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[Arthur Henry Hallam, Ob. 1833]
Grief Unspeakable
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. | |
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| But, for the unquiet heart and brain, | 5 |
| A use in measured language lies; | |
| The sad mechanic exercise, | |
| Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. | |
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| In words, like weeds, I ’ll wrap me o’er, | |
| Like coarsest clothes against the cold; | 10 |
| But that large grief which these enfold | |
| Is given in outline and no more. | |
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Dead, in a Foreign Land
IX. FAIR ship, that from the Italian shore | |
| Sailest the placid ocean-plains | |
| With my lost Arthur’s loved remains, | 15 |
| Spread thy full wings, and waft him o’er. | |
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| So draw him home to those that mourn | |
| In vain; a favorable speed | |
| Ruffle thy mirrored mast, and lead | |
| Through prosperous floods his holy urn. | 20 |
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| All night no ruder air perplex | |
| Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright | |
| As our pure love, through early light | |
| Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. | |
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| Sphere all your lights around, above; | 25 |
| Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; | |
| Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, | |
| My friend, the brother of my love; | |
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| My Arthur, whom I shall not see | |
| Till all my widowed race be run; | 30 |
| Dear as the mother to the son, | |
| More than my brothers are to me. | |
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The Peace of Sorrow
XI. CALM is the morn without a sound, | |
| Calm as to suit a calmer grief, | |
| And only through the faded leaf | 35 |
| The chestnut pattering to the ground: | |
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| 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: | 40 |
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| 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: | |
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| Calm and deep peace in this wide air, | 45 |
| These leaves that redden to the fall; | |
| And in my heart, if calm at all, | |
| If any calm, a calm despair: | |
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| Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, | |
| And waves that sway themselves in rest, | 50 |
| And dead calm in that noble breast | |
| Which heaves but with the heaving deep. | |
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Time and Eternity
XLII. IF Sleep and Death be truly one, | |
| And every spirit’s folded bloom | |
| Through all its intervital gloom | 55 |
| In some long trance should slumber on; | |
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| 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: | 60 |
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| 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; | |
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| And love will last as pure and whole | 65 |
| As when he loved me here in Time, | |
| And at the spiritual prime | |
| Rewaken with the dawning soul. | |
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Personal Resurrection
XLVI. THAT each, who seems a separate whole, | |
| Should move his rounds, and fusing all | 70 |
| The skirts of self again, should fall | |
| Remerging in the general Soul, | |
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| Is faith as vague as all unsweet: | |
| Eternal form shall still divide | |
| The eternal soul from all beside; | 75 |
| And I shall know him when we meet: | |
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| 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 | 80 |
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| Upon the last and sharpest height, | |
| Before the spirits fade away, | |
| Some landing-place to clasp and say, | |
| “Farewell! We lose ourselves in light.” | |
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Spiritual Companionship
XCIII. How pure at heart and sound in head, | 85 |
| With what divine affections bold, | |
| Should be the man whose thought would hold | |
| An hour’s communion with the dead. | |
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| In vain shalt thou, or any, call | |
| The spirits from their golden day, | 90 |
| Except, like them, thou too canst say, | |
| My spirit is at peace with all. | |
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| They haunt the silence of the breast, | |
| Imaginations calm and fair, | |
| The memory like a cloudless air, | 95 |
| The conscience as a sea at rest: | |
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| 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. | 100 |
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L. 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? | |
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| Shall he for whose applause I strove, | 105 |
| I had such reverence for his blame, | |
| See with clear eye some hidden shame, | |
| And I be lessened in his love? | |
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| I wrong the grave with fears untrue: | |
| Shall love be blamed for want of faith? | 110 |
| There must be wisdom with great Death: | |
| The dead shall look me through and through. | |
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| Be near us when we climb or fall: | |
| Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours | |
| With larger other eyes than ours, | 115 |
| To make allowance for us all. | |
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Death in Life’s Prime
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. | 120 |
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| 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. | |
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| We pass; the path that each man trod | 125 |
| Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds: | |
| What fame is left for human deeds | |
| In endless age? It rests with God. | |
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| O hollow wraith of dying fame, | |
| Fade wholly, while the soul exults, | 130 |
| And self-enfolds the large results | |
| Of force that would have forged a name. | |
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The Poet’s Tribute
LXXVI. WHAT hope is here for modern rhyme | |
| To him who turns a musing eye | |
| On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie | 135 |
| Foreshortened in the tract of time? | |
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| 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 | 140 |
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| 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. | |
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| But what of that? My darkened ways | 145 |
| Shall ring with music all the same; | |
| To breathe my loss is more than fame, | |
| To utter love more sweet than praise. | |
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