This truth came borne with bier and pall I felt it, when I sorrow'd most, 'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all—
O true in word, and tried in deed, Demanding, so to bring relief To this which is our common grief, What kind of life is that I lead;
And whether trust in things above Be dimm'd of sorrow, or sustain'd; And whether love for him have drain'd My capabilities of love;
Your words have virtue such as draws A faithful answer from the breast, Thro' light reproaches, half exprest, And loyal unto kindly laws.
My blood an even tenor kept, Till on mine ear this message falls, That in Vienna's fatal walls God's finger touch'd him, and he slept.
The great Intelligences fair That range above our mortal state, In circle round the blessed gate, Received and gave him welcome there;
And led him thro' the blissful climes, And show'd him in the fountain fresh All knowledge that the sons of flesh Shall gather in the cycled times.
But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim, Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth, To wander on a darken'd earth, Where all things round me breathed of him.
O friendship, equal-poised control, O heart, with kindliest motion warm, O sacred essence, other form, O solemn ghost, O crowned soul!
Yet none could better know than I, How much of act at human hands The sense of human will demands By which we dare to live or die.
Whatever way my days decline, I felt and feel, tho' left alone, His being working in mine own, The footsteps of his life in mine;
A life that all the Muses deck'd With gifts of grace, that might express All-comprehensive tenderness, All-subtilising intellect:
And so my passion hath not swerved To works of weakness, but I find An image comforting the mind, And in my grief a strength reserved.
Likewise the imaginative woe, That loved to handle spiritual strife Diffused the shock thro' all my life, But in the present broke the blow.
My pulses therefore beat again For other friends that once I met; Nor can it suit me to forget The mighty hopes that make us men.
I woo your love: I count it crime To mourn for any overmuch; I, the divided half of such A friendship as had master'd Time;
Which masters Time indeed, and is Eternal, separate from fears: The all-assuming months and years Can take no part away from this:
But Summer on the steaming floods, And Spring that swells the narrow brooks, And Autumn, with a noise of rooks, That gather in the waning woods,
And every pulse of wind and wave Recalls, in change of light or gloom, My old affection of the tomb, And my prime passion in the grave:
My old affection of the tomb, A part of stillness, yearns to speak: "Arise, and get thee forth and seek A friendship for the years to come.
"I watch thee from the quiet shore; Thy spirit up to mine can reach; But in dear words of human speech We two communicate no more."
And I, "Can clouds of nature stain The starry clearness of the free? How is it? Canst thou feel for me Some painless sympathy with pain?"
And lightly does the whisper fall: "'Tis hard for thee to fathom this; I triumph in conclusive bliss, And that serene result of all."
So hold I commerce with the dead; Or so methinks the dead would say; Or so shall grief with symbols play And pining life be fancy-fed.
Now looking to some settled end, That these things pass, and I shall prove A meeting somewhere, love with love, I crave your pardon, O my friend;
If not so fresh, with love as true, I, clasping brother-hands, aver I could not, if I would, transfer The whole I felt for him to you.
For which be they that hold apart The promise of the golden hours? First love, first friendship, equal powers, That marry with the virgin heart.
Still mine, that cannot but deplore, That beats within a lonely place, That yet remembers his embrace, But at his footstep leaps no more,
My heart, tho' widow'd, may not rest Quite in the love of what is gone, But seeks to beat in time with one That warms another living breast.
Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring, Knowing the primrose yet is dear, The primrose of the later year, As not unlike to that of Spring.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H., Canto LXXXV