And yet, --

"Oh, never a doubt but somewhere I shall wake;"

again, --

"the light,
Returning, shall give back the golden hours,
Ocean a windless level. . . ."

again, best of all, in the last word, --

"Still may Time hold some golden space
Where I'll unpack that scented store
Of song and flower and sky and face,
And count, and touch, and turn them o'er,
Musing upon them."

He cannot forego his sensations, that "box of compacted sweets".
He even forefeels a ghostly landscape where two shall go wandering
through the night, "alone". So the faith that broke its chrysalis
in the first disillusionment of boyhood, in "Second Best",
beautiful with the burden of Greek lyricism, ends triumphant
with the spirit still unsubdued. --

"Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet
Death as a friend."

So go, "with unreluctant tread". But in the disillusionment of beauty
and of love there is an older tone. With what bitter savor, with what