Bring in great logs and let them lie,
To make a solid core of heat;

Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat Of all things ev'n as he were by:

We keep the day. With festal cheer, With books and music, surely we

Will drink to him whate'er he be, And sing the songs he loved to hear.

CVI.

I WILL not shut me from my kind,
And, lest I stiffen into stone,

Twill not eat my heart alone,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind :

What profit lies in barren faith,

And vacant yearning, though with might To scale the heaven's highest height, Or dive below the wells of Death?

What find I in the highest place,

But mine own phantom chanting hymns? And on the depths of death there swims The reflex of a human face.

I'll rather take what fruit may be

Of sorrow under human skies:

'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise,

Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.

CVII.

HEART-AFFLUENCE in discursive talk

From household fountains never dry; The critic clearness of an eye, That saw through all the Muses' walk;

Seraphic intellect and force

To seize and throw the doubts of man;

Impassioned logic, which outran

The hearer in its fiery course;

High nature amorous of the good,
But touched with no ascetic gloom;
And passion pure in snowy bloom
Through all the years of April blood;

A love of freedom rarely felt,

Of freedom in her regal seat

Of England, not the schoolboy heat,

The blind hysterics of the Celt;

And manhood fused with female grace
In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unasked, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face;

All these have been, and thee mine eyes Have looked on: if they looked in vain My shame is greater who remain,

Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.

CVIII.

THY Converse drew us with delight,
The men of rathe and riper years:
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
Forgot his weakness in thy sight.

On thee the loyal-hearted hung,

The proud was half disarmed of pride,
Nor cared the serpent at thy side

To flicker with his treble tongue.

The stern were mild when thou wert by,
The flippant put himself to school

And heard thee, and the brazen fool
Was softened, and he knew not why;

While I, thy dearest, sat apart,

And felt thy triumph was as mine;

And loved them more, that they were thine,

The graceful tact, the Christian art;