Canto V

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 enfold Is given in outline and no more.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H., Canto V