“the divided half of such
A friendship as had master’d Time;”
their intimacy would be eternal; and he imagines some sort of intercourse still carried on betwixt them, which he describes in language that has much of the spirit and character of Dante.
He then seems to turn again to his living friend, and says,
“If not so fresh, with love as true,
I, clasping brother-hands, aver
I could not, if I would, transfer
The whole I felt for him to you.”
But he is not wholly disconsolate—
“My heart, tho’ widow’d, may not rest
Quite in the love of what is gone,[59]
But seeks to beat in time with one
That warms another living breast.”
The concluding stanza offers the primrose of autumn to the surviving friend, whilst that of spring must be reserved for the friend whom he has lost.
LXXXVI.
He asks the ambrosial air of evening, which is so “sweet after showers,” and is “slowly breathing bare the round of space,”[60] clearing the sky of clouds, and “shadowing” the divided stream by raising ripples on its surface, to fan the fever from his cheek, till Doubt and Death can no longer enchain his fancy, but will let it fly to the rising star, in which
“A hundred spirits whisper, ‘Peace.’”