_The author speaks of these poems--"me-thinks, I have built a rich shrine for my friend, but it will not last."_ At any rate, so long as he lives will the tolling of Hallam's passing bell[36] be in his ears; and the strokes on the bell, "Ave" and "Adieu," hail and farewell, are like the notes of perpetual separation. They seem to be parted "for evermore."[37] He is in the lowest depth of woe.[38]
It has been thought that there might have been an interval after the composition of the previous Poem; and that the author resumed his task in a more hopeful state of mind.
He now compares the words of his late farewell to the echoes of dropping water in burial vaults, and he says that other hearts besides his own were affected by his lamentation.
Urania reproaches him for thus distributing a fruitless grief amongst those who had shared his sense of loss; and, exhorting him to wait with patience for a more resigned feeling, she assures him that it will come to his great relief--
"Abide a little longer here, And thou shalt take a nobler leave"--
be able to speak with more confidence of their meeting again.
He invites Sorrow to live with him as a wife, always and constant, not as a casual mistress: being his "bosom-friend and half of life," even as it were Hallam himself.
Sorrow must remain his centred passion which cannot move; nevertheless it will not always be gloomy: but rather allow occasional playfulness, so that it would not be commonly known that he had a life-long affliction.[39]
He cannot dismiss the memory of his loss, and calls Hallam "a soul of nobler tone," superior to himself, who is feeling "like some poor girl" that has fixed her affections on a man of higher rank than her own. She compares her state with his, and sighs over her own inferior circumstances, and repines at her humbler lot. The neighbours jeer at her disappointment, and she says
"How vain am I! How should he love a thing so low?"
No doubt, the passing into a higher world gave Hallam a superior dignity in the Poet's estimation.[40]
If Hallam, in the intermediate state be exchanging replies with the great intellects there assembled from all time,--"the spirits of just men made perfect"--how dwarfed and insignificant must seem any intercourse with his friend still left here--