If thou survive my well-contented day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, Compare them with the bettering of the time; And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, Exceeded by the height of happier men. O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought: "Had my friend's muse grown with this growing age, A dearer birth than this his love had bought, To march in ranks of better equipage; But since he died, and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love." Returning to Tennyson: has science cooled his yearning for human friendship? We are answered in No. 90 of _In Memoriam_. Where was ever such an invocation to a dead friend to return! When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, And rarely pipes the mounted thrush; Or underneath the barren bush Flits by the sea-blue bird of March; Come, wear the form by which I know Thy spirit in time among thy peers; The hope of unaccomplish'd years Be large and lucid round thy brow. When summer's hourly mellowing change May breathe, with many roses sweet, Upon the thousand waves of wheat, That ripple round the lonely grange; Come; not in watches of the night, But where the sunbeam broodeth warm, Come, beauteous in thine after-form, And like a finer light in light. Or still more touchingly, in No. 49, for here he writes from the depths of a sick despondency, from all the darkness of a bad quarter of an hour. Be near me when my light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick And tingle; and the heart is sick, And all the wheels of being slow. Be near me when the sensuous frame Is racked with pains that conquer trust; And Time, a maniac scattering dust, And Life, a fury, slinging flame. Be near me when my faith is dry, And men the flies of latter spring, That lay their eggs, and sting and sing, And weave their petty cells and die. Be near me when I fade away, To point the term of human strife, And on the low dark verge of life The twilight of eternal day. Has it diminished his tender care for the weakness of others? We are wonderfully answered in No. 33. O thou that after toil and storm Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air, Whose faith has centre everywhere, Nor cares to fix itself to form. Leave thou thy sister when she prays, Her early Heaven, her happy views; Nor then with shadow'd hint confuse A life that leads melodious days. Her faith thro' form is pure as thine, Her hands are quicker unto good. Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood To which she links a truth divine!