The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell

On doubts that drive the coward back,
And keen thro' wordy snares to track

30

Suggestion to her inmost cell.

So word by word, and line by line,

The dead man touch'd me from the past,

And all at once it seem'd at last

35

His living soul was flash'd on mine,

And mine in his was wound, and whirl'd
About empyreal heights of thought,

And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,

Eonian music measuring out

The steps of Time-the shocks of Chance-
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt.

Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech,
Or ev'n for intellect to reach
Thro' memory that which I became :

40

45

XCV

31, 32. Cf. the anonymous letter describing Hallam's characteristics, Remains, p. xxviii.: " He would always pursue the argument eagerly to the end, and follow his antagonist into the most difficult places."

36. In and after 1878. The living soul.

37. After 1880. mine in this.

38. Ultimate reality, the Platonic To TwsS ÖV.

39, 40. Cf., for a good illustrative commentary, Henry Vaughan, Silex Scintillans: The World:

I saw Eternity the other night,

Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,

All calm as it was bright;

And round beneath it Time, in hours, days, years,

Driven by the spheres,

Like a vast shadow moved, in which the World
And all her train were hurled.

45-48. Cf. Dante, Paradiso, xxxiii. 55-57:

Da quinci innanzi il mio veder fu maggio
Che il parlar nostro, ch' a tal vista cede,
E cede la memoria a tanto oltraggio.

Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd

The knolls once more where, couch'd at ease, 50

The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees

Laid their dark arms about the field:

And suck'd from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o'er
The large leaves of the sycamore,

And fluctuate all the still perfume,

And gathering freshlier overhead,

Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung

The lilies to and fro, and said

"The dawn, the dawn," and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,

Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,

To broaden into boundless day.

55

60

XCVI

You say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies,

You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.

I know not: one indeed I knew

In many a subtle question versed,
Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true:

XCV

49-64. Surely among the miracles of descriptive poetry. 51, 52. Cf. Armstrong, Art of Preserving Health:

The impending trees

Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom.

XCVI

With this section cf. Hume (Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, part xii. ad fin.): "To be a philosophical sceptic is in a man of letters the first step to becoming a sound believing Christian." Cf., too, Donne, Satire, iii. 77, 78:

:

Doubt wysely in strange waye
To stand enquiring right is not to straye.

See, too, Whateley's Bacon's Essays, p. 303.

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,

At last he beat his music out.

There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

He fought his doubts and gather'd strength,
He would not make his judgement blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind

And laid them: thus he came at length

10

15

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,

20

But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinaï's peaks of old,

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

XCVII

My love has talk'd with rocks and trees;
He finds on misty mountain-ground
His own vast shadow glory-crown'd;

He sees himself in all he sees.

Two partners of a married life

I look'd on these and thought of thee
In vastness and in mystery,

And of my spirit as of a wife.

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.

XCVI

5

10

13-20. See Arthur Hallam's Sonnet to my Mother (Remains, p. 75), describing how the remembrance of her gentle faith had enabled him to fight his doubts :And on the calmed waters once again Ascendant Faith circles with silver plume.

22. See Exodus xix. 16.

XCVII

2, 3. An allusion, perhaps, to the spectre of the Brocken.

Their love has never past away;
The days she never can forget
Are earnest that he loves her yet,
Whate'er the faithless people say.

Her life is lone, he sits apart,

He loves her yet, she will not weep,
Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep
He seems to slight her simple heart.

He thrids the labyrinth of the mind,
He reads the secret of the star,

He seems so near and yet so far,

He looks so cold: she thinks him kind.

She keeps the gift of years before,

25

A wither'd 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 fixt and cannot move,

30

She darkly feels him great and wise,
She dwells on him with faithful eyes,

35

"I cannot understand: I love."

XCVIII

You leave us you will see the Rhine,
And those fair hills I sail'd below,
When I was there with him; and go
By summer belts of wheat and vine

XCVIII

Addressed to Charles Tennyson and his bride in May 1836 (see Life, i. 148).

To where he breathed his latest breath,
That City. All her splendour seems
No livelier than the wisp that gleams
On Lethe in the eyes of Death.

5

Let her great Danube rolling fair

Enwind her isles, unmark'd of me:
I have not seen, I will not see

10

Vienna; rather dream that there,

A treble darkness, Evil haunts

The birth, the bridal; friend from friend
Is oftener parted, fathers bend

15

Above more graves, a thousand wants

Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey

By each cold hearth, and sadness flings
Her shadow on the blaze of kings:

And yet myself have heard him say,

20

That not in any mother town

With statelier progress to and fro The double tides of chariots flow By park and suburb under brown

Of lustier leaves; nor more content,
He told me, lives in any crowd,

When all is gay with lamps, and loud

25

With sport and song, in booth and tent,