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 honour'd guest,
Thy partner in the flowery walk
Of letters, genial table-talk,

Or deep dispute, and graceful jest:

While now thy prosperous labour 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 link'd with thine in love and fate,

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.

LXXXIII.

THIS truth came borne with bier and pall, I felt it, when I sorrow'd 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 dimm'd of sorrow, or sustain'd;

And whether love for him have drain'd

My capabilities of love;

Your words have virtue such as draws
A faithful answer from the breast,
Thro' light reproaches, half exprest,
And loyal unto kindly laws.

My blood an even tenor kept,

Till on mine ear this message falls,

That in Vienna's fatal walls

God's finger touch'd 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 show'd him in the fountain fresh

All knowledge that the sons of flesh Shall gather in the cycled times.

But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim,

Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth,

To wander on a darken'd earth,

Where all things round me breathed of him.

O friendship, equal-poised control,

O heart, with kindliest motion warm,

O 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,

I felt and feel, tho' left alone, His being working in mine own, The footsteps of his life in mine;

A life that all the Muses deck'd

With gifts of grace, that might express
All-comprehensive tenderness,

All-subtilising 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

But in the present broke the blow.

life,