:',vK!';-i ^•k';- :■■ i'\ ' '•■■•■"''■.:' ^ ■■ • .'■'■ ■■■■ |ji!i'5-'C' OOK OP BALDWIN f SELECT ENGLISH CLASSICS LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. @{pi! GaiiijnQfit :^a.... UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. \/^ Select lEnoIisb Claeaice \ -^ THE BOOK OF ELEGIES EDITED Wirn NOTES BY JAMES BALDWIN, Ph.D. Author of "Six Centuries of English Poetry," "The Famous Allegories," "The I!ook Lover," etc. SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY PUBLISHERS New York BOSTON Chicago 1S93 H\ Copyright, 1893, By silver, BURDETT & COMPANY. J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. Boston, Mass., U.S.A. PUBLISHERS' NOTE. This is the third vohime of a series of Select English Classics which the pubhshers have in course of preparation. The series will include an extensive variety of selections chosen from the different departments of English literature, and arranged and annotated for the use of classes in schools. It will embrace, among other things, representative specimens from all the best English writers, whether of poetry or of prose ; selections from English dramatic literature, especially of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ; choice extracts from the writings of the great essayists ; selections from famous English allegories ; a volume of elegies and elegiacal poetry ; studies of English prose fiction, with illustrative speci- mens, etc. Each volume will contain copious notes, critical, explanatory, and biographical, besides the necessary vocabu- laries, glossaries, and indexes ; and the series when complete will present a varied and comprehensive view of much that is best in English literature. For supplementary reading, as well as for systematic class instruction, the books will possess many peculiarly valuable as well as novel features ; while their attractive appearance, combined with the sterling quality of their contents, will commend them for general reading and make them desirable acquisitions for every library. 3 CONTENTS. PAGE Fore Word 6 The Song of Thyrsis touching the Sorrow of Daphnis . 7 Prose Version .......... 9 Notes 13 The Lament for Adonis 19 Prose Version. Rev. J. Banks 21 Metrical Version. Elizabeth Barrctc Broivning ... 24 Notes 29 The Lament for Bion 37 Prose Version. Andrew Lang ....... 39 Notes 44 '^" On the Death of Sir Philip Sidney 49 Astrophel. Edmund Spenser . . . . . . • 5^ A Pastorall Aeglogue. L. B 59 Notes .64 Dirge for Imogen. William Shakespeare 73 Dirge in C'ynibeline. William Collins ..... 76 Lycidas. John Millon 77 Notes 85 Elegy written in a Country Churchyard. Thomas Gray . 95 Notes 104 4 CONTENTS. Adonais. Percy Bysshej Shelley Notes .... In Memokiam. Alfred Tennyson Notes . . ' . Ben Jonson Elegiacal Poems .... Epitaph. Robert Wilde . Epitaph. Ano7i. Epitaph on the Countess of Pembrok Epitaph on Elizabeth L. H. Ben Jonson A Sea Dirge. William Shakespeare A Land Dirge. John Webster Soldiers' Dirge. William Collins Rose i\ylmer. Walter Savage Landor A Pagan Epitaph. Anon. Bereavement. William W^ordsworth Epitaph on Mrs. Margaret Paston. JoJin Dryden Epitaph on the Excellent Countess of Huntingdon. Falkland ........ On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson. Milton Mary. Charles Wolfe Hester. Charles Lamb ...... The Shepherd's Elegy. William Broivne Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson. Robert Burns The Minstrel's Roundelay. Thomas Chatter ton Thanatopsis. William Cullen Bryant Friends departed. Henry Vaughan Notes Lord John FORE WORD. The Idyls of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus have served as models for no inconsiderable portion of our modern pastoral and elegiac poetry. They have been imitated by Spenser, improved upon by Milton, parodied by Pope and Gay, copied after by Shelley, and loved and admired by all the poets. By the three specimens presented in this book most of the elegies in our own language have been either directly or remotely suggested, or in some way modified. No apology, therefore, would seem necessary for the admission of these translations from the Greek into a volume of select English classics. No Book of Elegies could be complete without them. THE SONG OF THYRSIS TOUCHING THE SORROW OF DAPHNIS FROM THE FIRST IDYL OF THEOCRITUS Written in Gkeek about 270 b.c. A71 English Prose Version The shepherd Thy r sis, famed for his skill in song, sal one day in the shade of a pine, close by a clear, cool spring that gushed up out of the earth. A goatherd lounged at his ease on the grass and played siveet tunes upon his pipe. " Ah, friend,''' said Thyrsis, " thou dost in truth play well tipoti that reed: next to Pan thou shouldst have the prize. If he take the horned he-goat, then the she-goat shall be thine ; but if he choose the she-goat for his meed, then the year-old kid must fall to thee.''' J Veil pleased was the goatherd with this high praise, and he paid it back in kind. " Thy song, good Thyrsis,''' said he, " is far more sweet than that of the stream as it falls from the edge of the rock. If the A/uses for their meed bear off the young e%ve, thou shall have the lamb for thy gift ; but if it please them best to take the latnb, then thou shall take the eiue as thine own.'''' " Come., sit thou here and pipe me a song,''' said Thyrsis, " and I will 7vatch thy /locks." " -^'^y" quoth the goatherd, *' it is not right good for jis to pipe at mid-day. IFe fear Pan. But, come with me to the shade of yon elm, and do thou sing to me the song of Daphnis and his grief If thou wilt but sing as thou didst one day, I will let thee milk — ay, three times — a goat that hath twins, and whose milk doth fill two pails. A deep bowl of ivy-wood, too, will I give thee, rubbed 7vith sivcet bees-wax, — a two-eared bo7vl, carved with great skill, for -ivhich I gave a goat and a large cheese-cake of 7ohite milk, and whicJi has lud yet touched my lips." TJius urged, JViyrsis sang of the sorrow of Daphnis. E\}t cSong of E^mm TOUCHING THE SORROW OF DAPHNIS. 5>©o Now cease, ye Muses dear, nozv cease the shepherd's lay ! Thus Daphnis spake, and thus he made an end : and fain would Aphrodite raise him up. But all the threads of the ^ Fates, I ween, were now sjoun out. And Daph- nis went down the ^^ stream. The swift wave washed far from the land the man the Muses loved, the man to the Nymphs most dear. Now cease, ye Muses dear, nozv cease the shepherd's lay ! 50 And now, give thou me the she-goat and the bowl, THE SORROW OF DAPHNIS. 13 that I may milk her and pour it out, a thank-gift to the Muses. O hail, hail, ye Muses dear, and oft-times hail ! And I to you a song more sweet than this will sing -'^ in the days to come ! NOTES. The Author. "Theocritus, the BucoHc poet, was a Syracusau by extraction, and the son of Simichidas, as he says himself, ' Simichidas, pray whither through the noon dost thou drag thy feet?' (A/j'/ vii.). Some say that this was an assumed name, for he seems to have been snub-nosed, and that his father was Praxagoras, and his mother Phihnna. He became the pupil of Philetas and Asclepiades, of whom he speaks in his seventh Idyl, and flourished about the time of Ptolemy Lagus. Pie gained much fame for his skill in bucolic poetry. According to some, his original name was Moschus, and Theocritus was a name later assumed." — A^otice tistially prefixed to his Idyls, translated by Andrezv Lang. Of the life of Theocritus, but little is known. He was born probably at Syracuse about the year 315 B.C., and received at least a portion of his education at Alexandria. His early poetic efforts were so successful that he was rewarded by the patronage of Ptolemy Philadelphus, in whose honor some of his Idyls were written. He afterwards returned to Syra- cuse, where he spent the latter part of his life, and where much of his best work in poetry was done. Of the date and manner of his death, there is no trustworthy record. He was the inventor of pastoral poetry. " He stands alone, with a crowd of imitators at a wide interval of merit." The Poem. The Song of Thyrsis is a part, and the chief motif, of the first Idyl of Theocritus, of which the following is a brief analysis: "The shepherd Thyrsis meets a goatherd in a shady place beside a spring, and at his invitation, sings the Lament for Daphnis. This ideal hero of Greek pas- toral song had won for his bride the fairest of the Nymphs. Confident in the strength of his passion, he boasted that Love could never subdue him to a new affection. Love avenged himself by making Daphnis desire a strange maiden, but to this temptation he never yielded. The song tells how the cattle and the wild things of the wood bewailed him; how 14 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. Hermes and Priapus gave him counsel in vain; and how with his last breath he retorted the taunts of the implacable Aphrodite. The scene is in Sicily." 1. Begin, ye Muses dear. This form of invocation has been often imitated by the later poets. See Moschus's Lament for Bion (page 39) : — " Begin, ye Sicilian Muses, begin the dirge ! " Compare also with Virgil, Eclogue viii. : — " Begin with me, my pipe, Moenalian strains ! " And with Pope, Pastoral iii. : — " Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful strains." Also with Milton, I^ycidas, line 15 (see page 79). And with Spenser, Shepheards Calender, November : — " Morne now my Muse, now morne with heavy cheare." 2. Thyrsis. The name is very common in pastoral poetry. See Virgil, Eclogue vii., " In alternate verses the two began to contend. These Cory- don, those Thyrsis, each in his turn recited." Also Milton, V Allegro : — " Hard by a cottage chimney smokes From betwixt two aged oaks, Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met, Are at their savoury dinner set." 3. Where were ye, Nymphs ? Doubtless having reference to the nurturing care which the Nymphs had had for Daphnis. The line is imi- tated by Milton, Lya'das, line 50. Also by Pope in Pastoral ii. : — " Where stray y^, Nymphs, in what lawn or grove, While your Alexis pines in hopeless love ? " See Virgil, Eclogue x. : — " What groves, ye virgin Naiads, or what lawns detained you, While Gallus pined with ill-requited love ? " See also Shelley's A dona? s, ii. i, and Spenser's Astrophel, 128. Daphnis. The original Daphnis, whose grief is celebrated in this Idyl, was the son of Hermes and the friend of both Pan and Apollo. His mother was a Nymph, and he was placed while an infant in a laurel grove, whence his name (from Gr. daphne, a laurel tree). He was brought up by the Nymphs, and became a shepherd on the slopes of Mount Etna. rilE SORROW OF DAPHNIS. 15 There he tended his sheep, was taught music by Pan, and invented bucoHc poetry with which to entertain Artemis while she was hunting. A Naiad, who fell in love with him, made him swear never to love any other maiden. He kept his promise for a time, but at length became hopelessly enam- oured of a princess. Thereupon the Naiad, according to some, punished him with blindness. Others say that she changed him to a stone : — " This is that modest shepherd, he That only dare salute, but ne'er could be Brought to kiss any, hold discourse, or sing, Whisper, or boldly ask." Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess. See Virgil, Eclogue v. : — "The shepherds wept Daphnis, cut off by cruel death." Longos, a Greek sophist (4th or 5th century A.D.), wrote a prose-pastoral love story entitled Daphnis and Chloe. John Gay (i 688-1 732) wrote a poem with the same title; and William Browne published a pastoral called Daphnis and lycidas in 1727. 4. Peneus. A river in Thessaly flowing through the vale of Tempe, between the mountains Ossa and Olympus. — Pindus. A range of moun- tains in northern Greece. If the Nymphs were here, they were about four hundred miles from Daphnis, on Mount Etna. 5. Anapus and Acis were rivers in Sicily, near the foot of Mount Etna. In his Seventh Idyl Theocritus again mentions the Anapus: — " Through Polypheme did such sweet nectar glance. That madie the shepherd of Anapus dance." Acis was a Sicilian shepherd, the son of Faunus, and beloved by the Nymph (jalatea. The monster Polypheme, jealous of him, crushed him under a huge rock, and his blood became the river Acis (now Fiume de Jaci), which flows from under a rock at the foot of Mount Etna. 6. For him the wild beasts did cry. Imitated by Moschus in his Lament for Bion (see page 40). And by Virgil, Eclogue v. : — " Even the African lions mourned thy death." Also by Pope, Pastoral iii. : — " For her the feather'd choirs neglect their song." Also by Spenser, Shepheards Calender^ November: — " The beastes in forrest wayle as they were woode." Compare with A Pastor all ^glogue (line 76). 16 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 7. Hermes. Daphnis was the son of Hermes, hence the latter addresses him as " my child." Hermes was especially worshipped by the shepherds, whose patron he was, and he is often mentioned in connection with Pan and the Muses. 8. all asked what harm had caused him so much pain. Compare this passage with Milton's Lycidas, lines 91, 92; also with Pope's Pastoral iii. : — " Pan came and asked what magic caused my smart." Theocritus represents Hermes, the Shepherds, Pan, Priapus, and Cypris as bewailing the misfortunes of Daphnis. Moschus (see page 40) introduces Apollo, the Satyrs, the Priapi, the Panes, and Echo as mourn- ing for Bion; Milton (see page 82) speaks of Neptune, Camus, and St. Peter in connection with the sorrow for Lycidas; Shelley (see page 119) introduces Dreams, Desires, Adorations, Destinies, Phantasies, Sorrow, Sighs, and Pleasure among the mourners for Adonais. 9. Priapus. A god of the gardens, of flocks, of bees, and of fruitful- ness. Pausanias says : " Priapus is honored elsewhere by those who keep sheep and goats or stocks of bees; but the Lampsakenes regard him more than any other of the gods, calHng him the son of Dionysos and Aphro- dite." See Virgil, Eclogue vii. : "A pail of milk and these cakes, Priapus, are enough for thee to expect. Thou art the keeper of a poor, ill-tended garden." 10. Cypris. Hesiod {Theog. 188 seq.') says that when Aphrodite, the goddess of love, sprang into life from the foam of the sea, she first approached the island of Cythera, and then proceeding onward, finally landed upon Cyprus. Hence she is sometimes called Cypris, or the Cyprian, and sometimes Cytherea. 11. bend love to a fall. The original Greek expression is a term used in descril)ing wrestling matches, and means to master, to overthrow. 12. But get thee to Mount Ida. By a sudden breaking off and turn of expression — called aposiopesis — Daphnis here taunts Aphrodite by bringing to remembrance her intrigue with Anchises on Mount Ida. For an example of the similar use of this figure, see Exodus xxxii. 32; also Virgil, ALneid, i. 135: "Dare you, winds, without my sovereign leave to embroil heaven and earth, and raise such mountains? Whom I — But first it is right to assuage the tumultuous waves." 13. Adonis. For a brief version of the story of Adonis, see page 29 of this volume. Observe Daphnis's taunting manner. 14. For a description of the fight with Diomed, see Homer's Iliad, v. 336: "Now Tydeides (Diomed) had made onslaught with pitiless weapon on the Cyprian, knowing how she was a coward goddess, and none of those THE SORROW OF DAPHNIS. 17 that have mastery in battle of the warriors, — no Athene she nor Enyo, waster of cities. . . . And over her Diomed of the loud war-cry shouted afar : ' Refrain thee, thou daughter of Zeus, from war and fighting. Is it not enough that thou beguilest feeble women? But if in battle thou wilt mingle, verily I deem that thou shalt shudder at the name of battle if thou hear it even from afar.' " 15. Arethusa. The Nymph Arethusa, being pursued by the river- god Alpheus, was changed into the fountain of Arethusa in the island of Ortygia, near the Sicilian coast. She was sometimes reckoned as a Nymph of Sicily, and as the special patron of pastoral poetry. Virgil, Eclogue x. i , invokes her aid : " Grant unto me, O Arethusa, this last essay." See Milton, Lycidas, line 84; also Shelley's beautiful poem, Arethusa. 16. Thymbris, a mountain in Sicily. 17. Lycasus, a lofty mountain in Arcadia, the birthplace of Pan and one of his chief sanctuaries. 18. Maenalus, a mountain in Arcadia, the favorite haunt of Pan. It was covered with pine-trees. See Virgil, Eclogue viii. : " Mcenalus always has a vocal grove and shaking pines; he ever hears the lover of shepherds, and Pan, the first who suffered not the reeds to be neglected." 19. Helice was a city of Achaia, swallowed up by an earthquake in 373 B.C. Reference is made here most probably to some other locaHty of the same name, perhaps in Arcadia, as indicated by the close connection of the thought with Lycaon. 20. Lycaon, king of Arcadia. For his impiety he, with all his sons except Nyctimus, the youngest, was slain with lightning; or, according to other stories, they were changed to wolves (Gr. Itikos, a wolf). Among the pastoral poets tombs are often referred to as prominent landmarks. 21. dragged by Love. See Pope's Ocfe on St. Cecilia's Day : — " Love, strong as death, the poet led To the pale nations of the dead." 22. Imitated by Pope, Pastoral iii. : — " Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn, And liquid amber drop from every thorn." See Luke vi, 44. 23. See note 34, on Lycidas, page 90. 24. The stream of Acheron, which the shades of the dead must cross before entering Hades. 25. in the days to come. See the closing lines in Adonis, "Thou must wail again next year." And in Lycidas, "To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new." 18 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. " There can be no doubt that the bucolic vein was early and strongly developed among Sicilian shepherds. The use of the shepherd's pipe and of responsive song was early developed in the country, and from the oldest time in some peculiar relation to the shepherd life in the mountains of Arcadia — worshipping the same god, Pan, honoring the same traditions, and pursuing the same habits. It even appears to me that in the great days of Gelon and Hieron there was a considerable emigration from Arcadia to Sicily, for we know that their mercenary armies were recruited from Arcadia, and doubtless the veterans were better rewarded with upland pastures in rich Sicily than by returning to their harsh and wintry home. But the Arcadian music found itself already at home in a country where the legends of the shepherd Daphnis were older than Stesichorus, and had been raised by him into classical literature. According to various authori- ties, Daphnis was brought up in a grove of laurels, and being an accom- plished singer, and taught by Pan to play on the pipe, he became the companion of Artemis in her hunting, and delighted her with his music. His tragic end, which is connected with his love for a nymph and his faith- lessness, was variously told, and these versions were the favorite subject of pastoral lays, which were attached to the worship of Artemis through- out Sicily, and celebrated in musical contests at her feasts in Syracuse, where shepherds sang alternately in what was called Priapean verse. . . . The shepherds of Theocritus are not pure and innocent beings, living in a garden of Eden or an imaginary Arcadia, free from sin and care. They are men of like passion as we are, gross and mean enough for ordinary life. But though artiticially painted by a literary townsman, they are real shepherds, living in a real country, varying in culture and refinement, but all speaking human sentiments without philosophy and artifice. ... It were unjust to deny Theocritus the noble position he deserves among the great and matchless masters of Greek poetry, though to him the Muse came last, * as to one born out of due season.' " — Mahaffy. THE LAMENT FOR ADONIS AN IDYL INTENDED TO BE SUNG AT THE SPRING FESTIVAL IN ALEXANDRIA IN HONOR OF ADONIS THE FIRST IDYL OF BION OF SMYRNA Written in Greek about 265 b.c. I. An English Prose Version by Rev. y. Banks II. An English Metrical Version by Elizabeth Barrett Browtiing The oldest of love stories : The Sun looked dozvn and smiled upon the Earth. And she beholding him in his beauty, put on her many-hued gar- ments and joyfully claimed him as her ozvn. Then the Loves danced at their betrothal, and the Father of all blessed their tinion. And infields and forests, in upland glades and lowland meadows, their ntiptial sojtg zvas sung ; and life and gladness, youth and beauty, sprang everyzvhere into being. But, as the Seasons passed, the unvjilling Sun was wooed by envious Darkness, his light zuas obscured by clouds, his glory ivas dimmed, his beauty was shrouded with shade. On the tvooded hill-tops he lingered and lan- guished, loath to leave his lovely bride. But at length the queen of the shadozv-land prevailed, and carried hi?n away to her gloomy abode. Earth lost her lovely lord and ivith him her matchless beauty. " IVoe, woe,^'' the groves lamented ; and the oak trees in the valley shuddered for grief The rivulets ceased their laughter, and the mountain brooks stood still. The leaves of the forest flushed red in their anguish, and in every field and wooded dell Earth zuailed piteously a wild dirge for her lover. Then, touched at the sight of the universal sorrozo, the All- father decreed that after six months had passed, the Sun should return to his bride, and, renewing his youth, should again gladden the Earth zvith his caresses. Six tnonths in every twelve he should smile upon her ; six months in every tzvelve he should abide in the land of shadozvs. The Sun is Adonis; the Earth is Verms, sometimes called Cytherea ; the queen of the shadozv-land is stern Persephone, the maiden of Hades. While hunting in the forest, Adonis is slain by a cruel beast — a fierce wild-boar. Persephone carries him azuay to the realms of death. Venus wails for Adonis ; the Loves join in the lament. E\}t Hamrnt for ^tionts. PROSE VERSION. D^a^-in- trade; the village stocks; the stock of a gun; the stock dove; the stocks on which ships are built; the stock which goes round the neck; the family stock; the stocks or public funds in which money is invested; and other stocks besides these. What point in common can we find among them all? This — they are all derived from, and were originally the past participle of, to stick, which, as it now makes stuck, made formerly stock., and they cohere in the idea of fixedness which is common to them all. Thus the stock of a gun is that in which the barrel is fixed ; the village stocks are those in which the feet are fast- ened; the j/^r/^-in-trade is the fixed capital, and so too is the stock on the farm, although the fixed capital has there taken the shape of horses and cattle; in the stocks, or public funds, money sticks fast, inasmuch as those who place it there cannot withdraw the capital, but receive only the inter- est; the stock of a tree is fast set in the ground, and from this use of the word, it is transferred to a family; the stock or stirps is that from which it grows, and out of which it unfolds itself." — Trench. — hight. Was called. Although active in form, this word, used in the present tense or as a preterite, is passive in meaning. From A.-S. hatan, to call. 10. passing all the pastors. Observe the euphuism. — pastors. Shepherds. From Lat. pascere, to pasture. 68 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 11. the Nymph, his mother. "His mother was Daughter to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. We know that a Pippin grafted on a Pippin is called a Renate, as extracted from Gentil Parentage. Gardeners have a mystery by Innoculating Roses on Roses (the original, they say of the Province) to make them grow double. I could in like manner avow the double excellency of such, who are descended of Noble Ancestors." — 4>tXo0tXi7ra;s. 12. each other. That is, every other swain. 13. weetingly. Wittingly, knowingly. 14. Ne. Not. — spill. Destroy, mar. From A.-S., spillatt, to destroy. " Spill not the morning, the quintessence of the day, in recrea- tions." — Fuller. " To choose whether she would him save or spill." Chaucer, Wife 0/ Baths Tale. 15. "A little gall embitters a great deal of honey." — Spanish Proverb. 16. he could pipe. Compare with Lycidas, line 10. 17. somers larke, etc. Compare with Shakespeare, Cymbeline, ii. 3 : — " The lark at heaven's gate sings And Phoebus gins rise." 18. For her. For "Stella," Penelope Devereux. See note on Astro- phel, above, and note 46, below. 19. many a Nymph. Compare with Lycidas, 31;. 20. prime. Spring. " Hope waits upon the flowery prime." — Waller. 21. Woodgods. Referring doubtless to some of Sidney's companions or contemporaries. So the companions of Lycidas were fauns and satyrs. See Lycidas, 34. 22. fairest faire, etc. Euphuism again. 23. hymnes. The sonnets entitled Astrophel and Stella, in which Sidney celebrated his love for Lady Devereux. See note 46, below. 24. hardie. Resolute, brave. Compare with Chaucer : — " Hap helpeth hardy man alway." 25. salvage. The old form of the word savage. From Lat. silva, a woodr silvaticus, belonging to a wood. 26. y'drad. Dreading, fearing. 27. doth make aboad. Doth dwell. 28. forreine soyle. Holland. See introductory note, page 50. — ON THE DEATH OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 69 forest wide. The country in the neighborhood of Flushing and Zutphen, where the battle was fought. 29. Ardeyn. Probably Ardennes, an ancient forest of great extent in the north of France. This forest is made famous in Boiardo's Orlando Innatnorato (1495), and is probably the forest of Arden of Shakespeare's As You Like It : — " 0/L Where will the old Duke live ? CAa. They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England." — Act i., Sc. I. There was also a forest of Arden in the central part of England. But the Arden of the poets, wherever it may have been (whether Arden, Ardeyn, or Ardennes), was a product of the imagination : — " The forest-walks of Arden's fair domain, Where Jaques fed his solitary vein, No pencil's aid as yet had dared supply. Seen only by the intellectual eye." — Charles Lamb. As to the fowle Arlo, it was possibly suggested by the ancient village of Arlon in northern France almost surrounded by the forest of Ardennes. 30. brutish nation. The Spanish. Spenser here forgets his meta- phors, and lapses into literal terms and expressions. 31. dearest hale. Best welfare, safety. Akin to hale (or hail), sound, healthy, whole. From O. E. heil. 32. heard. The poet returns to his metaphors, and the "brutish nation " becomes a " herd " of cruel beasts, a " beastly rout," etc. 33. bale. Destruction. From A.-S. bealu, evil. 34. toyle. Ambush, trap, nets. Now commonly used in the plural, toils : — "Toils for beasts, and lime for birds were found." — Dryden. troups. Crowds. — bnist. Burst. 35. Ill mynd. Unfortunate disposition. Observe the euphuism in these lines, using /// as an adjective and a noun, and myjid as a noun, a verb, and an adjective (in nnmyndfull). 36. Launched his thigh. See The Lament for Adonis (page 25, line 3). Launch, to pierce as with a lance, to lance. 37. ryved. Split, cleaved asunder, rifted. 38. stound. Sudden pain. Akin to stun, stunned. 39. whiles. Meanwhile. — nets. See note 34, above. 40. to let. To hinder, or prevent. From A.-S. lettan. The same word with the opposite meaning, to permit, is from A.-S. laetan. In its 70 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. first meaning it is now obsolete except in the legal phrase, " without let or hindrance." 41. Ah! where were ye? Compare with Lycidas, 50; with the Sorrow of Daphnis, Hne 3; and with Adonais, ii. I. See note 3, page 14. 42. dreryhead. Sorrow, dismalness = drearihood : — " She grew to hideous shape of dryrihed, Pined with grief of folly late repented." — Spettser, Muiopotmos. 43. unpitied, etc. Compare with Scott: — " And, doubly dying, shall go down, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung." Lay of the Last Minstrel, vi. i. 44. thine eylids up to close. Compare with Dryden : — " On the bare earth expos'd he lies, With not a friend to close his eyes." — Alexatiders Feast. Also with Pope, Elegy on an unfortunate Lady, 49 : — " No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier ; By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd." Also with Bion's Lament for Adonis (page 21, line 12). — sort. Com- pany. — sewing of the chace. Following the chase. The word sewing is akin to the word sue, to woo, to follow up, to pursue. 45. Tho. Then. — wild. Willed, wished. Observe the play on the words beare and biere. 46. She. Referring to " his loved lasse," Stella (Lady Devereux). But the entire narrative that follows is purely fanciful. At the time of Sidney's death, "Stella" had already been married to Lord Rich, and was then a widow. She soon married a second time, becoming the wife of Charles Blount whom James I. afterwards created Earl of Devonshire. 47. with sweet kisses, etc. Compare with the Lament for Adonis, (page 22, line 28). 48. forwent. Departed from, went out of. — her weary lodge. Its " tenement of clay." 49. turtle. See note 56, below. 50. flowre. See note 14, page 33. 51. The Pastoral Aeglogue is the fourth in the collection of poems on the death of Sir Philip Sidney. Its poetical merits are not of a high order, but it is given here rather to show its probable connection with, and influence upon, other works of the same class. Of the two shepherds ON THE DEATH OE SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 71 (poets) represented as talking, Lycon is Bryskett himself. " Colin " is "Colin Clout," or Spenser. See lines 81-89. 52. stownd. Time, or occasion. See note 38, above, for the use of the word stound, which has a very different meaning. 53. Grown. Probably a river or other stream of water in the neigh- borhood of the writer's home or near the country residence of the Sidneys. 54. Phillisides. Phil. Sid., Philip Sidney; philos, a lover; sidiiSy a star. See note on Astrophel, above. 55. rude. See note 4, on 7ny rymes bene rudely dight, above. 56. pore turtle. The poor turtle-dove, noted for its mournful note and believed to have great affection for its mate : — " Why then, sir, I will take a liberty to tell or rather to remember you what is said of turtle-doves, — first that they silently plight their troth and marry; and that then the survivor scorns, as the Thracian women are said to do, to outlive his or her mate, and this is taken for truth ; and if the survivor shall ever couple with another, then not only the living but the dead, be it either the he or the she, is denied the name and honor of a true turtle-dove." — Izaak Walton, Complete Arigler. " The moan of doves in immemorial elms." — Tennyson, The Princess. " The Turtle by him never stird, Example of immortall love." — Matthew Roydon. The name turtle was not applied to the tortoise until about 1610, twenty years after the writing of this poem. 57. make. Mate. This is the original form of the word now exclu- sively written mate. From A.-S. maca. The word match, a companion, an equal, is also from the same root : — " And of fair Britomart ensample take, That was as true in love as turtle to her make." The Faerie Queene, iii. 11. 58. prunes. Plumes. Sometimes written /r*?^;/^. 59. Pan. The god of flocks and herds, and hence specially regarded with love and fear by all shepherds. He is described in the Homeric hymns as " lord of all the hills and dales " : — " Universal Pan Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, Led on the eternal S^rmg." — iMilton, Paradise Lost, iv. 266. Observe Lycon's sudden change of address from his companion, Colin, to the god Pan and the rural Muses. See The Sorrow of Daphnis. 72 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 60. hard constraint. Compare with Milton's " bitter constraint," Lycidas, 6 (see page 79), 61 . harmful! death, deadly harme. Euphuism again. — Albion. England. Conjecture derives the word from Gael, alp, a highland; from albtis, white, with reference to the white cliffs visible from Gaul; or from Albiones, the ancient inhabitants of Britain. 62. uneath. Scarcely. 63. Pales. The goddess of sheepfolds and pastures, especially revered by the Romans. — untrust. Untrussed, disarranged. Compare this pas- sage with Bion's reference to Aphrodite's unkempt hair, Lament for Adonis, page 21, bottom. Also Asfrophel, 57, and Adonais, xiv. 4. 64. Nymphs and Oreades. See note 4, page 31. 65. wolves. Compare with The Sorrow of Daphnis, line 10, and with 7%e Lament for Bion. Also see note 6, page 15. 66. What lucklesse destinie, etc. Compare with Milton, Lycidas, 92 and 107; and see note 8, page 16. 67. father Neptune. See Lycidas, 90. 68. Compare the mention of the river-gods Thamis, Humber, and Severn, with Milton's reference to Camus, Lycidas, 103. See also note i, page 44, and Lajnent for Bion, line 2. 69. cypres. The cypress was an emblem of death, and was dedicated by the Romans to Pluto. — echo. Compare with Lament for Bion, page 40, line 13, and with Adonais, xv. 70. Compare these lines with the opening lines of Moschus's Lament for Bion. 71. Satyres . . . daunst. Compare with I^ycidas, 34. — wipe away all grief e. Compare with L^ycidas, 181. 72. bay tree. The laurel. Poets and victors in the Pythian games were crowned with wreaths of laurel. Hence, a poet laureate was origi- nally one who had received such honor. The reference here is doubtless to Sidney's series of sonnets entitled Astrophel and Stella. See note i, page 86. 73. Unhappie flock, etc. Compare with Lycidas, 125. 74. sitst above. Compare with Lycidas, 172 et seq. ; and see note 64, page 93. 75. flowres. See note 15, page -^i. 76. The sun, etc. Compare with Lycidas, 190-191; and see note 69, page 94. DIRGE FOR IMOGEN FROM THE TRAGEDY OF CYMBELINE By William Shakespeare Written about i6io Overtaken by misfortune^ hnogen, the daughter of Cymbeline, king of Britain, was wandering in a forest, disguised as a page. Led by chance, she came to a cave wherein dwelt old Belarius and with him her own brothers, Polydore and Cadwal, whom he had stolen from their father in their infancy. She told them that her name was Fidele, and that she had lost her way while trying to reach Milford-Haven, where a kinsjuan of hers tvas about to ejnbark for Italy. The wild forest youths, grown no7v to ??ianhood^ s stature, welcomed her to their rude home, and she gladly accepted their press- ing invitation to stay ivith them tintil she had rested frojn the fatigue of her journey. The longer she remained with thei7i, the more attached did they become to her and she to the??i. " How angel-like he sings," said Polydore. ^' But his neat cookery" said Cadwal; "he sauced our broths as though Juno had been sick, and he her dieter P Then there came a day when Belarius and the brothers must go hunting, for their stock of venison was low. But Imogen was ill and cotdd not go out with thou. No sooner was she left alone than she took from her pocket a cordial which had been given her, and which until that mojtient she had forgotten, and drank it off. Nozv the person from whom she had received the cordial did not know its nature, else he would not have given it to her. It caused her to fall into a sound sleep, so deathlike that to all appearances she was dead. When Be- larius and the brothers returned to the cave they foiind her lying., as they supposed lifeless^ on the ground. . . . Then they carried her to a shady nook in the forest, and zvith great sadness in their hearts covered her 7vith leaves and flowers. " While summer lasts and I live here," said Polydore, " /'// szveeten thy sad grave with flozvers. Thou shall not lack the flower thafs like thy face, pale primrose ; nor the azur^d hare-bell, like thy veins ; no, nor the leaf of eglantine., zvhom not to slander, out-sweeten' d not thy breath. All these zvill I strezv o'er thee." . . . And then the brothers sang repose to the spirit of their unknotvn guest. ©trge for Imogen- Fear no more the heat o' th' sun, Nor the furious winter's rages ; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. Fear no more the frown o' th' great. Thou art past the tyrant's stroke ; Care no more to clothe and eat ; To thee the reed is as the oak : The sceptre, learning, physic, must All follow this, and come to dust. Fear no more the lightning-flash, Nor th' all-dreaded thunder-stone ; Fear no slander, censure rash ; Thou hast finish'd joy and moan : All lovers young, all lovers must Consign to thee, and come to dust. No exorciser harm thee ! Nor no witchcraft charm thee ! Ghost unlaid forbear thee ! Nothing ill come near thee ! Quiet consummation have ; And renowned be thy grave ! 75 16 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. ' [A variation by William Collins, 1 746.] DIRGE IN CYMBELINE. To fair Fidele's grassy tomb Soft maids and village hinds shall bring Each opening sweet of earliest bloom, And rifle all the blooming Spring. No wailing ghost shall dare appear, To vex with shrieks this quiet grove, But shepherd lads assemble here, And melting virgins own their love. No wither'd witch shall here be seen, No goblins lead their nightly crew ; The female fays shall haunt the green. And dress thy grave with pearly dew. The red-breast oft at evening hours Shall kindly lend his little aid. With hoary moss and gather'd flowers, To deck the ground where thou art laid. When howling winds and beating rain. In tempests shake thy sylvan cell ; Or 'midst the chase on every plain. The tender thought on thee shall dwell. Each lonely scene shall thee restore, For thee the tear be duly shed ; Belov'd till life can charm no more ; And mourn'd till Pity's self be dead. LYCIDAS A PASTORAL ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD KING By John Milton 1637 Edward King zvas the son of Sir John King, zvho during the later years of Elizabeth and the reigns of the first two Stuarts was royal Secretary for Ireland. He was a young man of many accomplishments and much promise. In 1626, when only fourteen years of age, he entered Christ's College, Cajnbridge, where Milton, then in his third college year, was laying the foundation for his future illustrious career. King became at once a favorite among the students. He composed verses — some of which, written in Latitt, are still preserved, and after graduation he zuas made a fellow and tutor in the college. It was the intention of himself and his friends that he should enter the Church, and his studies zvere all directed towards prepar- ing him for that important and responsible position. Just at the time when the promises of his life seemed brightest, he decided upon making a visit to some of his friends in Ireland, and took passage on board a vessel at Chester for that purpose. When off the Welsh coast the ship struck upon a rock, and through the blow leaked and gaped. " While the other voyagers busied themselves in vain with mortal life,''' says a contemporary, " King, aspiring after the immortal, threzo himself upon his knees, and as he prayed tvas swallowed up by the waters along with the vessel, and gave his life to God, on the loth of August, in the year of salvation i6j'}, of his life twenty-five.^'' A few fnonths after this deplorable event a small volume of verses in honor of the young scholar zuas published in Cambridge. It contained thirty-six pieces (twenty-three of which were in Greek or Latin), and one of them was entitled 'Lycidzs and signed jf. M., zvith the date " Novemb. /^jy." ILgcitias. ^ Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude. And with ^ forc'd fingers rude, ^ Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. * Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear Compels me to disturb your season due ; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer : ^ Who would not sing for Lycidas ? he knew Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme. He must not float upon his watery bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind Without the meed of some ^ melodious tear. *" Begin, then. Sisters of the sacred well That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring ; Begin, and somewhat loudly ^ sweep the string. Hence with denial vain and coy excuse : So may some gentle ^ Muse With lucky words favor my destin'd urn. And, as he passes, turn And bid fair peace be to my ^^ sable shroud. For we were nurs'd upon the self-same hill,^^ Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill ; 79 80 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. Together both, ere the ^^ high lawns appear'd Under the opening eye-Hds of the ^^ Morn, We ^^ drove afield, and both together heard What time the gray-fly winds ^^ her sultry horn, 1^ Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, 30 Oft till the star that rose at evening bright Toward heaven's descent had slop'd his ^^ westering wheel. Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute ; Temper'd to the ^^ oaten flute. Rough 1^ Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with cloven heel From the glad sound would not be absent long ; And 2^ old Damoetas lov'd to hear our song. But, O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return ! Thee, shepherd, thee the '^^ woods and desert caves 40 With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their '^ echoes mourn : The willows and the hazel copses green, Shall now no more be seen Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. As killing as the '^ canker to the rose, Or 24 taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear When the first white-thorn blows. Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear. 50 2^ Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas } For neither were ye playing on ^^ the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie. Nor on the '^^ shaggy top of Mona high. Nor yet where ^^ Deva spreads her wizard stream : Ay me ! I ^ fondly dream ! LYCIDAS. 81 Had ye been there — for what could that have done ? What could the ^^ Muse herself that Orpheus bore, The Muse herself, for her enchanting son Whom universal Nature did lament, 60 When, by the rout that made the hideous roar, His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore ? Alas ! what ^^ boots it with incessant care To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ? Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair ? Fame is ^^ the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 70 (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights and live laborious days ; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find. And think to burst out into sudden ^^ blaze. Comes the ^* blind Fury with abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life. ** But not the praise," Phoebus replied, and touch'd my ^^ trembling ears ; " Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil. Nor in the ^^ glistering foil Let off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies : 80 But lives and spreads aloft by those ^^ pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed." O fountain ^^Arethuse, and thou honor'd flood Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocal reeds ! That strain I heard was of a higher mood ; But now my ^^ oat proceeds. And listens to the ^ herald of the sea 82 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 90 That came in Neptune's plea. He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds, What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain ? And question' d every gust of ^^ rugged wings That blows from off each beaked promontory. They knew not of his story ; And sage ^ Hippotades their answer brings, That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd ; The air was calm, and on the level brine Sleek ^3 Panope with all her sisters play'd. 100 It was that fatal and perfidious bark. Built in the ^ eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. Next ^^ Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow. His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge. Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. '* Ah ! who hath reft " (quoth he) '' my dearest pledge "i " Last came, and last did go. The ^^ pilot of the Galilean lake ; 1 10 Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,) He shook his miter'd locks, and stern bespake : " How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, Enow of such, as for their bellies' sake Creep and intrude and ^" climb into the fold 1 Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. And shove away the worthy bidden guest. *^ Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 120 A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least That to the faithful herdman's art belongs ! L YCIDAS. 83 What ^^ recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped; And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ; The ^"^ hungry sheep look up and are not fed. But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw. Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread : Besides what the ^^ grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing sed : But that ^2 two-handed engine at the door 130 Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more." Return '^^ Alpheus, the dread voice is past That shrunk thy streams ; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and ^'^flowrets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades and wanton winds and gushing brooks On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes, That on the green turf suck the honey'd showers, 140 And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the ^^ rathe primrose that forsaken dies. The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine. The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet. The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears : Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, ^ 150 To strew the ^ laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For, so to interpose a little ease, ^"^ Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise ; 84 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurl'd, Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou, perhaps, under the whehning tide Visit'st the bottom of the ^^ monstrous world ; Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, i6o Sleep'st by the fable of ^^ Bellerus old. Where the great vision of the guarded mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold ; Look homeward, ^*^ angel, now, and melt with ruth, And O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. ^^ Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more. For Lycidas your sorrow is ^^ not dead. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his ^^ drooping head, 170 And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky : So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high. Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves. Where, other groves and other streams along, With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves. And hears the ^^ unexpressive nuptial song. In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. ^^ There entertain him all the saints above. In solemn troops, and sweet societies, 180 That sing, and, singing in their glory, move, And ^^ wipe the tears forever from his eyes. Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more ; Henceforth thou art the ^^ Genius of the shore. In thy large recompense, and shalt be good To all that wander in that perilous flood. LYCIDAS. 85 Thus sang the ^^ uncouth swain to the oaks and rills, While the still Morn went out with sandals gray. He touch'd the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his ^^ Doric lay ; ''^And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills, 190 And now was dropt into the western bay. ^^ At last he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue : To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. NOTES. The Author. John Milton was born in Bread street, London, December 9, 1608. He was educated at St. Paul's School, London, and at Christ's College, Cambridge. His first poem of importance was the Hymn on the Morning of Chris fs Nativity, written in 1629. This was followed by U Allegro and // Penseroso, companion pieces, by the Arcades (1633), and by the dra- matic poem Comzts (1637). Lycidas was also written in 1637. From 1640 until the decline of the Commonwealth, Milton took an active part in politics, and his writings during this period were entirely prose. Para- dise Lost, his greatest work, appeared in 1667. Paradise Regained and the tragedy Samson Agonistes were published in 1 67 1. Milton died in 1674. See note on Adonais, iv. 9. " Milton ! thou should'st be living at this hour : England hath need of thee : she is a fen Of stagnant waters : altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ; Oh ! raise us up, return to us again ; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart : Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea : Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way. In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay." — Wordsworth (1802). .86 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. The Poem. "This piece, unmatched in the whole range of English poetry, and never again equalled by Milton himself, leaves all criticism behind. Indeed, so high is the poetic note here reached, that the common ear fails to catch it. Lycidas is the touchstone of taste; the i8th century criticism could not make anything out of it. . . . It marks the point of transition from the early Milton of mask, pastoral, and idyl, to the quite other Milton, who, after twenty years of hot party struggle, returned to poetry in another vein, — never to the ' woods and pastures ' of which he took a final leave in LycidasP — Mark Pattison. The Title. Lycidas is the name of a shepherd in the second Idyl of Bion, and in the third Eclogue of Virgil. Milton probably selected it on account of its original signification of whiteness or purity. 1. Yet once more. " Milton's conceptions of a poet's work and of the preparation needed for it were of the highest. He was ever striving after * inward ripeness,' and conscious how far he was from attaining it. This sense of his unfitness to perform as yet a poet's high duties had determined him to write no more till he was sensible of being maturer; till 'the mel- lowing year ' had dawned. But the death of his dear friend forced him to intermit this high resolve. Therefore ' yet once more ' would he write ; he would yet again play the poet, though he knew well his proper hour had not yet come." — Hales. — laurels. See note on bay tree, page 72 : — " The laurel, meed of niightie conquerours And poets sage." — Faerie Queene, i. i, 9. myrtles. The myrtle was symbolic of love and peace. Pliny relates that the Romans and Sabines made friendship under a myrtle tree, and purified themselves with its branches. — ivy. This plant was also a symbol of friendship; it was sacred to Bacchus, and like laurel the meed of poets. See Virgil's Eclogues, vii. 27 : " Ye Arcadian shepherds, deck with ivy your rising poet." And viii. 13: "Accept my songs and permit thts ivy to creep around thy temples among thy victorious laurels." 2. forc'd. Forceful, violent. 3. shatter. Scatter. Compare with Paradise Lost, x. 1065 : — " The winds Blow moist and keen, shattering the graceful locks Of these fair-spreading trees." L VCIDAS. 87 4. bitter constraint. Compare with hard constraint^ Pastorall ALglogue, 41. — sad occasion. The Pastorall yEglogtie has " sad stownd " (see note 52, page 71). — dear. Dire, dreadful; possibly from A.-S. derian, to hurt : — " Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven, Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio." — Shakespeare, Hamlet. The word dear as most commonly used, meaning beloved or costly, is from A.-S. deare, greatly esteemed, rare. 5. who would not sing. See note 7, page 31. 6. melodious tear. Tearful melody. 7. Begin, then. Compare with Theocritus, Song of Thyrsis : " Begin, ye Muses dear," etc. (see page 9) ; also with Moschus, Lament for Bion : " Begin, ye Sicilian Muses," etc. See note i, page 14. The " Sisters of the sacred well " are the nine Muses. The sacred well is the Pierian Spring at the foot of Mount Olympus, " the seat of Jove." Here, accord- ing to Hesiod, was the birthplace of the Muses. Other fountains, as that of Helicon in Boeotia, and the Castalian Spring near Mount Parnassus, were identified with their worship. Compare with : — " Rehearse to me, ye sacred Sisters nine. The golden brood of great Apolloes wit, Those piteous plaints and sorrowfull sad tune Which late ye poured fourth as ye did sit Beside the silver springs of Helicone, Making your music of hart-breaking mone ! " Spenser, Tea res of the A fuses, 1-6. " With the Muses of Helicon let us begin to sing, with them who haunt the mountain, vast and divine, of Helicon, and with tender feet dance round the dark-colored fountain and altar of mighty Jove." — Hesiod, Theogony, i. 8. sweep the string. Compare with Pope : — " Descend, ye Nine, , . . And sweep the sounding lyre." — Ode on St. Cecilia's Day. 9. Muse. Poet; as in Shakespeare's Sonnet, 21 : — " So is it not with me as with that Muse, Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse." — destin'd urn. Coffin, grave. See note 56, below. 10. sable shroud. Black coffin, — that is, the "destin'd urn" men- tioned above, 11. They had both been educated at the same college — Christ's College, Cambridge. 88 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 12. high lawns. Compare with Gray's Elegy, vii. 13. eyelids of the Morn. Compare with Romeo and Juliet, ii. 3, i : — " The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night." And with Job iii. 9, marg. : — " Neither let it see the eyelids of the morning,'^' 14. drove afield. See Gray's Elegy, stanza vii. 15. her sultry horn. Compare with Collins : — " Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum." — Ode to Even'wg. The gray-fly, or trumpet-fly, hums during the hottest part of the day. Compare with Gray's Elegy, ii. 3. 16. Battening. Feeding, taking care of. 17. westering. Westward going. Compare with Chaucer, Troilus and Creseide, ii. 906 : — " The dales honour and the Heavens eye Can westren fast, and downward for to wrie." 18. oaten flute. See note i, page 66. 19. Satyrs and Fauns. The University men at Cambridge. But compare the expression with Virgil, Eclogue vi. 27 : " Then you might have seen the Fauns and savages frisking in measured dance, then the stiff oaks waving their tops." The passage is imitated by Pope in Pasto- rals, ii : — " Rough Satyrs dance, and Pan applauds the song." 20. old Damoetas. "Probably W. Chappell, the tutor of Christ's College in Milton and King's time." — Hales. Both Theocritus and Virgil use the name in their pastorals. Damcetas is also a prominent character in Sidney's Arcadia. 21. woods and desert caves. Compare with the Lament for Bion, line 15, page 40. 22. echoes. See Lament for Bion, Xm^ 13, page 40; also Adonais, stanza 15, page 122. Compare with Wordsworth, Intimations of Lmmor- tality : — " 1 hear the echoes through the mountain throng." 23. canker. A disease incident to trees, causing the bark to fall off. The word was also formerly used to indicate a worm or insect injurious to LYCWAS. 89 roses, and such is probably its meaning here. See Shakespeare, Mid- summer Night's Df-eam, ii. 2, 3 : — " Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds." 24. taint-worm. A parasitic insect, or larva, destructive to animals, especially sheep. 25. Where were ye, Nymphs ? See Sorrow of Daphnis, line 2, page 9; also note on the same. Compare this and the passage following it with Virgil's Eclogues, x. : " What groves, ye virgin Naiads, detained you? . . . For neither any of the tops of Parnassus, nor those of Pindus nor Aonian Aganippe, did retard you." 26. the steep. Probably Kerig-y-Druidion among the heights of South Denbighshire, where were the burial places of the Druids. An- other supposition is that Penmaenmawr in Wales is meant. See Gray's Bard. 27. shaggy top of Mona. The island of Anglesey, "called by the bards ' the shady island,' because it formerly abounded with groves of trees; but there is now little wood, except along the bank of the Menai." 28. Deva. The river Dee : — " Dee, which Britons long ygone % Did call divine, that doth by Chester turn." Spetiser, The Faerie Queene, iv. 11. ^ 29. fondly. Used here in its original meaning o{ foolishly . 30. Muse. Calliope was the mother of Orpheus. The latter was torn in pieces by the Thracian women while under the influence of their Bacchanalian orgies. His head was thrown into the Hebrus river, down which it floated to the sea, and was finally carried to Lesbos, where it was recovered and buried. See Pope's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day : — " See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies ; Hark ! Haemus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries — Ah see, he dies ! " See also Virgil's Georgics, iv. 5 20: "The Ciconian matrons, amid the sacred service by the gods and nocturnal orgies of Bacchus, having torn the youth in pieces, scattered his limbs over the wide fields. And then CEagrian Hebrus rolled down the middle of its tide his head torn from the alabaster neck." See also Paradise Lost, vii. 34 : — " That wild rout that tore the Thracian bard In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamor drown'd Both harp and voice ; nor could the Muse defend Her son." 90 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 31. boots. Avails. From A. -S. <55/, advantage. — to tend, etc. "Of what avail is it to devote so much attention to poetry, or the poet's trade? " Amaryllis. A pastoral sweetheart mentioned by Virgil. See Eclogues, i. 4: "You, Tityrus, stretched at ease in the shade, teach the wood to re-echo beauteous Amaryllis." A name applied to the Countess of Derby in Spenser's Colin Clouts come Home Again, 435. Milton wrote his Ar- cades as part of an entertainment to be presented in the presence of this same lady by some noble persons of her family (1633). — Neaera's hair. Compare with the following lines from Lovelace : — " When I lie tangled in her hair, And fetter'd to her eye, The birds that wanton in the air Know no such liberty." 32. the spur. Hales compares this passage with the following from Dryden : " Reward is the spur of virtue in all good acts, all laudable attempts; and emulation, which is the other spur, will never be wanting when particular rewards are proposed." 33. blaze. " For what is glory but the blaze of fame? " Paj-adise Regained, iii. 34. blind Fury. Milton evidently means the Fate, Atropos, whose office it is to cut the thread of life after it has been spun by her two sisters, Clotho and Lachesis : — " Sad Clotho held the rocke, the whiles the thrid By griesly Lachesis was spun with paine. That cruell Atropos eftsoones undid. With cursed knife cutting the twist in twaine: Most wretched men, whose days depend on thrids so vaine." The Faerie Queene, iv. 2, 48. " The fatall sisters, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, daughters of Herebus and the Night, whome the poets faine to spin the life of man, as it were a long thred, which they draw out in length, till his fatall houre and timely death be come ; but if by other casualtie his daies be abridged, then one of them, that is, Atropos, is said to have cut the threed in twaine." — Shepheards Calender, Glosse. 35. trembling ears. See Virgil's Eclogues, vi. 3: "When I offered to sing of kings and battles, Apollo twitched my ear." Touching the ears was probably significant of refreshing the memory. The tingling (trembling ?) of the ears was formerly believed to indicate that some one was talking about the person to whom they belonged : — Z VCIDaS. 91 " One ear tingles ; some there be That are snarling now at me." — Herrick, Hesperides. 36. glistering foil. Alluding to the tinsel or metallic leaf used for "setting oft" jewels. The connection here is: "Fame is . . . not set off to the world in glistering foil, nor does it lie in broad humor, etc." 37. pure eyes. See Habakkukx. 13: "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil." 38. Arethuse. See note 15, page 17. The allusion here is to pastoral poetry as exemplified by Theocritus and other Sicilian poets. See also note 53, below. — Mincius. A river in northern Italy, tributary to the Po. The poet Virgil's birthplace was on its banks. — smooth-sliding. Smoothly gliding. 39. oat. See note i, page 66. 40. herald of the sea. Triton, the son of Neptune. He came to plead Neptune's innocence of the death of Lycidas. He calls in the winds as witnesses for the defence. Compare with A Pastoral yEglogue, 95. 41. rugged wings. Turbulent winds. 42. Hippotades. ^olus, the god of the winds, son of Hippotes, " the horseman." 43. Panope. One of the sea-nymphs, daughter of Nereus and Doris. Her sisters were the Nereides. 44. eclipse. It was a popular superstition that a curse rested upon whatever was done during an ecHpse. Compare Paradise Lost, i. 597: — " As when the sun . . . . . . from behind the moon In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds." See also Shakespeare, Macbeth, iv. i, 28. The conclusion of Triton's investigations concerning the causes of the wreck is that the ship on which Lycidas had embarked was unseaworthy, and that she sank in calm waters. 45. Camus. The genius of the river Cam, on which is situated Cam- bridge, and the university wherein Lycidas was nurtured, — hence called "reverend sire." Compare with The Moiirning Mtise of Thestylis (1587):- "The Thames was heard to roar, the Reyne, and eke the Mose, With torment and with grief: their fountains pure and cleere Were troubled, and with swelling flouds declared their woes." In further explanation of this passage Plumptre says: "The 'mantle' is as if made of the plant 'river-sponge,' which floats copiously in the Cam; the * bonnet ' of the river-sedge, distinguished by vague marks traced somehow over the middle of the leaves after the fashion of the at, af, of the hyacinth." See note 2, page 44. 92 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 46. pilot. St. Peter. In Christian art he is represented, as here, with two keys; hence, two keys, borne saltire-wise, are the insignia of the Pope. The bishops of Winchester, Gloucester, Exeter, St. Asaph, and Peterborough, in England, also bear two keys. The leading thought in the next twenty-three hnes seems to be the loss which the church sustained by the death of Lycidas. 47. climb into the fold. See John x. i. " He that entereth not Vjy the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." Milton refers to false teachers and preachers, and especially to the corruptions existing in the church. His sympathies are with the Puritans, just then rising into power, as opposed to the rituahsm which was then being enforced by Archbishop Laud. 48. blind mouths. "A singularly violent figure, as if men were mouths and nothing else." — Masson. 49. recks. Concerns. " What do they care?" From A.-S. r^r^;/, to care for. Compare with Milton's Comus, 404 : — " Of night or loneliness it recks me not." sped. Provided for. Compare with Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, ii. 9, 72: "So, begone; you are sped." — list. Wish, choose. That is, when they choose to exercise the herdsman's art. — scrannel. Akin to scrawny, lean, thin, insufficient. 50. hungry sheep. Compare this entire passage with Spenser, Shep- heards Calender, May : — " Thilke same bene shepheardes for the devils stedde, That playen while their flockes be unfedde. But they bene hyred for little pay Of other, that cared as little as they What fallen the flocke, so they hau the fleece." 51. grim wolf. Probably an allusion to the Catholic Church, which was at that time having many accessions. 52. two-handed engine. " He means to say generally that the time of retribution is at hand. Some commentators, unwisely in my opinion, take the words as a definite prophecy of Laud's execution (in 1645). Cer- tainly they could never have been understood in that sense at the time of the poem's first publication ' under the sanction and from the press of one of our universities,' and when ' the proscriptions of the Star Chamber and the power of Laud were at their height.' " — Hales. Compare with Matt, iii. 10. '* And now also the axe is laid at the root of the trees." Also Luke iii. 9. 53. Alpheus. See note on Arethusa, above. In the Arcades, Milton refers to the — LYCWAS. 93 " Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluice Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse." The name is used here, however, simply as a personification of pastoral poetry, and Milton means that after his digression on churches and pastors he will now return to his original strain. 54. flowrets. Compare this entire passage with the passages quoted or referred to in notes 15 and 16, pages t^^) ari<^ 34- 55. rathe. Early. Still retained in its comparative form, rather. 56. laureate hearse. Poet tomb. Compare with Milton's Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester : — " And some flowers and some bays For thy hearse to strew the ways, Sent thee from the banks of Came." 57. Let our frail thoughts, etc. That is, let us imagine that Lycidas really lies in a tomb and is not lost in the vast ocean. 58. monstrous world. World of monsters. 59. Bellerus. A Cornish giant. "Bellerium was the name formerly given to the promontory of the Land's End. It was the home of a mighty giant, after whom, in all probability, the headland was called." — Hunt's /romances of the West of England. Milton at first wrote it Corineus, a giant from whom the name Cornwall was derived. — guarded mount. Mount St. Michaels, a steep rock near Penzance in Cornwall. Warton says : " There is still a tradition that a vision of St. Michael seated on this crag, appeared to some hermits." The land here looks almost directly towards Namancos and Bayona near Cape Finisterre. 60. angel. St. Michael. That is, turn your gaze away from the dis- tant Spanish coast and look towards the shores where doubtless the body of Lycidas lies. 61. Weep no more, etc. See The Sorrow of Daphnis, page 12. 62. not dead. See Adonais, xxxix. i. Compare with the Countess of Pembroke's Dolefnll Lay of Clorinda : — " Ay me, can so divine a thing be dead? Ah ! no : it is not dead, ne can it die." 63. drooping head. Compare with Gray's Bard: — " To-morrow he repairs the golden flood." 64. unexpressive. Inexpressible. — nuptial song. See page 36. 65. There entertain him, etc. Compare this entire passage with The Dolefnll Lay of Clorinda : — 94 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. " There liveth he in everlasting blis, Sweet Spirit never fearing more to die : Ne dreading harm from any foes of his, Ne fearing salvage beasts more crueltie." Also with Pastorall ALglogue, line 136; also The Faerie Queene, iii. 6, 48 : — " There now he liveth in eternal blis, loying his goddess, and of her enioyd." Also Paradise Lost, xi. 82 : — " By the waters of life, where'er they sat In fellowships of joy." Also The Shepheards Calender, November : — " There lives shee with the blessed gods in blisse, There drincks she nectar with ambrosia mixt, And ioyes enioyes that mortall men doe misse. The honor now of highest gods she is." 66. wipe the tears. Compare with Kevelationy'xx. 17: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." 67. Genius. Good spirit, guardian angel. — recompense. That is, in the great compensation or reward which is thine. Compare with Shake- speare, The Tempest, iv. I, I : — " If I have too austerely punished you, Your compensation makes amends." 68. uncouth. Uncultivated, rude; perhaps rather in the sense of unknown. 6g. Doric lay. See note 5, page 45. 70. And now, etc. Compare with Jeremiah vi. 4 : " For the shadows of the evening are stretched out." Also with Pope's Pastorals, iii. : — " Thus sung the shepherds till the approach of night. The skies yet blushing with departing light, When falling dews with spangles deck'd the glade, And the low sun had lengthen'd every shade." And with Virgil, Eclogue i. 83 : " And now the high tops of the villages smoke afar off, and longer shadows fall from the lofty mountains." 71. At last. Compare with Fletcher, The Purple Island : — " Hence, then, my lambs ; the falling drops eschew: To-morrow shall ye feast in pastures new." ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD By Thomas Gray 1750 ** Gray's Elegy is perhaps the most zvidely knoivn poem in our language. The reason of this extensive popularity is perhaps to be sought in the fact that it expresses in an exquisite manner feelings and thoughts that are universal. In the current ideas of the Elegy there is perhaps nothing that is rare, or exceptional, or out of the com??ion way. The musings are of the 7f lost ratio7ial and obvious character possible ; it is difficult to conceive of any one musing under similar circumstances zvho should not muse so ; but they are not the less deep and moving on this account. The mystery of life does not become clearer, or less solemn and axvfid, for any amount of contemplation. Such inevitable, such everlastijig questions as rise in the mindzvhen one lingers in the precincts of Death can never lose their fresh- ness, never cease to fascinate and to move. It is with such questions, that would have been commonplace long ages since if they could ever be so, that the Elegy deals. It deals with them in no lofty philosophical manner, but in a siffiple, humble, unpretentious way, always zvith the truest and broad- est humanity. The poefs thoughts turn to the poor ; he fo7'gets the fine tombs inside the church, and thinks only of the ' mouldering heaps ' in the churchyard. Hence the problem that especially sttggests itself is the poten- tial greatness, when they lived, of the * rtide forefatJiers ' that noiu lie at his feet. He does not and cannot solve it, though he finds considerations to mitigate the sadness it must inspire ; but he expresses it in all its awfulness in the most effective language and with the deepest feeling ; and his expression of it has become a living part of our language.''^ — Rev. J. W. Hales. lElegg WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. >J«»iOO 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, hoHest manhood, thou : Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours to make them thine. Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be : They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 154 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 seemed my sin in me ; What seemed my worth since I began; For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee. Forgive my grief for one removed, Thy creature, whom I found so fair. 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 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 ? IN MEMORIAM. ISS Or reach a hand thro' time to catch The far-off interest of tears ? Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drowned, Let darkness keep her raven gloss : Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss. To dance with death, to beat the ground, Than that the victor Hours should scorn 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. 156 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. III. O Sorrow, cruel fellowship, O Priestess in the vaults of Death, sweet and bitter in a breath. What whispers from thy lying lip ? "The stars," she whispers, "blindly run; A web is wov'n across the sky ; From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun : " And all the phantom. Nature stands — With all the music in her tone, A hollow echo of my own, — A hollow form with empty hands." And shall I take a thing so blind. Embrace her as my natural good ; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind.'* IV. To Sleep I give my powers away ; My will is bondsman to the dark ; 1 sit within a helmless bark. And with my heart I muse and say : O heart, how fares it with thee now. That thou shouldst 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. IN MEMORIAM. 157 Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, That grief hath shaken into frost ! Such clouds of nameless trouble cross All night below the darkened 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 words, like 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 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. 158 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 bowed, \ His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud, \ Drops in his vast and wandering grave. ^ 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 ; j 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. ] Oh, somewhere, meek unconscious dove, j That sittest ranging golden hair; j 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 ; j And thinking, '' This will please him best," She takes a ribbon or a rose ; - j For he will see them on to-night ; And with the thought her color burns ; . And, having left the glass, she turns ; Once more to set a ringlet right; IN MEM OKI AM. 159 And, even when she turned, the curse Had fallen, and her future lord Was drowned in passing thro' the ford, Or killed 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, ' i Doors, where my heart was used to beat . j So quickly, waiting for a hand, 1 A hand that can be clasped no more, — Behold me, for I cannot sleep, \ And like a guilty thing I creep j At earliest morning to the door. \ He is not here ; but far away 1 The noise of life begins again, I And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain j On the bald street breaks the blank day. i i ! VIII. { A happy lover who has come To look on her that loves him well, J 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. 160 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 fostered up with care ; So seems it in my deep regret, my forsaken heart, with thee And this poor flower of poesy Which little cared for fades not yet. But since it pleased a vanished eye, 1 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 favorable speed Ruffle thy mirrored mast, and lead Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn. IN MEMORIAM. 161 I All night no ruder air perj^lex | Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright : As our pure love, thro' early light i 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, j My friend, the brother of my love ; I My Arthur, whom I shall not see ' Till all my widowed 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 nio:ht : I I see the cabin-window bright ; I I see the sailor at the wheel. I Thou bringest the sailor to his wife. And travelled men from foreign lands ; And letters unto trembling hands ; And, thy dark freight, a vanished life. ' So bring him : we have idle dreams : This look of quiet flatters thus i Our home-bred fancies : oh 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 ; 162 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. Than if with thee the roaring wells Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine ; And hands so often clasped 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 : 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. IN MEMOKIAM. 163 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 ner\'es 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 this the end of all my care ? " And circle moaning in the air : " Is this the end ? Is this the end ? " 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 forever new, A void where heart on heart reposed ; And, where warm hands have prest and closed, Silence, till I be silent too. 164 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. Which weep the comrade of my choice, An awful thought, a Ufe 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 ; My fancies time to rise on wing, And glance about the approaching sails. As tho' they brought but merchants' bales. And not the burden that they bring. XIV. If one should bring me this report. That thou hadst touched the land to-day, And I went down unto the quay. And found thee lying in the port; And standing, muffled round with woe. 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 drooped of late. And he should sorrow o'er my state And marvel what possessed my brain ; IN MEMORIAM. 165 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 whirled away. The rooks are blown about the skies ; The forest cracked, the waters curled. The cattle huddled on the lea ; And wildly dashed 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 That rises upward always higher. And onward drags a laboring 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 desjDair and wild unrest 166 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 stunned me from my power to think And all my knowledge of myself ; 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 Compelled 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 : Come quick, thou bringest all I love. IN MEiMORIAM. I67 Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam, My blessing, Hke a Hne of Hght, Is on the waters day and night. And Hke 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 boscmi of the stars. So kind an office hath been done. Such precious relics brought by thee ; The dust of him I shall not see Till all my widowed 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 famiHar 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 ; 168 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES, 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 darkened 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 hushed nor moved along. And hushed my deepest grief of all. When filled 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. XX. The lesser griefs that may be said. That breathe a thousand tender vows, And but as servants in a house Where lies the master newly dead ; Who speak their fcehng as it is, And weep the fulness from the mind : IN MEMORIAM. 169 '' 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 there is none. So much the vital spirits sink To see the vacant chair, and think, '' How good ! how kind ! and he is gone." 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." 170 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 ? " Behold, ye speak an idle thing : Ye never knew the sacred dust : I do but sing because I must. And pipe but as the hnnets 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 cheered the way, And, crowned with all the season lent, From April on to April went. And glad at heart from May to May : But where the path we walked began To slant the fifth autumnal slope, As we descended following Hope, There sat the Shadow feared of man ; IN MEM OR I AM. 171 Who broke our fair companionship, And spread his mantle dark and cold, And wrapt thee formless in the fold, And dulled 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 cloaked 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 : *' 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 ; 172 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. " 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 looked to human eyes Since Adam left his garden yet. And is it that the haze of grief Makes former gladness loom so great ? To lowness of the present state, That sets the past in this relief ? Or that the past will always win A glory from 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 ; IN MEMORIAM. 173 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. 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 mouldered 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 : 174 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time, Unfettered 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 : Each voice four changes on the wind. That now dilate, and now decrease, Peace and good-will, good-will and peace, Peace and good-will, to all mankind. This year I slept and woke with pain, I almost wished no more to wake. And that my hold on life would break Before I heard those bells again : IN MEMORIAM. 175 But they my troubled spirit rule, For they controlled me when a boy ; They bring me sorrow touched 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, j How dare we keep our Christmas-eve : ! 1 Which brings no more a welcome guest j To enrich the threshold of the night J With showered largess of delight, | In dance and song and game and jest. \ 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 possessed the earth, And sadly fell our Christmas-eve. 176 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. ■! 1 At our old pastimes in the hall We gambolled, making vain pretence \ Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute shadow watching all. I We paused : the winds were in the beech : J We heard them sweep the winter land ; j And in a circle hand-in-hand j Sat silent, looking each at each. •; Then echo-like our voices rang ; j We sung, tho' every eye was dim, 1 A merry song we sang with him 1 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 followed, 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 1 With gathered 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 MEMORIAAL Yll . XXXI. When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, \ And home to Mary's house returned, \ Was this demanded, if he yearned \ To hear her weeping by his grave ? : "Where wert thou, brother, those four days ? " \ There Hvcs no record of reply. Which telling what it is to die j Had surely added praise to praise. I I From every house the neighbors met, j The streets were filled with joyful sound, \ A solemn gladness even crowned \ The purple brows of Olivet. i Behold a man raised up by Christ ! ,: The rest remaineth unrevealed ; ! He told it not ; or something sealed • 'j The lips of that Evangelist. | j XXXII. ' Her eyes are homes of silent prayer. Nor other thought her mind admits \ But, he was dead, and there he sits, j And he that brought him back is there. ] 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. I All subtle thought, all curious fears, j Borne down by gladness so complete, j ■i -i 178 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES, She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet With costly spikenard and with tears. Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, Whose loves in higher love endure ; What souls possess themselves so pure, Or is there blessedness like theirs ? XXXIII. O thou that after toil and storm Mayst seem to have reached a purer air, Whose faith has centre everywhere. Nor cares to fix itself to form, Leave thou thy sister when she prays. Her early Heaven, her happy views ; Nor thou with shadowed 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 ! See thou, that countest reason ripe In holding by the law within, Thou fail not in a world of sin. And ev'n for want of such. a type. XXXIV. My own dim life should teach me this. That life shall live for evermore. Else earth is darkness at the core. And dust and ashes all that is ; IN MEMORIAM. 179 This round of green, this orb of flame, Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks In some wild poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim. What then were God to such as I ? 'Twere hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use A little patience ere I die ; '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 Ionian 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." 180 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. ] 1 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 j Had bruised the herb and crushed the grape, : And basked and battened in the woods. '■ XXXVI. Tho' truths in manhood darkly join, j Deep-seated in our mystic frame, -; We yield all blessing to the name ; Of Him that made them current coin ; I For wisdom dealt with mortal powers ^ Where truth in closest words shall fail, i Where truth embodied in a tale j Shall enter in at lowly doors. | And so the Word had breath, and wrought j With human hands the creed of creeds ; In loveliness of perfect deeds, i More strong than all poetic thought ; ] 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 darkened brow : " Thou pratest here where thou art least ; IN MEMORIAM. 181 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 whfsper 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 am but an earthly Muse, And owning but a little art To lull with song an aching heart. And render human love his dues ; *' 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 murmured, as I came along, Of comfort clasped in truth revealed ; And loitered in the master's field. And darkened sanctities with song." XXXVIII. With weary steps I loiter on, Tho' always under altered skies The purple from the distance dies. My prospect and horizon gone. 182 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 rendered free, Then are these songs I sing of thee Not all ungrateful to thine ear, 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 conies the golden hour When flower is feeling after flower ; But Sorrow fixt upon the dead, And darkening the dark graves of men. What whispered from her lying lips } Thy gloom is kindled at the tips. And passes into gloom again. XL. Could we forget the widowed hour And look on Spirits breathed away, As on a maiden in the day When first she wears her orange-flower ! When crowned with blessing she doth rise To take her latest leave of home. IN MEAIORIAM. 183 And hopes and light regrets that come Make April of her tender eyes ; \ 'i And doubtful joys the father move, 1 And tears are on the mother's face, I As parting with a long embrace ; She enters other realms of love ; i Her office there to rear, to teach, Becoming as is meet and fit A link among the days, to knit The generations each with each ; And doubtless, unto thee is given A life that bears immortal fruit In such great offices as suit The full-grown energies of heaven. Ay me, the difference I discern ! How often shall her old fireside Be cheered 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 missed her most. Shall count new things as dear as old : But thou and I have shaken hands, Till growing winters lay me low ; My paths are in the fields I know. And thine in undiscovered lands. 184 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 turned 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 bowlings from forgotten fields ; . 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 ; IN MEMORIAM. 185 It was but unity of place That made me dream I ranked 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 ? XLIII. If Sleep and Death be truly one, And every spirit's folded bloom Thro' all its intervital gloom In some lone 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 color 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. 186 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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. The days have vanished, tone and tint, And yet perhaps the hoarding sense Gives out at times (he knows not whence) A Httle 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. Oh, 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." So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, IN iMEMORIAM. \^>j As thro' the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined. This use may He 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 shadowed 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 revealed ; The fruitful hours of still increase; Days ordered in a wealthy peace. And those five years its richest field. 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, 188 THE BOOR OF ELEGIES. 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." 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. IN MEMORIAM. 189 XLIX. From art, from nature, from the schools, Let random influences glance, Like light in many a shivered lance That breaks about the dappled pools : 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-pencilled 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 racked with pangs that conquer trust ; And Time, a maniac scattering dust. And Life, a Fury slinging flame. Be near me when my faith is dry, And men the flies of latter spring, 190 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 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 lessened in his love.? I wrong the grave with fears untrue : Shall love be blamed for want of faith 1 There must be wisdom with great Death The dead shall look me thro' and thro'. 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. 1 I cannot love thee as I ought, ] For love reflects the things beloved ; i My words are only words, and moved ] Upon the topmost froth of thought. " IN MEMOKIAM. 191 '' 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 fret not, like an idle girl. That life is dashed with flecks of sin. Abide : thy wealth is gathered in, When Time hath sundered shell from pearl." 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 } Oh, 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, 192 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. LIV. Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; That nothing walks with aimless feet; That no one life shall be destroyed. 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 shrivelled in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain. Behold, we know not any thing ; I can but trust that good shall fall At last — 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.? Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams ? IN MEMORIAM. 193 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, all shall go. " 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 seemed so fair. Such splendid purpose in his eyes. Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies. Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, 19+ THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law — Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shrieked against his creed — Who loved, who suffered countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or sealed within the iron hills ? No more ? A monster then, a dream, A discord. Dragons of the prime. That tear each other in their slime, Were mellow music matched with him. 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. IN MEMORIAM. 195 I hear it now, and o'er and o'er, Eternal greetings to the dead, / And ''Ave, Ave, Ave," said, / " Adieu, adieu," for evermore. '^ 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 answered : *' 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. My centred passion cannot move, Nor will it lessen from to-day ; 196 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 passed : a soul of nobler tone : My spirit 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. The foolish neighbors come and go, And tease her till the day draws by : At night she weeps, ** How vain am II How should he love a thing so low } " LXI. If, in thy second state sublime. Thy ransomed reason change replies With all the circle of the wise. The perfect flower of human time ; IN^MEMORIAM. 197 And if thou cast thine eyes below, How dimly charactered and slight, How dwarfed a growth of cold and night. How blanched 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 Shakespeare 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 ; 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, 198 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. And yet I spare them sympathy And I would set their pains at ease. So may'st thou watch me where I weep, As, unto vaster motions bound, The circuits of thine orbit round A higher height, a deeper deep. 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, IN MEAIORIAM. 199 The limit of his narrower fate, While yet beside its vocal springs He played at counsellors and kings, With one that was his earliest mate ; Who ploughs with pain his native lea And reaps the labor 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-tossed With ''Love's too precious to be lost, A little grain shall not be spilt." And in that solace can I sing, Till out 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. 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 crossed Which makes a desert in the mind. 200 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 : 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 dipped 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. IN MEMORIAM. 20] 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, J Nor can I dream of thee as dead. I walk as ere I walked forlorn. When all our path was fresh with dew, * And all the bugle breezes blew Reveillee to the breaking morn. "I But what is this t 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 ; I It is the trouble of my youth \ That foolish sleep transfers to thee. A LXIX. j I dreamed there would be Spring no more, \ That Nature's ancient power w^as lost : i The streets were black with smoke and frost, j They chattered trifles at the door : j I wandered from the noisy town, j I found a wood with thorny boughs : 'i I took the thorns to bind my brows, \ I wore them like a civic crown : \ I met with scoffs, I met with scorns j From youth and babe and hoary hairs : \ 202 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. They called me in the public squares The fool that wears a crown of thorns : They called me fool, they called me child : I found an angel of the night ; The voice was low, the look was bright ; He looked upon my crown and smiled : He reached the glory of a hand, That seemed 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 puckered faces drive ; Dark bulks that tumble half alive, And lazy lengths on boundless shores ; 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. IN MEMORIAM. 203 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 talked Of men and minds, the dust of change. The days that grow to something strange, In walking as of old we walked Beside the river's wooded reach. The fortress, and the mountain ridge, The cataract flashing from the bridge, The breaker breaking on the beach. 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 crowned estate begun To pine in that reverse of doom, Which sickened every living bloom. And blurred the splendor of the sun ; Who usherest in the dolorous hour With thy quick tears that make the rose 204 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. Pull sideways, and the daisy close \ Her crimson fringes to the shower ; \ J 1 Who might'st have heaved a windless flame \ Up the deep East, or, whispering, played ' A chequer-work of beam and shade Along the hills, yet looked the same, As wan, as chill, as wild as now ; ' Day, marked as with some hideous crime, •■ When the dark hand struck down thro' time And cancelled nature's best : but thou, ; Lift as thou may'st thy burdened brows ■ Thro' clouds that drench the morning star, : And whirl the ungarnered sheaf afar, j And sow the sky with flying boughs, \ And up thy vault with roaring sound \ Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day ; j Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray. And hide thy shame beneath the ground. i ^ LXXIII. ; So many worlds, so much to do, j So little done, such things to be, i How know I what had need of thee, For thou wert strong as thou wert true ? j The fame is quenched that I foresaw, • The head hath missed an earthly wreath ; , I curse not nature, no, nor death ; ; For nothing is that errs from law. i IN MEMORIAM. 205 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. 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, I'o 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, arid 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. 1 leave thy praises unexpressed In verse that brings myself relief. And by the measure of my grief I leave thy greatness to be guessed ; What practice howsoe'er expert In fitting aptest words to things, 206 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. \ Or voice the richest-toned that sings, , Hath power to give thee as thou wert ? I care not in these fading days i 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 perished 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 sharpened to a needle's end ; 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. IN MEMORIAM. 2U7 Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain ; And what are they when these remain The ruined shells of hollow towers ? LXXVII. What hope is here for modern rhyme To him v/ho turns a musing eye On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie Foreshortened 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 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 darkened 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 possessed the earth. And calmly fell our Christmas-eve : The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost, No wing of wind the region swept, 208 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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. Who showed 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 — mixed 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 ! I know thee of what force thou art To hold the costliest love in fee. But thou and I are one in kind. As moulded like in Nature's mint ; And hill and wood and field did print The same sweet forms in either mind. For us the same cold streamlet curled Thro' all his eddying coves ; the same All winds that roam the twilight came In whispers of the beauteous world. IN MEAIORIAM. 209 At one dear knee we proffered vows, One lesson from one book we learned, Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turned 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 dropped 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 stayed in peace with God and man. I make a picture in the brain ; I hear the sentence that he speaks ; He bears the burden of the weeks ; But turns his burden into gain. 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 ; 210 I'lIE BOOK OF ELEGIES. There cannot come a mellower change, For now is love mature m 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. Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks ; And these are but the shattered stalks, * Or ruined 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. IN MEiMORIAM. 211 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 ? Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, The little speedwell's darling blue, Deep tulips dashed with fiery dew, Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. 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 ; 1 see thee sitting crowned 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, 212 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES, When thou should'st link thy Hfe with one Of mine own house, and boys of thine 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 honored guest. Thy partner in the flowery walk Of letters, genial table-talk. Or deep dispute, and graceful jest; While now thy prosperous labor 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 ; 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 linked with thine in love and fate, IN MEMORIAAL 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 sorrowed most, 'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all — 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 dimmed of sorrow, or sustained ; And whether love for him have drained My capabilities of love ; Your words have virtue such as draws A faithful answer from the breast. Thro' light reproaches, half expressed, And loyal unto kindly laws. 213 214 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES, My blood an even tenor kept, , Till on mine ear this message falls, That in Vienna's fatal walls God's finger touched 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 ; And led him thro' the blissful climes. And showed 'him in the fountain fresh All knowledge that the sons of flesh Shall gather in the cycled times. But I remained, whose hopes were dim, Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth. To wander on a darkened earth, Where all things round me breathed of him, O friendship, equal-poised control, O heart, with kindliest motion warm, 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, 1 felt and feel, tho' left alone. His being working in mine own, The footsteps of his life in mine; IN MEMORIAM. 215 A life that all the Muses decked With gifts of grace, that might express All-comprehensive tenderness, All-subtilizing 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 mastered Time ; 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, 216 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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." 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 ; IN MEAIORIAM. 217 If not SO fresh, with love as true, I, clasping brother-hands, aver I could not, if I would, transfer The whole I felt for him to you. For which be they that hold apart The promise of the golden hours ? First love, first friendship, equal powers, That marry with the virgin heart. Still mine, that cannot but deplore. That beats within a lonely place, That yet remembers his embrace, But at his footstep leaps no more, My heart, tho' widowed, may not rest Quite in the love of what is gone. But seeks to beat in time with one That warms another livins: 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 The round of space, and rapt below Thro' all the dewy-tasselled wood, And shadowing down the horned flood In ripples, fan my brows and blow 218 rilE BOOK OF ELEGIES. i The fever from my cheek, and sigh \ The full new life that feeds thy breath ; Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death, j 111 brethren, let the fancy fly ; From belt to belt of crimson seas j On leagues of odor streaming far, \ To where in yonder orient star • \ A hundred spirits whisper *' Peace." LXXXVII. J I passed 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 prophets blazoned on the panes; j And caught once more the distant shout, : The measured pulse of racing oars i Among the willows ; paced the shores ] And many a bridge, and all about J The same gray flats again, and felt ! The same, but not the same ; and last ■ Up that long walk of limes I passed To see the rooms. in which he dwelt. i Another name was on the door : ; I lino;ered ; all within was noise 1 Of song, and clapping hands, and boys That crashed the glass and beat the floor ; ' IN MEMORIAM. 219 Where once we held debate, a band Of youthful friends, on mind and art, And. labor, and the changing mart. And all the framework of the land ; When one would aim an arrow fair. But send it slackly from the string ; And one would pierce an outer ring And one an inner, here and there ; And last the master-bowman, he Would cleave the mark. A willing ear We lent him. Who, but hung to hear The rapt oration flowing free From, point to point, with power and grace And music in the bounds of law. 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. Oh, tell me where the senses mix. Oh, tell me where the passions meet. Whence radiate : fierce extremes employ Thy spirits in the darkening leaf, 220 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. And in the midmost heart of grief Thy passion clasps a secret joy : And I — my harp would prelude woe — I cannot all command the strings ; The glory of the sun 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 mixed in all our simple sports; They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts And dusty purlieus of the law. Oh, joy to him in this retreat, Immantled in ambrosial dark. To drink the cooler air, and mark The landscape winking thro' the heat : Oh, 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 ! IN MEMORIAM. 221 ^ j ] Oh, bliss, when all in circle drawn \ About him, heart and ear were fed j To hear him, as he lay and read \ The Tuscan poets on the lawn : • | i Or in the all-golden afternoon j 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, ■ Discussed the books to love or hate, ' Or touched the changes of the state, \ Or threaded some Socratic dream ; ; \ But if I praised the busy town, i 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 .i The picturesque of man and man." " We talked : the stream beneath us ran, \ The wine-flask lying couched in moss, ; Or cooled within the glooming wave ; \ And last, returning from afar, j Before the crimson-circled star \ Had fall'n into her father's grave, \ 222 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. And brushing ankle-deep in flowers, We heard behind the woodbine veil The milk that bubbled in the pail, And buzzings of the honeyed 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 ; 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 passed 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. IN MEMOKIAM. 223 XCI. When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, And rarely pipes the mounted thrush ; Or underneath the barren bush Flits by the sea-blue bird of March ; Come, wear the form by which I know Thy spirit in time among thy peers. The hope of unaccomplish'd years Be large and lucid round thy brow. When summer's hourly-mellowing change May breathe, with many roses sweet, Upon the thousand waves of wheat, That ripple round the lonely grange ; Come : not in watches of the night. But when the sunbeam broodeth warm, Come, beauteous in thine after form, And like a finer light in light. XCII. 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 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 ; 224 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. '■ And tho' the months, revolving near, ; Should prove the phantom-warning true, ' They might not seem thy prophecies, i But spiritual presentiments, ' And such refraction of events As often rises ere they rise. j 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 walked when clasped 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. Oh, therefore, from thy sightless range With gods in unconjectured bliss, Oh, 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 MEMORIAM. 223 In vain shalt thou, or any, call The spirits from their golden day, Except, like them, thou too canst say. My spirit is at peace with all. They haunt the silence of the breast. Imaginations calm and fair. The memory like a cloudless air, The conscience as a sea at rest : But when the heart is full of din. And doubt beside the portal waits. They can but listen at the gates, And hear the household jar within. xcv. By night we lingered 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 chirred ; The brook alone far off was heard, And on the board the fluttering urn : And bats went round in fragrant skies. And wheeled or lit the filmy shapes That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes And woolly breasts and beaded eyes ; While now we sang old songs that pealed From knoll to knoll, where, couched at ease, 226 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field. But when those others, one by one, Withdrew themselves from me and night, And in the house light after light Went out, and I was all alone, A hunger seized my heart ; I read Of that glad year which once had been. In those fall'n leaves which kept 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 vigor, bold to dwell On doubts that drive the coward back. And keen thro' wordy snares to track Suggestion to her inmost cell. So word by word, and line by line. The dead man touched me from the past. And all at once it seemed at last His living soul was flashed on mine. And mine in his was wound, and whirled About empyreal heights of thought. And came on that which is, and caught The deep pulsations of the world, iEonian music measuring out The steps of Time, the shocks of Chance, IN MEMORIAM. Ill The blows of Death. At length my trance Was cancelled, 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 revealed The knoll once more where, couched at ease, The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field : And, sucked from out the distant gloom, A breeze began to tremble o'er The large leaves of the sycamore, And fluctuate all the still perfume. And gathering freshlier overhead, Rocked 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, Mixed 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. 228 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. I know not : one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touched a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true : Perplexed in faith, but pure in deeds. At last he beat his music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, ' Believe me, than in half the creeds. He fought his doubts and gathered 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 Sinai's peaks of old, While Israel made their gods of gold, Altho' the trumpet blew so loud. XCVII. My love has talked with rocks and trees ; He finds on misty mountain-ground His own vast shadow glory-crowned ; He sees himself in ^11 he sees. Two partners of a married life — I looked on these and thought of thee In vastness and in mystery. And of my spirit as of a wife. IN MEMORIAM. 11^ 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 passed 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 threads 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 withered violet is her bliss ; She knows not what his greatness is : For that, for all, she loves him more. For him she plays, to him she sings Of early faith and plighted vows ; She knows but matters of the house, And he, he knows a thousand things. Her faith is fixed and cannot move. She darkly feels him great and wise. She dwells on him with faithful eyes, " I cannot understand ; I love." 230 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. XCVIII. You leave us : you will see the Rhine, And those fair hills I sailed 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 splendor seems No livelier than the wisp that gleams On Lethe in the eyes of Death. ! Let her great Danube rolling fair ' Enwind her isles, unmarked of me : : I have not seen, I will not see , Vienna ; rather dream that there, i .1 A treble darkness, Evil haunts ' ; The birth, the bridal ; friend from friend ! Is oftener parted, fathers bend . Above more graves, a thousand wants j 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 i With statelier progress to and fro I The double tides of chariots flow j By park and suburb under brown ' Of lustier leaves ; no more content, j He told me, lives in any crowd, j When all is gay with lamps, and loud \ With sport and song, in booth and tent. IN MEMORIAAI. 231 Imperial halls, or open plain ; And wheels the circled dance, and breaks The rocket molten into flakes Of crimson or in emerald rain. xcix. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, So loud with voices of the birds. So thick with lowing 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. Oh, 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. c. I climb the hill ; from end to end Of all the landscape underneath. 232 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 trenched 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. CI. Unwatched, 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 ; IN MEMORIAM. 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 ; As year by year the laborer 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 233 234 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. The low love-language of the bird In native hazels tassel-hung." The other answers, *' Yea, but here Thy feet have strayed in after hours With thy lost friend among the bowers, And this hath made them trebly dear." These two have striven half the day, And each prefers his separate claim. Poor rivals in a losing game. That will not yield each other way. I turn to go ; my feet are set To leave the pleasant fields and farms; They mix in one another's arms To one pure image of regret. cm. On that last night before we went From out the doors where I was bred, I dreamed a vision of the dead, Which left my after-morn content. Methousrht 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 veiled, to which they sang ; IN MEMORIAM. 235 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 learned that I must go They wept and wailed, 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 rolled the floods in grander space. The maidens gathered strength and grace And presence, lordlier than before ; And I myself, who sat apart And watch'd them, waxed in every limb ; I felt the thews of Anakim, The pulses of a Titan's heart ; 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. 236 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. \ 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 : j 'i Whereat those maidens with one mind \ Bewailed 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 3 An answer from my lips, but he -j Replying " Enter likewise ye And go with us : " they entered in. J And while the wind began to sweep \ A music out of sheet and shroud, ; We steered her toward a crimson cloud : That land-hke 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 1 A single murmur in the breast, "i That these are not the bells I know. ' I Like strangers' voices here they sound. In lands where not a memory strays. Nor landmark breathes of other days, \ But all is new unhallowed ground. ; IN MEMORIAM. 237 cv. To-night ungathered let us leave This laurel, let this holly stand : We live within the stranger's land, And strangely falls our Christmas eve. 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 footsteps beat the floor. Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm ; For who would keep an ancient form Thro' which the spirit breathes no more t Be neither song, nor game, nor feast ; Nor harp be touched, nor flute be blown ; No dance, no motion, save alone What lightens in the lucid east Of rising worlds by yonder wood. Long sleeps the summer in the seed ; Run out your measured arcs, and lead The closing cycle rich in good. 238 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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. 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. IN AlEiMORIAM. 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 vapor, leaving night forlorn. 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 sharpened eaves. And bristles all the brakes and thorns To yon hard crescent, as she hangs About 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. 239 240 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. \ 1 CVIII. , ■ I will not shut me from my kind, ] And, lest I stiffen into stone, • j 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, j But mine own phantom chanting hymns ? j 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, j Whatever wisdom sleep with thee. \ CIX. J Heart-affluence in discursive talk ■ From household fountains never dry ; j The critic clearness of an eye, ' That saw thro' all the Muses' walk ; | Seraphic intellect and force \ To seize and throw the doubts of man ; \ Impassioned logic, which outran \ The hearer in its fiery course ; j High nature amorous of the good, \ But touched with no ascetic gloom ; : IN MEMOKIAM. 241 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, unasked, in thine, And find his comfort in thy face ; All these have been, and thee mine eyes Have looked on : if they looked in vain, My shame is greater who remain. Nor let thy wisdom make me wise. ex. 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 i^roud was half disarmed 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 softened, and he knew not why ; 242 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. While I, thy dearest, sat apart, And felt thy triumph was as mine ; And loved them more, that they were thine, The graceful tact, the Christian art ; Not mine the sweetness or the skill, But miije the love that will not tire, And, born of love, the vague desire That spurs an imitative will. 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 seemed to be. Best seemed the thing he was, and joined 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. 243 And thus he bore without abuse The grand old name of gentleman, Defamed by every charlatan, And soiled with all ignoble use. CXII. High wisdom holds my wisdom less. That I, who gaze with temperate eyes On glorious insufficiencies, Set light by narrow 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 swayed. In vassal tides that followed thought. 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 the keen In intellect, with force and skill 244 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. To strive, to fashion, to fulfil — j I doubt not what thou wouldst have been : i -I A life in civic action warm, i A soul on highest mission sent, | A potent voice of Parliament, ] A pillar steadfast in the storm, \ Should licensed boldness gather force, j Becoming, when the time has birth, A lever to uplift the earth ; And roll it in another course. With thousand shocks that come and go, With agonies, with energies. With overthrowings, and with cries, ■ And undulations to and fro. ■j CXIV. i i 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. i But on her forehead sits a fire : \ She sets her forward countenance j And leaps into the future chance, is 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, 1 But some wild Pallas from the brain IN MEMORIAM. 245 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 : 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 bourgeons 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 drowned 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 ; 246 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. ! Where now the seamew pipes, or dives \ In yonder greening gleam, and fly j The happy birds, that change their sky j To build and brood ; that live their lives j From land to land ; and in my breast ; Spring wakens too ; and my regret | Becomes an April violet, i And buds and blossoms like the rest. \ CXVI. i Is it, then, regret for buried time j That keenlier in sweet April wakes, And meets the year, and gives and takes \ The colors of the crescent prime ? i 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 ; 5 And that dear voice, I once have known, j Still speak to me of me and mine : I 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, IN MEMORIAM. 2^7 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 laboring in his youth ; Nor dream of human love and truth, As dying nature's earth and lime ; 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 branched from clime to clime, The herald of a higher race. And of himself in higher place If so he type this work of time 248 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. Within himself, from more to more, Or, crowned 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 dipped in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the shocks of doom 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, IN MEMORIAM. 249 Magnetic mockeries ; not in vain, Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death ; 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 ap^. 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 loosened from the wain, The boat is drawn upon the shore ; Thou listenest to the closing door, And life is darkened 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 : 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. 250 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. \ 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. I Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then, While I rose up against my doom, : And yearned 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, Be quickened 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 ! IN JMEMORIAAI. 251 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. 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 answered "■ I have felt." 252 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. No, like a child in doubt and fear : But that blind clamor made me wise ; Then was I as a child that cries, But, crying, knows his father near; 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 played with gracious lies, Because he felt so fixed 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. cxxvi. Love is and was my lord and king, And in his presence I attend IN MEMORIAM. 253 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 Encompassed 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 sundered 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. 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, 50.111 I 254 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. And compass'd by the fires of Hell; While thou, dear sj^irit, 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 v/ith 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, Wild hours that fly with hope and fear. If all 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 jDicturesque And tuft with grass a feudal tower; Why then my scorn might well descend On you and yours. I see in part That all, as in some piece of art. Is toil cooperant to an end. IN MEMORIAM. Z55 CXXIX. Dear friend, far off, my lost desire, So far, so near in woe and weal ; Oh loved the most, when most I feel There is a lower and a higher ; 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 ; Love 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. Far off thou art, but ever nigh ; I have thee still, and I rejoice ; 256 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. I prosper, circled with thy voice ; I shall not lose thee tho' I die. CXXXI. O living will that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock, Rise in the spirit-ual 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 conquered 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. 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 numbered 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 ; IN MEM OKI AM. 257 No longer caring to embalm In dying songs a dead regret, But like a statue solid-set, And moulded in colossal calm. 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 wafe 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. Oh, 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. And thou art w^orthy ; full of power ; As gentle ; liberal-minded, great, Consistent ; wearing all that weight Of learning lightly like a flower. 258 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 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 watched 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, j The ''wilt thou" answer'd, and again j The " wilt thou " asked till out of twain Her sweet " I will " has made ye one. \ Now sign your names, which shall be read, | Mute symbols of a joyful morn, \ By village eyes as yet unborn ; The names are signed, 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. Oh, 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. IN MEMORIAM. 259 Oh, 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. 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 warmed, 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-favored 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, 260 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. Discussing how their courtship grew, And talk of others that are wed, And how she looked, 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 vapor 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 ; And touch with shade the bridal doors, With tender gloom the roof, the wall ; And breaking let the splendor 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, IN MEMORIAM. 261 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 I Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand \ Is Nature Hke an open book ; \ I 1 No longer half-akin to brute, j For all we thought and loved and did, j And hoped, and suffered, is but seed ' Of what in them is flower and fruit ; Whereof the man, that with me trod j 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, J One God, one law, one element, I And one far-off divine event. To which the whole creation moves. NOTES. The Author. \ Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 at Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. \ He was educated at home, by his father, and at Trinity College, Cam- bridge. His first volume of poetry was published in 1830. Upon the I death of Wordsworth in 1850, he was appointed poet-laureate. In 1883 i he was made Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Freshwater. He died "^ October 6, 1892. His principal poems are The Idylls of the King^ In '• 262 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. Memoriani, The Princess, Maud, Locksley Hall, Enoch Arden, and several poetical dramas. The Subject. Arthur Henry Hallam, in whose memory this poem was written, was the son of Henry Hallam, the distinguished historian. He was born in 1811, and therefore was by two years the junior of Tennyson. With the latter, he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. At a very early age he translated the sonnets of Dante's Vita Nnova, and wrote memoirs of Petrarch, Voltaire, and Burke, and a drama on the life of Raphael. These were published after his death in a volume of memoirs edited by his father. He died in Vienna, September 15, 1833. The Poem. It is analogous to a series of sonnets, and is composed of 133 "short swallow-flights of song." The metre is the same throughout, — a stanza of four lines, the first rhyming with the fourth, the second with the third. ^ No number contains less than three stanzas, while one (Ixxxiv.) has as many as thirty. " The whole spirit of the poem is the spirit of the sonnet as understood by Dante, Petrarch, and Shakespeare." Prologue. The eleven stanzas comprising the prologue to the poem were probably the last to be written. Internal evidence would indicate that the work was composed at different times during the years which intervened between Hallam's death and the date (1849) here given. I. Introductory. This division is introductory to the theme which forms the burden of the entire poem, and was probably one of the first parts written. It may, therefore, have been composed some sixteen years earlier than the prologue. Stanza, i. See Longfellow, The Ladder of St. Atcgnstine : — " Saint Augustine ! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame," — who sings, etc. The reference is not to Longfellow, however, but more probably to Goethe. If men may thus rise on stepping- 1 Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648) is sometimes accredited as the inventor of this metre. It is true that he was the first to make such verses truly melodious, but the stanza of this form had been used by earlier writers. It was very effectively employed by George Sandys in his Paraphrase of the Psalms of David (1636). IN MEMORIAM. 263 stones of their dead selves to higher things, cannot they also turn their losses into gains, and make their tears blossom and bear fruit? 2. far-off interest of tears. Compare with Shakespeare, Sonnet -^i : — " Many a holy and obsequious tear Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye As interest of the dead." 4. Compare with xxvii. 4. II. Address to the Yew-Tree. In England the yew-tree is extensively planted in graveyards, probal)ly because of its tenacious growth and long life. With the ancient Druids it was an emblem of immortality. " The eternal gloom of the yew-tree is felt to be congenial." — Robertson. 1. See Bryant, Thanatopsis : — " The oak Shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy mould." See also Gray's Elegy, stanza 4; also xxxix., below. 2. 3. Compare with Milton, Paradise Lost, iii. ; — " Thus with the year Seasons return ; but not to me returns Day or the sweet approach of even or mom, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine." III. The voice of sorrow. I. Compare with lix. See T.ocksley Hall, 76: "A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things." IV. The poet's musings with his heart. V. Why give place to grief? I. words . . . half conceal the Soul within. See Goldsmith, The Bee, No. iii. : "The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them." Talleyrand is credited with the common phrase : " Speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts." 3. weeds. Mourning garments. From A.-S. ivird, clothing. A common expression still current is "widow's weeds." — in outline, etc. The poet's grief shall be the subject of words — of this poem. But it is too great for a full expression; he can give it in outline only. 264 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. VI. The shock to parents and friends. I. The fact of the commonness of bereavement is no consolation; it rather adds to grief: — " There is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there ; There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair." — Lo7igfelhnv, Resignation, 7. Young Hallam was betrothed to Tennyson's sister, and she is the "poor child" whose sorrow is described in this and the following stanzas. From Ixxxv. 5, we learn that he died suddenly in Vienna. VII. At the house of sorrow. 3. What more suggestive picture of desolation than the dark, deserted house, the drizzling rain at break of the blank day, and the **bald," silent street? VIII. Two similes and a reason. 1-3. The first simile is easily understood : " Like as a happy lover . . . so find I every pleasant spot," etc. 4-6. In the second simile is included the reason for inditing this poem, — the wish to plant " this poor flower of poesy ... on his tomb," etc. IX. Apostrophe to the ship that brings him home. I. Hallam having died, as already noted, in Vienna, his body was brought home in a ship from Italy, and buried not far from the junction of the Severn with the Wye (see xviii., xix.). — waft him o'er. Compare with I.ycidas, 64. — holy urn. So Milton says " destin'd urn " and " laureate hearse " (see note 56, page 93). 3. Phosphor. The light-bringer or morning star. Gr. phos, light, and phcrcin, to bring. See cxxi. 5. The poet's affection for his friend is here concisely expressed. " He seems to have looked upon their communion as a ' marriage of true minds,' in which he was the weaker or feminine element." Compare with xvii. 5. X. Apostrophe to the ship, continued. It is perhaps a foolish instinct with us, and yet it seems better that the dead should be buried beneath the sod than that their graves should be in the ocean, unknown and unmarked. 5. fathom-deep. "Full fathom five thy father Wt?,:' — Shakespeare, Tempest. XL An interlude of calm. 1-4. The calmness of the morning hour in autumn. IN MEMORIAM. 265 5. The calmness of death on the calm sea. XII. The poet goes in spirit to meet the ship. 1. See Milton's sonnet, To his Deceased Wife. 2. mortal ark. The body. The metaphorical allusion is to the dove sent out by Noah to determine whether the waters of the flood had subsided. See C*?;/!?^/^ viii. 8-12. XIII. Tears for the chosen comrade, XIV. To think of him as still alive is not so strange. To be able to realize that he is dead is even stranger. " A simple child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death ? " Wordsivorth, We are Seven, XV. An autumn storm at evening. Contrast the picture here drawn with that of the calm morning in xi., — wild unrest with calm despair. Can both exist in the same mind? See xvi. i. XVI. The poet is surprised at such contrariety of feeling. XVII. Another benison upon the ship. I. The vessel arrives. 5. Till all my widow'd race be run. See note on ix. 5. XVIII. The English burial near the banks of the Severn. I. from ashes . . . the violet. So from the blood of Adonis springs the rose. See note 14, page 32. See Shakespeare, iT^zw/t-/, "And from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring ! " XIX. Arthur's grave by the river. 1. by the pleasant shore. One would infer that the grave was near the river bank where the Severn joins the Wye. Hallam was buried inside Clevedon Church. 2. The tide at Chepstow near the junction of the Wye and Severn sometimes rises sixty feet; then it is that it "makes a silence in the hills." 4. The poet's grief is somewhat like the tide. XX. Ebb and flow. XXI. The poet's reason for singing. 2-5. The complaints of the critics. 266 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. 6. I do but sing, etc. Compare with Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot : — " I lisped in numbers for the numbers came." 5. latest moon. The planet Neptune, discovered in 1846, probably just before the writing of these stanzas. XXII. Four years of companionship. 1. Compare with Lycidas, 23-31 : — " For we were nurs'd upon the self-same hill," etc. 2. 3. From April on to April went, etc. " Three winters cold Have from the forest shook three summers' pride; Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd, In process of the seasons have I seen; Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, Since first I saw you fresh, which yet art green." Shakespeare, Sonnet 104. 3. Shadow. The shadow of death. See Job xxiv. 17: "For the morning is to them even as the shadow of death; if one know them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of death." XXIII. Recollections of that companionship. 3. Pan. See note 59, page 71. 6. flute of Arcady. See note 7, page 67. XXIV. Imagination may paint the past in too bright colors. I. fount of Day, etc. The very sun has its spots. XXV. But Love's burden is light. XXVI. Forgetfulness of the past is less to be desired than death. I. Still onward, etc. Compare with Gray's ^Z.?^, 3. The preceding verses were written in the autumn, very soon after Arthur's death. Some weeks have now passed, the Christmas time is approaching, and the poet again takes up his pen. 3-4. I would rather find " that Shadow waiting with the keys," than know that I would live indifferent to Love. XXVII. The blessedness of having loved. XXVIII. The Christmas bells. XXIX. Christmas eve. 3. We will keep it for old custom's sake — because we were wont to do so, because we used to do so. Compare with Ixxviii., below. IN MEMORIAM. 267 XXX. Christmas day. How we kept the Christmas eve. Conflicting thoughts. Compare it with the second Christmas (see Ixxviii.), and note the change which time brings. XXXI. The present state of the dead. In this and the next five flights we have a series of meditations on the condition of the departed, suggested by the story of the resurrection of Lazarus (see JoJui xi., xii.). XXXII. The devotion of Mary. I . See Luke x. 42. 3. See John xii. 3. / XXXIII. Simple faith better than formal devotion. / XXXIV. Immortality our only hope. XXXV. The moral chaos that would ensue if this were not so. 5-6. If Death were the end, then Love itself would be "mere fellow- ship," etc. XXXVI. The incarnation of Christ. 3. the Word. " In the beginning was the Word . . . and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth," — yohn i. 4. and to cease. Compare with Keats's Ode to a iVighfijigale, 56 : — " To cease upon the midnight with no pain." XXXVII. Superiority of revelation over uninspired poetry. 1. Urania. See note 2 on Adonnis, page 136. 2. Parnassus. The dwelling place or favorite haunt of Apollo and the Muses. 3. Melpomene. The singing goddess. The Muse who presided over tragedy. XXXVIII. Song cheers the weary way. The spring approaches, we are "under altered skies," the "blowing season " of March is here, the " herald melodies " of singing birds are heard. 2. herald melodies. Compare with Shakespeare, Sonnet i : — " The only herald to the gaudy spring." XXXIX. A second address to the yew-tree. See ii., and the note on the same. 268 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. XL. Death's parting is final. 6-8. The bride returns to her friends; but the Spirits breathed away come not again. XLI. The poet fears that he will always be one hfe behind his friend. If this be the case, they can never be comrades again. XLII. And yet may they not meet as teacher and pupil? XLIII. Death may be a trance. XLIV. Do the dead forget their former life? 1. If our souls existed before we were born, we have forgotten that existence. And may not the spirit in the next life also forget? — " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath elsewhere its setting. And cometh itoxsx afar." — Wordsworth. 2. And yet we cannot say that "some httle flash, some mystic hint" of the former life does not sometimes come to us : — " Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness. But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God who is our home." — Wordsworth. 3. And so may not some such mystic hint awaken the memory of the dead — if indeed Death so taste of forgetfulness. — Lethean. Per- taining to Lethe, the river of forgetfulness : — " A slow and silent stream, Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks Forthwith his former state and being forgets — Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain." Afilton, Paradise Lost, ii. 583. XLV. Perhaps the consciousness of personal existence first comes to us in this present life and is never lost. XLVL The memory of our five years' friendship will surely remain. XLVIL The doctrine of Pantheism is both vague and distasteful. See note on Adonais, xxxviii., page 147. XLVIIL The mission of Sorrow. 2. Sorrow ministers to love, and cares not to "part and prove" the great problems of existence : — IN MEMORIAM. 269 " Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, To thee I send this withered embassage. To witness duty, and to show my wit." Shakespeare, Sonnet 26. See iii. 4. The poet dares not " trust a larger lay," but sings only in " short swallow- flights of song," i.e. in these one hundred and thirty odd divisions of In Memoriani. XLIX. The song may be light but the sorrow is deep. See cvi. 4, 5. L. An invocation. 1. Thou wilt be my light. 2. Thou wilt be my strength. 3. Thou wilt aid my faith. 4. Thou wilt be a strong presence to support me. LI. The superior wisdom of the dead. 2. Compare with Shakespeare, Sonnet 61 : — " Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee So far from home into my deeds to pry. To find out shames and idle hours in me? " 3-4. I fear not the searching eyes of the Spirits to whom even shame may be laid bare. For their larger wisdom will enable them to understand my weakness. LIL The poet would not blame his own weakness overmuch. Lin. Evil in retrospect. Is there anywhere proof that evil is in any sense desirable or necessary? 4. "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." — i. Thessalo- 7iiatis V. 21. LIV. All things work together for good. 5. See cxxiv. 5. /LV. Is the universal desire of immortality a proof that existence is eternal? \J 4, 5. We know nothing. We have only Faith, and upon it we must rest everything. LVI. The confusion of an appeal to Nature. 3-5. Shall man become dust to be blown about by the winds or locked up in the tomb? Is this the end? See Hamlet, v. i. 270 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. w 7. Where shall we find an answer to these wearying doubts? " Behind the veil, behind the veil." Compare with cxviii. LVII. The funeral bell. 3. See Shakespeare, Sonnet 71 : — " No longer mourn for me when I am dead, Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled." It would seem that Tennyson's first intention was that the poem should end here. LVIII. Why shed the fruitless tear? LIX. Apostrophe to Sorrow. Sorrow in a personified form has taken the place of the dead. Compare with Shakespeare, King John : — " Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me ; Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words. Remembers me of all his gracious parts. Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form: Then, have I reason to be fond of grief." Compare with the poet's former address to Sorrow, in iii., above. LX. Lowly love entertained for one in higher station. LXI. The sincerity of my love for him. 3. the soul of Shakespeare. " The transcendent love for a beautiful soul, * passing the love of woman,' of which the soul of Shakespeare was capable, is here hinted at, and the poet declares that even this love cannot surpass his for his friend. The allusion appears to indi- cate a deep and probably recent study of the Sonnets of Shakespeare." — Tennysoniana. LXII. "Though an unworthy love, once past, perishes, . . . LXIII. "Yet the higher Being may in some sort feel for the affection borne to it by the inferior." — Robertson. LXIV. Does the great man remember the humble companion of his boyhood? LXV. Our love must still be in some degree mutual. LXVL My loss is like the blind man's loss of sight. But even the blind man's " inner day can never die." IN MEM OR I AM. 271 LXVII. In fancy, at night, I see the tal^let over Arthur's grave in the dark church. LXVIII. In my dreams he is not dead. See note at bottom of page 148. I . Sleep, Death's twin-brother. See note on Adonais, vii. 7, page 1 39. LXIX. A dream. LXX. Out of the shadovviness of dreams Arthur's fair face appears and drives all phantoms away. LXXI. Recollections of one pleasant episode in our lives. LXXII. Anniversary of Arthur's death. A stormy, dreary day in autumn again. Compare with xcix. LXXIII. Fame. He lived not to achieve it — and why should he? Compare with Lycidas, 78. LXXIV. A simile. His family likeness to the good and great. LXXV. His deeds while here were potential, but certainly, somewhere, he is now making his power active. Compare this and the next two flights with Shakespeare, Sonnet 17: — " Who will believe my verse in time to come, If it were filled with your most high deserts? Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb Which hides your life and shows not half your parts. If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The eye to come would say, ' This poet lies ; Such heav'nly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.' So should my papers, yellovv'd with their age. Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue, And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage And stretched metre of an antique song." LXXVI. Fame at its best is transient. LXXVII. These verses may be but short-lived, yet what of that? I sing for love, and not for fame. LXXVIII. The second Christmas. Compare with xxviii., xxix., above. 4. Grief is not so poignant as it was a year ago. LXXIX. The closeness of our friendship. Here begins a series of verses in which the poet musingly reviews the loving relationship which existed between him and Arthur. LXXX. Suppose he had lived and I had died. 272 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. ; LXXXI. My love for him has been made mature through his death. j LXXXII. I murmur only because our intercourse has been terminated. All else is well. ; LXXXIII. The tardy spring of the new year. It whispers hope. \ 3. See Lycidas, 142-151; also note 16, page 34. \ LXXXIV. Visions of what might have been. ; 3. See vi. 7, and the note to the same. I LXXXV. After all, another friendship is not impossible. : 25. clasping brother-hands. This poem is probably addressed to Tennyson's brother-in-law (husband of Arthur's betrothed), and if so, must have been written at least seven years after Hallam's death, i LXXXVI. The coming of Spring brings hallowed influences, and whisper? j " Peace ! " LXXXVII. Reminiscences of college life. 2. high-built organs. Compare with Milton, ///'^/w^rc'.yc, 161 : — " There let the pealing organ blow i To the full-voiced quire below," etc. i i LXXXVIII. The contrast of fierce and secret joy in the song of the | nightingale. See Keats's Ode to a Nightingale. \ 3. Sqq Locksley Hall : — " Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might." 1 LXXXIX. Memoirs of country delights. 6. Tuscan poets. Dante, Petrarch. XC. A change of circumstances may make return of the dead to life i undesirable to some, but never would his return be unwelcome to me. XCI. Both spring and summer bring glad remembrances of him, and J seem to bid him come back. XCII. And yet even should he return in visible spirit-form, I could hardly '• believe it. XCIII. Oh, that our spirits might at least have some sort of communion. j 2. Compare with this from ^_j'//;/6'r'.j' /zV/^/.- — ' " Star to star vibrates light : may soul to soul '1 Strike through a finer element of her own j So from afar touch as at once? " > XCIV. Only the pure in heart can hold communion with the dead. IN MEM OKI AM. 273 XCV. Another reminiscence called up by reading his letters one night while tenting in the fields. 7. defying change. See Shakespeare, 6"^/^;^,?^ 123: — " No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change, Thy registers and thee, I both defy." 5. from me and night. Compare with Gray's Elegy , 4. XCVI. Doubt and faith. 6. Sinai's peaks of old. See Exodus xxxii. 1-4. XCVII. The love of faith. XCVIII. Vienna, the city of his death. XCIX. The second anniversary of his death. See Ixxii., above. C. Every object I see recalls memories of him. " Once more he seems to die." CI. On leaving the home of childhood. Tennyson left his ancestral home about the year 1835, ^'^'^ this division of the poem was probably written at that time. 3. lesser wain. The constellation U^'sa Major, or the Great Bear, is frequently called " Charles's wain " (probably from ceorles wain, the countryman's wagon). Tennyson doubtless refers here to the constellation Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear. CII. The remembrances which make the old home so dear are of two kinds. 2. Two spirits, etc. See Shakespeare, Sonnet 144: — " Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which hke two spirits do suggest me still." cm. The last night in my childhood's home, and what I dreamed. " The vision presents the thought that, his memory going with us, the spirit of all that is wise and good and graceful sails with us in the life-voyage." — Robertson. CIV. The approach of Christmas. Strange Christmas bells. CV. The third Christmas eve. In a new house, and among strange associations. Compare with xxviii. and Ixxviii. CVI. The bells of the New Year. CVII. Celebration of Arthur's birthday. However bitter the winter weather, let us keep the day with festal cheer. 274 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. \ \ CVIII. The wisdom which sorrow brings. ] CIX. Arthur's distinctive characteristics. I ex. His influence over his associates. ' CXI. A true gentleman he was in heart and hfe : — " " The rank is but the guinea's stamp, i A man's a man for a' that." — Bunts. i CXII. The growth of his intellectual power. ; CXIII. What he would have been had he lived. CXIV. Wisdom is heavenly, Knowledge is of earth. His was a charac- ter in which to knowledge was added reverence and charity, — and these three thus blended are Wisdom. CXV. The coming of spring. Compare with xxxviii. CXVI. Hopes aroused by Nature's re-awakening. CXVII. The sorrow of separation will only enhance the delight of | meting. j 3. All the courses of the suns. Compare with Shakespeare, Sonnet j 59 : " Inve hundred courses of the sun." | CXVHI. The evolution of man from the lower forms of nature is but an | indication that his upward progress will continue. j I. dying Nature's earth and lime. Compare with — i " Before the little ducts began i To feed the bones with lime." — Two Voices, ^26. ' CXIX. Another visit to the house which was Arthur's home. Compare j with vii. ' ; ^CXX. Man is not " a greater ape." He is born for higher things. \ I. Like Paul with beasts. See i Corinthians xv. 32. This poem was \ written before the enunciation of the doctrine of evolution by Dar- j win, probably soon after the publication of The Vestiges of the j Natural History of Creation (1844), which had produced much j discussion on this and kindred themes. j CXXI. The evening and the morning star. As Hesper, the evening star, changes in time to Phosphor, the morning star, so my grief has ; changed from despair to hope. See ix., above. | CXXII. Did Arthur know of my despair and wretchedness? Then let | him be with me now in my feeling of blessedness,. \ J IN MEMORIAL. 275 1. Compare with Shakespeare, Sonnet 64: — " When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main," etc. CXXIir. The great changes which have taken place on earth, yet no change can make me think our separation final. ^XXIV. An answer to the sceptic's doubts. Do we ask, Where is God? We feel Him, know Him, in our inmost hearts. 5. See liv. 5. CXXV. In all these sorrowing verses, Hope and Love have been present; for it was he that " breathed the spirit of the song." 2. Compare with Shakespeare, Sonnet 72 : — " Unless you would devise some virtuous lie. To do more for me than mine own desert, And hang more praise upon deceased I Than niggard truth would willingly impart — Oh, lest your true love may seem false in this. That you for love speak well of me untrue." CXXVI. The majesty of Love. CXXVH. All is well. All is moving on towards God. 2. fool-fury of the Seine. The French revolution. We infer from the expression " thrice again " that he has in mind three revolutions. If so, this poem must have been written about the time of the popu- lar uprising in 1848 and the dethronement of Louis Philippe. CXXVIII. Love conquers doubt. CXXIX. The ennobling power of the friendship which I have for him. 2. Sweet human hand, etc. Compare with, — J In the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow." Shakespeare, Sonnet 106. CXXX. He is now a universal presence. 2. I do not therefore love thee less. Compare with, — " I love not less though less the show appear." Shakespeare, Sonnet 102. CXXXI. A prayer for spiritual strength. 276 THE BOOK OF ELEGIES. It is wonderful how generally the formalists have missed their way to the interpretation of this poem. It is sometimes declared with oracular decisiveness, that, if this be poetry, all they have been accustomed to call poetry must change its name. As if it were not a law that every original poet must be in a sense new; as if yEschylus were not a poet because he did not write an epic like Homer : or as if the Romantic poets were not poets because they departed from every rule of classical poetry. And as if, indeed, this very objection had not been brought against the Romantic school, and Shakespeare himself pronounced by French critics a " buf- foon " : till Schlegel showed that all life makes to itself its own form, and that Shakespeare's form had its living laws. So spoke the " Edinburgh Review" of Byron; but it could not arrest his career. So spoke Byron himself of Wordsworth ; but he would be a bold man, or a very flippant one, who would dare to say now that Wordsworth is not a great poet. And the day will come when the slow, sure judgment of Time shall give to Tennyson his undisputed place among the English poets as a true one, of rare merit and originality. — F. W. Robertson. I conceive that this monumental and superlative poem has done more than any other literary performance of the nineteenth century to express and to consolidate all that is best in the life of England, its domestic affection, its patriotic feeling, its healthful morality, its rational and earnest religion. Happy is the nation whose accepted and greatest poet thus voices its deepest instincts. Let who will adjure Englishmen to galvanize the corpse of Paganism, I shall take my place in the throng of simple folk who listen, well pleased, to the home-bred, heart-felt, honest strains. of In Menioriam. — Peter Bayne. It is the cry of the bereaved Psyche into the dark infinite after the vanished love. His friend is nowhere in his sight, and God is silent. Death, God's final compulsion to prayer, in its dread, its gloom, its utter stillness, its apparent nothingness, urges the cry. Moanings over the dead are mingled with the profoundest questionings of philosophy, the signs of nature, and the story of Jesus, while now and then the star of the morn- ing, bright Phosphor, flashes a few rays through the shifting, cloudy dark- ness. And if the sun has not arisen on the close of the book, yet the aurora of the coming dawn gives light enough to make the onward journey possible and hopeful. — George MacDonald, ELEGIACAL POEMS By William Shakespeare, Ben Jonsort, John Webster, Henry Vaughan, John Milton, Thomas Chatter ton, Robert Burns, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, William Cullen Bryant, and others If I were to give a sensible image of Elegy, I should not paint her as many have done, in long robes of sorroiv, with dishevelled hair and a veiled brozv^ weeping over a coffin. I zvonld rather represent her as a nymph, seated placidly, zvith her head tipon her hand, full of feeling and contemplation. On her neglected locks shotdd hang a torn garland, and in her lap should lie a wreath of faded flowers. A tomb should appear in the distance, half- concealed -by a dark grove of cypresses. Be- hind should rise a hill full of budding roses, and illumined with the rays of the rising sun. — Jacobi. lElcgtaral ^ocms. 3>@