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.

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/22

Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then,
While I rose up against my doom,
And yearn'd to burst the folded gloom,
To bare the eternal Heavens again,

To feel once more, in placid awe,
The strong imagination roll
A sphere of stars about my soul,
In all her motion one with law;

If thou wert with me, and the grave
Divide us not, be with me now,
And enter in at breast and brow,
Till all my blood, a fuller wave,

Be quicken'd with a livelier breath,
And like an inconsiderate boy,
As in the former flash of joy,

I slip the thoughts of life and death;

And all the breeze of Fancy blows,

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

There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars, hath been

The stillness of the central sea.

The hills are shadows, and they flow

From form to form, and nothing stands; They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go.

But in my spirit will I dwell,

And dream my dream, and hold it true; For tho' my lips may breathe adieu, I cannot think the thing farewell.

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;

༢

I found Him not in world or sun, Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye; Nor thro' the questions men ma The petty cobwebs we have spun: If e'er when faith had fall'n aslee I heard a voice believe no more And heard an ever-breaking sho That tumbled in the Godless deep A warmth within the breast would The freezing reason's colder par And like a man in wrath the hea Stood up and answer'd 'I have fe

No, like a child in doubt and fear But that blind clamour made me 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 understand And out of darkness came the h That reach thro' nature, moulding 1

CXXV 25 Whatever I have said or sung,

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

Yet Hope had never lost her youth She did but look through dimmer Or Love but play'd with gracious Because he felt so fix'd in truth:

And if the song were full of care,

He breathed the spirit of the song And if the words were sweet and 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

1268

Love is and was my Lord and King And in his presence I attend

To hear the tidings of my friend, Which every hour his couriers bring Love is and was my King and Lord And will be, tho' as yet I keep Within his court on earth, and slee Encompass'd by his faithful guard, And hear at times a sentinel

Who moves about from place to And whispers to the worlds of spa In the deep night, that all is well.

CXXVII

127

Iron and to end Sagesfassurance told

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,
And compass'd by the fires of Hell;
While thou, dear spirit, happy star,
O'erlook'st the tumult from afar,
And smilest, knowing all is well.
CXXVIII 28

The love that rose on stronger_wings,
Unpalsied when he met with Death,
Is comrade of the lesser faith

That sees the course of human things.

No doubt vast eddies in the flood

Of onward time shall yet be made, And throned races may degrade; Yet O ye mysteries of good,

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 picturesque 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 coöperant to an end.

Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near in woe and weal;
O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;

Known and unknown; human, divine;

Sweet human hand and lips and eye; Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;

Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.

130 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;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho' I die.

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

No longer caring to embalm

In dying songs a dead regret,
But like a statue solid-set,
And moulded in colossal calm.
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.

Let all my genial spirits advance
To meet and greet a whiter sun;
My drooping memory will not shu
The foaming grape of eastern Fran
It circles round, and fancy plays,

And hearts are warm'd and faces b As drinking health to bride and gro We wish them store of happy days.

Nor count me all to blame if I
Conjecture of a stiller guest,
Perchance, perchance, among the re
And, tho' in silence, wishing joy.

But they must go, the time draws on,
And those white-favour'd horses wa
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 par
Discussing how their courtship grew,
And talk of others that are wed,
And how she look'd, and what he sai
And back we come at fall of dew.

Again the feast, the speech, the glee,

The shade of passing thought, the we Of words and wit, the double health The crowning cup, the three-times-thre

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look

On knowledge; under whose command Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand Is Nature like an open book;

No longer half-akin to brute,

For all we thought and loved and did, And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed Of what in them is flower and fruit; Whereof the man, that with me trod This planet, was a noble type Appearing ere the times were ripe, That friend of mine who lives in God, That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves.

THE EAGLE

FRAGMENT
[1851]

HE clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

ODE ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON

[1852]

I

BURY the Great Duke

With an empire's lamentation,

Let us bury the Great Duke

To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation,

Mourning when their leaders fall,
Warriors carry the warrior's pall,
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.

II

Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore?

Here, in streaming London's central roar.
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore.

III

Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
As fits an universal woe,

Let the long long procession go,
And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow,
And let the mournful martial music blow;
The last great Englishman is low.

IV

Mourn, for to us he seems the last, Remembering all his greatness in the Past.

No more in soldier fashion will he greet
With lifted hand the gazer in the street.
O friends, our chief state-oracle is mute:
Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood,
The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute,
Whole in himself, a common good.
Mourn for the man of amplest influence,
Yet clearest of ambitious crime,
Our greatest yet with least pretense,
Great in council and great in war,
Foremost captain of his time,
Rich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime.

O good grey head which all men knew,
O voice from which their omens all men

All is over and done:
Render thanks to the Giver,
England, for thy son.

Let the bell be toll'd.

Render thanks to the Giver,
And render him to the mould.
Under the cross of gold

That shines over city and river,
There he shall rest for ever
Among the wise and the bold.
Let the bell be toll'd:

And a reverent people behold

The towering car, the sable steeds:
Bright let it be with its blazon'd deeds,
Dark in its funeral fold.

Let the bell be toll'd:

And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd; And the sound of the sorrowing anthem roll'd

Thro' the dome of the golden cross;
And the volleying cannon thunder his loss;
He knew their voices of old.

For many a time in many a clime
His captain's-ear has heard them boom
Bellowing victory, bellowing doom:
When he with those deep voices wrought,
Guarding realms and kings from shame;
With those deep voices our dead captain
taught

The tyrant, and asserts his claim

In that dread sound to the great name,
Which he has worn so pure of blame,
In praise and in dispraise the same,
A man of well-attemper'd frame.
O civic muse, to such a name,

And down we swept and charged and of threw.

So great a soldier taught us there,
What long-enduring hearts could do
In that world's-earthquake, Waterloo
Mighty Seaman, tender and true,
And pure as he from taint of craven gu
O saviour of the silver-coasted isle,
O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile,
If aught of things that here befall
Touch a spirit among things divine,
If love of country move thee there at
Be glad, because his bones are laid
thine!

And thro' the centuries let a people's vo
In full acclaim,

A people's voice! we are a people yet. Tho' all men else their nobler drea forget,

Confused by brainless mobs and lawl Powers;

Thank Him who isled us here, and roug

His Briton in blown seas and stormi showers,

We have a voice, with which to pay

Of boundless love and reverence and reg To those great men who fought, and k

And keep it ours, O God, from brute co

Of Europe, keep our noble England who And save the one true seed of freedo

Betwixt a people and their ancient thro That sober freedom out of which the springs

Our loyal passion for our temperate king For, saving that, ye help to save manki Till public wrong be crumbled into dus And drill the raw world for the march

Till crowds at length be sane and crow

But wink no more in slothful overtrust.
Remember him who led your hosts;
He bade you guard the sacred coasts.
Your cannons moulder on the seawa