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.’ XLVII. If these brief lays, of Sorrow born, Were taken to be such as closed Grave doubts and answers here proposed, Then these were such as men might scorn: Her care is not to part and prove; She takes, when harsher moods remit, What slender shade of doubt may flit, And makes it vassal unto love: And hence, indeed, she sports with words; But better serves a wholesome law, And holds it sin and shame to draw The deepest measure from the chords: Nor dare she trust a larger lay, But rather loosens from the lip Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away. XLVIII. From art, from nature, from the schools, Let random influences glance, Like light in many a shiver’d lance That breaks about the dappled pools: The lightest wave of thought shall lisp, The fancy’s tenderest eddy wreathe, The slightest air of song shall breathe To make the sullen surface crisp. And look thy look, and go thy way, But blame not thou the winds that make The seeming-wanton ripple break, The tender-pencil’d shadow play. Beneath all fancied hopes and fears Ay me! the sorrow deepens down, Whose muffled motions blindly drown The bases of my life in tears. XLIX. Be near me when my light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick And tingle; and the heart is sick, And all the wheels of Being slow. Be near me when the sensuous frame Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust, And time, a maniac, scattering dust, And life, a Fury, slinging flame. Be near me when my faith is dry, And men the flies of latter spring, That lay their eggs, and sting and sing, And weave their petty cells and die. Be near me when I fade away, To point the term of human strife, And on the low dark verge of life The twilight of eternal day. L.