FRIENDSHIP MASTERS TIME

From "In Memoriam"

O friendship, equal-poised control,

O heart, with kindliest motion warm,

O sacred essence, other form,

O solemn ghost, O crowned soul!

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.

***

My pulses therefore beat again

For other friends that once I met;

Nor can it suit me to forget

The mighty hopes that make us men.

I woo your love: I count it crime

To mourn for any overmuch;

I, the divided half of such

A friendship as had mastered Time;

Which masters Time, indeed, and is

Eternal, separate from fears:

The all-assuming months and years

Can take no part away from this.

***

O days and hours, your work is this,

To hold me from my proper place,

A little while from his embrace,

For fuller gain of after bliss:

That our distance might ensue

Desire of nearness doubly sweet;

And unto meeting when we meet,

Delight a hundred-fold accrue.

***

The hills are shadows, and they flow

From form to form, and nothing stands;

They melt like mist, the solid lands,

Like clouds they shape themselves and go.

But in my spirit will I dwell,

And drema my dream, and hold it true;

For tho' my lips may breathe adieu,

I cannot think the thing farewell.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson.