For tho' my nature rarely yields

To that vague fear implied in death;
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath,

The howlings from forgotten fields;

Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor

An inner trouble I behold,

A spectral doubt which makes me cold,

That I shall be thy mate no more,

Tho' following with an upward mind

The wonders that have come to thee,

Thro' all the secular to-be,

But evermore a life behind.

XLII.

VEX my heart with fancies dim:
He still outstript me in the race;
It was but unity of place

That made me dream I rank'd with him.

And so may Place retain us still,

And he the much-beloved again,

A lord of large experience, train To riper growth the mind and will:

And what delights can equal those

That stir the spirit's inner deeps,

When one that loves but knows not, reaps

A truth from one that loves and knows?

XLIII.

F Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit's folded bloom
Thro' all its intervital gloom

In some long trance should slumber on;

Unconscious of the sliding hour,

Bare of the body, might it last,

And silent traces of the past Be all the colour of the flower:

So then were nothing lost to man;
So that still garden of the souls
In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since life began;

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.

XLIV.

OW fares it with the happy dead?

For here the man is more and more;

But he forgets the days before

God shut the doorways of his head.

The days have vanish'd, tone and tint,

And yet perhaps the hoarding sense

Gives out at times (he knows not whence) A little flash, a mystic hint;

And in the long harmonious years

(If Death so taste Lethean springs) May some dim touch of earthly things Surprise thee ranging with thy peers.

If such a dreamy touch should fall,

O turn thee round, resolve the doubt;

My guardian angel will speak out

In that high place, and tell thee all.

XLV.

HE 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.