15

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow forever and forever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

IN MEMORIAM

(From In Memoriam, 1850)

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;

5 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.

10

15

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.

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, 20 And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow

25 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,

30

35

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 my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
40 I find him worthier to be loved.

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.

MAUD

(From Maud, 1855)

XVIII.

I.

I have led her home, my love, my only friend.
There is none like her, none.

And never yet so warmly ran my blood
And sweetly, on and on

5 Calming itself to the long-wish'd-for end, Full to the banks, close on the promised good.

II.

None like her, none.

Just now the dry-tongued laurels' pattering talk Seem'd her light foot along the garden walk, 10 And shook my heart to think she comes once

more;

But even then I heard her close the door,

The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone.

III.

There is none like her, none.

Nor will be when our summers have deceased.

15 O, art thou sighing for Lebanon

In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious
East,

Sighing for Lebanon,

Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here increased,
Upon a pastoral slope as fair,

20 And looking to the South, and fed

With honey'd rain and delicate air,
And haunted by the starry head

Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate,
And made my life a perfumed altar-flame;
25 And over whom thy darkness must have spread
With such delight as theirs of old, thy great
Forefathers of the thornless garden, there
Shadowing the snow-limb'd Eve from whom she

came.

IV.

Here will I lie, while these long branches sway, 30 And yon fair stars that crown a happy day Go in and out as if at merry play,

Who am no more so all forlorn,

As when it seem'd far better to be born

To labour and the mattock-harden'd hand,

35 Than nursed at ease and brought to understand A sad astrology, the boundless plan

That makes you tyrants in your iron skies,
Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes,

Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand 40 His nothingness into man.

V.

But now shine on, and what care I, Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl The countercharm of space and hollow sky, And do accept my madness, and would die 45 To save from some slight shame one simple girl.

VI.

Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may give
More life to Love than is or ever was

In our low world, where yet 'tis sweet to live.
Let no one ask me how it came to pass;
50 It seems that I am happy, that to me
A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,
A purer sapphire melts into the sea.

VII.

Not die; but live a life of truest breath,

And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs. 55 O why should Love, like men in drinking-songs, Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death? Make answer, Maud my bliss,

Maud made my Maud by that long loving kiss,
Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this?

60 The dusky strand of Death inwoven here

With dear Love's tie, makes Love himself more dear.'

VIII.

Is that enchanted moan only the swell
Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay?
And hark the clock within, the silver knell
65 Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white,
And died to live, long as my pulses play;
But now by this my love has closed her sight
And given false death her hand, and stol'n away
To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell
70 Among the fragments of the golden day.

May nothing there her maiden grace affright!
Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell.
My bride to be, my evermore delight,

My own heart's heart, my ownest own, farewell; 75 It is but for a little space I go:

And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell Beat to the noiseless music of the night! Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow Of your soft splendours that you look so bright? 80 I have climbed nearer out of lonely Hell.

Beat, happy stars, timing with things below, Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell, Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe That seems to draw-but it shall not be so: 85 Let all be well, be well.

CROSSING THE BAR

(1889)

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,