ere--by death, fools think, imprisoned--
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so
--Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken
What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
--Being--who?

One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,--fight on, fare ever
There as here!"

With these high words he ended a long life, and his memory still falls
upon us, like the dew which fell on Paradise. It was a life lived fully,
kindly, lovingly, at its just height from the beginning to the end. No
fear, no vanity, no lack of interest, no complaint of the world, no
anger at criticism, no villain fancies disturbed his soul. No laziness,
no feebleness in effort, injured his work, no desire for money, no
faltering of aspiration, no pandering of his gift and genius to please
the world, no surrender of art for the sake of fame or filthy lucre, no
falseness to his ideal, no base pessimism, no slavery to science yet no
boastful ignorance of its good, no morbid naturalism, no devotion to the
false forms of beauty, no despair of man, no retreat from men into a
world of sickly or vain beauty, no abandonment of the great ideas or
disbelief in their mastery, no enfeeblement of reason such as at this
time walks hand in hand with the worship of the mere discursive
intellect, no lack of joy and healthy vigour and keen inquiry and
passionate interest in humanity. Scarcely any special bias can be found
running through his work; on the contrary, an incessant change of
subject and manner, combined with a strong but not overweening
individuality, raced, like blood through the body, through every vein of
his labour. Creative and therefore joyful, receptive and therefore
thoughtful, at one with humanity and therefore loving; aspiring to God
and believing in God, and therefore steeped to the lips in radiant Hope;
at one with the past, passionate with the pr