Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch, Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need, Thy kingly intellect shall feed, Until she be an athlete bold, And weary with a finger's touch Those writhed limbs of lightning speed; Like that strange angel which of old, Until the breaking of the light, Wrestled with wandering Israel, Past Yabbok brook the livelong night, And heaven's mazed signs stood still In the dim tract of Penuel. TO R. C. TRENCH AFTERWARDS ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN (Dedication of "The Palace of Art") I send you here a sort of allegory, (For you will understand it) of a soul, A sinful soul possess'd of many gifts, A spacious garden full of flowering weeds, A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain, That did love Beauty only, (Beauty seen In all varieties of mould and mind) And Knowledge for its beauty; or if Good, Good only for its beauty, seeing not That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge, are three sisters That doat upon each other, friends to man, Living together under the same roof, And never can be sunder'd without tears. And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie Howling in outer darkness. Not for this Was common clay ta'en from the common earth Moulded by God, and temper'd with the tears Of angels to the perfect shape of man. TO THE REV. W. H. BROOKFIELD Brooks, for they call'd you so that knew you best, Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes, How oft we two have heard St. Mary's chimes! How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest, Would echo helpless laughter to your jest! How oft with him we paced that walk of limes, Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times, Who loved you well! Now both are gone to rest. You man of humorous-melancholy mark, Dead of some inward agony--is it so? Our kindlier, trustier, Jaques, past away! I cannot laud this life, it looks so dark: [Greek: Skias onar]--dream of a shadow, go-- God bless you. I shall join you in a day. TO EDMUND LUSHINGTON ON HIS MARRIAGE WITH CECILIA TENNYSON O true and tried, so well and long, Demand not thou a marriage lay; In that it is thy marriage day Is music more than any song. Nor have I felt so much of bliss Since first he told me that he loved A daughter of our house; nor proved Since that dark day a day like this; Tho' I since then have number'd o'er Some thrice three years: they went and came, Remade the blood and changed the frame, And yet is love not less, but more; No longer caring to embalm In dying songs a dead regret, But like a statue solid-set, And moulded in colossal calm. Regret is dead, but love is more Than in the summers that are flown, For I myself with these have grown To something greater than before;