And blessings on the falling-out
   That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love,
   And kiss again with tears!

For when we came where lies the child
   We lost in other years,
There above the little grave,
   We kissed again with tears.

Between the next two cantos intervenes the well-known cradle-song, perhaps the best of all; and at the next interval is the equally well-known bugle-song, the idea of which is that of twin-labour and twin-fame, in a pair of lovers: 

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.

In the next, the memory of wife and child inspirits the soldier in the field; in the next, the sight of the fallen hero’s child opens the sluices of his widow’s tears; and in the last, and perhaps the most beautiful of all, the poet has succeeded, in the new edition, in superadding a new form of emotion to a canto in which he seemed to have exhausted every resource of pathos which his subject allowed; and prepares us for the triumph of that art by which he makes us, after all, love the heroine whom he at first taught us to hate and despise, till we see that the naughtiness is after all one that must be kissed and not whipped out of her, and look on smiling while she repents, with Prince Harry of old, “not in sackcloth and ashes, but in new silk and old sack:” 

Ask me no more:  the moon may draw the sea;
   The cloud may stoop from Heaven and take the shape,
   With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape;
But, O too fond, when have I answered thee? 
      Ask me no more.

Ask me no more:  what answer should I give? 
   I love not hollow cheek or faded eye: 
   Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die! 
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live;
      Ask me no more.

Ask me no more:  thy fate and mine are seal’d: 
   I strove against the stream and all in vain: 
   Let the great river take me to the main: 
No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield;
      Ask me no more.

We now come to “In Memoriam;” a collection of poems on a vast variety of subjects, but all united, as their name implies, to the memory of a departed friend.  We know not whether to envy more—­the poet the object of his admiration, or that object the monument which has been consecrated to his nobleness.  For in this latest and highest volume, written at various intervals during a long series of years, all the poet’s peculiar excellences, with all that he has acquired from others, seem to have been fused down into a perfect unity, and brought to bear on his subject with that care and finish which only a labour of love can inspire.  We only now know the whole man, all his art, all his insight, all his faculty of discerning the piu nell’ uno, and the uno nell’ piu.  As he says himself: 

My love has talked with rocks and trees,
   He finds on misty mountain-ground,
   His own vast shadow glory-crowned;
He sees himself in all he sees.