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