Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

CWGC Lieutenant E.G. Willmore MC, MA, Royal Garrison Artillery

The epitaph Far off thou art, but ever nigh.  I have thee still and I rejoice is an extract from a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam:

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.
 
II

Thy voice is on the rolling air;
  I hear thee where the waters run;
  Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
 
What art thou then? I cannot guess;
  But tho’ I seem in star and flower
  To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:
 
My love involves the love before;
  My love is vaster passion now;
  Tho’ mix’d with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
 
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
  I have thee still, and I rejoice;
  I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho’ I die.
 
III

O living will that shalt endure
  When all that seems shall suffer shock,
  Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro’ our deeds and make them pure,
 
That we may lift from out of dust
  A voice as unto him that hears,
  A cry above the conquer’d years
To one that with us works, and trust,
 
With faith that comes of self-control,
  The truths that never can be proved
  Until we close with all we loved
And all we flow from, soul in soul.