XVIII.

IS well; 'tis something; we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid,

And from his ashes may be made

The violet of his native land.

'Tis little; but it looks in truth

As if the quiet bones were blest

Among familiar names to rest

And in the places of his youth.

Come then, pure hands, and bear the head That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,

And come, whatever loves to weep,

And hear the ritual of the dead.

Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be,

I, falling on his faithful heart,

Would breathing thro' his lips impart The life that almost dies in me;

That dies not, but endures with pain,
And slowly forms the firmer mind,
Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again.

ΧΙΧ.

HE Danube to the Severn gave

The darken'd heart that beat no more;

They laid him by the pleasant shore,

And in the hearing of the wave.

There twice a day the Severn fills;

The salt sea-water passes by,

And hushes half the babbling Wye,

And makes a silence in the hills.

The Wye is hush'd nor moved along,
And hush'd my deepest grief of all,

When fill'd with tears that cannot fall,

I brim with sorrow drowning song.

The tide flows down, the wave again

Is vocal in its wooded walls;

My deeper anguish also falls,

And I can speak a little then.

ΧΧ.

HE lesser griefs that may be said,

That breathe a thousand tender vows,

Are but as servants in a house

Where lies the master newly dead;

Who speak their feeling as it is,

And weep the fullness from the mind: "It will be hard," they say, "to find Another service such as this."

My lighter moods are like to these,

That out of words a comfort win;

But there are other griefs within,

And tears that at their fountain freeze;

For by the hearth the children sit

Cold in that atmosphere of Death,

And scarce endure to draw the breath, Or like to noiseless phantoms flit:

But open converse is there none,

So much the vital spirits sink

To see the vacant chair, and think,

"How good! how kind! and he is gone."