O'er the sea-ramparts where I lie,
⁠Built up of chalk sea-pressed and knit
⁠By the close turf-roots covering it,
Swift lights and shadows chase and fly,
⁠Moths flit, birds travel; all but they
⁠Seems passing and to pass away.

Matched with the shifting sea's green waves,
⁠How steadfast these! And secular signs
⁠Are on them, deep-entrenched lines
Of Roman tracks, and mounded graves
⁠Of Britain; yet we know their birth
⁠Late in the chronicle of earth.

Shell-fragments in yon flinty case.
⁠This channelled slope wherein I rest —
⁠Curved softly, like a woman's breast —
That crumbling ledge, that sea-worn base,
⁠To insight have revealed the power
⁠Which made these walls and doth devour.

Fade we not also? Ah! too plain
⁠Those graves proclaim it, and too sure
⁠He feels it who hath seen Death's door
Half-opened, nor can taste again
⁠That draught of happiness which erst
⁠Life stretched to his unconscious thirst.

But who is oracle for Death?
⁠By whose clear witness are we taught
⁠The spirit that hath loved and thought
Dies with the body's failing breath? —
⁠The same false eye of sense which told
⁠How steadfast were the hills and old.

Insight once more refutes the tale;
⁠Kindled by Love, the spirit's gaze,
⁠Focussing all Hope's astral rays,
Can pierce mortality's dull veil,
⁠And picture in the cosmic span
⁠A happier sphere than earth for man.

Unproved, unprovable the creed,
⁠Bridging a gulf which baffles yet
⁠Brain to explore or heart forget;
But grounded in our common need,
⁠It trusts His purpose to fulfil,
⁠Love's yearning who did first instil.

Moved by dim dreams to reach His eye,
⁠Mutely appealed our fathers rude
⁠When on this upland solitude
They placed their dead so near the sky;
⁠And we who love and lose to-day
⁠Are haply finer-souled than they.

O gentle, kindly hills! not less,
⁠But more we prize you, that we hold
⁠Ourselves, albeit we seem not old,
And wear no mask of steadfastness,
⁠Heirs of a life that will not pass
⁠With crumbling chalk and withering grass.

Prize we or scorn, ye still will bless;
⁠Your outlines load the eye with wealth,
⁠Your sweet airs charm the sick to health,
Your calm rebukes our carefulness,
⁠Your very lifelessness doth give
⁠Zest to the knowledge that we live.

When man at length his ideal height hath gained,
So that the heavenly kingdom is attained,
Will there be any room for tears and pain,
For dim grey twilights, sobbing wind, and rain,
Mist, wreaths, and flying clouds, the thunder's roar,
Or the sea breaking on a lonely shore,
With all the yearnings these things shadow forth?
Is the pathetic minor but for earth,
And will the heavens resound with joy alone,
Though sadness often makes a deeper tone?
Must all of life fall off that cannot show
Some fruit that did to full perfection grow?
The tottering steps, the pause, even the fall,
Will not eternal life have time for all;
And in the circle of infinity
Must not all moods of life unfolded lie,
But all complete, — the weak within the strong,
And the one verse become a perfect song;
The bud, the blossom, the fruit-laden bough,
Seen by the light of the eternal now?
May not all discords to one concord lead —
Whose every missing note would leave a need
Deep, unimagined as a world untrod —
An infinite harmony whose name is God?