This Poem opens as if Hallam’s grave was in the churchyard, where grasses waved; but it was not so, he was buried inside Clevedon church.
The Poet imagines the reproofs, with which passers-by will visit him for his unrestrained grief. He would “make weakness weak:” would parade his pain to court sympathy, and gain credit for constancy; and another says, that a display of private sorrow is quite inappropriate at times, when great political changes impend, and Science every month is evolving some new secret.
He replies, that his song is but like that of the linnet—joyous indeed when her brood first flies, but sad when the nest has been rifled of her young.
XXII.
For “four sweet years,” from flowery spring to snowy winter, they had lived in closest friendship;
“But where the path we walk’d began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,”
“the Shadow fear’d of man,” grim Death, “broke our fair companionship.”
Hallam died on the 15th September, 1833, and the survivor, eagerly pursuing, can find him no more, but
“thinks, that somewhere in the waste
The Shadow sits and waits for me.”
His own spirit becomes darkened by gloomy apprehensions of superimpending calamity.