The Cambridge Book of Poetry and Song

These mellow days are past and dim, In turn, receive, to silent rest,

LOVE took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands:
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.

As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

Comfort? comfort scorned of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,
In the dead unhappy night, when the rain is on the roof.

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day:
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

[From In Memoriam.]

STRONG SON OF GOD.

STRONG Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face,

By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;

Thou madest life in man and brute,

Forgive what seemed my sin in me: What seemed my worth since 1 began;

For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee. Forgive my grief for one removed, Thy creature, whom I found so fair,

I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved.

Thou madest Death; and lo, thy Forgive these wild and wandering

foot

cries, Confusions of a wasted youth: Forgive them where they fail in truth,

And in thy wisdom make me wise.

[From In Memoriam.]

HOPE FOR ALL.

Oи, 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 destroyed, 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 shrivelled in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold we know not anything:

[From The Princess.]
RECONCILIATION.

As through the land at eve we went,
And plucked the ripest ears,

We fell out, my wife and I,
Oh, we fell out, I know not why,
And kissed again with tears.

For when we came where lies the child

We lost in other years, There above the little grave,

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glim-Oh, there above the little grave,
We kissed again with tears.

mering square:

So sad, so strange, the days that are

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