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Yet none could better know than I,
How much of act at human hands
The sense of human will demands,
By which we dare to live or die.
Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, though left alone,
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine;
A life that all the Muses deck'd
With gifts of grace that might express
All-comprehensive tenderness,
All-subtilising intellect:
And so my passion hath not swerved
To works of weakness, but I find
An image comforting the mind,
And in my grief a strength reserved.
Likewise the imaginative woe,
That loved to handle spiritual strife,
Diffused the shock through all my life,
But in the present broke the blow.
