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Beckonedst the trembler, and still

Gavest the weary thy hand!
If, in the paths of the world,
Stones might have wounded thy feet,
Toil or dejection have tried
Thy spirit, of that we saw
Nothing! to us thou wert still
Cheerful, and helpful, and firm.
Therefore to thee it was given
Many to save with thyself;
And, at the end of thy day,
O faithful shepherd! to come,
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand.1

And through thee I believe

In the noble and great who are gone;
Pure souls honored and blest

By former ages, who else—
Such, so soulless, so poor,

Is the race of men whom I see-
Seemed but a dream of the heart,
Seemed but a cry of desire.
Yes! I believe that there lived
Others like thee in the past,

Not like the men of the crowd
Who all round me to-day

Bluster or cringe, and make life
Hideous, and arid, and vile;

But souls tempered with fire,

Fervent, heroic, and good,

Helpers and friends of mankind.

1 "Marcus Aurelius," the Poet elsewhere remarks, "saved his own sou by his righteousness, and he could do no more. Happy they who can do this! but still happier, who can do more.'

Servants of God!-or sons
Shall I not call you? because
Not as servants ye knew
Your Father's innermost mind,
His, who unwillingly sees.

One of his little ones lost-
Yours is the praise, if mankind
Hath not as yet in its march
Fainted, and fallen, and died!

See! in the rocks of the world
Marches the host of mankind,
A feeble, wavering line!

Where are they tending?-A God
Marshaled them, gave them their goal.—
Ah, but the way is so long!

Years they have been in the wild!
Sore thirst plagues them; the rocks,
Rising all round, overawe.

Factions divide them-their host
Threatens to break, to dissolve.-
Ah, keep, keep them combined!
Else, of the myriads who fill
That army, not one shall arrive!
Sole they shall stray; in the rocks
Labor for ever in vain,

Die one by one in the waste.

Then, in such hour of need

Of your fainting, dispirited race,
Ye, like angels, appear,

Radiant with ardor divine.

Beacons of hope, ye appear!

Languor is not in your heart,

Weakness is not in your word,
Weariness not on your brow.

Ye alight in our van! at your voice,
Panic, despair, flee away.

Ye move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn,
Praise, reinspire the brave!
Order, courage, return.

Eyes rekindling, and prayers,
Follow your steps as ye go.
Ye fill up the gaps in our files,
Strengthen the wavering line,
Stablish, continue our march,
On, to the bound of the waste,
On, to the City of God!

Matthew Arnold

297

IN MEMORIAM A. H. H.

OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII 1

TRONG Son of God, immortal Love,

STRONG

Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;

Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot

Is on the skull which thou hast made.

1 Arthur Henry Hallam, son of the distinguished historian Henry Hallam, died in Vienna, September 15, 1833, at the age of twenty-two. Tenny. son was two years his senior.

Thirty-two poems and part of another, out of a total of one hundred and thirty-three, are here reprinted. They are presented in their original order, but the lyrics selected from the body of the elegy are renumbered. consecutively, without regard to their proper numbers.

The poems constituting In Memoriam"brief lays, of sorrow born"were composed at intervals over a considerable number of years.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

Thou madest man, he knows not why, He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him: thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine,

The highest, holiest manhood, thou. Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know, For knowledge is of things we see; And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before,

But vaster.

We are fools and slight;

We mock thee when we do not fear: But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seemed my sin in me,
What seemed my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Forgive my grief for one removed,

Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;

Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.

I

I

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.

II

ΟΝΕ

NE writes, that "other friends remain,"
That "loss is common to the race”-

And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

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