A higher hand must make her mild, If all be not in vain; and guide Her footsteps, moving side by side With wisdom, like the younger child: For she is earthly of the mind, But wisdom heavenly of the soul. O, friend, who camest to thy goal So early, leaving me behind, I would the great world grew like thee, Who grewest not alone in power And knowledge, but from hour to hour In reverence and in charity. CXIII. Now fades the last long streak of snow, Now burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow. Now rings the woodland loud and long, The distance takes a lovelier hue, And drown’d in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song. Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, The flocks are whiter down the vale, And milkier every milky sail On winding stream or distant sea; Where now the seamew pipes, or dives In yonder greening gleam, and fly The happy birds, that change their sky To build and brood; that live their lives. From land to land; and in my breast Spring wakens too; and my regret Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest. CXIV. Is it, then, regret for buried time That keenlier in sweet April wakes, And meets the year, and gives and takes The colours of the crescent prime? Not all: the songs, the stirring air, The life re-orient out of dust, Cry thro’ the sense to hearten trust In that which made the world so fair. Not all regret: the face will shine Upon me, while I muse alone; The dear, dear voice that I have known Will speak to me of me and mine: Yet less of sorrow lives in me For days of happy commune dead; Less yearning for the friendship fled, Than some strong bond which is to be. CXV. O days and hours, your work is this, To hold me from my proper place, A little while from his embrace, For fuller gain of after bliss: That out of distance might ensue Desire of nearness doubly sweet; And unto meeting, when we meet, Delight a hundredfold accrue, For every grain of sand that runs, And every span of shade that steals, And every kiss of toothed wheels, And all the courses of the suns. CXVI. Contemplate all this work of Time, The giant labouring in his youth; Nor dream of human love and truth, As dying Nature’s earth and lime; But trust that those we call the dead, Are breathers of an ampler day For ever nobler ends. They say, The solid earth whereon we tread In tracts of fluent heat began, And grew to seeming-random forms, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at the last arose the man;