Believing where we cannot prove;2
1. He died 1833 (Latin). tion: 'Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet 2. Cf. John 20.24?29, in which Jesus rebukes have believed.' Thomas for his doubts concerning the Resurrec
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IN MEMORIAM, EPILOGUE/ 1139
5 Thine are these orbs3 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 wilt not leave us in the dust: 10 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. 15 Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine. Our little systems4 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,5 But vaster. We are fools and slight; JO 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 seemed my sin in me, What seemed my worth since I began; 35 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 wasted0 youth; desolated Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in thy wisdom make me wise. 1849
3. The sun and moon (according to Tennyson's 4. Of religion and philosophy, note). 5. As in the days of fixed religious faith.
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1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
1
I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones,6 That men may rise on stepping stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
5 But who shall so forecast the years And find in loss a gain to match? Or reach a hand through time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drowned, io 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, is 'Behold the man that loved and lost, But all he was is overworn.'
2
Old yew, which graspest at the stones That name the underlying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapped about the bones.
5 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, not for thee the glow, the bloom, io Who changest not in any gale, Nor branding summer suns avail To touch thy thousand years of gloom7
And gazing on thee, sullen tree, Sick for? thy stubborn hardihood, envying 15 I seem to fail from out my blood And grow incorporate into thee.
6. Identified by Tennyson as the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). 7. The ancient yew tree, growing in the grounds near the clock tower and church where Haliam was to be buried, seems neither to blossom in spring nor to change from its dark mournful color in summer. 'Thousand years': cf. Book of Common Prayer, Psalm 90: 'For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.'
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IN MEMORIAM, 118 / 1141
115
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship, O Priestess in the vaults of Death, O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
5 'The stars,' she whispers, 'blindly run; A web is woven across the sky; From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun;
'And all the phantom, Nature, stands? 10 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; Sorrow 15 Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind?
4
To Sleep I give my powers away; My will is bondsman to the dark; I sit within a helmless bark,
