XLIX.
He compares the “random influences” of Art, Nature, and the Schools, to light breaking in shivered lances on the dappled water. For even so does “the sullen surface” of the mind become “crisp” and curled with the wave of thought, the eddy of fancy, the air of song.
The transient passenger may look and go on his way, but must not blame such mental perturbations: for
“Beneath all fancied hopes and fears,
Ay me,[30] the sorrow deepens down,
Whose muffled motions blindly drown
The bases of my life in tears.”
L.
He invokes Hallam’s spirit to be near him in his various moods of distress—when he is filled with nervous apprehensions, when faith seems gone, and Time to be only “a maniac scattering dust,” and Life to be “a Fury slinging flame:” when men also appear to be no more than flies, that sting and weave their cells and die. But above all,
“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.”
The idea is sustained, that we shall go through the darkness of death, when Time will be lost, into the dawning light of Eternity; and the Poet would have his friend be near him at this translation.
LI.
Dare we indeed challenge the dead to inspect us? Have we “no inner vileness” that we would not have them discover? Would the Poet be lessened in Hallam’s esteem and affection, when “some hidden shame” was exposed? No,