In Memoriam A. H. H.

I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things.

But who shall so forecast the years And find in loss a gain to match? Or reach a hand thro’ time to catch The far-off interest of tears?

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown’d, 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: ‘Behold the man that loved and lost, But all he was is overworn.’

O sorrow, cruel fellowship! O Priestess in the vaults of Death! O sweet and bitter in a breath, 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— With all her 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; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind?

To night the winds began to rise And roar from yonder dropping day: The last red leaf is whirl’d away, The rooks are blown about the skies;

The forest crack’d, the waters curl’d, The cattle huddled on the lea; And wildly dash’d on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world:

And but for fancies, which aver That all thy motions gently pass Athwart a plane of molten glass, I scarce could brook the strain and stir

That makes the barren branches loud; And but for fear it is not so, The wild unrest that lives in woe Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a labouring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.

Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroy’d, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivel’d in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another’s gain.

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.

So runs my dream: but what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.