In Memoriam A.H.H.

"Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove; Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made."

"Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, thou. Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine."

"Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they."

"Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before, But vaster. We are fools and slight; We mock thee when we do not fear: But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light."

"Forgive what seem'd my sin in me; What seem'd my worth since I began; For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee."

"Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Confusions of a wasted youth; Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in thy wisdom make me wise."

"I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things."

"Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, Let darkness keep her raven gloss: Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, To dance with death, to beat the ground,Than that the victor Hours should scorn The long result of love, and boast, 'Behold the man that loved and lost, But all he was is overworn.'"

"Old Yew, which graspest at the stones That name the under-lying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.The seasons bring the flower again, And bring the firstling to the flock; And in the dusk of thee, the clock Beats out the little lives of men."

"O Sorrow cruel fellowship, O Priestess in the vaults of Death, O sweet and bitter in a breath, What whispers from thy lying lip?'The stars,' she whispers, 'blindly run; A web is wov'n across the sky; From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun:'And all the phantom, Nature stands— With all the music in her tone, A hollow echo of my own,— A hollow form with empty hands.'And shall I take a thing so blind, Embrace her as my natural good; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind?"

"I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within."

"But for the unquiet heart and brain A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise Like dull narcotics numbing pain."

"In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold: But that large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more."

"One writes, that 'Other friends remain,' That 'Loss is common to the race' — And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain. That loss is common would not make My own less bitter, rather more: Too common! Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break."

"Tears of the widower, when he sees A late-lost form that sleep reveals, And moves his doubtful arms, and feels Her place is empty, fall like these; Which weep a loss for ever new, A void where heart on heart reposed; And, where warm hands have prest and closed, Silence, till I be silent too."

"And topples round the dreary west A looming bastion fringed with fire."

"'Tis 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."

"Behold, ye speak an idle thing: Ye never knew the sacred dust: I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing."

"The shadow cloaked from head to foot."

"Who keeps the keys of all the creeds."

"When each by turns was guide to each, And Fancy light from Fancy caught, And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech."

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

"Her eyes are homes of silent prayer."

"Whose faith has centre everywhere, Nor cares to fix itself to form."

"My own dim life should teach me this That life shall live for evermore."

"How 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."

"Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away."

"Be near me when my light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick And tingle; and the heart is sick, And all the wheels of Being slow. Be near me when the sensuous frame Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust; And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a Fury slinging flame."

"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?"

"Hold thou the good: define it well: For fear divine Philosophy Should push beyond her mark, and be Procuress to the Lords of Hell."

"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 shriveled in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain."

"Behold, we know not anything; 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."

"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 thro’ 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."

"'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 seem'd so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law — Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed —Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or seal'd 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 match'd 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."

"O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me No casual mistress, but a wife, My bosom-friend and half of life; As I confess it needs must be."

"And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance."

"And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty state's decrees, And shape the whisper of the throne."

"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?"

"Thy leaf has perished 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."

"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 waneA 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."

"O last regret, regret can die! No — mixt with all this mystic frame, Her deep relations are the same, But with long use her tears are dry."

"I wage not any feud with Death For changes wrought on form and face; No lower life that earth’s embrace May breed with him, can fright my faith. Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks; And these are but the shatter’d stalks, Or ruin’d chrysalis of one."

"My blood an even tenor kept, Till on mine ear this message falls, That in Vienna's fatal walls God's finger touch'd him, and he slept."

"He brought an eye for all he saw; He mixt in all our simple sports; They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts And dusty purlieus of the law."

"Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds."

"He seems so near, and yet so far."

"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light; The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die."

"Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true."

"Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more, Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind."

"Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws."