XXXIX.

COULD we forget the widow'd hour
And look on Spirits breathed away,

As on a maiden in the day

When first she wears her orange-flower!

When crown'd with blessing she doth rise To take her latest leave of home,

And hopes and light regrets that come Make April of her tender eyes;

And doubtful joys the father move,

And tears are on the mother's face,

As parting with a long embrace

She enters other realms of love;

Her office there to rear, to teach,
Becoming as is meet and fit
A link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each;

And, doubtless, unto thee is given

A life that bears immortal fruit

In such great offices as suit The full-grown energies of heaven.

Ay me, the difference I discern!

How often shall her old fireside

Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride, How often she herself return,

And tell them all they would have told,

And bring her babe, and make her boast,

Till even those that miss'd her most, Shall count new things as dear as old:

But thou and I have shaken hands,
Till growing winters lay me low;
My paths are in the fields I know,
And thine in undiscover'd lands.

XL.

THY spirit ere our fatal loss

Did ever rise from high to higher;

As mounts the heavenward altar-fire, As flies the lighter thro' the gross.

But thou art turn'd to something strange, And I have lost the links that bound

Thy changes; here upon the ground; No more partaker of thy change.

Deep folly yet that this could be

!

That I could wing my will with might To leap the grades of life and light, And flash at once, my friend, to thee:

For though my nature rarely yields

To that vague fear implied in death;
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath,

The howlings from forgotten fields;

Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor

An inner trouble I behold,

A spectral doubt which makes me cold, That I shall be thy mate no more,

Tho' following with an upward mind

The wonders that have come to thee,

Thro' all the secular to be,

But evermore a life behind.

XLI.

I VEX my heart with fancies dim:

He still outstript me in the race;

It was but unity of place

That made me dream I rank'd with him.

And so may Place retain us still,

And he the much-beloved again,

A lord of large experience, train To riper growth the mind and will:

And what delights can equal those

That stir the spirit's inner deeps,

When one that loves but knows not, reaps

A truth from one that loves and knows?