Chapter LXXXIV

This Poem is a very charming conception of what their lives might have domestically been, if Hallam had been spared. The picture is almost too beautiful: detailing more than life ever allows--and there came the crushing sorrow.

Engaged in marriage to the Poet's sister,[57] death intervened--

"that remorseless iron hour
Made cypress of her orange flower,
Despair of Hope, and earth of thee."

It is remarkable how the imagination of the Poet glows over the tender scenes of home affection, and the great results which he presumes were arrested by the removal of his friend, who he had hoped would have attained "to reverence and the silver hair" in company with himself--and then, in their full old age,

"He that died in Holy Land
Would reach us out the shining hand,
And take us as a single soul."

The mere thought of this forbidden consummation of their friendship shocks him; it revives the old bitterness of sorrow, and stops

"The low beginnings of content."[58]