Hadst thou such credit with the soul?
Then bring an opiate trebly strong,
Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong
That so my pleasure may be whole;

While now we talk as once we talk'd

Of men and minds, the dust of change, The days that grow to something strange, In walking as of old we walk'd

Beside the river's wooded reach,

The fortress, and the mountain ridge, The cataract flashing from the bridge, The breaker breaking on the beach.

LXXI.

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 splendor 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.

LXXII.

So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be,

How know I what had need of thee,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true?

The fame is quench'd that I foresaw,

The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath :

I curse not nature, no, nor death;

For nothing is that errs from law.

We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? It rests with God.

O hollow wraith of dying fame,

Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
And self-infolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a name.

LXXIII.

As sometimes in a dead man's face,

To those that watch it more and more, A likeness, hardly seen before, Comes out to some one of his race:

So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,

I see thee what thou art, and know Thy likeness to the wise below, Thy kindred with the great of old.

But there is more than I can see,

And what I see I leave unsaid,

Nor speak it, knowing Death has made His darkness beautiful with thee.

LXXIV.

I LEAVE thy praises unexpress'd
In verse that brings myself relief,
And by the measure of my grief
I leave thy greatness to be guess'd;

What practice howsoe'er expert
In fitting aptest words to things,

Or voice the richest-toned that sings,
Hath power to give thee as thou wert?

I care not in these fading days

To raise a cry that lasts not long, And round thee with the breeze of song To stir a little dust of praise.

Thy leaf has perish'd in the green,

And, while we breathe beneath the sun,
The world which credits what is done

Is cold to all that might have been.

So here shall silence guard thy fame;
But somewhere, out of human view,
Whate'er thy hands are set to do
Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.

LXXV.

TAKE wings of fancy, and ascend,

And in a moment set thy face
Where all the starry heavens of space

Are sharpen'd to a needle's end;

Take wings of foresight; lighten thro'
The secular abyss to come,

And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb
Before the mouldering of a yew;

And if the matin songs, that woke

The darkness of our planet, last,

Thine own shall wither in the vast,

Ere half the lifetime of an oak.

Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain;

And what are they when these remain The ruin'd shells of hollow towers?

LXXVI.

WHAT hope is here for modern rhyme
To him who turns a musing eye

On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie Foreshorten'd in the tract of time?

These mortal lullabies of pain

May bind a book, may line a box, May serve to curl a maiden's locks; Or when a thousand moons shall wane

A man upon a stall may find,

And, passing, turn the page that tells A grief, then changed to something else, Sung by a long-forgotten mind.

But what of that? My darken'd ways
Shall ring with music all the same;
To breathe my loss is more than fame,
To utter love more sweet than praise.