Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame In matter-moulded forms of speech, Or ev’n for intellect to reach Thro’ memory that which I became: Till now the doubtful dusk reveal’d The knolls once more where, couch’d at ease, The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field: And suck’d from out the distant gloom A breeze began to tremble o’er The large leaves of the sycamore, And fluctuate all the still perfume; And gathering freshlier overhead, Rock’d the full-foliaged elms, and swung The heavy-folded rose, and flung The lilies to and fro, and said ‘The dawn, the dawn,’ and died away; And East and West, without a breath, Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, To broaden into boundless day. XCIV. You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. I know not: one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touched a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true: Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out, There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. He fought his doubts and gather’d strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them: thus he came at length To find a stronger faith his own; And Power was with him in the night, Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone, But in the darkness and the cloud, As over Sinaï’s peaks of old, While Israel made their gods of gold Altho’ the trumpet blew so loud. XCV. My love has talk’d with rocks and trees, He finds on misty mountain-ground His own vast shadow glory-crown’d, He sees himself in all he sees. Two partners of a married life-- I look’d on these and thought of thee In vastness and in mystery, And of my spirit as of a wife. These two--they dwelt with eye on eye, Their hearts of old have heat in tune, Their meetings made December June, Their every parting was to die. Their love has never past away; The days she never can forget Are earnest that he loves her yet, Whate’er the faithless people say. Her life is lone, he sits apart, He loves her yet, she will not weep, Tho’ rapt in matters dark and deep He seems to slight her simple heart. He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, He reads the secret of the star, He seems so near and yet so far, He looks so cold: she thinks him kind.