Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/332

 Feeding the wave of ever-widening bliss

Where fellowship means equal perfectness.

And on the mountains in thy wandering

Thy feet were beautiful as blossomed spring,

That turns the leafless wood to love's glad home,

For with thy coming Melody was come.

This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow,

And that immeasurable life to know

From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead,

A seed primeval that has forests bred.

It is the glory of the heritage

Thy life has left, that makes thy outcast age:

Thy limbs shall lie dark, tombless on this sod,

Because thou shinest in man's soul, a god,

Who found and gave new passion and new joy

That naught but Earth's destruction can destroy.

Thy gifts to give was thine of men alone:

'T was but in giving that thou couldst atone

For too much wealth amid their poverty."

The words seemed melting into symphony.

The wings upbore him, and the gazing song

Was floating him the heavenly space along,

Where mighty harmonies all gently fell

Through veiling vastness, like the far-off bell,

Till, ever onward through the choral blue,

He heard more faintly and more faintly knew,

Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave,

The All-creating Presence for his grave.

1869