Charging an army, while All the world wonder'd: Reel'd from the sabre-stroke 5 Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Volley'd and thunder'd; 6 When can their glory fade? Honour the charge they made! Noble six hundred ! (1856) CXXXVIII IN MEMORIAM A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII STRONG Son of God, immortal Love, Believing where we cannot prove; 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. 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, 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, Let knowledge grow from more to more, We mock thee when we do not fear: What seem'd my worth since I began; Thy creature, whom I found so fair. Forgive these wild and wandering cries, I I HELD it truth, with him who sings .1849 But who shall so forecast the years Or reach a hand thro' time to catch The far-off interest of tears? Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, Than that the victor Hours should scorn II OLD Yew, which graspest at the stones That name the under-lying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head; Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. 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, Nor branding summer suns avail To touch thy thousand years of gloom : And gazing on thee, sullen tree, Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, III O SORROW, cruel fellowship, O Priestess in the vaults of Death, What whispers from thy lying lip? "The stars," she whispers, "blindly run; A web is wov'n across the sky; From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun : "And all the phantom, Nature, stands— A hollow echo of my own,- And shall I take a thing so blind, IV To Sleep I give my powers away; O heart, how fares it with thee now, That thou should'st fail from thy desire, "What is it makes me beat so low?" Something it is which thou hast lost, Some pleasure from thine early years Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, That grief hath shaken into frost! Such clouds of nameless trouble cross All night below the darken'd eyes; With morning wakes the will, and cries, "Thou shalt not be the fool of loss." V I SOMETIMES hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold; But that large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more. VI ONE writes, that "Other friends remain," That pledgest now thy gallant son; Thy sailor,-while thy head is bow'd, O somewhere, meek unconscious dove, For now her father's chimney glows ป And thinking "this will please him best," She takes a riband or a rose ; For he will see them on to-night; And with the thought her colour burns; And, having left the glass, she turns Once more to set a ringlet right; And, even when she turn'd, the curse Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford, Or kill'd in falling from his horse. |