. infra , verse xxiv . :
And pining life be fancy -fed .
ED .]

p. 123. Section LXXXV . Verse xxiii . [ Think of me as

having reached the final goal of bliss , and as
triumphing in the
one far - off divine event
To which the whole creation moves .
ED . ]
p. 123. Section LXXXV. Verse xxvi . , line 1 .
[With love as true , if not so fresh .
ED . ]
 NOTES . 249

p. 124. Section LXXXV . Verse xxvii . hold apart. [ Set by

itself, above rivalry . — ED . ]

p. 124. Section LXXXVI . Written at Barmouth .

p. 124. Section LXXXVI . Verse i . ambrosial air. It was

a west wind .

p. 125. Section LXXXVI . Verse ii . the horned flood . Be-

tween two promontories .

p. 125. Section LXXXVI . Verse iv. orient star. Any

rising star is here intended .

p. 125. Section LXXXVII . Trinity College , Cambridge .

p. 126. Section LXXXVII . Verse iv . the rooms . Which

were in New Court , Trinity . [ Now 3 G.-
ED . ]
p. 127. Section LXXXVII . Verse x .
The bar of Michael Angelo .
The broad bar of frontal bone over the eyes
of Michael Angelo.
p. 127. Section LXXXVIII . To the Nightingale .

p. 127. Section LXXXVIII . Verse i. quicks [quickset

thorn . — ED . ].

p. 128. Section LXXXIX . Somersby .

p. 128. Section LXXXIX . Verse i . counterchange [ chequer .

-ED .] .
The " towering sycamore " is cut down , and

the four poplars are gone , and the lawn is no

longer flat .
250 IN MEMORIAM.
p. 130. Section LXXXIX . Verse xii .

Before the crimson -circled star

Had fall'n into her father's grave .
Before Venus , the evening star , had dipt into
the sunset . The planets , according to Lap-
lace , were evolved from the sun .

p. 130. Section xc . [ He who first suggested that the

dead would not be welcome if they came to
life again knew not the highest love . Cf.

For surely now our household hearths are

cold :
Our sons inherit us looks are strange :
: our

And we should come like ghosts to trouble

joy.
The Lotos - Eaters . — ED . ]

p. 132. Section xci . Verse i.

Flits by the sea-blue bird of March .
Darts the sea-shining bird of March
would best suit the Kingfisher . used to see I
him in our brook first in March . He came
up from the sea . ἁλιπόρφυρος εἴαρος ὄρνις
(Alcman ) . [ Cf. Memoir, ii . 4.-ED. ]
p. 133. Section xcii . Verse iv.
And such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise .

The heavenly bodies are seen above the

horizon , by refraction , before they actually rise .
 NOTES . 251

p. 133. Section XCII . Verse ii .

Where all the nerve of sense is numb .
[This spiritual state is described in Sect . XCIV .
—ED . ]
p. 134. Section XCIII . Verse

in iii
.
With gods unconjectured bliss

.
Cf. Comus 11
[

:
66
Among the enthroned gods on sainted seats

"
.
ED

.
]
to
tenfold complicated Refers [ the ten
-

heavens of Dante Cf. Paradiso XXVIII 15

,
.

.
foll.-ED.
]

iii

xciv
.p

134. Section Verse

.
.

of

They haunt the silence the breast

.
This was what felt
I
.
.p

Section xcv Verse

ii

135.
.
.

The brook alone far off was heard

-

marvellously still night and asked

It

was
I
a

my brother Charles
to

listen the brook

to

which we had never heard so far off before

.
lit

— ED
p

135. Section xcv alighted

iii

Verse
[

.]
.

the filmy shapes

That haunt the dusk with ermine capes
,

And woolly breasts and beaded eyes

.

Moths perhaps the ermine or the puss moth

;

The living soul The

p

136. Section xcv Verse

ix
.

Deity maybe The first reading his living

"
,

,
.
 252 IN MEMORIAM.
soul , " troubled me , as perhaps giving a wrong
impression .
[The old passage that troubled him was :
His living soul was flash'd on mine ,
And mine in his was wound , and whirl'd
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is .
With reference to the later reading , my
father would say : " Of course the greater
Soul may include the less . " He preferred ,
however , for fear of giving a wrong impression,
the vaguer and more abstract later reading ;
and his further comment was : " have often I
had that feeling of
into the Great Soul . " -
being whirled up and rapt
ED . ]
p. 137. Section xcv . Verse x. that which is . [Td ov ,
the Absolute Reality. — ED . ]

p. 137. Section xcv . Verse xi . The trance came to an

end in a moment of critical doubt , but the
doubt was dispelled by the glory of the dawn
of the " boundless day."
p.
I
ii .
I
138. Section xcvi . Verse
know not : one indeed knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true .
A. H. H.

p.
xix

And
Cf.

16

139. Section xcvi . Verse vi . Exod

,
.
.
to

in

pass on the third day the

it

came
,
 NOTES. 253

morning, that there were thunders and light-

nings , and a thick cloud upon the mount , and
the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud ."

-
[ The thoughtsuggested in this verse is
that the stronger faith of Moses found in

-
the darkness of the cloud through commune
with the Power therein dwelling is of a
higher order than the creeds of those who
walk by sight rather than by insight .— ED . ]

p. 139. Section XCVII . The relation of one on earth to

one in the other and higher world . Not my
relation to him here . He looked up to me
as I looked up to him .
[ Love finds his image everywhere . The
relation of one on earth to one in the other
world is as a wife's love for her husband after
a love which has been at first demonstrative .

Now he is compelled to be wrapt in matters

dark and deep . Although he seems distant ,
she knows that he loves her as well as before ,
all

for she loves him in true faith

]
¹
.

xcvii
.p

139. Section Verse

i.
.

His own vast shadow glory crown'd

-

.
of

Like the spectre the Brocken

.

You
us

Section xcvIII
"

You leave
.p

"

141. Verse
.
i.
.

imaginary
is

.
p

141. Section XCVIII Verse wisp ignis fatuus

ii

-
.

Note by my mother
1

.
254 IN MEMORIAM.
p. 142. Section XCVIII . Verse v. Gnarr, snarl .

p. 142. Section XCVIII . Verse vi . mother town , metropolis .

p. Section XCIX . Verse i.

I
143.
Day, when lost the flower of men.
September the 15th . Cf. LXXII . ii .

p. coming care

iii
143. Section XCIX . Verse the hard-
-

[
.
ship of winter ED
.

.
].
p

143. Section XCIX Verse

v
.
.
.

Betwixt the slumber

of
the poles

.
The ends of the axis of the earth which

,
that they seem not
so

slowly

to
move move

,
but slumber
.

hill
.p

Verse climb the

144. Section 1837.
I
c

.
)
(

i.
.

Hill above Somersby

.
iv
.p

144. Section Verse

c

.
.

Nor runlet tinkling from the rock

.

The rock Holywell which

in

wooded
is
a
,

ravine commonly called there the Glen

"
"
,

.
p

iii

The brook The brook

CI

145. Section Verse

[
.

Somersby the charm and beauty of which

at

all

joy my father life.-ED.

to

was his
a

or when
the lesser wain My father would
[
.

often spend his nights wandering about the

gazing the stars Edward Fitz-
at

wolds
,

Gerald writes Like Wordsworth on the

"
:

mountains Alfred too when lad abroad on

a
,
,

the wold sometimes of night with the

a
,
 NOTES. 255

shepherd , watched not only the flock on the

greensward , but also

the fleecy star that bears

Andromeda far off Atlantic seas . "

Cf. Memoir , i. 19.—ED. ]

p. 146. Section CII . Verse ii .

Two spirits of a diverse love.
First , the love of the native place ; second ,

this enhanced by the memory of A. H. H.

p. 147. Section CIII . [ I have a dream which comforts

me on leaving the old home and brings me
content . The departure suggests the departure
of my reunion with him . I have
death , and
grown in spiritual grace as he has . The
gorgeous sky at the end of the section typifies .
the glory of the hope in that which is to be. ] ¹

p. Section III. Verse ii.

I
147.
Methought dwelt within a hall,

-
And maidens with me .
They are the Muses , poetry , arts all that
made life beautiful here , which we hope will
pass with us beyond the grave .

hidden summits , the divine.

river , life .
p. 148. Section cIII . Verse iv . sea , eternity .

p. the Age
III

The progress
of

148. Section Verse vii

.

Note by my mother
1

.
256 IN MEMORIAM.
p.

III
Verse The great hopes of

ix
149. Section

.
humanity and science

.
civ
.p
150. Section Verse

i.
.
single church below the hill

.
Waltham Abbey church

.
civ

iii
.p

150. Section Verse

.
.
But all
new unhallow'd ground

is

.
High Beech Epping Forest where we were

(
living ,
Cf. xcix ii.—ED.
[

]
).

.
In
cv

Cf. xxx
.p

iii
151. Section Verse abuse

ii
[

.
.
.

.
.

—
the old sense
-
wrong ED

]
.

.
vii
vi

Section cv
p

151. Verses
-
.
.
.
.

No dance no motion save alone

,

,
in

What lightens the lucid east

Of rising worlds by yonder wood

The scintillating motion of the stars that rise .

.
152. Section cv Verse vii
.p

.
.

Run out your measured arcs and lead

,

The closing cycle

.

Fulfil your appointed revolutions and bring

,
[

the closing period rich good Cf.

in
"

"
.

Virgil Ecl
.iv
4
,

Ultima Cymaei venit jam carminis aetas

.

ED
].

Verse viii
p

153. Section cvi

.
.
.

Ring in the
be

Christ that
to
is

The broader Christianity

of

the future Cf.

[
.

Introduction supra 223.-ED.

.p
,

]
 NOTES . 257

p. 153. Section cvII. Verse i.

It is the day when he was born .
February 1 , 1811 .

p. grides grates

iii
154. Section CVII . Verse

,
.

.
p

Section CVII Verse drifts Fine snow which

to iv
154.

[
.

.
passes squallsfall into the breaker and
in

,
darkens before melting Cf. The

in
the sea

.
Spring III.-ED.
of

Progress

]
,

cvIII Verse
.p

155. Section
i.
.

will not shut from my kind

I

me

.
Grief shall not make me hermit and will
a

I
,
not indulge yearnings
and barren
it in

vacant

-
aspirations useless trying find him to
is
;

find nothing but the

in

the other worlds

I I

myself
of

reflections had better learn the

:

lesson that sorrow teaches

.
.p

155. Section CVIII Verse The original reading

iv
[
.

.
of

last line MS
(
)
:
.

Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee

.

Cf. cxIII
i
.
.

pencil note by James Spedding on the

A

MS In Memoriam says
of

You might give

"
.

the thought turn of this kind The wisdom

a

:
'

that died with you lost for ever but out of

is

the loss itself some other wisdom may be

gained —ED
"

]
."

cix My father Henry Hallam

p

to

155. Section wrote

[
.

S
258 IN MEMORIAM .
on February 14 , 1834 : " That you intend
to print some of my friend's remains (tho'
only for private circulation ) has given me
greater pleasure than anything I have experi-
enced for a length of time . I
attempted to
draw up a memoir of his life and character ,
I
but failed to do him justice . failed even I
to please myself . I
could scarcely have
pleased you. I
hope to be able at a future
period to concentrate whatever powers may I
possess on the construction of some tribute to
those high speculative endowments and com-
prehensive sympathies I
which ever loved to
contemplate ; but at present , tho ' somewhat
ashamed at my own weakness , I
find the
object yet is too near me to permit of any
very accurate delineation . You , with your
clear insight into human nature , may perhaps
not wonder that in the dearest service could I
have been employed in , I
should be found
...
most deficient . . . . I know not whether among
the prose pieces you would include the one
which he was accustomed to call his Theo-
dicean Essay . I
am inclined to think it does

--I
great honour to his originality of thought .
Among the poems if you print the one en-
titled Timbuctoo would request you , for
my sake , to omit the initiatory note . The
poem is everyway so much better than that
wild and unmethodized performance of my
own , that even his praise on such a subject
 NOTES . 259

would be painful . " 1 The judgment on Hallam

of his coincided with that of
-
contemporaries
my father. See Memoir , i . 105-108 . ED . ]

p. 155. Section cix . Verse i .

Heart -affluence in discursive talk

From household fountains never dry .
[Cf. The Princess , II . p . 34 :
and betwixt them blossom'd up
From out a common vein of memory
Sweet household talk , and phrases of the hearth ,
And far allusion .

See also Coleridge , Dejection , an Ode :

" I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life , whose fountains
are within . "
ED . ]
p. 156. Section cix . Verse vi .
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise .
If I do not let thy wisdom make me wise .

p. 157. Section cx . Verse i.

The men of rathe and riper years .
[" Rathe ," Anglo - Saxon hrath , " early ." Cf.
Lancelot and Elaine : " Till rathe she rose . "
ED . ]

p. 158. Section cxi . Verse v. Drew in [ contracted ,

narrowed . ED . ] .
Where God and Nature met in light.
1 From an unpublished letter in possession of Mr. Arthur Lee , M.P.
S 2
260 IN MEMORIAM.
Cf. LXXXVII . Verse ix . :
The God within him light his face .

p. 159. Section cxI .

Verse vi . charlatan . From Ital .
ciarlatano , a mountebank ; hence the accent
on the last syllable .

p. 159. Section CXII . Verse i . [ High

wisdom is ironical.
" High wisdom "
has been twitting the poet
that although he gazes with calm and indulgent
eyes on unaccomplished greatness , he yet
makes light of narrower natures more perfect
in their own small way.—ED. ]
glorious insufficiencies . Unaccomplished
greatness such as Arthur Hallam's .

Set light by, make light of.

‫ود‬
[ In answer to " high wisdom the poet
says : " The power and grasp and originality
of A. H. H.'s intellect , and the greatness of
his nature [which are not mere " glorious in-
sufficiencies " ] , make me seem careless about
those that have a narrower perfectness . ] ¹

p. 159. Section CXII . Verse ii . the lesser lords of doom .

Those that have free - will , but less intellect .
p. 160. Section cxIII . Verse i. [ Cf. cvIII . iv.-ED. ]
p. 161. Section cxiv . Verse i .
Who shall fix
Her pillars ?
"Wisdom hath builded her house , she hath
hewn out her seven pillars " (Prov . ix. 1) .

1 Note by my mother .
 NOTES. 261

p. 162. Section cxv . Verse i . burgeons , buds .

maze of quick , quickset tangle .

squares . [ Cf. The Ring :

the down , that sees

A thousand squares of corn and meadow , far

As the gray deep .
ED . ]
p. 163. Section cxvi . Verse i. crescent prime , growing
spring .

p. cxvII .
iii
164. Section Verse
.
of

And every span shade that steals

.
The sun dial
-

of

And every kiss toothed wheels

.
The clock
.

cxvIII represent
.p

Cf.
iv

165. Section Verse type

[

,
, .

The Princess VII 136

.p
.

Dear but let us type them now

,

In our own lives

.

ED
]
.

By gradual self-
p

165. Section CXVIII Verse

v
[
.

.
.

development by sorrows and fierce strivings

or
,

and calamities ED
]
.

.
p .p

166. Section cxix Cf. vII.-ED.

]
[
.

166. Section cxx Verse Like Paul with beasts

.

i.

of
If

after the manner men have fought

"

with beasts Ephesus what advantageth

at

it
,

me Cor xv 32
"
?
(1

).
262 IN MEMORIAM .
p. 167. Section cxx . Verse

iii
.
Let him the wiser man who springs

,
Hereafter up from childhood shape

,
His action like the greater ape

.
Spoken ironically against mere materialism

,
not against evolution

.
Cf. By an Evolutionist
to
born other things

:
.
The Lord let the house of brute to the soul

a
of man
a

-
And the man said Am your debtor

I
'

it ?'
as
And the Lord Not yet but make
'

:
clean as you can
,

And then will let you a better

I

.'
ED

]
.
cxxI where my
p

Written Shiplake
at

167. Section
,
[
.

father and mother were married

- ED
]
.

cxxi
p

168. Section Verse

v
.

Sweet Hesper Phosphor double name

,
-

The evening star also the morning star

is

death and sorrow brighten into death and

hope
.

grief
-

cxxII
p

of

168. Section Verse doom that

.

i.

cxxII
.p

169. Section Verse

v
.
.

And every dew drop paints bow

a

.
-

Every dew drop turns into miniature rainbow

a

.
-

All material
.p

169. Section CXXIII Geologic changes

[
.
.

things are unsubstantial yet there that in

is
,
 NOTES. 263

myself which assures me that the spiritual part

of man abides , and that we shall meet again . ] ¹
p. 169. Section CXXIII . Verse i.
The stillness of the central sea .

Balloonists say that even in a storm the middle

sea is noiseless .
[ Professor George Darwin writes : People "
always talk at sea of the howling of the wind
and lashing of the sea , but it is the ship that
makes it all . A man clinging to a spar in a
heavy sea would only hear a little gentle
swishing from the ' white horses . ' ". -ED . ]
p. cxxIII .
iii

169. Section Verse

.

For tho my lips may breathe adieu

'

,
cannot think the thing farewell
I

LVII and the poem Frater Ave

to

iv

Cf. note
[

.,
.

atque Vale.-ED.
]

cxxiv blind clamour refers

.p

to
170. Section Verse
.v
[
.

heard voice believe no more

I

'
'

And heard an ever breaking shore

-

That tumbled the Godless deep

in

ED
]
.
.p

172. Section cxxvI The following was originally

[
.

the second verse MS

)
(

.
:

Love my king nor here alone

is

But where see the distance loom

I

For in the field behind the tomb

There rests the shadow of his throne
.

ED
]
.

Note by my mother
1

.
264 IN MEMORIAM .
p. 172. Section cxxvI . [ The following was originally
the third verse (MS . ) :
And hear at times a sentinel
That moves about from place to place ,
And whispers to the vast of space
Among the worlds, that all is well .
ED . ]
p. 173. Section cxxvII . Verse iv . brute earth . [ Cf.
"bruta
Carm . I. xxxiv . -
tellus , " the heavy , inert
) ED . ]
earth (Hor .

p. 173. Section CXXVIII . [ In comradeship with Love

that is all the stronger for facing Death , the
Faith which believes in the progress of the
world sees that all in the individual as in the
race is working to one great result , however
retrograde the eddies of the world- currents
may at times appear to be . ] ¹ (This section.
must be read in close connection with cxxvi .
and CXXVII .)

p. 174. Section cxxix . [These two faiths are in reality

the same . The thought of thee as human
and divine mingles with all great thoughts as
cf.

to the destiny of the world ( cxxx

²
)
]
.

He shall live though he die

”
"

following words were

p

The

-
176. Section CXXXI
[
.

by my father January 1869 and

in

uttered
,

bear upon this section Yes true that

is is
"

it
:

there are moments when the flesh nothing

Note by my mother Note by my mother

2
1

.
.
 NOTES. 265

to me , when I feel and know the flesh to be

the vision, God and the Spiritual the only
real and true . Depend upon it, the Spiritual
it belongs to one more than the
is the real
hand and the foot. You may tell me that my
hand and my foot are only imaginary symbols
of my existence , I
never , never can convince
could believe you ; but you
me that the is I
not an eternal Reality , and that the Spiritual
is not the true and real part of me . " These
words he spoke with such passionate earnest-
ness that a solemn silence fell on us as he
left the room.-Ed. ]
p. 176. Section cxxxI . Verse i . O living will. That
which we know as Free - will in man . [See
Introduction , supra , pp . 215 , 216.—ED. ]

spiritual rock . [ Cf. 1 Cor . x . 4.—ED. ]

p. 176. Section cxxxi . Verse ii . conquer'd years . [ Cf.
" victor Hours , " 1. iv.-ED. ]
p. 177. Conclusion .The marriage of Edmund Lush-
ington and Cecilia Tennyson , Oct. 10 , 1842 .

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