XLII.

IF Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit's folded bloom

Through all its intervital gloom

In some long trance should slumber on ;

Unconscious of the sliding hour,

Bare of the body, might it last, And silent traces of the past Be all the color of the flower:

So then were nothing lost to man ;
But that still garden of the souls
In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since life began :

And love would last as pure and whole

As when he loved me here in Time, And at the spiritual prime Rewaken with the dawning soul.

XLIII.

How fares it with the happy dead?
For here the man is more and more ;

But he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.

The days have vanished, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)

A little flash, a mystic hint;

And in the long, harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs)
May some dim touch of earthly things
Surprise thee ranging with thy peers.

If such a dreamy touch should fall,

O, turn thee round, resolve the doubt,
My guardian angel will speak out
In that high place, and tell thee all.

XLIV.

THE baby new to earth and sky,

What time his tender palm is pressed

Against the circle of the breast,

Has never thought that "this is I":

But as he grows he gathers much,

And learns the use of "I," and "me,"

And finds "I am not what I see,

And other than the things I touch":

So rounds he to a separate mind

From whence clear memory may begin, As through the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined.

This use may lie in blood and breath,

Which else were fruitless of their due,

Had man to learn himself anew

Beyond the second birth of Death.

XLV.

WE ranging down this lower track,

The path we came by, thorn and flower, Is shadowed by the growing hour, Lest life should fail in looking back.

So be it: there no shade can last

In that deep dawn behind the tomb,

But clear from marge to marge shall bloom

The eternal landscape of the past;

A lifelong tract of time revealed;

The fruitful hours of still increase; Days ordered in a wealthy peace, And those five years its richest field.

O Love! thy province were not large,
A bounded field, nor stretching far,
Look also, Love, a brooding star,
A rosy warmth from marge to marge.

XLVI.

THAT each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall

Remerging in the general Soul,

Is faith as vague as all unsweet:

Eternal form shall still divide

The eternal soul from all beside; And I shall know him when we meet :

And we shall sit at endless feast,

Enjoying each the other's good;

What vaster dream can hit the mood Of Love on earth? He seeks at least

Upon the last and sharpest height,
Before the spirits fade away,

Some landing-place, to clasp and say,

"Farewell! We lose ourselves in light."