He invites Sorrow to live with him as a wife, always and constant, not as a casual mistress: being his “bosom-friend and half of life,” even as it were Hallam himself.
Sorrow must remain his centred passion which cannot move; nevertheless it will not always be gloomy: but rather allow occasional playfulness, so that it would not be commonly known that he had a life-long affliction.[39]
LX.
He cannot dismiss the memory of his loss, and calls Hallam “a soul of nobler tone,” superior to himself, who is feeling “like some poor girl” that has fixed her affections on a man of higher rank than her own. She compares her state with his, and sighs over her own inferior circumstances, and repines at her humbler lot. The neighbours jeer at her disappointment, and she says
“How vain am I!
How should he love a thing so low?”
No doubt, the passing into a higher world gave Hallam a superior dignity in the Poet’s estimation.[40]
LXI.
If Hallam, in the intermediate state be exchanging replies with the great intellects there assembled from all time,—“the spirits of just men made perfect”—how dwarfed and insignificant must seem any intercourse with his friend still left here—
“How blanch’d with darkness must I grow!”
This figure of speech will be taken from the blanching of vegetables in the dark. Still, he would have him turn to