We keep the day. With festal cheer, With books and music, surely we Will drink to him whate’er he be, And sing the songs he loved to hear. CVI. I will not shut me from my kind, And, lest I stiffen into stone, I will not eat my heart alone, Nor feed with sighs a passing wind: What profit lies in barren faith, And vacant yearning, tho’ with might To scale the heaven’s highest height, Or dive below the wells of Death? What find I in the highest place, But mine own phantom chanting hymns? And on the depths of death there swims The reflex of a human face. I’ll rather take what fruit may be Of sorrow under human skies: ’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise, Whatever wisdom sleep with thee. CVII. Heart-affluence in discursive talk From household fountains never dry; The critic clearness of an eye, That saw thro’ all the Muses’ walk; Seraphic intellect and force To seize and throw the doubts of man; Impassion’d logic, which outran The hearer in its fiery course; High nature amorous of the good, But touch’d with no ascetic gloom; And passion pure in snowy bloom Thro’ all the years of April blood; A love of freedom rarely felt, Of freedom in her regal seat Of England, not the schoolboy heat, The blind hysterics of the Celt; And manhood fused with female grace In such a sort, the child would twine, A trustful hand, unasked, in thine, And find his comfort in thy face; All these have been, and thee mine eyes Have look’d on: if they look’d in vain My shame is greater who remain, Nor let thy wisdom make me wise. CVIII. Thy converse drew us with delight, The men of rathe and riper years: The feeble soul, a haunt of fears, Forgot his weakness in thy sight. On thee the loyal-hearted hung, The proud was half disarm’d of pride, Nor cared the serpent at thy side To flicker with his treble tongue. The stern were mild when thou wert by, The flippant put himself to school And heard thee, and the brazen fool Was soften’d, and he knew not why; While I, thy dearest, sat apart, And felt thy triumph was as mine; And loved them more, that they were thine, The graceful tact, the Christian art; Not mine the sweetness or the skill, But mine the love that will not tire, And, born of love, the vague desire That spurs an imitative will. CIX. The churl in spirit up or down, Along the scale of ranks, thro’ all To who may grasp a golden ball By blood a king, at heart a clown;