Heart-affluence in discursive talk
From household fountains never dry;
The critic clearness of an eye,
That saw thro’ all the Muses’ walk;


Seraphic intellect and force
To seize and throw the doubts of man;
Impassion’d logic, which outran
The hearer in its fiery course;


High nature amorous of the good,
But touch’d with no ascetic gloom;
And passion pure in snowy bloom
Thro’ all the years of April blood;


A love of freedom rarely felt,
Of freedom in her regal seat
Of England; not the schoolboy heat,
The blind hysterics of the Celt;


And manhood fused with female grace
In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unask’d, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face;


All these have been, and thee mine eyes
Have look’d on: if they look’d in vain,
My shame is greater who remain,
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.

This passionate recall of Hallam’s “wisdom” shows a best friend’s partiality but is touching, nevertheless. The English freedom he admires in Hallam, was even then instrumental in imposing the greatest enslavement of human beings ever achieved by any nation. Celtic peoples with their blind hysteria could never hope to emulate such liberation. The stanza celebrating Hallam’s manhood fused with female grace, is more convincing.

When the almost daily task of caring for her was taken away from me by her death, I gradually came to understand my daughter better, and value her virtues. Her sad courage in living with a fatal addiction, which had seemed mere stubbornness became obvious to me. Even yet, when I think of her, more discoveries are made.