“And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill!
But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
“Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”
Out of these few simple words, deep and melancholy, and sounding as the sea, as out of a well of the living waters of love, flows forth all In Memoriam, as a stream flows out of its spring—all is here. “I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,”—“the touch of the vanished hand—the sound of the voice that is still,”—the body and soul of his friend. Rising as it were out of the midst of the gloom of the valley of the shadow of death,—
“The mountain infant to the sun comes forth