in time appear in eternity-then the grief of the poet is consoled.

"And love will last as pure and whole

As when he loved me here in Time,
And at the spiritual prime

Rewaken with the dawning soul."

It is a subject which does not admit of dogmatic statement. Our knowledge of consciousness in relation to the body is too limited for us to define how far the one is dependent on the other, or whether the spirit has consciousness apart from the body. As far as science has penetrated it would seem as if consciousness and organism were correlated. If the body perish, we may conceive the "ego sleeping and waiting unconsciously for the new organism. "There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial." With the new body the consciousness may awake with memories and affections vivid as the unfolding flower. Few are the gleams that pierce the veil of that silent world where our dead ones may be sleeping.

XLIV. The subject is continued and viewed from another point. As man grows in knowledge here he forgets the experiences of his infant life when

"God shut the doorways of his head,"

but still dim memories seem to float up to him out of the mists of those early days,

"A little flash, a mystic hint."

Then is it not possible that the spirit of the departed, "If Death so taste Lethean springs,"* may be touched with the memory of earthly things? So he prays that his tormenting doubt may be solved.

"If such dreamy touch should fall,

O turn thee round, resolve the doubt."

XLV. But if the departed have knowledge of us and the past, shall we know them again?

It

The question of personal identity after death is suggested. It may have shaped itself thus-Shall I know my friend again in that other world? Can I be sure that identity will remain unchanged? is the shadow that creeps over many hearts, the doubt that they may not recognise the vanished face.

The poem shows how conscious identity is formed in childhood-the child grows to distinguish between "I" and "not I." It wins that knowledge through the senses.

"So rounds he to a separate mind.”

But if after death we must begin again to distinguish personal identity,

"Had man to learn himself anew Beyond the second birth of Death,"

* Lethe has a double power—to call to remembrance as well as to obliterate.

then the knowledge gained in the body must be lost, which seems incredible. That our identity once realised does not change with the changes of the body seems clear from the fact that every particle of the body is changed while identity remains, and we know one another. Identity must thus lie in the spirit and not in the body, which is only the fading veil of the spirit. If so, then recognitions hereafter become a certainty. Not to know the vanished face again would break the human heart, and reveal a gulf of darkness in the hills of Life!

XLVI. But all is to be made clear. Upon the retrospect of our chequered life the shadows of forgetfulness fall and veil

"The path we came by, thorn and flower."

But in the life of God the shadows are sunned The past lies in His light, and we shall

away.

see the meaning of thorn and flower.

"So be it: there no shade can last

In that deep dawn behind the tomb."

The "richest field" of restrospect will be those five years of tender human friendship. But love will not be limited by time and sense. It can only be satisfied with the infinite as the field of pure delights

"Love, a brooding star,

A rosy warmth from marge to marge."

Thus in the odes relating to immortality we have seen not only the sanctuary where grief with folded wings sat weeping, but the darkness that dimmed the light on the altar. Will a hand come to wipe away the brimming tears, and the light glow again in the holy place of sorrow?

Third
Section-
Victory.

LXXVIII. WE have the coming of another Christmas, and, when contrasted with cantos xxix., xxx., we find a healthier condition. Then excessive grief made the festive games a " vain pretence"; now

"Who show'd a token or distress?

No single tear, no mark of pain."

There are no tears nor marks of pain nor shadow of death. Is grief dead? No, but death does not seem so awful. A new element, as yet undefined, gives colour and warmth to grief.

"Her deep relations are the same,

But with long use her tears are dry."

LXXX. The poet imagines himself to be dead and Hallam living, and pictures the grief of his friend sustained by religious faith and life

"A grief as deep as life or thought,

But stay'd in peace with God and man."

He thinks how in his case sorrow would have been sanctified, and seeming loss turned to gain, and the thought of such endurance and progress,

gives consolation. That "picture in the brain " of sustaining power is transferred to his own spirit.

"Unused example from the grave

Reach out dead hands to comfort me."

LXXXI. He is still looking back upon the past, thinking of his vanished friend, when he is haunted with the thought

"More years had made me love thee more";

but that would be selfish-to wish him back; and he finds some joy in the sunnier thought that his loss and pain are Hallam's gain and peace.

"My sudden frost was sudden gain,

And gave all ripeness to the grain,
It might have drawn from after-heat."

Grain and fruit are ripened by a sudden frost. In the thought of the fruition of his friend, ripened by the frost of death, he finds some compensation. Thus grief, that had looked back into the grave with its blighted hopes, now begins to lift longing eyes to the future. The gaze is turning slowly from the grave. This forward look means the coming of health and hope. Note how he speaks of the gain to Hallam. So long as grief sits over against the sepulchre weeping it is night, but when it sees the angel it hastens to speak of the risen life.

LXXXII He has no feud with death on account of the changes wrought upon the body

"And these are but the shatter'd stalks."