or that the face of the sky is a delusion, or that the music of the many voices of the world is but mocking sound, and asks whether sorrow is to be trusted when she casts such a tragic gloom over the bright sky, and kills the music of the glad creation. Shall he accept her as a guide?

"Embrace her as my natural good;

Or crush her, like a vice of blood?"

VI. His grief refuses to be comforted by the kindly meant letters of condolence with the stereotyped phrases, "other friends remain," and "loss is common to the race."

"And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain."

He rejects the proffered consolation. If his love for Hallam were forgotten in the sorrow of others, it would be a loss to himself. Whatever destroys pure love is a curse, not a blessing. God would not have us forget but cherish our sacred loves, that we may find them in Him, or else "what to me remains of good?"

VII. He is thinking of the dead friend and the dark house in the loveless street where the hand of

Hallam grasped his. He is unable to sleep, and, rising in the "earliest morning," creeps along like a stricken deer to the well-known door, as if once again to see the radiant face and clasp the outstretched hand of his friend; but, alas!

"He is not here; but far away

The noise of life begins again,

And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day."

What a picture is portrayed in the dreary words, "the drizzling rain," "the bald street," "the blank day"! We look through them into the soul of grief, and see utter desolation within.

VIII. He states the reason for "In Memoriam." As a happy lover returns to look upon the face of his love, and rings the bell only to find her gone, and with her light and music, and then wanders into the deserted walks to find and cherish a flower that she had reared, so the poet, knowing his friend had been pleased with his poems, would take his "poor flower of poesy" and plant it on his tomb.

IX. We have a beautiful prayer for the safe arrival of the ship bearing the "loved remains' from Vienna. He would have her come quickly : "Ruffle thy mirror'd mast." Speed creates agitation; the reflection in the mirror of the waters is "ruffled." He would draw all nature into sympathy with his sacred wish for the safety of the "holy urn." At night he would have all the lights above ensphered, and the "gentle heavens" sleep "before the prow," even as the man he loved sleeps.

"My Arthur, whom I shall not see

Till all my widow'd race be run."

x. Chastened Grief still lingers about the vessel,

and seems to hear the noise of the keel and the striking of the bell at night, to see a light in the cabin window and the sailor at his watch. The feelings of sorrow thus find expression in the sounds. and sights which fill imagination, and in the freight conveyed by the coming vessel; while the poet contrasts the awful thought of a body buried at sea in the " roaring wells," with the happier thought of burial on shore in some spot blessed of nature. "To rest beneath the clover sod,

That takes the sunshine and the rains,"

or, in the chancel of the church,

"where the kneeling hamlet drains

The chalice of the grapes of God."

XI. His grief looks out upon nature across the wolds, to the sleeping sea beyond, where peace seems to have fallen. It was nature's Sabbath; but the calm without serves to remind him of "the dead calm in that noble breast" of his sleeping friend, and of the calm in his own stunned heart, only

"If any calm, a calm despair."

XII. Grief becomes impatient, and takes wings of love and flies to the ship at sea, and hovers about it like a bird.

"And circle moaning in the air:

'Is this the end? Is this the end?'”

How restless!coming and going, wanting to be where the body of Hallam is, who was

"More than my brothers are to me."

Such is grief clasping love-restless until it find the object loved, lingering about the mortal shell, once the dwelling of the noble spirit that had left its subtle impress on the calm face.

XIV. The bereaved soul cannot realise its loss. If some one came and told him the vessel was lying in the port, and he went down to see the passengers, and the man he loved "as half-divine" suddenly struck a hand with his, and asked "a thousand things of home," he says,—

How true!

"I should not feel it to be strange."

Death seizes our friend, and still we look for him. We seem to hear his footfall in the hall, and turn to see him enter as of old.

xv. A storm has risen. The winds are roaring from out the western sky; the leaves are whirled before the tempest; the rooks are driven; great trees are torn from their roots; the sea is white with foam; the cattle huddle in fear. He is concerned for the safety of the vessel.

"And but for fancies, which aver

That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,

I scarce could brook the strain and stir."

XVII. The ship arrives, and he craves the blessing of Heaven on her, for she bears

"The dust of him I shall not see Till all my widow'd race be run.”

XVIII. The poet finds some little solace in the thought that his friend will be buried in English earth, among the sacred places of home and youth, while those who bear the body to the last sleepingplace must have "pure hands." Then in the longing of pathetic sorrow he would fain cast himself upon the lifeless form, and breathe his own almost dying life into the frozen lips of the dead, but now he can only treasure the look and the words of the sacred past.

XIX. The ship sails up the Severn, bearing "the darken'd heart that beat no more," when his grief is like the flowing of the tide and the hushing of the Wye. The rising tide meets the incoming stream, and by its mightier volume hushes its babbling. So with the coming of the body a greater sea of sorrow floods his being, and his song, like the stream, is hushed.

"I brim with sorrow drowning song."

Presently the tides of sorrow fall, and the speechless soul finds voice.

"My deeper anguish also falls, And I can speak a little then."

XXII-XXVII. The poet recalls the past, his tender recollections of all his friend had been, and how the burdens of life were halved by love. In XXVI he cannot bear the thought of love ever forgetting or becoming indifferent-he thinks this