Canto XL

Thy spirit ere our fatal loss

      Did ever rise from high to higher;

      As mounts the heavenward altar-fire,

As flies the lighter thro' the gross.

But thou art turn'd to something strange,

      And I have lost the links that bound

      Thy changes; here upon the ground;

No more partaker of thy change.

Deep folly! yet that this could be—

      That I could wing my will with might

      To leap the grades of life and light,

And flash at once, my friend, to thee:

For though my nature rarely yields

      To that vague fear implied in death;

      Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath,

The howlings from forgotten fields;

Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor

      An inner trouble I behold,

      A spectral doubt which makes me cold,

That I shall be thy mate no more,

Tho' following with an upward mind

      The wonders that have come to thee,

      Thro' all the secular to be,

But evermore a life behind.