Proficiscienti

I NOW God be with you wheresoe'er you go; God knows I would that I could go instead; My little worthless life — dear friend, you know How little loss it were if I were dead. But you tune songs such as I fain would sing, You have dared such things as would that I could do ; In music, action, suffering, everything. My sum is still a moiety of you. Go, since you must, those strange and fearful ways. Where death screams loud in hurtling of a shell ; Would I might too ! — But though my body stays. My spirit goes with you to the heart of hell. For souls once stamped with love's immortal brand Eternally inseparable stand. II Full merrily you went ; yet my heart yearned That you should go from England once again, To tread the paths of death and danger spurned, The darkling troublous ways of fear and pain. Happier I was myself to go away ; For then the man that went, perchance to die, By life and death's grim borderland to stray, Was not a friend of mine, but merely I. Call me not fool or braggart, if I know That love awaked, in ev'n so poor a heart As mine, desires and pants and suffers so. To serve what is of its own self a part ; Nor even death can sever loves so sweet ; If not on earth, beyond it, we shall meet.