6.

Back from the Breton coast,

Sick of a nameless fear,

Back to the dark sea-line

Looking, thinking of all I have lost;

An old song vexes my ear;

But that of Lamech is mine.

7.

For years, a measureless ill,

For years, for ever, to part

But she, she would love me still;

And as long, O God, as she

Have a grain of love for me,

So long, no doubt, no doubt,
Shall I nurse in my dark heart,
However weary, a spark of will
Not to be trampled out.

8.

Strange, that the mind, when fraught

With a passion so intense

One would think that it well

Might drown all life in the eye,

That it should, by being so overwrought,
Suddenly strike on a sharper sense

For a shell, or a flower, little things

Which else would have been past by!

And now I remember, I,

When he lay dying there,

I noticed one of his many rings

(For he had many, poor worm) and thought

It is his mother's hair.

9.

Who knows if he be dead?

Whether I need have fled ?

Am I guilty of blood?

However this may be,

Comfort her, comfort her, all things good,

While I am over the sea!

Let me and my passionate love go by,

But speak to her all things holy and high, Whatever happen to me!

Me and my harmful love go by;

But come to her waking, find her asleep, Powers of the height, Powers of the deep, And comfort her tho' I die.

III.

COURAGE, poor heart of stone!

I will not ask thee why

Thou canst not understand

That thou art left for ever alone:

Courage, poor stupid heart of stone.

Or if I ask thee why,

Care not thou to reply:

She is but dead, and the time is at hand

When thou shalt more than die.

IV.

1.

O THAT 'twere possible

After long grief and pain

To find the arms of my true love

Round me once again!

2.

When I was wont to meet her

In the silent woody places

By the home that gave me birth,

We stood tranced in long embraces

Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter

Than any thing on earth.