Chapter LXXXVII

He revisits Cambridge, the chief scene of past intimacy with Hallam, and roams about the different colleges.

The expression "high-built organ," probably alludes to the organ being here, as in some cathedrals, reared above the screen which separates the choir from the nave.

"The prophets blazon'd on the panes,"

refers to the stained glass windows, and more particularly to those, perhaps, in King's College chapel. The scenery at the back of the colleges is vividly recalled.

He stops at the door of Hallam's old room, now occupied by a noisy wine party. It was there that his friend used to achieve such controversial triumphs--ever as the master-bowman hitting the mark in argument, when

"we saw
The God within him light his face,"

like the martyr Stephen's;

"And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo"--

whose brow was straight and prominent--the sign of intellectual power.

_Michael Angelo had a strong bar of bone over his eyes._

Mrs. Frances A. Kemble in _Record of a Girlhood_, vol. ii. p. 3, thus
describes young Hallam's appearance. "There was a gentleness and
purity almost virginal in his voice, manner, and countenance; and the
upper part of his face, his forehead and eyes (perhaps in readiness
for his early translation), wore the angelic radiance that they still
must wear in heaven. Some time or other, at some rare moments of the
divine Spirit's supremacy in our souls, we all put on the heavenly
face that will be ours hereafter, and for a brief lightning space our
friends behold us as we shall look when this mortal has put on
immortality. On Arthur Hallam's brow and eyes this heavenly light, so
fugitive on other human faces, rested habitually, as if he was
thinking and seeing in heaven."

LXXXVIII.

He asks the "wild bird," probably the nightingale, whose liquid song brings a sense of Eden back again, to define the feelings of the heart, its emotions and passions. In the "budded quicks" of Spring the bird is happy; in the "darkening leaf," amid the shadowing foliage, though its happiness be gone, its grieving heart can still cherish "a secret joy." The notes of the nightingale are supposed to be both sorrowful and joyous.

Even so, the Poet cannot wholly govern his own muse; for, when he would sing of woe,

"The glory of the sum of things,"

the grandeur of life's experience, will sometimes rule the chords.