The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

So draw him home to those that mourn In vain: a favourable speed Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead

Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.

I hear the noise about thy keel; I hear the bell struck in the night: I see the cabin window bright;

I see the sailor at the wheel.

Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife, And travell'd men from foreign lands; And letters unto trembling hands;

And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life.

So bring him: we have idle dreams; This look of quiet flatters thus Our home-bred fancies: O to us,

The fools of habit, sweeter seems

To rest beneath the clover sod,

That takes the sunshine and the rains, Or where the kneeling hamlet drains

The chalice of the grapes of God ;

Than if with thee the roaring wells

Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine; And hand so often clasp'd in mine

Should toss with tangle and with shells

IV.—7/ the Lost Came Back

"Is this the end of all my care?" the poet asks himself when the body of his friend has been hidden in the dark grave. But in the depth of his grief his reason is not calm enough to answer

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him, and he can only resign himself to his sorrow and to what time may teach him.

If one should bring me this report,

That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day, And I went down unto the quay,

And found thee lying in the port;

And standing, muffled round with woe, Should see thy passengers in rank Come stepping lightly down the plank,

And beckoning unto those they know;

And if along with these should come

The man I held as half divine;

Should strike a sudden hand in mine, And ask a thousand things of home;

And I should tell him all my pain,

And how my life had droop'd of late, 'And he should sorrow o'er my state,

And marvel what possess'd my brain;

And I perceived no touch of change, No hint of death in all his frame, But found him all in all the same,

I should not feel it to be strange.

V.—The Influence of Nature

When he comes again to the grave of his friend, the very gentleness of the natural scenes has a soothing influence on his spirit, and he writes:

The Danube to the Severn gave

The darken'd heart that beats no more; They laid him by the pleasant shore,

And in the hearing of the wave. 280

There twice a day the Severn fills; The salt sea-water passes by, And hushes half the babbling Wye,

And makes a silence in the hills.

The Wye is hush'd nor moved along, And hush'd my deepest grief of all, When fill'd with tears that cannot fall,

I brim with sorrow drowning song.

The tide flows down, the wave again

Is vocal in its wooded walls;

My deeper anguish also falls, And 1 can speak a little then.

VL—Memories of the Lost Friend

His grief is still a purely personal one, still of the old remembered days he sings:

The path by which we twain did go,

Which led by tracts that pleased us well, Thro' four sweet years arose and fell,

From flower to flower, from snow to snow:

And we with singing cheer'd the way, And, crown'd with all the season lent, From April on to April went,

And glad at heart from May to May:

But where the path we walk'd began To slant the fifth autumnal slope, As we descended following Hope,

There sat the Shadow fear'd of man;

Who broke our fair companionship, And spread his mantle dark and cold, And wrapt thee formless in the fold,

And dull'd the murmur on thy lip. 281

And bore thee where I could not see Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste; And think that, somewhere in the waste,

The shadow sits and waits for me.

VII.—The Sacrifice of Love

In the presence of this " Shadow cloak'd from head to foot," " who keeps the keys of all the creeds," the poet begins to ponder more and more over the great mysteries of man's life and destiny. His thoughts of life, however, are still involved with memories of his friend.

I know that this was Life—the track Whereon with equal feet we fared; And then, as now, the day prepared

The daily burden for the back.

But this it was that made me move

As light as carrier-birds in air ;

I loved the weight I had to bear, Because it needed help of Love:

Nor could I weary, heart or limb,

When mighty Love would cleave in twain The lading of a single pain,

&nd part it, giving half to him.

VIII.—The Lessons of Life

But from his personal feelings he begins to draw the real lessons of life, and as the wildness of despair gives place at length to calmer thoughts, he is able to contemplate his loss with greater resignation.

I envy not in any moods

The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage,

That never knew the summer's woods. 282

I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time, Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,

To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest, The heart that never plighted troth, But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;

Nor any want-begotten rest.

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.

IX.—The Message of the Bells