“He that died in Holy Land
Would reach us out the shining hand,
And take us as a single soul.”
The mere thought of this forbidden consummation of their friendship shocks him; it revives the old bitterness of sorrow, and stops
“The low beginnings of content.”[58]
LXXXV.
The first stanza merely repeats the sentiment expressed in Poem xxvii., that the deepest grief has only more fully convinced him, that to have loved and lost is better than never to have loved.
It is the friend to whom the epithalamium is addressed—E. L. Lushington—“true in word and tried in deed,” who asks how he is affected—if his faith be still firm, and he has still room in his heart for love? He answers, that all was well with him, until that fatal “message” came, that
“God’s finger touch’d him, and he slept.”
He then recounts what he thinks may have occurred to Hallam, when translated through various stages of spiritual being; and he repeats his sorrowful regrets for his loss. But “I woo your love,” he seems to say to his future brother-in-law, for he holds it wrong
“to mourn for any over much:”
still, so deep is his attachment to Hallam, that he calls himself