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“Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

“O well for the fisherman’s boy
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

“And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill!
But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

“Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”

Out of these few simple words, deep and melancholy, and sounding as the sea, as out of a well of the living waters of love, flows forth all In Memoriam, as a stream flows out of its spring–all is here. “I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,”–“the touch of the vanished hand–the sound of the voice that is still,”–the body and soul of his friend. Rising as it were out of the midst of the gloom of the valley of the shadow of death,–

“The mountain infant to the sun comes forth
Like human life from darkness;”

and how its waters flow on! carrying life, beauty, magnificence,–shadows and happy lights, depths of blackness, depths clear as the very body of heaven. How it deepens as it goes, involving larger interests, wider views, “thoughts that wander through eternity,” greater affections, but still retaining its pure living waters, its unforgotten burden of love and sorrow. How it visits every region! “the long unlovely street,” pleasant villages and farms, “the placid ocean-plains,” waste howling wildernesses, grim woods, nemorumque noctem, informed with spiritual fears, where may be seen, if shapes they may be called–

“Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,
And Time the Shadow;”

now within hearing of the Minster clock, now of the College bells, and the vague hum of the mighty city. And overhead through all its course the heaven with its clouds, its sun, moon, and stars; but always, and in all places, declaring its source; and even when laying its burden of manifold and faithful affection at the feet of the Almighty Father, still remembering whence it came,–

“That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God which ever lives and loves;
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.”

It is to that chancel, and to the day, 3d January, 1834, that he refers in poem XVIII. of In Memoriam.

“‘Tis well, ’tis something, we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid,
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.
“‘Tis little; but it looks in truth
As if the quiet bones were blest
Among familiar names to rest,
And in the places of his youth.”

And again in XIX.:–

“The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken’d heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.

“There twice a day the Severn fills,
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.”

Here, too, it is, LXVI.:–

“When on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest,
By that broad water of the west;
There comes a glory on the walls:

“Thy marble bright in dark appears,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name,
And o’er the number of thy years.”