I perish

While thou, a meteor of the sepulchre, Didst swathe thyself all round Hope's quiet urn

For ever? He, that saith it, hath o'erstept

The slippery footing of his narrow wit, And fall'n away from judgment. Thou art light,

To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers,
And length of days, and immortality
Of thought, and freshness ever self-
renew'd.

For Time and Grief abode too long with
Life,

And, like all other friends i' the world, at last

They grew aweary of her fellowship:
So Time and Grief did beckon unto
Death,

And Death drew nigh and beat the doors of Life;

But thou didst sit alone in the inner house, A wakeful portress, and didst parle with Death,

'This is a charmed dwelling which I hold;'

So Death gave back, and would no further come.

Yet is my life nor in the present time,
Nor in the present place. To me alone,
Push'd from his chair of regal heritage,
The Present is the vassal of the Past:
So that, in that I have lived, do I live,
And cannot die, and am, in having been -
A portion of the pleasant yesterday,
Thrust forward on to-day and out of
place;

A body journeying onward, sick with toil,

The weight as if of age upon my limbs, The grasp of hopeless grief about my heart,

And all the senses weaken'd, save in that, Which long ago they had glean'd and garner'd up

So know I not when I began to love. This is my sum of knowledge — that my love

Grew with myself-say rather, was my

growth,

My inward sap, the hold I have on earth, My outward circling air wherewith I breathe,

Which yet upholds my life, and evermore Is to me daily life and daily death:

For how should I have lived and not have loved?

Can ye take off the sweetness from the flower,

The colour and the sweetness from the rose,

And place them by themselves; or set apart

Their motions and their brightness from the stars,

And then point out the flower or the star?
Or build a wall betwixt my life and love,
And tell me where I am? 'Tis even
thus:

In that I live I love; because I love
I live whate'er is fountain to the one
Is fountain to the other; and whene'er
Our God unknits the riddle of the one,
There is no shade or fold of mystery
Swathing the other.

Under the selfsame aspect of the stars, (Oh falsehood of all starcraft!) we were born.

How like each other was the birth of each!

The sister of my mother- she that bore
Camilla close beneath her beating heart,
Which to the imprison'd spirit of the child,
With its true-touched pulses in the flow
And hourly visitation of the blood,
Sent notes of preparation manifold,
And mellow'd echoes of the outer world-
My mother's sister, mother of my love,
Who had a twofold claim upon my heart,
One twofold mightier than the other was,
In giving so much beauty to the world,
And so much wealth as God had charged
her with -

Loathing to put it from herself for ever,
Left her own life with it; and dying thus,
Crown'd with her highest act the placid

face

Sweet thro' strange years to know that whatsoe'er

Our general mother meant for me alone,
Our mutual mother dealt to both of us:
So what was earliest mine in earliest life,
I shared with her in whom myself remains.
As was our childhood, so our infancy,
They tell me, was a very miracle
Of fellow-feeling and communion.
They tell me that we would not be
alone,

We cried when we were parted; when I wept,

Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears, Stay'd on the cloud of sorrow; that we loved

The sound of one another's voices more Than the gray cuckoo loves his name,

and learn'd

Till, drunk with its own wine, and overfull

Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself,
It fall on its own thorns-if this be true-
And that way my wish leads me ever-

more

Still to believe it 'tis so sweet a thought, Why in the utter stillness of the soul Doth question'd memory answer not, nor tell

Of this our earliest, our closest-drawn, Most loveliest, earthly-heavenliest harmony?

O blossom'd portal of the lonely house, Green prelude, April promise, glad newyear

Of Being, which with earliest violets
And lavish carol of clear-throated larks
Fill'd all the March of life! I will not
speak of thee,

These have not seen thee, these can never know thee,

They cannot understand me. Pass we

then

A term of eighteen years. Ye would but laugh,

If I should tell you how I hoard in thought

The faded rhymes and scraps of ancient

crones,

Gray relics of the nurseries of the world, Which are as gems set in my memory, Because she learnt them with me; or

what use

To know her father left us just before The daffodil was blown? or how we

found

The dead man cast upon the shore? All this

Seems to the quiet daylight of your minds But cloud and smoke, and in the dark of mine

Is traced with flame. Move with me to the event.

There came a glorious morning, such a

one

As dawns but once a season. Mercury On such a morning would have flung himself

From cloud to cloud, and swum with balanced wings

To some tall mountain: when I said to

her,

'A day for Gods to stoop,' she answered,

'Ay,

And men to soar:' for as that other gazed,

Shading his eyes till all the fiery cloud, The prophet and the chariot and the steeds,

Suck'd into oneness like a little star Were drunk into the inmost blue, we stood,

When first we came from out the pines at

noon,

With hands for eaves, uplooking and almost

Waiting to see some blessed shape in heaven,

So bathed we were in brilliance. Never yet

Before or after have I known the spring Pour with such sudden deluges of light Into the middle summer; for that day Love, rising, shook his wings, and charged the winds

With spiced May-sweets from bound to bound, and blew

Fresh fire into the sun, and from within Burst thro' the heated buds, and sent his soul

Into the songs of birds, and touch'd far

And honey of delicious memories! And down to sea, and far as eye could ken,

Each way from verge to verge a Holy Land,

Still growing holier as you near'd the bay, For there the Temple stood.

When we had reach'd The grassy platform on some hill, I stoop'd,

I gather'd the wild herbs, and for her brows

And mine made garlands of the selfsame flower,

Which she took smiling, and with my work thus

Crown'd her clear forehead. Once or twice she told me

(For I remember all things) to let grow The flowers that run poison in their veins.

She said, 'The evil flourish in the world.' Then playfully she gave herself the lie'Nothing in nature is unbeautiful;

So, brother, pluck and spare not.' So I

Whence rose as it were breath and steam of gold,

And over all the great wood rioting And climbing, streak'd or starr'd at intervals

With falling brook or blossom'd bushand last,

Framing the mighty landscape to the west,

A purple range of mountain-cones, be

tween

Whose interspaces gush'd in blinding

bursts

The incorporate blaze of sun and sea.

At length Descending from the point and standing both,

There on the tremulous bridge, that from beneath

Had seem'd a gossamer filament up in air, We paused amid the splendour. All the

west

And ev'n unto the middle south was ribb'd

And barr'd with bloom on bloom. The sun below,

Held for a space 'twixt cloud and wave, shower'd down

Rays of a mighty circle, weaving over That various wilderness a tissue of light Unparallel'd. On the other side, the

moon,

Half-melted into thin blue air, stood still, And pale and fibrous as a wither'd leaf, Nor yet endured in presence of His eyes To indue his lustre; most unloverlike, Since in his absence full of light and joy, And giving light to others. But this most,

Next to her presence whom I loved so well,

Spoke loudly even into my inmost heart As to my outward hearing: the loud stream,

Forth issuing from his portals in the crag (A visible link unto the home of my heart),

Ran amber toward the west, and nigh the sea

Parting my own loved mountains was received,

Shorn of its strength, into the sympathy