Then they praised him, soft and low,
Call'd him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe;
Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,

Lightly to the warrior stept, Took the face-cloth from the face; Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,

Set his child upon her kneeLike summer tempest came her tears 'Sweet my child, I live for thee.'

VI

'COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height.

What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),

In height and cold, the splendor of the hills?

But cease to move so near the heavens, and

cease

To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the Silver
Horns,

Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors.
But follow; let the torrent dance thee
down

To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
There thousand wreaths of dangling water-
smoke,

That like a broken purpose waste in air.
So waste not thou, but come; for all the
vales

Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.'

IN MEMORIAM A. H. H.

OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII

'In Memoriam' was first published in 1850. No changes were made in the second and third editions. In the fourth edition (1851) the present 59th section (OSorrow, wilt thou live with me?) was added. The present 39th section (Old warder of these buried bones,' etc.) was added in the 'Miniature Edition' of the 'Poems' (1871).

Arthur Henry Hallam, to whose memory the poem is a tribute, was the son of Henry Hallam, the historian, and was born in London, February 1, 1811. In 1818 he spent some months with his parents in Italy and Switzerland, where he became familiar with the French language, which he had already learned to read with ease. Latin he also learned to read with facility in little more than a year. When only eight or nine years old, he began to write tragedies which showed remarkable precocity.

After a brief course in a preparatory school he was sent to Eton, where he remained till 1827. He did not distinguish himself as a classical scholar, being more interested in English literature, especially the earlier dramatists. He took an active part in the Debating Society, where he showed great power in argumentative discussion; and during his last year in the school he began to write for the Eton Miscellany.' After leaving Eton he spent eight months with his parents in Italy, where he mastered the language and the works of Dante and Petrarch.

In October, 1829, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. There he soon became acquainted with the Tennysons, and thus began the evermemorable friendship of which' In Memoriam' is the monument. Like his friends, he was the pupil of the Rev. William Whewell. In 1831 he obtained the first prize for an English declamation on the conduct of the Independent party during the Civil War. In consequence of this success, he was called upon to deliver an oration in the chapel before the Christmas vacation, and chose as a subject the influence of Italian upon English literature. He also gained a prize for an English essay on the philosophical writings of Cicero.

He left Cambridge on taking his decree in January, 1832. He resided from that time with his father in London in 67 Wimpole Street, referred to in 'In Memoriam,' vii. : —

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street.

Arthur used to say to his friends, 'You know you will always find us at sixes and sevens.' At the earnest desire of his father he applied himself vigorously to the study of law in the Inner Temple, entering, in the month of October, 1832, the office of an eminent conveyancer, with whom he continued till his departure from England in the following summer.

O, not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale,
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom;
And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
I seem to fail from out my blood
And grow incorporate into thee.

III

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 woven across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun;

'And all the phantom, Nature, stands -
With all the 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?

IV

To Sleep I give my powers away;
My will is bondsman to the dark;
I sit within a helmless bark,
And with my heart I muse and say:

O heart, how fares it with thee now,
That thou shouldst fail from thy desire,
Who scarcely darest to inquire,
'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;

For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these en-
fold

Is given in outline and no more.

VI

One writes, that 'other friends remain,' That loss is common to the race'. And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more.
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.

O father, wheresoe'er thou be,

Who pledgest now thy gallant son, A shot, ere half thy draught be done, Hath still'd the life that beat from thee.

O mother, praying God will save

Thy sailor, while thy head is bow'd, His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave.

Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well;
Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something thought;

Expecting still his advent home;

And ever met him on his way
With wishes, thinking, 'here to-day,'
Or here to-morrow will he come.'

O, somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!

For now her father's chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;

And thinking this will please him best,'

She takes a riband or a rose;

And this poor flower of poesy Which, little cared for, fades not yet.

But since it pleased a vanish'd eye,

I go to plant it on his tomb, That if it can it there may bloom, Or, dying, there at least may die.

IX

Fair ship, that from the Italian shore Sailest the placid ocean-plains

With my lost Arthur's loved remains, Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favorable speed
Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead
Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.

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;

Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love;

My Arthur, whom I shall not see

Till all my widow'd race be run; Dear as the mother to the son, More than my brothers are to me.

X

I hear the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night;
I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.

Thou bring'st 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;
This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies. O, to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems

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;

To where the body sits, and learn That I have been an hour away.

XIII

Tears of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these;

Which weep a loss for ever new,

A void where heart on heart reposed; And, where warm hands have prest and closed,

Silence, till I be silent too;

Which weep the comrade of my choice,
An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,
A Spirit, not a breathing voice.

Come, Time, and teach me, many years,
I do not suffer in a dream;

For now so strange do these things seem, Mine eyes have leisure for their tears,

My fancies time to rise on wing,

And glance about the approaching sails, As tho' they brought but merchants' bales, And not the burthen that they bring.

XIV

If one should bring me this report,
That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day,
And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port;

And standing, muffled round with woe,
Should see thy passengers in rank

Come stepping lightly down the plank, And beckoning unto those they know;

And if along with these should come

The man I held as half-divine,

Should strike a sudden hand in mine, And ask a thousand things of home;

And I should tell him all my pain,

And how my life had droop'd of late,
And he should sorrow o'er my state
And marvel what possess'd my brain;

And I perceived no touch of change,
No hint of death in all his frame,
But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.