In Memoriam A. H. H.: 96. You say, but with no touch of sco

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:

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 judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind


And laid them: thus he came at length

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,

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.

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 82. I wage not any feud with death

I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth's embrace


May breed with him, can fright my faith.

Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter'd stalks,


Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.

Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth


Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.

For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart


We cannot hear each other speak.

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 72. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
And howlest, issuing out of night,
With blasts that blow the poplar white,


And lash with storm the streaming pane?

Day, when my crown'd estate begun
To pine in that reverse of doom,
Which sicken'd every living bloom,


And blurr'd the splendour of the sun;

Who usherest in the dolorous hour
With thy quick tears that make the rose
Pull sideways, and the daisy close


Her crimson fringes to the shower;

Who might'st have heaved a windless flame
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play'd
A chequer-work of beam and shade


Along the hills, yet look'd the same.

As wan, as chill, as wild as now;
Day, mark'd as with some hideous crime,
When the dark hand struck down thro' time,


And cancell'd nature's best: but thou,

Lift as thou may'st thy burthen'd brows
Thro' clouds that drench the morning star,
And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar,


And sow the sky with flying boughs,

And up thy vault with roaring sound
Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,


And hide thy shame beneath the ground.

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 56. So careful of the type? but no

"So careful of the type?" but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone:


I care for nothing, all shall go.

"Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:


I know no more." And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,


Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law-Tho'
Nature, red in tooth and claw


With ravine, shriek'd against his creed-


Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,


Or seal'd within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,


Were mellow music match'd with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?


Behind the veil, behind the veil.

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 67. When on my bed the moonlight fall

When on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest
By that broad water of the west,


There comes a glory on the walls:
Thy marble bright in dark appears,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name,


And o'er the number of thy years.

The mystic glory swims away;
From off my bed the moonlight dies;
And closing eaves of wearied eyes


I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray:

And then I know the mist is drawn
A lucid veil from coast to coast,
And in the dark church like a ghost


Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 54. Oh, yet we Trust that somehow Goo

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final end of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,


Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,


When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
I shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,


Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last--far off--at last, to all,


And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:


And with no language but a cry.

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 45. The baby new to earth and sky

The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,


Has never thought that "this is I":

But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of "I," and "me,"
And finds "I am not what I see,


And other than the things I touch."

So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
As thro' the frame that binds him in


His isolation grows defined.

This use may lie in blood and breath
Which else were fruitless of their due,
Had man to learn himself anew


Beyond the second birth of Death.

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 2. Old Yew, which graspest at the sto

Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,


Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.

The seasons bring the flower again,
And bring the firstling to the flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the clock


Beats out the little lives of men.

O not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale,
Nor branding summer suns avail


To touch thy thousand years of gloom:

And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
I seem to fail from out my blood


And grow incorporate into thee.

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 39. Old warder of these buried bones

Old warder of these buried bones,
And answering now my random stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke,


Dark yew, that graspest at the stones

And dippest toward the dreamless head,
To thee too comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower;


But Sorrow--fixt upon the dead,

And darkening the dark graves of men,-What
whisper'd from her lying lips?
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips,


And passes into gloom again.

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 126. Love is and was my Lord and King

Love is and was my Lord and King,
And in his presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend,


Which every hour his couriers bring.

Love is and was my King and Lord,
And will be, tho' as yet I keep
Within his court on earth, and sleep


Encompass'd by his faithful guard,

And hear at times a sentinel
Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,


In the deep night, that all is well.