"Thou to this last and sovran mystery130
Of my mysterious travail guiding sent,
Dear as thou wert, I will not mourn for thee,
Thou wert not shaped for earth's hard element—
Our ends, our aims, our pleasure, and our woe,
Thou knew'st them all, but thine we could not know.
"Forgive that none were worthy of thy worth!131
That none took heed, upon the plodding way,
What diamond dew was on the flowers of earth,
Till in thy soul drawn upward to the day.
But now, why gape the wounds upon thy breast?
What guilty hand dismiss'd thee to the Blest?
"For blest thou art, beloved and lost? Oh, speak,132
Say thou art with the Angels?"—As at night
Far off the pharos on the mountain-peak
Sends o'er dim ocean one pale path of light,
Lost in the wideness of the weltering Sea,
So, that one gleam along eternity
Vouchsafed, the radiant guide (its mission closed)133
Fled, and the mortal stood amidst the cloud!
All dark above, lo at his feet reposed
Beneath the Brow's still terror o'er it bow'd,
With eyes that lit the gloom through which they smiled,
A Virgin shape, half woman and half child!
There, bright before the iron gates of Death,134
Bright in the shadow of the awful Power
Which did as Nature give the human breath,
As Fate mature the germ and nurse the flower
Of earth for heaven,—Toil's last and sweetest prize,
The destined Soother lifts her fearless eyes!
Through all the mortal's fame enraptured thrills135
A subtler tide, a life ambrosial,
Bright as the fabled element which fills
The veins of Gods to whom in Ida's hall
Flush'd Hebe brims the urn. The transport broke
The charm that gave it—and the Dreamer woke.
Was it in truth a Dream? He gazed around,136
And saw the granite of sepulchral walls;
Through open doors, along the desolate ground,
O'er coffin dust—the morning sunbeam falls;
On mouldering relics life its splendour flings,
The arms of warriors and the bones of kings.—
He stood within that Golgotha of old,137
Whither the Phantom first had led the soul.
It was no dream! lo, round those locks of gold
Rest the young sunbeams like an auriole;
Lo, where the day, night's mystic promise keeps,
And in the tomb a life of beauty sleeps!
Slow to his eyes, those lids reveal their own,138
And, the lips smiling even in their sigh,
The Virgin woke! Oh, never yet was known,
In bower or plaisaunce under summer sky,
Life so enrich'd with nature's happiest bloom
As thine, thou young Aurora of the tomb!
Words cannot paint thee, gentlest cynosure139
Of all things lovely in that loveliest form,
Souls wear—the youth of woman! brows as pure
As Memphian skies that never knew a storm;
Lips with such sweetness in their honey'd deeps
As fills the rose in which a fairy sleeps;