As wan, as chill, as wild, as now;

Day, marked as with some hideous crime, When the dark hand struck down through time,

And cancelled nature's best: but thou,

Life as thou mayst thy burdened brows

Through clouds that drench the morning star,

And whirl the ungarnered sheaf afar,
And sow the sky with flying boughs,

And up thy vault with roaring sound
Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,
And hide thy shame beneath the ground.

LXXII.

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

The fame is 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.

:

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.

O hollow wraith of dying fame,

Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
And self-infolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a name.

LXXIII.

As sometimes in a dead man's face,

To those that watch it more and more,
A likeness hardly seen before

Comes out, to some one of his race:

So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,

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

But there is more than I can see,

And what I see I leave unsaid,

Nor speak it, knowing Death has made His darkness beautiful with thee.

LXXIV.

I 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,
Or voice the richest-toned that sings,
Hath power to give thee as thou wert?

I care not, in these fading days,

To raise a cry that lasts not long,

And round thee with the breeze of song

To stir a little dust of praise.

Thy leaf has 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.

LXXV.

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 through
The secular abyss to come,

And lo! thy deepest lays are dumb

Before the mouldering of a yew;

And if the matin songs, that woke

The darkness of our planet, last,

Thine own shall wither in the vast,

Ere half the lifetime of an oak.

Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain; And what are they when these remain The ruined shells of hollow towers?

LXXVI.

WHAT hope is here for modern rhyme
To him, who 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.

LXXVII.

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,
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 pictures 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.

LXXVIII.

59

"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
Through all his eddying coves; the same
All winds that roam the twilight came
In whispers of the beauteous world.

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.

LXXIX.

Ir 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.