And is she happy? Does she see unmoved The days in which she might have lived and loved 65 Slip without bringing bliss slowly away, One after one, to-morrow like to-day? Joy has not found her yet, nor ever will-- Is it this thought which, makes her mien so still, Her features so fatigued, her eyes, though sweet, 70 So sunk, so rarely lifted save to meet Her children's? She moves slow; her voice alone Hath yet an infantine and silver tone, But even that comes languidly; in truth, She seems one dying in a mask of youth. 75 And now she will go home, and softly lay Her laughing children in their beds, and play Awhile with them before they sleep; and then She'll light her silver lamp, which fishermen Dragging their nets through the rough waves, afar, 80 Along this iron coast,° know like a star,° °81 And take her broidery-frame, and there she'll sit Hour after hour, her gold curls sweeping it; Lifting her soft-bent head only to mind Her children, or to listen to the wind. 85 And when the clock peals midnight, she will move Her work away, and let her fingers rove Across the shaggy brows of Tristram's hound Who lies, guarding her feet, along the ground; Or else she will fall musing, her blue eyes 90 Fixt, her slight hands clasp'd on her lap; then rise, And at her prie-dieu° kneel, until she have told °92 Her rosary-beads of ebony tipp'd with gold, Then to her soft sleep--and to-morrow'll be To-day's exact repeated effigy. 95
Yes, it is lonely for her in her hall. The children, and the grey-hair'd seneschal,° °97 Her women, and Sir Tristram's aged hound, Are there the sole companions to be found. But these she loves; and noiser life than this 100 She would find ill to bear, weak as she is. She has her children, too, and night and day Is with them; and the wide heaths where they play, The hollies, and the cliff, and the sea-shore, The sand, the sea-birds, and the distant sails, 105 These are to her dear as to them; the tales With which this day the children she beguiled She gleaned from Breton grandames, when a child, In every hut along this sea-coast wild. She herself loves them still, and, when they are told, 110 Can forget all to hear them, as of old.
Dear saints, it is not sorrow, as I hear, Not suffering, which shuts up eye and ear To all that has delighted them before, And lets us be what we were once no more. 115 No, we may suffer deeply, yet retain Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain, By what of old pleased us, and will again. No, 'tis the gradual furnace of the world, In whose hot air our spirits are upcurl'd 120 Until they crumble, or else grow like steel-- Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring-- Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel, But takes away the power--this can avail, By drying up our joy in everything, 125 To make our former pleasures all seem stale. This, or some tyrannous single thought, some fit Of passion, which subdues our souls to it, Till for its sake alone we live and move-- Call it ambition, or remorse, or love-- 130 This too can change us wholly, and make seem All which we did before, shadow and dream.
