So draw him home to those that mourn All night no ruder air perplex Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor bright As our pure love, thro' early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. Sphere all your lights around, above; My Arthur, whom I shall not see X. I hear the noise about thy keel; Thou bringest the sailor to his wife, And travell'd men from foreign lands; And letters unto trembling hands; And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life. So bring him: we have idle dreams : To rest beneath the clover sod, That takes the sunshine and the rains Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God; Than if with thee the roaring wells Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine; And hands so often clas'd in mine, Should toss with tangle and with shells. XI. Calm is the morn without a sound, Calm and deep peace on this high wold, Calm and still light on yon great plain That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, And crowded farms and lessening towers, To mingle with the bounding main: Calm and deep peace in this wide air, Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, And waves that sway themselves in rest, And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep. XIX. The Danube to the Severn gave The darken'd heart that beat no more; And in the hearing of the wave. There twice a day the Severn fills; The Wye is hush'd nor moved along The tide flows down, the wave again XXIV. And was the day of my delight If all was good and fair we met, This earth had been the Paradise It never look'd to human eyes Since our first sun arose and set. And is it that the haze of grief Makes former gladness loom so great? To lowness of the present state, That sets the past in this relief ? Or that the past will always win XXXIV. My own dim life should teach me this, This round of green, this orb of flame, What then were God to such as I? 'Twere hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use A little patience ere I die; "Twere best at once to sink to peace, XL. Could we forget the widow'd hour When first she wears her orange-flower i When crown'd with blessing she doth rise And doubtful joys the father move, Her office there to rear, to teach, And doubtless, unto thee is given Ay me, the difference I discern! How often shall her old fireside Be cheered with tidings of the bride, How often she herself return, And tell them all they would have told, And bring her babe, and make her boast, Till even those that miss'd her most, Shall count new things as dear as old: But thou and I have shaken hands, Till growing winters lay me low; My paths are in the fields I know. And thine in undiscover'd lands. LI. Do we indeed desire the dead Shall he for whose applause I strove, I wrong the grave with fears untrue; Be near us when we climb or fall: LIV. Oh yet we trust that somehow good To pangs of nature, sins of will, That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not a worm is cloven in vain ; Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall At last-far off--at last, to all, And every winter change to spring, |