I went alone. ’Twas summer time;
And, standing there before the shrine
Of that illustrious bard,
I read his own familiar name,
And thought of his extensive fame,
And felt devotion’s sacred flame,
Which we do well to guard.

Far from the world, O Lord, I flee.
How sweet the words appeared to me,
Like voices in a dream!
The calm retreat, the silent shade
Describe the spot where he was laid,
And where surviving friendships paid
Their tribute of esteem.

There is a fountain. As I stood
I thought I saw the crimson flood,
And some beneath the wave;
I thought the stream still rolled along,
And that I saw the ransomed throng,
And that I heard the nobler song
Of Jesus’ power to save.

When darkness long has veiled my mind,
And from these words I felt inclined
In sympathy to weep;
But smiling day has dawned at last,
And all his sorrows now are past;
No tempter now, no midnight blast,
To spoil the poet’s sleep.

O for a closer—even so,
For we who journey here below
Have lived too far from God.
Oh, for that holy life I said,
Which Enoch, Noah, Cowper led!
Oh, for that purer light to shed
Its brightness on the road!

God moves in a mysterious way;
But now the poet seemed to say,
No mysteries remain.
On earth I was a sufferer,
In heaven I am a conqueror;
God is his own interpreter,
And he has made it plain.

Anonymous

It is a place where po­ets crowned may feel the heart’s decaying;
It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying;
Yet let the grief and humbleness as low as silence can languish:
Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish.

O po­ets from a maniac’s tongue was poured the deathless sing­ing!
O Chris­tians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging!
O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,
Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling!

And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story,
How discord on the mu­sic fell and darkness on the glory,
And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed,
He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted.

With quiet sadness and no gloom, I learn to think upon him,
With meekness that is gratefulness to God whose Hea­ven hath won him,
Who suffered once the madness-cloud to His own love to blind him,
But gently led the blind along where breath and bird could find him;

And wrought with­in his shattered brain such quick po­etic senses
As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious influences:
The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his with­in its number,
And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber.

Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home-caresses,
Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses,
The very world, by God’s constraining, from falsehood’s ways removing,
Its women and its men be­came, beside him, true and loving.

And though, in blindness, he remained unconscious of that guiding,
And things provided came with­out the sweet sense of providing,
He testified this solemn truth, while phrensy desolated,—
Nor man nor nature satisfied whom on­ly God created.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning