In Memoriam (Tennyson)/Canto 19

by Alfred Tennyson

xix.

The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken'd heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.

There twice a day the Severn fills,
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.

The Wye is hush'd nor moved along;
And hush'd my deepest grief of all,
When fill'd with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song,

The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls:
My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.