This truth came borne with bier and pall

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 reliefTo 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’dMy capabilities of love;

Your words have virtue such as drawsA 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 wallsGod’s finger touch’d him, and he slept.

The great Intelligences fairThat range above our mortal state,In circle round the blessed gate,Received and gave him welcome there;

And led him through the blissful climes,And show’d him in the fountain freshAll knowledge that the sons of fleshShall 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 handsThe sense of human will demands,By which we dare to live or die.

Whatever way my days decline,I felt and feel, though left alone,His being working in mine own,The footsteps of his life in mine;

A life that all the Muses deck’dWith gifts of grace that might expressAll-comprehensive tenderness,All-subtilising intellect:

And so my passion hath not swervedTo works of weakness, but I findAn image comforting the mind,And in my grief a strength reserved.

Likewise the imaginative woe,That loved to handle spiritual strife,Diffused the shock through all my life,But in the present broke the blow.

My pulses therefore beat againFor other friends that once I met;Nor can it suit me to forgetThe mighty hopes that make us men.

I woo your love: I count it crimeTo mourn for any overmuch;I, the divided half of suchA friendship as had master’d Time;

Which masters Time indeed, and isEternal, separate from fears.The all-assuming months and yearsCan 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 waveRecalls, 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 seekA 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 speechWe two communicate no more.’

And I ‘Can clouds of nature stainThe starry clearness of the free?How is it? Canst thou feel for meSome 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 proveA meeting somewhere, love with love,I crave your pardon, O my friend;

If not so fresh, with love as true,I, clasping brother-hands, averI could not, if I would, transferThe whole I felt for him to you.

For which be they that hold apartThe promise of the golden hours?First love, first friendship, equal powersThat 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 restQuite in the love of what is gone,But seeks to beat in time with oneThat 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.