Immortal Psyche held the anguished heart
Fast to her own, and purified the pain,
And fanned him with her wings.
And now, as then,
Along those hushed rich corridors we moved,
Poring each masterpiece we favoured most,
And would no longer stay, but felt some chance
Must serve us for the rest: musing, I pass
From scene to scene of My Dear Lady's life,
And leave my other memories undisturbed.

Beneath this airy sapphire's brooding rest,
Its shadows overcast me with a chill
Like coming storm, that black calamity
Which struck and took our Darling from their charge
And mine. Grief stupefied us all. At once
The childless mother lost her wavering strength,
And lay prostrated; never tasting life
On earth again! Beside her husband sat
And watched her fading; saw the last poor smile
Wane from her features; till the closing eyes
Lit into tearful rapture; when he knew
Love's immortality to her revealed.
With both her own she mutely clasped his hand,
And held it in most gentle pressures fixed:
But when the tender grasp relaxed and fell,
The world closed round him to a stony blank.

And now was stricken down the mighty man;
As the ripe harvest levelled by a storm
At morningtide; which, ere sun warmth anew
Can flatter into strength, a second storm
O'erwhelms and scattereth to waste at even.

When that torpidity which follows pain
Through strangeness passed to natural regard
For daily wants; his vacant home he loathed:
His spacious garden grounds; his lake; his woods;
The breezy air; the overhanging heaven,
He loathed: he loathed them all. When spring aroused
The amorous songsters of the copse and field
To seasonable joy, their music mocked
His sadness with its echoes, babbling tales
Of what had been: and he, in bitterness,
Resolved to quit a place where every turn
Stood like a foe, whose settled leering eye
In silence gloared with hope to mark his fall;
He left our country. Far, in Eastern climes,
His nation serving well, he fought and died:
And never had a nobler man upheld
The majesty of England's worth and name.

Long toil-devoted years have gloomed and shone
Since these events closed up my doors of life.
Partly from choice, and part necessity,
With constancy have I sustained and urged
The work it was my duty to advance.
For, when my vision cleared again, I looked
And saw how mean a thing was man, who used
The produce of his fellows' energies
And gave back nothing.

Then my