58
In those sad words I took farewell. Like echoes in sepulchral halls, As drop by drop the water falls
In vaults and catacombs, they fell;
5 And, falling, idly broke the peace Of hearts that beat from day to day, Half-conscious of their dying clay,
And those cold crypts where they shall cease.
The high Muse answered: 'Wherefore grieve io Thy brethren with a fruitless tear? Abide a little longer here, And thou shalt take a nobler leave.'
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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?
5 O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood, Be sometimes lovely like a bride, And put thy harsher moods aside,
If thou wilt have me wise and good?
My centered passion cannot move, io Nor will it lessen from today; But I'll have leave at times to play As with the creature of my love;
And set thee forth, for thou art mine, With so much hope for years to come, 15 That, howsoe'er I know thee, some Could hardly tell what name were thine.
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IN MEMORIAM, 118 / 1161
115
Dost thou look back on what hath been, As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green;
5 Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;
Who makes by force his merit known io And lives to clutch the golden keys,5 To mold a mighty state's decrees, And shape the whisper of the throne;
And moving up from high to higher, Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope 15 The pillar of a people's hope, The centre of a world's desire;
Yet feels, as in a pensive dream, When all his active powers are still, A distant dearness in the hill,
20 A secret sweetness in the stream,
The limit of his narrower fate, While yet beside its vocal springs He played at counselors and kings,
With one that was his earliest mate;
25 Who plows with pain his native lea And reaps the labour of his hands, Or in the furrow musing stands:
'Does my old friend remember me?'
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When on my bed the moonlight falls, I know that in thy place of rest By that broad water6 of the west
There comes a glory on the walls:
5 Thy marble bright in dark appears, As slowly steals a silver flame
5. Badges of high public office. 6. The Severn River.
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1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Along the letters of thy name, And o'er the number of thy years.
The mystic glory swims away, 10 From off my bed the moonlight dies; And closing eaves of wearied eyes I sleep till dusk is dipped in gray;
And then I know the mist is drawn A lucid veil from coast to coast, 15 And in the dark church like a ghost Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.
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I cannot see the features right, When on the gloom I strive to paint The face I know; the hues are faint
And mix with hollow masks of night;
