A Fragment.[73]

Could I remount the river of my years     To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,     I would not trace again the stream of hours     Between their outworn banks of withered flowers,     But bid it flow as now - until it glides     Into the number of the nameless tides.     * * * * *     What is this Death? - a quiet of the heart?     The whole of that of which we are a part?     For Life is but a vision - what I see     Of all which lives alone is Life to me,     And being so - the absent are the dead,     Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread     A dreary shroud around us, and invest     With sad remembrancers our hours of rest.     The absent are the dead - for they are cold,     And ne'er can be what once we did behold;     And they are changed, and cheerless, - or if yet     The unforgotten do not all forget,     Since thus divided - equal must it be     If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;     It may be both - but one day end it must     In the dark union of insensate dust.     The under-earth inhabitants - are they     But mingled millions decomposed to clay?     The ashes of a thousand ages spread     Wherever Man has trodden or shall tread?     Or do they in their silent cities dwell     Each in his incommunicative cell?     Or have they their own language? and a sense     Of breathless being? - darkened and intense     As Midnight in her solitude? - Oh Earth!     Where are the past? - and wherefore had they birth?     The dead are thy inheritors - and we     But bubbles on thy surface; and the key     Of thy profundity is in the Grave,     The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,     Where I would walk in spirit, and behold[74]     Our elements resolved to things untold,     And fathom hidden wonders, and explore     The essence of great bosoms now no more.     * * * * *     Diodati, July, 1816.                 [First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 36.]