But where the path we walked began io To slant the fifth autumnal slope,5 As we descended following Hope, There sat the Shadow feared of man;
Who broke our fair companionship, And spread his mantle dark and cold, 15 And wrapped thee formless in the fold, And dulled the murmur on thy lip,
And bore thee where I could not see Nor follow, though I walk in haste, And think that somewhere in the waste
20 The Shadow sits and waits for me.
23
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut, Or breaking into song by fits, Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloaked from head to foot,
5 Who keeps the keys of all the creeds, I wander, often falling lame, And looking back to whence I came,
Or on to where the pathway leads;
And crying, How changed from where it ran io Through lands where not a leaf was dumb, But all the lavish hills would hum The murmur of a happy Pan;6
When each by turns was guide to each, And Fancy light from Fancy caught, 15 And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech;
And all we met was fair and good, And all was good that Time could bring, And all the secret of the Spring
20 Moved in the chambers of the blood;
And many an old philosophy On Argive7 heights divinely sang,
5. Hallam died just before the beginning of tures. autumn (September 15, 1833) in the fifth year of 7. Of Argos, an ancient city-state in the north- the friendship. eastern Peloponnesus; more generally, Greek. 6. In Greek mythology the god of woods and pas
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INMEMORIAM,EPILOGUE/1151
And round us all the thicket rang To many a flute of Arcady.8 88
24
And was the day of my delight
As pure and perfect as I say?
The very source and fount of day
Is dashed with wandering isles of night.9
5 If all was good and fair we met,
This earth had been the Paradise
It never looked to human eyes
Since our first sun arose and set.
And is it that the haze of grief IO Makes former gladness loom so great? The lowness of the present state, That sets the past in this relief?
Or that the past will always win A glory from its being far, 15 And orb into the perfect star We saw not when we moved therein?1
25 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. 5 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; ioNor could I weary, heart or limb, When mighty Love would cleave in twain The lading0 of a single pain, And part it, giving half to him. burden
26
Still onward winds the dreary way; I with it, for I long to prove
8. A sheep-raising region in Greece associated 1. The poet wonders whether Earth would have with pastoral poetry. the deceptive appearance of being a perfect orb if 9. Moving spots on the sun. viewed from afar, on another planet.
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1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
No lapse of moons can canker Love, Whatever fickle tongues may say.
5 And if that eye which watches guilt And goodness, and hath power to see Within the green the mouldered tree,
And towers fallen as soon as built?
O, if indeed that eye foresee 10 Or see?in Him is no before? In more of life true life no more And Love the indifference to be,
Then might I find, ere yet the morn Breaks hither over Indian seas, 15 That Shadow waiting with the keys, To shroud me from my proper scorn.2
