CXVI.

Is it, then, regret for buried time
That keenlier in sweet April wakes,
And meets the year, and gives and takes
The colours of the crescent prime?

Not all the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust,

Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.

Not all regret the face will shine

Upon me, while I muse alone;

And that dear voice, I once have known, Still speak to me of me and mine :

Yet less of sorrow lives in me

For days of happy commune dead; Less yearning for the friendship fled Than some strong bond which is to be.

CXXIV.

That which we dare invoke to bless :
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess;

I found him not in world or sun,

Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;
Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:

"

If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,
I heard a voice "believe no more
And heard an ever breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;

A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer'd "I have felt."

No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamour made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near;

And what I am beheld again

What is, and no man understands; And out of darkness came the hands That reach thro' nature, moulding men.

CXXXI.

O LIVING will that shalt endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,

Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure,

That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works, and trust,

With faith that comes of self-control,

The truths that never can be proved Until we close with all we loved, And all we flow from, soul in soul.

STRAY LINES FROM IN MEMORIAM.

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?

I hold it true, what e'er befall,
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine.

God's finger touch'd him, and he slept.

There no shade can last

In that deep dawn behind the tomb
But clear from marge to marge shall bloom
The eternal landscape of the past.

The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go.

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.

But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends.

Can clouds of nature stain

The starry clearness of the free?
How is it? Canst thou feel for me
Some painless sympathy with pain?

And lightly does the whisper fall;
'Tis hard for thee to fathom this;
I triumph in conclusive bliss,
And that serene result of all.

And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds

In loveliness of perfect deeds,

More strong than all poetic thought.