Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near in woe and weal;
O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;


Known and unknown; human, divine;
Sweet human hand and lips and eye;
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;


Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.

Tennyson now accepts the view that his dear dead Hallam, alive in a new way, cannot be the simple individual whom he loved in life, but a more mysterious person, mingled withe divine but also somehow still himself. All that is good is interrelated with Hallam.

This is, at least for me, a painful recognition: what I loved was a being in the world, and if alive, she cannot be that anymore. I comfort myself that whatever she is now, is more than she was, not less, and therefore more loveable.