Alfred, Lord Tennyson: In Memoriam, Sections 7

12.
Lo, as the dove when up she springs
to bear through Heaven a tale of woe,
some dolorous message knit below
the wild pulsation of her wings;

Like her I go; I cannot stay;
I leave this mortal ark behind,
a weight of nerves without a mind,
and leave the cliffs, and haste away

o'er ocean-mirrors rounded large,
and reach the glow of southern skies,
and see the sails at distance rise,
and linger weeping on the marge,

and saying; "Comes he thus, my friend?
Is this the end of all my care?"
And circle moaning in the air:
"Is this the end? Is this the end?"

And forward dart again, and play
about the prow, and back return
to where the body sits, and learn
that I have been an hour away.

13.
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 forever new,
a void where heart on heart reposed;
and, where warm hands have pressed 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 though they brought by merchants' bales,
and not the burthen that they bring.

14.
If one should bring me this report,
that thou hadst touched the land today,
and I went down unto the quay;
and found thee lying in the port;

And standing, muffled round with woe,
should see thy passengers in rank
come stepping lightly down the plank
and beckoning unto those they they know;

And if along with these should come
then man I held as half divine,
should strike a sudden hand in mine,
and ask a thousand things of home;

And I should tell him all my pain,
and how my life had drooped of late,
and he should sorrow o'er my state
and marvel what possessed my brain;

And I perceived no touch of change,
no hint of death in all his frame,
but found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.

15.
Tonight the winds begin to rise
and roar from yonder dropping day;
the last red leaf is whirled away,
the rooks are blown about the skies;

the forest cracked, thewaters curled,
the cattle huddled on the lea;
and wildly dashed on tower and tree
the sunbeam strikes along the world;

And but for fancies, which aver
that all thy motions gently pass
atwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir

that makes the barren branches loud;
and but for fear it is not so,
the wild unrest that lives in woe
would dote and pore on yonder cloud

that rises upward always higher,
and onward drags a labouring breast,
and topples round the dreary west,
a looming bastion fringed with fire.
(Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

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