My love involves the love before; My love is vaster passion now; Tho’ mixed with God and Nature thou, I seem to love thee more and more. Far off thou art, but ever nigh; I have thee still, and I rejoice; I prosper, circled with thy voice; I shall not lose thee tho’ I die.” [Sidenote: _Browning’s “May and Death”_] Following is a little poem by Robert Browning entitled _May and Death_, which may well be placed near the stanzas of _In Memoriam_:— “I wish that when you died last May, Charles, there had died along with you Three parts of Spring’s delightful things; Ay, and for me the fourth part too. A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps! There must be many a pair of friends Who arm-in-arm deserve the warm Moon-births and the long evening-ends. So, for their sake, be May still May! Let their new time, as mine of old, Do all it did for me; I bid Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold. Only one little sight, one plant Woods have in May, that starts up green Save a sole streak which, so to speak, Is Spring’s blood, spilt its leaves between— That, they might spare; a certain wood Might miss the plant; their loss were small; But I—whene’er the leaf grows there— It’s drop comes from my heart, that’s all.” [Sidenote: _Ralph Waldo Emerson_] Between Browning and Whitman we may insert a few lines from R. W. Emerson:— “The only way to have a friend is to be one.... In the last analysis love is only the reflection of a man’s own worthiness from other men. Men have sometimes exchanged names with their friends, as if they would signify that in their friend each loved his own soul. “The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood.... Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, and daring, which can love us, and which we can love.” _Essay on Friendship._ [Sidenote: _Henry D. Thoreau_] These also from Henry D. Thoreau:—