And tingle; and the heart is sick, And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame

Is racked with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,

And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,

And men the flies of latter spring, That lay their eggs, and sting and sing, And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,

To point the term of human strife, And on the low dark verge of life The twilight of eternal day.

L.

Do we indeed desire the dead

Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide?

No inner vileness that we dread?

Shall he for whose applause I strove,

I had such reverence for his blame, See with clear eye some hidden shame, And I be lessened in his love?

I

wrong the grave with fears untrue :

Shall love be blamed for want of faith? There must be wisdom with great Death: The dead shall look me through and through.

Be near us when we climb or fall:

Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,

To make allowance for us all.

LI.

I CANNOT love thee as I ought,

For love reflects the thing beloved; My words are only words, and moved Upon the topmost froth of thought.

“Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,"
The Spirit of true love replied;
"Thou canst not move me from thy side,
Nor human frailty do me wrong.

"What keeps a spirit wholly true
To that ideal which he bears?
What record? not the sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue :

"So fret not, like an idle girl,

That life is dashed with flecks of sin. Abide: thy wealth is gathered in, When Time hath sundered shell from pearl."

LII.

How many a father have I seen,

A sober man, among his boys,

Whose youth was full of foolish noise, Who wears his manhood hale and green:

And dare we to this fancy give,

That had the wild oat not been sown, The soil, left barren, scarce had grown The grain by which a man may live?

O, if we held the doctrine sound

For life outliving heats of youth,
Yet who would preach it as a truth
To those that eddy round and round?

Hold thou the good: define it well:
For fear divine Philosophy

Should push beyond her mark, and be Procuress to the Lords of Hell.

LIII.

O, YET we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal 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 destroyed,
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
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold, we know not any thing;

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.

LIV.

THE wish, that of the living whole

No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have

The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,

That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere

Her secret meaning in her deeds, And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

LV.

"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 seemed so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed,

And love Creation's final law—
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed—
Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or sealed 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 matched 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.

LVI.

of woe

PEACE; come away: the song
Is after all an earthly song:

Peace; come away we do him wrong
To sing so wildly let us go.

:

Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;
But half my life I leave behind:
Methinks my friend is richly shrined;
But I shall pass; my work will fail.
Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,

One set slow bell will seem to toll
The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever looked with human eyes.
I hear it now, and o'er and o'er,

Eternal greetings to the dead; And "Ave, Ave, Ave," said, "Adieu, adieu," forevermore !

LVII.

IN those sad words I took farewell:
Like echoes in sepulchral halls,
As drop by drop the water falls
In vaults and catacombs, they fell;

And, falling, idly broke the peace

Of hearts that beat from day to day, Half conscious of their dying clay, And those cold crypts where they shall cease.

The high Muse answered: "Wherefore grieve Thy brethren with a fruitless tear?