The author speaks of these poems—“me-thinks, I have built a rich shrine for my friend, but it will not last.” At any rate, so long as he lives will the tolling of Hallam’s passing bell[36] be in his ears; and the strokes on the bell, “Ave” and “Adieu,” hail and farewell, are like the notes of perpetual separation. They seem to be parted “for evermore.”[37] He is in the lowest depth of woe.[38]
LVIII.
It has been thought that there might have been an interval after the composition of the previous Poem; and that the author resumed his task in a more hopeful state of mind.
He now compares the words of his late farewell to the echoes of dropping water in burial vaults, and he says that other hearts besides his own were affected by his lamentation.
Urania reproaches him for thus distributing a fruitless grief amongst those who had shared his sense of loss; and, exhorting him to wait with patience for a more resigned feeling, she assures him that it will come to his great relief—
“Abide a little longer here,
And thou shalt take a nobler leave”—
be able to speak with more confidence of their meeting again.
LIX.