46.

But you spared me this, like the heart you are,
And filled my empty heart at a word.
If two lives join, there is oft a scar,
They are one and one, with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.

47.

A moment after, and hands unseen
Were hanging the night around us fast;
But we knew that a bar was broken between
Life and life: we were mixed at last
In spite of the mortal screen.

48.

The forests had done it; there they stood;
We caught for a moment the powers at play:
They had mingled us so, for once and good,
Their work was done--we might go or stay,
They relapsed to their ancient mood.

49.

How the world is made for each of us!
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment's product thus,
When a soul declares itself--to wit,
By its fruit, the thing it does!

--
St. 49. "Those periods of life which appear most full of moral purpose
to Mr. Tennyson, are periods of protracted self-control,
and those moments stand eminent in life in which the spirit
has struggled victoriously in the cause of conscience against
impulse and desire. With Mr. Browning the moments are most glorious
in which the obscure tendency of many years has been revealed by
the lightning of sudden passion, or in which a resolution that changes
the current of life has been taken in reliance upon that insight
which vivid emotion bestows; and those periods of our history
are charged most fully with moral purpose, which take their direction
from moments such as these. . . . In such a moment the somewhat dull
youth of `The Inn Album' rises into the justiciary of the Highest;
in such a moment Polyxena with her right woman's-manliness,
discovers to Charles his regal duty, and infuses into her weaker husband,
her own courage of heart {`King Victor and King Charles'}; and rejoicing in
the remembrance of a moment of high devotion which determined
the issues of a life, the speaker of `By the Fireside' exclaims,--
`How the world is made for each of us!'" etc.--Edward Dowden.

50.

Be hate that fruit, or love that fruit,
It forwards the general deed of man,
And each of the Many helps to recruit
The life of the race by a general plan;
Each living his own, to boot.

51.

I am named and known by that moment's feat;
There