Is there no baseness we would hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?
Shall he for whose applause I strove,
I had such reverence for his blame,
See with clear eye some hidden shame
And I be lessen'd in his love?
Who has not been conscious of a similar feeling under the searching glances of the eyes upon the wall? They seem at times to pierce our very souls. Tennyson came at last to the comfortable assurance that the shrinking fear with which he thought of his dead friends was not justified. For, he reflected, those who have gone out of the dusk into the daylight have acquired, not only a loftier purity, but a larger charity.
I wrong the grave with fears untrue:
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death: