True, as inexorable winds, or bars 105 Floating or fixed of polar ice, allow.[34] But turn we rather, let my spirit turn With thine, O silent and invisible Friend! To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief, When reunited, and by choice withdrawn 110 From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught That the remembrance of foregone distress, And the worse fear of future ill (which oft Doth hang around it, as a sickly child Upon its mother) may be both alike 115 Disarmed of power to unsettle present good So prized, and things inward and outward held In such an even balance, that the heart Acknowledges God’s grace, his mercy feels, And in its depth of gratitude is still. 120 O gift divine of quiet sequestration! The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise, And feeding daily on the hope of heaven, Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves To life-long singleness; but happier far 125 Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others, A thousand times more beautiful appeared, Your _dual_ loneliness. The sacred tie Is broken; yet why grieve? for Time but holds His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead 130 To the blest world where parting is unknown.[35] [22] 1837. _To the dear memory of a frail good Man_ In privately printed edition. [23] Charles Lamb died December 27, 1834, and was buried in Edmonton Churchyard, in a spot selected by himself.--ED. [24] This way of indicating the _name_ of my lamented friend has been found fault with, perhaps rightly so; but I may say in justification of the double sense of the word, that similar allusions are not uncommon in epitaphs. One of the best in our language in verse, I ever read, was upon a person who bore the name of Palmer†; and the course of the thought, throughout, turned upon the Life of the Departed, considered as a pilgrimage. Nor can I think that the objection in the present case will have much force with any one who remembers Charles Lamb’s beautiful sonnet addressed to his own name, and ending-- No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name! W. W. 1837. † 1840. Pilgrim; 1837. Professor Henry Reed, in his edition of 1837, added the following note to Wordsworth’s. “In _Hierologus_, a Church Tour through England and Wales, I have met with an epitaph which is probably the one alluded to above … a Kentish epitaph on one Palmer: Palmers all our fathers were; I, a Palmer lived here, And traveyled sore, till worn with age, I ended this world’s pilgrimage, On the blest Ascension Day In the cheerful month of May.” The above is Professor Reed’s note. The following is an exact copy of the epitaph:--