University of Virginia Library

Home! in the grey old house beside the brook;
Home! in the dim old room among his books;
Home! with his sister sitting by his side,
And a fond throng of clinging memories
Hovering about him, as the swallows fluttered
Round their old nests, and twittered in the eaves,
White-throated: there he lay in his young manhood,
A fever-flush upon his wasted cheek,
And a fire burning in his large grey eye;
Waiting, he said, for that uncourtly valet
Who doth unclothe us of our fleshly robes,
Preparing us for sleep. I had my fears;
Yet life was strong, only it had no relish,
And hope was broken; and the springs of life
Being gone, he only longed to see the end
Of its hard jolting. Then the Doctors came,
And tapped, and stethescoped, and spoke of râles,
And lesions and adhesions and deaf parts,
Cells, stitches, mucus, coughs, and blisterings:
And then, with kindly knowing helplessness,
They shook their head, and went upon their way.

But he, in full persuasion that the end
Had well begun, was tender, cheerful, kind;
Not bitter with this world, nor greatly troubled
About the other: yea, he had great peace
Thinking of Hester and me, and laying plans
About our wedding, making settlements
Preposterous, and buying heaven knows what
From heaven knows where, but restless till he saw it:
Still glad to hear no murmur of the streets,
And see no pile of books and sorted task
Urging the o'er-wrought brain, and hold no more
The sluggish pen in weary, fevered hand.
Could he but sleep a little! Oft he lay,
Seeing old faces flit by as in dreams,
Hearing old voices talking in the air,
All senses strangely keen, and fancy quick,
Yet, as it were, a passing instrument
Played on by passing sounds and subtle smells
And lights and shadows, and all fleeting things.
At peace he was with God, at peace with man;
Only he had forgotten how to sleep.

I'm not a poet; I have no romance,
But stand by facts, and laws o' the Universe;
Though doubtless rhyme and rhythm and play of fancy
Are facts too, and have laws like utter prose.
But what I mean is, if a man abuse
Stomach and brain, they will revenge themselves
For sleepless nights, and hastily-snatched meals,
And life at fever-heat. You must not think
Of a heart broken, dying in despair
Of unrequited love. He loved, and lost
That sweetest relish of laborious life
Which henceforth was all labour—that was all.
It did not change his spirit, did not fill
His mouth with the big words of tragedy,
Much pitying himself; it only set him
Doggedly to his task of work, with force
Unbroken, undivided, unrelieved;
And therein he had lived, and therein found
A joy and fulness of life, till something cracked
With the overstrain of so unresting toil.
Moreover, he had planned a scheme so vast
That only a Goethe-Methuselah, with a power
Of vision, and a power of master-work,
Prolonged a thousand years, had seen the end on't.
But now it is not given to any one
To overarch the structure of all knowledge,
And crown it with its dome and golden cross;
Nor is it given to any one to work,
As God does, leisurely, because He draws
Upon the unmeasured ages, wherefore He
Alone may say “'Tis finished, and very good.”
We only do a part, and partly well,
And others come and mend it. Thorold tried
Too much for our brief life—a cosmic work,
And toiled to do it in his week of days
That had nor fresh-breathed morn, nor restful eve
For him. So he broke down, a wreck, at last,
Achieving but a fragment of his thought,
A porch, a pillar, and an outline dim.
Some deemed he was a failure; others saw
The germ of grand discovery in his thought,
And worked it to their profit. Ah! well, well:
There are who give us all they have, complete,
Nothing omitted, nothing lying behind,
All formulated, tidy, docketed,
Tied neatly up in ribbons, laid in drawers,
And handy for our use—an entire soul,
With all its thoughts booked up to the last hour
In double entry: these don't interest me;
I know them, and am done with them; they have
No infinite possibilities, no shadows
Of the great God upon them, and their light
Is but a row of foot-lights and reflectors
Shining upon the stage, and on themselves.
But others, more aspiring than achieving,
Achieve all in suggestion. They lie down
With Nature, as Ruth lay at the feet of Boaz,
Who longed for his upwaking, and yet feared
What the day-break might bring; so they with dread
And yearning wait, till god shall speak to them
The thing they cannot utter, save in fragments,
In broken strains of angel melody,
Or visions momentary behind the veil;
Yet more suggestive of Divinity,
More helpful by their infinite reaching forth
Than all completed thinking. Thorold thus
Pushed at the gates of God, and through the chink
Caught, wondering, some gleams of inmost Light
Transcendent, and some chords of harmony
Entrancing; unexpected mysteries
Of unison and beauty, heretofore
Or jarring, or divided, blended now
In reconciling vision of higher truth.