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Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson

<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN> <p><SPAN name='Page_1'></SPAN><SPAN name='Page_2'></SPAN><SPAN name='Page_3'></SPAN></p> <h1>THE SUPPRESSED POEMS</h1> <h2>OF</h2> <h1>ALFRED LORD TENNYSON</h1> <h2>1830-1868</h2> <h3>EDITED BY J.C. THOMSON</h3> <p> <SPAN name='Page_4'></SPAN> <b>Contents</b> <SPAN name='Page_5'></SPAN></p> <ul> <li><SPAN href='#Page_8'>EDITOR'S NOTE</SPAN><br/> </li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_9'>TIMBUCTOO</SPAN><br/> </li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_21'>POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL</SPAN> <ul> <li><SPAN href='#Page_23'>i. The How and the Why</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_25'>ii. The Burial of Love</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_27'>iii. To ——</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_28'>iv. Song <i>'I' the gloaming light'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_29'>v. Song <i>'Every day hath its night'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_31'>vi. Hero to Leander</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_33'>vii. The Mystic</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_35'>viii. The Grasshopper</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_37'>ix. Love, Pride and Forgetfulness</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_38'>x. Chorus <i>'The varied earth, the moving heaven'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_40'>xi. Lost Hope</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_41'>xii. The Tears of Heaven</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_42'>xiii. Love and Sorrow</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_43'>xiv. To a Lady sleeping</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_44'>xv. Sonnet <i>'Could I outwear my present state of woe'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_45'>xvi. Sonnet <i>'Though night hath climbed'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_46'>xvii. Sonnet <i>'Shall the hag Evil die'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN name='Page_6'></SPAN><SPAN href='#Page_47'>xviii. Sonnet <i>'The pallid thunder stricken sigh for gain'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_48'>xix. Love</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_50'>xx. English War Song</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_52'>xxi. National Song</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_54'>xxii. Dualisms</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_55'>xxiii. <span class="greek" title="[Greek: ohi rheontes]">οἱ ρἑοντες</span></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_56'>xxiv. Song <i>'The lintwhite and the throstlecock'</i></SPAN><br/> </li> </ul> </li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_59'>CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS, 1831-32</SPAN> <ul> <li><SPAN href='#Page_61'>xxv. A Fragment</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_63'>xxvi. Anacreontics</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_64'>xxvii. <i>'O sad no more! O sweet no more'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_65'>xxviii. Sonnet <i>'Check every outflash, every ruder sally'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_66'>xxix. Sonnet <i>'Me my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_67'>xxx. Sonnet <i>'There are three things that fill my heart with sighs'</i></SPAN><br/> </li> </ul> </li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_69'>POEMS, 1833</SPAN> <ul> <li><SPAN href='#Page_71'>xxxi. Sonnet <i>'Oh beauty, passing beauty'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_72'>xxxii. The Hesperides</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_77'>xxxiii. Rosalind</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_79'>xxxiv. Song <i>'Who can say'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN name='Page_7'></SPAN><SPAN href='#Page_80'>xxxv. Sonnet <i>'Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_81'>xxxvi. O Darling Room</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_82'>xxxvii. To Christopher North</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_83'>xxxviii. The Lotos-Eaters</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_85'>xxxix. A Dream of Fair Women</SPAN><br/> </li> </ul> </li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_87'>MISCELLANEOUS POEMS AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS, 1833-68</SPAN> <ul> <li><SPAN href='#Page_89'>xl. Cambridge</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_90'>xli. The Germ of 'Maud'</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_92'>xlii. <i>'A gate and afield half ploughed'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_93'>xliii. The Skipping-Rope</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_94'>xliv. The New Timon and the Poets</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_97'>xlv. Mablethorpe</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_98'>xlvi. <i>'What time I wasted youthful hours'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_99'>xlvii. Britons, guard your own</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_102'>xlviii. Hands all round</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_105'>xlix. Suggested by reading an article in a newspaper</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_110'>l. <i>'God bless our Prince and Bride'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_111'>li. The Ringlet</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_114'>lii. Song <i>'Home they brought him slain with spears'</i></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_115'>liii. 1865-1866</SPAN><br/> </li> </ul> </li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_117'>THE LOVER'S TALE, 1833</SPAN><br/> </li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_159'>INDEX OF FIRST LINES</SPAN></li> </ul> <hr class='section' /> <p><SPAN name='Page_8'></SPAN><b><i>Note</i></b></p> <p><i>To those unacquainted with Tennyson's conscientious methods, it may seem strange that a volume of 160 pages is necessary to contain those poems written and published by him during his active literary career, and ultimately rejected as unsatisfactory. Of this considerable body of verse, a great part was written, not in youth or old age, but while Tennyson's powers were at their greatest. Whatever reasons may once have existed for suppressing the poems that follow, the student of English literature is entitled to demand that the whole body of Tennyson's work should now be open, without restriction or impediment, to the critical study to which the works of his compeers are subjected.</i></p> <p><i>The bibliographical notes prefixed to the various poems give, in every case, the date and medium of first publication.</i></p> <p><i>J.C.T.</i></p> <hr class='section' /> <h2>Timbuctoo</h2> <p><SPAN name='Page_9'></SPAN> A POEM<br/> WHICH OBTAINED<br/> THE CHANCELLOR'S MEDAL<br/> AT THE<br/> <i>Cambridge Commencement</i><br/> <br/> MDCCCXXIX<br/> <br/> BY<br/> A. TENNYSON<br/> <br/> Of Trinity College<br/></p> <p><SPAN name='Page_10'></SPAN>[Printed in Cambridge <i>Chronicle and Journal</i> of Friday, July 10, 1829, and at the University Press by James Smith, among the <i>Prolusiones Academicæ Præmiis annuis dignatæ et in Curia Cantabrigiensi Recitatæ Comitiis Maximis</i>, MDCCCXXIX. Republished in <i>Cambridge Prize Poems</i>, 1813 to 1858, by Messrs. Macmillan in 1859, without alteration; and in 1893 in the appendix to a reprint of <i>Poems by Two Brothers</i>].</p> <p><SPAN name='Page_11'></SPAN><br/></p> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Timbuctoo</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line2'>Deep in that lion-haunted inland lies</div> <div class='line2'>A mystic city, goal of high Emprize.<SPAN name='FNanchor_A_1'></SPAN><SPAN href='#Footnote_A_1'><sup>[A]</sup></SPAN></div> <div class='line2'>—CHAPMAN.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>I stood upon the Mountain which o'erlooks</div> <div class='line'>The narrow seas, whose rapid interval</div> <div class='line'>Parts Afric from green Europe, when the Sun</div> <div class='line'>Had fall'n below th' Atlantick, and above</div> <div class='line'>The silent Heavens were blench'd with faery light,</div> <div class='line'>Uncertain whether faery light or cloud,</div> <div class='line'>Flowing Southward, and the chasms of deep, deep blue</div> <div class='line'>Slumber'd unfathomable, and the stars</div> <div class='line'>Were flooded over with clear glory and pale.</div> <div class='line'>I gaz'd upon the sheeny coast beyond,</div> <div class='line'>There where the Giant of old Time infixed</div> <div class='line'>The limits of his prowess, pillars high</div> <div class='line'>Long time eras'd from Earth: even as the sea</div> <div class='line'>When weary of wild inroad buildeth up</div> <div class='line'>Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves.</div> <div class='line'>And much I mus'd on legends quaint and old</div> <div class='line'>Which whilome won the hearts of all on Earth</div> <SPAN name='Page_12'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Toward their brightness, ev'n as flame draws air;</div> <div class='line'>But had their being in the heart of Man</div> <div class='line'>As air is th' life of flame: and thou wert then</div> <div class='line'>A center'd glory-circled Memory,</div> <div class='line'>Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves</div> <div class='line'>Have buried deep, and thou of later name</div> <div class='line'>Imperial Eldorado root'd with gold:</div> <div class='line'>Shadows to which, despite all shocks of Change,</div> <div class='line'>All on-set of capricious Accident,</div> <div class='line'>Men clung with yearning Hope which would not die.</div> <div class='line'>As when in some great City where the walls</div> <div class='line'>Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces throng'd</div> <div class='line'>Do utter forth a subterranean voice,</div> <div class='line'>Among the inner columns far retir'd</div> <div class='line'>At midnight, in the lone Acropolis.</div> <div class='line'>Before the awful Genius of the place</div> <div class='line'>Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while</div> <div class='line'>Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks</div> <div class='line'>Unto the fearful summoning without:</div> <div class='line'>Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees,</div> <div class='line'>Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth on</div> <div class='line'>Those eyes which wear no light but that wherewith</div> <div class='line'>Her phantasy informs them.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line10'>Where are ye</div> <div class='line'>Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands green?</div> <div class='line'>Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glooms,</div> <div class='line'>The blossoming abysses of your hills?</div> <SPAN name='Page_13'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Your flowering Capes and your gold-sanded bays</div> <div class='line'>Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds?</div> <div class='line'>Where are the infinite ways which, Seraphtrod,</div> <div class='line'>Wound thro' your great Elysian solitudes,</div> <div class='line'>Whose lowest depths were, as with visible love,</div> <div class='line'>Fill'd with Divine effulgence, circumfus'd,</div> <div class='line'>Flowing between the clear and polish'd stems,</div> <div class='line'>And ever circling round their emerald cones</div> <div class='line'>In coronals and glories, such as gird</div> <div class='line'>The unfading foreheads of the Saints in Heaven?</div> <div class='line'>For nothing visible, they say, had birth</div> <div class='line'>In that blest ground but it was play'd about</div> <div class='line'>With its peculiar glory. Then I rais'd</div> <div class='line'>My voice and cried 'Wide Afric, doth thy Sun</div> <div class='line'>Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair</div> <div class='line'>As those which starr'd the night o' the Elder World?</div> <div class='line'>Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo</div> <div class='line'>A dream as frail as those of ancient Time?'</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!</div> <div class='line'>A rustling of white wings! The bright descent</div> <div class='line'>Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me</div> <div class='line'>There on the ridge, and look'd into my face</div> <div class='line'>With his unutterable, shining orbs,</div> <div class='line'>So that with hasty motion I did veil</div> <div class='line'>My vision with both hands, and saw before me</div> <div class='line'>Such colour'd spots as dance athwart the eyes</div> <div class='line'>Of those that gaze upon the noonday Sun.</div> <div class='line'>Girt with a Zone of flashing gold beneath</div> <div class='line'>His breast, and compass'd round about his brow</div> <div class='line'>With triple arch of everchanging bows,</div> <SPAN name='Page_14'></SPAN> <div class='line'>And circled with the glory of living light</div> <div class='line'>And alternations of all hues, he stood.</div> <div class='line'>'O child of man, why muse you here alone</div> <div class='line'>Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old</div> <div class='line'>Which fill'd the Earth with passing loveliness,</div> <div class='line'>Which flung strange music on the howling winds,</div> <div class='line'>And odours rapt from remote Paradise?</div> <div class='line'>Thy sense is clogg'd with dull mortality,</div> <div class='line'>Thy spirit fetter'd with the bond of clay:</div> <div class='line'>Open thine eye and see.'</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line10'>I look'd, but not</div> <div class='line'>Upon his face, for it was wonderful</div> <div class='line'>With its exceeding brightness, and the light</div> <div class='line'>Of the great angel mind which look'd from out</div> <div class='line'>The starry glowing of his restless eyes.</div> <div class='line'>I felt my soul grow mighty, and my spirit</div> <div class='line'>With supernatural excitation bound</div> <div class='line'>Within me, and my mental eye grew large</div> <div class='line'>With such a vast circumference of thought,</div> <div class='line'>That in my vanity I seem'd to stand</div> <div class='line'>Upon the outward verge and bound alone</div> <div class='line'>Of full beatitude. Each failing sense</div> <div class='line'>As with a momentary flash of light</div> <div class='line'>Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw</div> <div class='line'>The smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth,</div> <div class='line'>The indistinctest atom in deep air,</div> <div class='line'>The Moon's white cities, and the opal width</div> <div class='line'>Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights</div> <div class='line'>Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,</div> <div class='line'>And the unsounded, undescended depth</div> <SPAN name='Page_15'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Of her black hollows. The clear Galaxy</div> <div class='line'>Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful,</div> <div class='line'>Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light</div> <div class='line'>Blaze within blaze, an unimagin'd depth</div> <div class='line'>And harmony of planet-girded Suns</div> <div class='line'>And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel,</div> <div class='line'>Arch'd the wan Sapphire. Nay, the hum of men,</div> <div class='line'>Or other things talking in unknown tongues,</div> <div class='line'>And notes of busy life in distant worlds</div> <div class='line'>Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling thoughts</div> <div class='line'>Involving and embracing each with each</div> <div class='line'>Rapid as fire, inextricably link'd,</div> <div class='line'>Expanding momently with every sight</div> <div class='line'>And sound which struck the palpitating sense,</div> <div class='line'>The issue of strong impulse, hurried through</div> <div class='line'>The riv'n rapt brain: as when in some large lake</div> <div class='line'>From pressure of descendant crags, which lapse</div> <div class='line'>Disjointed, crumbling from their parent slope</div> <div class='line'>At slender interval, the level calm</div> <div class='line'>Is ridg'd with restless and increasing spheres</div> <div class='line'>Which break upon each other, each th' effect</div> <div class='line'>Of separate impulse, but more fleet and strong</div> <div class='line'>Than its precursor, till the eyes in vain</div> <div class='line'>Amid the wild unrest of swimming shade</div> <div class='line'>Dappled with hollow and alternate rise</div> <div class='line'>Of interpenetrated arc, would scan</div> <div class='line'>Definite round.</div> <div class='line8'>I know not if I shape</div> <div class='line'>These things with accurate similitude</div> <SPAN name='Page_16'></SPAN> <div class='line'>From visible objects, for but dimly now,</div> <div class='line'>Less vivid than a half-forgotten dream,</div> <div class='line'>The memory of that mental excellence</div> <div class='line'>Comes o'er me, and it may be I entwine</div> <div class='line'>The indecision of my present mind</div> <div class='line'>With its past clearness, yet it seems to me</div> <div class='line'>As even then the torrent of quick thought</div> <div class='line'>Absorbed me from the nature of itself</div> <div class='line'>With its own fleetness. Where is he that, borne</div> <div class='line'>Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream,</div> <div class='line'>Could link his shallop to the fleeting edge,</div> <div class='line'>And muse midway with philosophic calm</div> <div class='line'>Upon the wondrous laws which regulate</div> <div class='line'>The fierceness of the bounding element?</div> <div class='line'>My thoughts which long had grovell'd in the slime</div> <div class='line'>Of this dull world, like dusky worms which house</div> <div class='line'>Beneath unshaken waters, but at once</div> <div class='line'>Upon some earth-awakening day of spring</div> <div class='line'>Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft</div> <div class='line'>Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides</div> <div class='line'>Double display of starlit wings which burn</div> <div class='line'>Fanlike and fibred, with intensest bloom:</div> <div class='line'>E'en so my thoughts, erewhile so low, now felt</div> <div class='line'>Unutterable buoyancy and strength</div> <div class='line'>To bear them upward through the trackless fields</div> <div class='line'>Of undefin'd existence far and free.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Then first within the South methought I saw</div> <div class='line'>A wilderness of spires, and chrystal pile</div> <div class='line'>Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,</div> <div class='line'>Illimitable range of battlement</div> <SPAN name='Page_17'></SPAN> <div class='line'>On battlement, and the Imperial height</div> <div class='line'>Of Canopy o'ercanopied.</div> <div class='line12'>Behind,</div> <div class='line'>In diamond light, upsprung the dazzling Cones</div> <div class='line'>Of Pyramids, as far surpassing Earth's</div> <div class='line'>As Heaven than Earth is fairer. Each aloft</div> <div class='line'>Upon his renown'd Eminence bore globes</div> <div class='line'>Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances</div> <div class='line'>Of either, showering circular abyss</div> <div class='line'>Of radiance. But the glory of the place</div> <div class='line'>Stood out a pillar'd front of burnish'd gold</div> <div class='line'>Interminably high, if gold it were</div> <div class='line'>Or metal more ethereal, and beneath</div> <div class='line'>Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze</div> <div class='line'>Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan</div> <div class='line'>Through length of porch and lake and boundless hall,</div> <div class='line'>Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom</div> <div class='line'>The snowy skirting of a garment hung,</div> <div class='line'>And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes</div> <div class='line'>That minister'd around it—if I saw</div> <div class='line'>These things distinctly, for my human brain</div> <div class='line'>Stagger'd beneath the vision, and thick night</div> <div class='line'>Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>With ministering hand he rais'd me up;</div> <div class='line'>Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,</div> <div class='line'>Which but to look on for a moment fill'd</div> <div class='line'>My eyes with irresistible sweet tears,</div> <div class='line'>In accents of majestic melody,</div> <div class='line'>Like a swol'n river's gushings in still night</div> <SPAN name='Page_18'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Mingled with floating music, thus he spake:</div> <div class='line'>'There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway</div> <div class='line'>The heart of man: and teach him to attain</div> <div class='line'>By shadowing forth the Unattainable;</div> <div class='line'>And step by step to scale that mighty stair</div> <div class='line'>Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds</div> <div class='line'>Of glory of Heaven.<SPAN name='FNanchor_B_2'></SPAN><SPAN href='#Footnote_B_2'><sup>[B]</sup></SPAN> With earliest Light of Spring,</div> <div class='line'>And in the glow of sallow Summertide,</div> <div class='line'>And in red Autumn when the winds are wild</div> <div class='line'>With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter roofs</div> <div class='line'>The headland with inviolate white snow,</div> <div class='line'>I play about his heart a thousand ways,</div> <div class='line'>Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears</div> <div class='line'>With harmonies of wind and wave and wood</div> <div class='line'>—Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters</div> <div class='line'>Betraying the close kisses of the wind—</div> <div class='line'>And win him unto me: and few there be</div> <div class='line'>So gross of heart who have not felt and known</div> <div class='line'>A higher than they see: They with dim eyes</div> <div class='line'>Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given <i>thee</i></div> <div class='line'>To understand my presence, and to feel</div> <div class='line'>My fullness; I have fill'd thy lips with power.</div> <div class='line'>I have rais'd thee higher to the Spheres of Heaven,</div> <div class='line'>Man's first, last home: and thou with ravish'd sense</div> <div class='line'>Listenest the lordly music flowing from</div> <div class='line'>Th' illimitable years. I am the Spirit,</div> <SPAN name='Page_19'></SPAN> <div class='line'>The permeating life which courseth through</div> <div class='line'>All th' intricate and labyrinthine veins</div> <div class='line'>Of the great vine of <i>Fable</i>, which, outspread</div> <div class='line'>With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare,</div> <div class='line'>Reacheth to every corner under Heaven,</div> <div class='line'>Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth:</div> <div class='line'>So that men's hopes and fears take refuge in</div> <div class='line'>The fragrance of its complicated glooms</div> <div class='line'>And cool impleachèd twilights. Child of Man,</div> <div class='line'>See'st thou yon river, whose translucent wave,</div> <div class='line'>Forth issuing from darkness, windeth through</div> <div class='line'>The argent streets o' the City, imaging</div> <div class='line'>The soft inversion of her tremulous Domes;</div> <div class='line'>Her gardens frequent with the stately Palm,</div> <div class='line'>Her Pagods hung with music of sweet bells:</div> <div class='line'>Her obelisks of rangèd Chrysolite,</div> <div class='line'>Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by,</div> <div class='line'>And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring</div> <div class='line'>To carry through the world those waves, which bore</div> <div class='line'>The reflex of my City in their depths.</div> <div class='line'>Oh City! Oh latest Throne! where I was rais'd</div> <div class='line'>To be a mystery of loveliness</div> <div class='line'>Unto all eyes, the time is well nigh come</div> <div class='line'>When I must render up this glorious home</div> <div class='line'>To keen <i>Discovery</i>: soon yon brilliant towers</div> <div class='line'>Shall darken with the waving of her wand;</div> <div class='line'>Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts,</div> <div class='line'>Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,</div> <div class='line'>Low-built, mud-walled, Barbarian settlement,</div> <div class='line'>How chang'd from this fair City!'</div> <div class='line10'>Thus far the Spirit:<SPAN name='Page_20'></SPAN></div> <div class='line'>Then parted Heavenward on the wing: and I</div> <div class='line'>Was left alone on Calpe, and the Moon</div> <div class='line'>Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!</div> </div></div> <p>[The following review of 'Timbuctoo' was published in the <i>Athenæum</i> of 22nd July, 1829: 'We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any very good reason, that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The age seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner; for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should least expect it—namely, in a prize poem. These productions have often been ingenious and elegant but we have never before seen one of them which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have done honour to any men that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have felt it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to the author, though the measure in which he writes was never before, we believe, thus selected for honour. We extract a few lines to justify our admiration (50 lines, 62-112, quoted). How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?' At the time when this highly eulogistic notice of the youthful unknown poet appeared, the <i>Athenæum</i> was edited by John Sterling and Frederick Denison Maurice, its then proprietors.]</p> <hr /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_21'></SPAN>Poems Chiefly Lyrical</h2> <p><SPAN name='Page_22'></SPAN>[The poems numbered I-XXIV which follow, were published in 1830 in the volume <i>Poems chiefly Lyrical</i>. (London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1830.) They were never republished by Tennyson.]</p> <h2><SPAN name='Page_23'></SPAN>I</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>The 'How' and the 'Why'</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line3'>I am any man's suitor,</div> <div class='line3'>If any will be my tutor:</div> <div class='line'>Some say this life is pleasant,</div> <div class='line3'>Some think it speedeth fast:</div> <div class='line'>In time there is no present,</div> <div class='line3'>In eternity no future,</div> <div class='line3'>In eternity no past.</div> <div class='line'>We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die,</div> <div class='line'>Who will riddle me the <i>how</i> and the <i>why</i>?</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The bulrush nods unto his brother</div> <div class='line'>The wheatears whisper to each other:</div> <div class='line'>What is it they say? What do they there?</div> <div class='line'>Why two and two make four? Why round is not square?</div> <div class='line'>Why the rocks stand still, and the light clouds fly?</div> <div class='line'>Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh?</div> <div class='line'>Why deep is not high, and high is not deep?</div> <div class='line'>Whether we wake or whether we sleep?</div> <div class='line'>Whether we sleep or whether we die?</div> <div class='line'>How you are you? Why I am I?</div> <div class='line'>Who will riddle me the <i>how</i> and the <i>why</i>?</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The world is somewhat; it goes on somehow;</div> <SPAN name='Page_24'></SPAN> <div class='line'>But what is the meaning of <i>then</i> and <i>now</i>!</div> <div class='line'>I feel there is something; but how and what?</div> <div class='line'>I know there is somewhat; but what and why!</div> <div class='line'>I cannot tell if that somewhat be I.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The little bird pipeth 'why! why!'</div> <div class='line'>In the summerwoods when the sun falls low,</div> <div class='line'>And the great bird sits on the opposite bough,</div> <div class='line'>And stares in his face and shouts 'how? how?'</div> <div class='line'>And the black owl scuds down the mellow twilight,</div> <div class='line'>And chaunts 'how? how?' the whole of the night.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Why the life goes when the blood is spilt?</div> <div class='line'>What the life is? where the soul may lie?</div> <div class='line'>Why a church is with a steeple built;</div> <div class='line'>And a house with a chimney-pot?</div> <div class='line'>Who will riddle me the how and the what?</div> <div class='line'>Who will riddle me the what and the why?</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_25'></SPAN>II</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>The Burial of Love</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line3'>His eyes in eclipse,</div> <div class='line3'>Pale cold his lips,</div> <div class='line'>The light of his hopes unfed,</div> <div class='line3'>Mute his tongue,</div> <div class='line3'>His bow unstrung</div> <div class='line'>With the tears he hath shed,</div> <div class='line'>Backward drooping his graceful head.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line3'>Love is dead;</div> <div class='line3'>His last arrow sped;</div> <div class='line'>He hath not another dart;</div> <div class='line3'>Go—carry him to his dark deathbed;</div> <div class='line'>Bury him in the cold, cold heart—</div> <div class='line3'>Love is dead.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Oh, truest love! art thou forlorn,</div> <div class='line3'>And unrevenged? Thy pleasant wiles</div> <div class='line'>Forgotten, and thine innocent joy?</div> <div class='line3'>Shall hollow-hearted apathy,</div> <div class='line'>The cruellest form of perfect scorn,</div> <div class='line3'>With langour of most hateful smiles,</div> <div class='line'>For ever write</div> <div class='line'>In the weathered light</div> <div class='line3'>Of the tearless eye</div> <div class='line3'>An epitaph that all may spy?</div> <div class='line3'>No! sooner she herself shall die.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>For her the showers shall not fall,</div> <SPAN name='Page_26'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Nor the round sun that shineth to all;</div> <div class='line3'>Her light shall into darkness change;</div> <div class='line'>For her the green grass shall not spring,</div> <div class='line'>Nor the rivers flow, nor the sweet birds sing,</div> <div class='line3'>Till Love have his full revenge.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_27'></SPAN>III</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>To ——</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Sainted Juliet! dearest name!</div> <div class='line3'>If to love be life alone,</div> <div class='line4'>Divinest Juliet,</div> <div class='line3'>I love thee, and live; and yet</div> <div class='line'>Love unreturned is like the fragrant flame</div> <div class='line3'>Folding the slaughter of the sacrifice</div> <div class='line3'>Offered to Gods upon an altarthrone;</div> <div class='line'>My heart is lighted at thine eyes,</div> <div class='line'>Changed into fire, and blown about with sighs.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_28'></SPAN>IV</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Song</div> <div class='heading'>I</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line3'>I' the glooming light</div> <div class='line3'>Of middle night,</div> <div class='line3'>So cold and white,</div> <div class='line'>Worn Sorrow sits by the moaning wave;</div> <div class='line3'>Beside her are laid,</div> <div class='line3'>Her mattock and spade,</div> <div class='line'>For she hath half delved her own deep grave.</div> <div class='line3'>Alone she is there:</div> <div class='line'>The white clouds drizzle: her hair falls loose;</div> <div class='line3'>Her shoulders are bare;</div> <div class='line'>Her tears are mixed with the bearded dews.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>II</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line3'>Death standeth by;</div> <div class='line3'>She will not die;</div> <div class='line3'>With glazèd eye</div> <div class='line'>She looks at her grave: she cannot sleep;</div> <div class='line3'>Ever alone</div> <div class='line3'>She maketh her moan:</div> <div class='line'>She cannot speak; she can only weep;</div> <div class='line3'>For she will not hope.</div> <div class='line'>The thick snow falls on her flake by flake,</div> <div class='line3'>The dull wave mourns down the slope,</div> <div class='line'>The world will not change, and her heart will not break.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_29'></SPAN>V</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Song</div> <div class='heading'>I</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Every day hath its night:</div> <div class='line3'>Every night its morn:</div> <div class='line'>Through dark and bright</div> <div class='line3'>Wingèd hours are borne;</div> <div class='line5'>Ah! welaway!</div> <div class='line'>Seasons flower and fade;</div> <div class='line3'>Golden calm and storm</div> <div class='line5'>Mingle day by day.</div> <div class='line3'>There is no bright form</div> <div class='line'>Doth not cast a shade—</div> <div class='line5'>Ah! welaway!</div> </div> <div class='heading'>II</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>When we laugh, and our mirth</div> <div class='line3'>Apes the happy vein,</div> <div class='line'>We're so kin to earth</div> <div class='line3'>Pleasuance fathers pain—</div> <div class='line5'>Ah! welaway!</div> <div class='line'>Madness laugheth loud:</div> <div class='line3'>Laughter bringeth tears:</div> <div class='line5'>Eyes are worn away</div> <div class='line3'>Till the end of fears</div> <div class='line'>Cometh in the shroud,</div> <div class='line5'>Ah! welaway!</div> </div> <div class='heading'>III</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>All is change, woe or weal;</div> <div class='line3'>Joy is sorrow's brother;</div> <div class='line'>Grief and sadness steal</div> <div class='line3'>Symbols of each other;</div> <div class='line5'>Ah! welaway!</div> <div class='line'>Larks in heaven's cope</div> <div class='line3'>Sing: the culvers mourn</div> <div class='line5'>All the livelong day.</div> <div class='line3'>Be not all forlorn;</div> <div class='line'>Let us weep in hope—</div> <div class='line5'>Ah! welaway!</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_31'></SPAN>VI</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Hero to Leander</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Oh go not yet, my love,</div> <div class='line3'>The night is dark and vast;</div> <div class='line'>The white moon is hid in her heaven above,</div> <div class='line3'>And the waves climb high and fast.</div> <div class='line'>Oh! kiss me, kiss me, once again,</div> <div class='line3'>Lest thy kiss should be the last.</div> <div class='line3'>Oh kiss me ere we part;</div> <div class='line3'>Grow closer to my heart.</div> <div class='line'>My heart is warmer surely than the bosom of the main.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Oh joy! O bliss of blisses!</div> <div class='line3'>My heart of hearts art thou.</div> <div class='line'>Come bathe me with thy kisses,</div> <div class='line3'>My eyelids and my brow.</div> <div class='line'>Hark how the wild rain hisses,</div> <div class='line3'>And the loud sea roars below.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Thy heart beats through thy rosy limbs</div> <div class='line3'>So gladly doth it stir;</div> <div class='line'>Thine eye in drops of gladness swims.</div> <div class='line3'>I have bathed thee with the pleasant myrrh;</div> <div class='line'>Thy locks are dripping balm;</div> <SPAN name='Page_32'></SPAN> <div class='line3'>Thou shalt not wander hence to-night,</div> <div class='line'>I'll stay thee with my kisses.</div> <div class='line3'>To-night the roaring brine</div> <div class='line'>Will rend thy golden tresses;</div> <div class='line3'>The ocean with the morrow light</div> <div class='line'>Will be both blue and calm;</div> <div class='line3'>And the billow will embrace thee with a kiss as soft as mine.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>No western odours wander</div> <div class='line3'>On the black and moaning sea,</div> <div class='line'>And when thou art dead, Leander,</div> <div class='line3'>My soul shall follow thee!</div> <div class='line'>Oh go not yet, my love,</div> <div class='line3'>Thy voice is sweet and low;</div> <div class='line'>The deep salt wave breaks in above</div> <div class='line3'>Those marble steps below.</div> <div class='line'>The turretstairs are wet</div> <div class='line3'>That lead into the sea.</div> <div class='line'>Leander! go not yet.</div> <div class='line'>The pleasant stars have set!</div> <div class='line'>Oh! go not, go not yet,</div> <div class='line3'>Or I will follow thee.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_33'></SPAN>VII</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>The Mystic</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Angels have talked with him, and showed him thrones:</div> <div class='line'>Ye knew him not: he was not one of ye,</div> <div class='line'>Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn:</div> <div class='line'>Ye could not read the marvel in his eye,</div> <div class='line'>The still serene abstraction; he hath felt</div> <div class='line'>The vanities of after and before;</div> <div class='line'>Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart</div> <div class='line'>The stern experiences of converse lives,</div> <div class='line'>The linkèd woes of many a fiery change</div> <div class='line'>Had purified, and chastened, and made free.</div> <div class='line'>Always there stood before him, night and day,</div> <div class='line'>Of wayward vary coloured circumstance,</div> <div class='line'>The imperishable presences serene,</div> <div class='line'>Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound,</div> <div class='line'>Dim shadows but unwaning presences</div> <div class='line'>Fourfacèd to four corners of the sky;</div> <div class='line'>And yet again, three shadows, fronting one,</div> <div class='line'>One forward, one respectant, three but one;</div> <div class='line'>And yet again, again and evermore,</div> <div class='line'>For the two first were not, but only seemed</div> <div class='line'>One shadow in the midst of a great light,</div> <div class='line'>One reflex from eternity on time,</div> <SPAN name='Page_34'></SPAN> <div class='line'>One mighty countenance of perfect calm,</div> <div class='line'>Awful with most invariable eyes.</div> <div class='line'>For him the silent congregated hours,</div> <div class='line'>Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath</div> <div class='line'>Severe and youthful brows, with shining eyes</div> <div class='line'>Smiling a godlike smile (the innocent light</div> <div class='line'>Of earliest youth pierced through and through with all</div> <div class='line'>Keen knowledges of low-embowèd eld)</div> <div class='line'>Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud</div> <div class='line'>Which droops low hung on either gate of life,</div> <div class='line'>Both birth and death; he in the centre fixed,</div> <div class='line'>Saw far on each side through the grated gates</div> <div class='line'>Most pale and clear and lovely distances.</div> <div class='line'>He often lying broad awake, and yet</div> <div class='line'>Remaining from the body, and apart</div> <div class='line'>In intellect and power and will, hath heard</div> <div class='line'>Time flowing in the middle of the night,</div> <div class='line'>And all things creeping to a day of doom.</div> <div class='line'>How could ye know him? Ye were yet within</div> <div class='line'>The narrower circle; he had well nigh reached</div> <div class='line'>The last, with which a region of white flame,</div> <div class='line'>Pure without heat, into a larger air</div> <div class='line'>Upburning, and an ether of black hue,</div> <div class='line'>Investeth and ingirds all other lives.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_35'></SPAN>VIII</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>The Grasshopper</div> <div class='heading'>I</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Voice of the summerwind,</div> <div class='line3'>Joy of the summerplain,</div> <div class='line3'>Life of the summerhours,</div> <div class='line2'>Carol clearly, bound along.</div> <div class='line3'>No Tithon thou as poets feign</div> <div class='line'>(Shame fall 'em they are deaf and blind)</div> <div class='line2'>But an insect lithe and strong,</div> <div class='line3'>Bowing the seeded summerflowers.</div> <div class='line'>Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel,</div> <div class='line3'>Vaulting on thine airy feet.</div> <div class='line'>Clap thy shielded sides and carol,</div> <div class='line3'>Carol clearly, chirrup sweet</div> <div class='line'>Thou art a mailèd warrior in youth and strength complete;</div> <div class='line3'>Armed cap-a-pie,</div> <div class='line3'>Full fair to see;</div> <div class='line4'>Unknowing fear,</div> <div class='line3'>Undreading loss,</div> <div class='line4'>A gallant cavalier</div> <div class='line'><i>Sans peur et sans reproche,</i></div> <div class='line3'>In sunlight and in shadow,</div> <div class='line3'>The Bayard of the meadow.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>II</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>I would dwell with thee,</div> <div class='line3'>Merry grasshopper,</div> <div class='line'>Thou art so glad and free,</div> <div class='line3'>And as light as air;</div> <div class='line'>Thou hast no sorrow or tears,</div> <div class='line'>Thou hast no compt of years,</div> <div class='line'>No withered immortality,</div> <div class='line'>But a short youth sunny and free.</div> <div class='line'>Carol clearly, bound along,</div> <div class='line3'>Soon thy joy is over,</div> <div class='line'>A summer of loud song,</div> <div class='line3'>And slumbers in the clover.</div> <div class='line3'>What hast thou to do with evil</div> <div class='line3'>In thine hour of love and revel,</div> <div class='line3'>In thy heat of summerpride,</div> <div class='line3'>Pushing the thick roots aside</div> <div class='line3'>Of the singing flowerèd grasses,</div> <div class='line3'>That brush thee with their silken tresses?</div> <div class='line'>What hast thou to do with evil,</div> <div class='line'>Shooting, singing, ever springing</div> <div class='line3'>In and out the emerald glooms,</div> <div class='line'>Ever leaping, ever singing,</div> <div class='line3'>Lighting on the golden blooms?</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_37'></SPAN>IX</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Love, Pride and Forgetfulness</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Ere yet my heart was sweet Love's tomb,</div> <div class='line'>Love laboured honey busily.</div> <div class='line'>I was the hive and Love the bee,</div> <div class='line'>My heart the honey-comb.</div> <div class='line'>One very dark and chilly night</div> <div class='line'>Pride came beneath and held a light.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The cruel vapours went through all,</div> <div class='line'>Sweet Love was withered in his cell;</div> <div class='line'>Pride took Love's sweets, and by a spell</div> <div class='line'>Did change them into gall;</div> <div class='line'>And Memory tho' fed by Pride</div> <div class='line'>Did wax so thin on gall,</div> <div class='line'>Awhile she scarcely lived at all,</div> <div class='line'>What marvel that she died?</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_38'></SPAN>X</h2> <p><b>Chorus</b></p> <p><i>In an unpublished drama written very early.</i></p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The varied earth, the moving heaven,</div> <div class='line3'>The rapid waste of roving sea,</div> <div class='line'>The fountainpregnant mountains riven</div> <div class='line3'>To shapes of wildest anarchy,</div> <div class='line'>By secret fire and midnight storms</div> <div class='line3'>That wander round their windy cones,</div> <div class='line'>The subtle life, the countless forms</div> <div class='line3'>Of living things, the wondrous tones</div> <div class='line'>Of man and beast are full of strange</div> <div class='line'>Astonishment and boundless change.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The day, the diamonded light,</div> <div class='line3'>The echo, feeble child of sound,</div> <div class='line'>The heavy thunder's girding might,</div> <div class='line3'>The herald lightning's starry bound,</div> <div class='line'>The vocal spring of bursting bloom,</div> <div class='line3'>The naked summer's glowing birth,</div> <div class='line'>The troublous autumn's sallow gloom,</div> <div class='line3'>The hoarhead winter paving earth</div> <div class='line'>With sheeny white, are full of strange</div> <div class='line'>Astonishment and boundless change.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Each sun which from the centre flings</div> <SPAN name='Page_39'></SPAN> <div class='line3'>Grand music and redundant fire,</div> <div class='line'>The burning belts, the mighty rings,</div> <div class='line3'>The murmurous planets' rolling choir,</div> <div class='line'>The globefilled arch that, cleaving air,</div> <div class='line3'>Lost in its effulgence sleeps,</div> <div class='line'>The lawless comets as they glare,</div> <div class='line3'>And thunder thro' the sapphire deeps</div> <div class='line'>In wayward strength, are full of strange</div> <div class='line'>Astonishment and boundless change.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_40'></SPAN>XI</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Lost Hope</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>You cast to ground the hope which once was mine,</div> <div class='line3'>But did the while your harsh decree deplore,</div> <div class='line'>Embalming with sweet tears the vacant shrine,</div> <div class='line3'>My heart, where Hope had been and was no more.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>So on an oaken sprout</div> <div class='line3'>A goodly acorn grew;</div> <div class='line'>But winds from heaven shook the acorn out,</div> <div class='line3'>And filled the cup with dew.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_41'></SPAN>XII</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>The Tears of Heaven</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Heaven weeps above the earth all night till morn,</div> <div class='line'>In darkness weeps, as all ashamed to weep,</div> <div class='line'>Because the earth hath made her state forlorn</div> <div class='line'>With selfwrought evils of unnumbered years,</div> <div class='line'>And doth the fruit of her dishonour reap.</div> <div class='line'>And all the day heaven gathers back her tears</div> <div class='line'>Into her own blue eyes so clear and deep,</div> <div class='line'>And showering down the glory of lightsome day,</div> <div class='line'>Smiles on the earth's worn brow to win her if she may.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_42'></SPAN>XIII</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Love and Sorrow</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>O maiden, fresher than the first green leaf</div> <div class='line'>With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea,</div> <div class='line'>Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee</div> <div class='line'>That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief</div> <div class='line'>Doth hold the other half in sovranty.</div> <div class='line'>Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystalline:</div> <div class='line'>Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine:</div> <div class='line'>Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine</div> <div class='line'>My heart's day, but the shadow of my heart,</div> <div class='line'>Issue of its own substance, my heart's night</div> <div class='line'>Thou canst not lighten even with <i>thy</i> light,</div> <div class='line'>All powerful in beauty as thou art.</div> <div class='line'>Almeida, if my heart were substanceless,</div> <div class='line'>Then might thy rays pass thro' to the other side,</div> <div class='line'>So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide,</div> <div class='line'>But lose themselves in utter emptiness.</div> <div class='line'>Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep</div> <div class='line'>They never learnt to love who never knew to weep.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_43'></SPAN>XIV</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>To a Lady Sleeping</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>O thou whose fringèd lids I gaze upon,</div> <div class='line'>Through whose dim brain the wingèd dreams are born,</div> <div class='line'>Unroof the shrines of clearest vision,</div> <div class='line'>In honour of the silverfleckèd morn:</div> <div class='line'>Long hath the white wave of the virgin light</div> <div class='line'>Driven back the billow of the dreamful dark.</div> <div class='line'>Thou all unwittingly prolongest night,</div> <div class='line'>Though long ago listening the poisèd lark,</div> <div class='line'>With eyes dropt downward through the blue serene,</div> <div class='line'>Over heaven's parapets the angels lean.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_44'></SPAN>XV</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Sonnet</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Could I outwear my present state of woe</div> <div class='line'>With one brief winter, and indue i' the spring</div> <div class='line'>Hues of fresh youth, and mightily outgrow</div> <div class='line'>The wan dark coil of faded suffering—</div> <div class='line'>Forth in the pride of beauty issuing</div> <div class='line'>A sheeny snake, the light of vernal bowers,</div> <div class='line'>Moving his crest to all sweet plots of flowers</div> <div class='line'>And watered vallies where the young birds sing;</div> <div class='line'>Could I thus hope my lost delights renewing,</div> <div class='line'>I straightly would commend the tears to creep</div> <div class='line'>From my charged lids; but inwardly I weep:</div> <div class='line'>Some vital heat as yet my heart is wooing:</div> <div class='line'>This to itself hath drawn the frozen rain</div> <div class='line'>From my cold eyes and melted it again.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_45'></SPAN>XVI</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Sonnet</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Though Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon,</div> <div class='line'>And bitter blasts the screaming autumn whirl,</div> <div class='line'>All night through archways of the bridgèd pearl</div> <div class='line'>And portals of pure silver walks the moon.</div> <div class='line'>Wake on, my soul, nor crouch to agony:</div> <div class='line'>Turn cloud to light, and bitterness to joy,</div> <div class='line'>And dross to gold with glorious alchemy,</div> <div class='line'>Basing thy throne above the world's annoy.</div> <div class='line'>Reign thou above the storms of sorrow and ruth</div> <div class='line'>That roar beneath; unshaken peace hath won thee:</div> <div class='line'>So shall thou pierce the woven glooms of truth;</div> <div class='line'>So shall the blessing of the meek be on thee;</div> <div class='line'>So in thine hour of dawn, the body's youth,</div> <div class='line'>An honourable eld shall come upon thee.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_46'></SPAN>XVII</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Sonnet</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Shall the hag Evil die with the child of Good,</div> <div class='line'>Or propagate again her loathèd kind,</div> <div class='line'>Thronging the cells of the diseased mind,</div> <div class='line'>Hateful with hanging cheeks, a withered brood,</div> <div class='line'>Though hourly pastured on the salient blood?</div> <div class='line'>Oh! that the wind which bloweth cold or heat</div> <div class='line'>Would shatter and o'erbear the brazen beat</div> <div class='line'>Of their broad vans, and in the solitude</div> <div class='line'>Of middle space confound them, and blow back</div> <div class='line'>Their wild cries down their cavernthroats, and slake</div> <div class='line'>With points of blastborne hail their heated eyne!</div> <div class='line'>So their wan limbs no more might come between</div> <div class='line'>The moon and the moon's reflex in the night;</div> <div class='line'>Nor blot with floating shades the solar light.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_47'></SPAN>XVIII</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Sonnet</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The palid thunderstricken sigh for gain,</div> <div class='line'>Down an ideal stream they ever float,</div> <div class='line'>And sailing on Pactolus in a boat,</div> <div class='line'>Drown soul and sense, while wistfully they strain</div> <div class='line'>Weak eyes upon the glistering sands that robe</div> <div class='line'>The understream. The wise could he behold</div> <div class='line'>Cathedralled caverns of thick-ribbèd gold</div> <div class='line'>And branching silvers of the central globe,</div> <div class='line'>Would marvel from so beautiful a sight</div> <div class='line'>How scorn and ruin, pain and hate could flow:</div> <div class='line'>But Hatred in a gold cave sits below,</div> <div class='line'>Pleached with her hair, in mail of argent light</div> <div class='line'>Shot into gold, a snake her forehead clips</div> <div class='line'>And skins the colour from her trembling lips.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_48'></SPAN>XIX</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Love</div> <div class='heading'>I</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Thou, from the first, unborn, undying love,</div> <div class='line'>Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near,</div> <div class='line'>Before the face of God didst breath and move,</div> <div class='line'>Though night and pain and ruin and death reign here.</div> <div class='line'>Thou foldest, like a golden atmosphere,</div> <div class='line'>The very throne of the eternal God:</div> <div class='line'>Passing through thee the edicts of his fear</div> <div class='line'>Are mellowed into music, borne abroad</div> <div class='line'>By the loud winds, though they uprend the sea,</div> <div class='line'>Even from his central deeps: thine empery</div> <div class='line'>Is over all: thou wilt not brook eclipse;</div> <div class='line'>Thou goest and returnest to His Lips</div> <div class='line'>Like lightning: thou dost ever brood above</div> <div class='line'>The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>II</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>To know thee is all wisdom, and old age</div> <div class='line'>Is but to know thee: dimly we behold thee</div> <div class='line'>Athwart the veils of evil which enfold thee</div> <div class='line'>We beat upon our aching hearts with rage;</div> <div class='line'>We cry for thee: we deem the world thy tomb.</div> <div class='line'>As dwellers in lone planets look upon</div> <SPAN name='Page_49'></SPAN> <div class='line'>The mighty disk of their majestic sun,</div> <div class='line'>Hallowed in awful chasms of wheeling gloom,</div> <div class='line'>Making their day dim, so we gaze on thee.</div> <div class='line'>Come, thou of many crowns, white-robèd love,</div> <div class='line'>Oh! rend the veil in twain: all men adore thee;</div> <div class='line'>Heaven crieth after thee; earth waileth for thee:</div> <div class='line'>Breathe on thy wingèd throne, and it shall move</div> <div class='line'>In music and in light o'er land and sea.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>III</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>And now—methinks I gaze upon thee now,</div> <div class='line'>As on a serpent in his agonies</div> <div class='line'>Awestricken Indians; what time laid low</div> <div class='line'>And crushing the thick fragrant reeds he lies,</div> <div class='line'>When the new year warm breathèd on the earth,</div> <div class='line'>Waiting to light him with his purple skies,</div> <div class='line'>Calls to him by the fountain to uprise.</div> <div class='line'>Already with the pangs of a new birth</div> <div class='line'>Strain the hot spheres of his convulsèd eyes,</div> <div class='line'>And in his writhings awful hues begin</div> <div class='line'>To wander down his sable sheeny sides,</div> <div class='line'>Like light on troubled waters: from within</div> <div class='line'>Anon he rusheth forth with merry din,</div> <div class='line'>And in him light and joy and strength abides;</div> <div class='line'>And from his brows a crown of living light</div> <div class='line'>Looks through the thickstemmed woods by day and night</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_50'></SPAN>XX</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>English War Song</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line3'>Who fears to die? Who fears to die?</div> <div class='line3'>Is there any here who fears to die</div> <div class='line'>He shall find what he fears, and none shall grieve</div> <div class='line3'>For the man who fears to die:</div> <div class='line'>But the withering scorn of the many shall cleave</div> <div class='line3'>To the man who fears to die.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'><i>Chorus</i>.—Shout for England!</div> <div class='line9'>Ho! for England!</div> <div class='line9'>George for England!</div> <div class='line9'>Merry England!</div> <div class='line9'>England for aye!</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The hollow at heart shall crouch forlorn,</div> <div class='line'>He shall eat the bread of common scorn;</div> <div class='line3'>It shall be steeped in the salt, salt tear,</div> <div class='line3'>Shall be steeped in his own salt tear:</div> <div class='line'>Far better, far better he never were born</div> <div class='line3'>Than to shame merry England here.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'><i>Chorus</i>.—Shout for England! <i>etc</i>.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>There standeth our ancient enemy;</div> <SPAN name='Page_51'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Hark! he shouteth—the ancient enemy!</div> <div class='line3'>On the ridge of the hill his banners rise;</div> <div class='line3'>They stream like fire in the skies;</div> <div class='line'>Hold up the Lion of England on high</div> <div class='line3'>Till it dazzle and blind his eyes.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'><i>Chorus</i>.—Shout for England! <i>etc</i>.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Come along! we alone of the earth are free;</div> <div class='line'>The child in our cradles is bolder than he;</div> <div class='line3'>For where is the heart and strength of slaves?</div> <div class='line3'>Oh! where is the strength of slaves?</div> <div class='line'>He is weak! we are strong; he a slave, we are free;</div> <div class='line3'>Come along! we will dig their graves.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'><i>Chorus</i>.—Shout for England! <i>etc</i>.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>There standeth our ancient enemy;</div> <div class='line'>Will he dare to battle with the free?</div> <div class='line3'>Spur along! spur amain! charge to the fight:</div> <div class='line3'>Charge! charge to the fight!</div> <div class='line'>Hold up the Lion of England on high!</div> <div class='line3'>Shout for God and our right!</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'><i>Chorus</i>.—Shout for England! <i>etc</i>.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_52'></SPAN>XXI</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>National Song</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>There is no land like England</div> <div class='line2'>Where'er the light of day be;</div> <div class='line'>There are no hearts like English hearts,</div> <div class='line2'>Such hearts of oak as they be.</div> <div class='line'>There is no land like England</div> <div class='line2'>Where'er the light of day be;</div> <div class='line'>There are no men like Englishmen,</div> <div class='line2'>So tall and bold as they be.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'><i>Chorus</i>.—For the French the Pope may shrive 'em,</div> <div class='line5'>For the devil a whit we heed 'em,</div> <div class='line5'>As for the French, God speed 'em</div> <div class='line6'>Unto their hearts' desire,</div> <div class='line5'>And the merry devil drive 'em</div> <div class='line6'>Through the water and the fire.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'><i>Chorus</i>.—Our glory is our freedom,</div> <div class='line6'>We lord it o'er the sea;</div> <div class='line5'>We are the sons of freedom,</div> <div class='line6'>We are free.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>There is no land like England,</div> <SPAN name='Page_53'></SPAN> <div class='line2'>Where'er the light of day be;</div> <div class='line'>There are no wives like English wives,</div> <div class='line2'>So fair and chaste as they be.</div> <div class='line'>There is no land like England,</div> <div class='line2'>Where'er the light of day be,</div> <div class='line'>There are no maids like English maids,</div> <div class='line2'>So beautiful as they be.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'><i>Chorus</i>.—For the French, <i>etc</i>.</div> </div></div> <p>[Sixty years after first publication this Song was incorporated in 'The Foresters' (published 1892) as the opening chorus of the second act. The two verses were unaltered, but the two choruses were re-written.]</p> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_54'></SPAN>XXII</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Dualisms</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Two bees within a chrystal flowerbell rockèd</div> <div class='line'>Hum a lovelay to the westwind at noontide.</div> <div class='line'>Both alike, they buzz together,</div> <div class='line'>Both alike, they hum together</div> <div class='line'>Through and through the flowered heather.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Where in a creeping cove the wave unshockèd</div> <div class='line2'>Lays itself calm and wide,</div> <div class='line'>Over a stream two birds of glancing feather</div> <div class='line'>Do woo each other, carolling together.</div> <div class='line'>Both alike, they glide together</div> <div class='line2'>Side by side;</div> <div class='line'>Both alike, they sing together,</div> <div class='line'>Arching blue-glossèd necks beneath the purple weather.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Two children lovelier than love, adown the lea are singing,</div> <div class='line'>As they gambol, lilygarlands ever stringing:</div> <div class='line'>Both in blosmwhite silk are frockèd:</div> <div class='line'>Like, unlike, they roam together</div> <div class='line'>Under a summervault of golden weather;</div> <div class='line'>Like, unlike, they sing together</div> <div class='line2'>Side by side;</div> <div class='line'>Mid May's darling goldenlockèd,</div> <div class='line'>Summer's tanling diamondeyed.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_55'></SPAN>XXIII</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'><span class="greek" title="[Greek: ohi rheontes]">οἱ ρἑοντες</span></div> <div class='heading'>I</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams are true,</div> <div class='line2'>All visions wild and strange;</div> <div class='line'>Man is the measure of all truth</div> <div class='line2'>Unto himself. All truth is change:</div> <div class='line'>All men do walk in sleep, and all</div> <div class='line2'>Have faith in that they dream:</div> <div class='line'>For all things are as they seem to all,</div> <div class='line2'>And all things flow like a stream.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>II</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>There is no rest, no calm, no pause,</div> <div class='line2'>Nor good nor ill, nor light nor shade,</div> <div class='line'>Nor essence nor eternal laws:</div> <div class='line2'>For nothing is, but all is made,</div> <div class='line'>But if I dream that all these are,</div> <div class='line2'>They are to me for that I dream;</div> <div class='line'>For all things are as they seem to all,</div> <div class='line2'>And all things flow like a stream.</div> </div></div> <p>Argal.—This very opinion is only true relatively to the flowing philosophers. (Tennyson's note.)</p> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_56'></SPAN>XXIV</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Song</div> <div class='heading'>I</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The lintwhite and the throstlecock</div> <div class='line3'>Have voices sweet and clear;</div> <div class='line2'>All in the bloomèd May.</div> <div class='line'>They from the blosmy brere</div> <div class='line'>Call to the fleeting year,</div> <div class='line'>If that he would them hear</div> <div class='line3'>And stay.</div> <div class='line'>Alas! that one so beautiful</div> <div class='line2'>Should have so dull an ear.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>II</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Fair year, fair year, thy children call,</div> <div class='line3'>But thou art deaf as death;</div> <div class='line2'>All in the bloomèd May.</div> <div class='line'>When thy light perisheth</div> <div class='line'>That from thee issueth,</div> <div class='line'>Our life evanisheth:</div> <div class='line3'>Oh! stay.</div> <div class='line'>Alas! that lips so cruel dumb</div> <div class='line2'>Should have so sweet a breath!</div> </div> <div class='heading'>III<SPAN name='Page_57'></SPAN></div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Fair year, with brows of royal love</div> <div class='line3'>Thou comest, as a King.</div> <div class='line2'>All in the bloomèd May.</div> <div class='line'>Thy golden largess fling,</div> <div class='line'>And longer hear us sing;</div> <div class='line'>Though thou art fleet of wing,</div> <div class='line3'>Yet stay.</div> <div class='line'>Alas! that eyes so full of light</div> <div class='line'>Should be so wandering!</div> </div> <div class='heading'>IV</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Thy locks are full of sunny sheen</div> <div class='line3'>In rings of gold yronne,<SPAN name='FNanchor_C_3'></SPAN><SPAN href='#Footnote_C_3'><sup>[C]</sup></SPAN></div> <div class='line2'>All in the bloomèd May,</div> <div class='line'>We pri' thee pass not on;</div> <div class='line'>If thou dost leave the sun,</div> <div class='line'>Delight is with thee gone,</div> <div class='line3'>Oh! stay.</div> <div class='line'>Thou art the fairest of thy feres,</div> <div class='line2'>We pri' thee pass not on.</div> </div></div> <hr /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_59'></SPAN><SPAN name='Page_58'></SPAN>Contributions to Periodicals 1831-32<SPAN name='Page_60'></SPAN></h2> <h2><SPAN name='Page_61'></SPAN>XXV</h2> <p><b>A Fragment</b></p> <p>[Published in <i>The Gem: a Literary Annual</i>. London: W. Marshall, Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Where is the Giant of the Sun, which stood</div> <div class='line'>In the midnoon the glory of old Rhodes,</div> <div class='line'>A perfect Idol, with profulgent brows</div> <div class='line'>Far sheening down the purple seas to those</div> <div class='line'>Who sailed from Mizraim underneath the star</div> <div class='line'>Named of the Dragon—and between whose limbs</div> <div class='line'>Of brassy vastness broad-blown Argosies</div> <div class='line'>Drave into haven? Yet endure unscathed</div> <div class='line'>Of changeful cycles the great Pyramids</div> <div class='line'>Broad-based amid the fleeting sands, and sloped</div> <div class='line'>Into the slumberous summer noon; but where,</div> <div class='line'>Mysterious Egypt, are thine obelisks</div> <div class='line'>Graven with gorgeous emblems undiscerned?</div> <div class='line'>Thy placid Sphinxes brooding o'er the Nile?</div> <div class='line'>Thy shadowy Idols in the solitudes,</div> <div class='line'>Awful Memnonian countenances calm</div> <div class='line'>Looking athwart the burning flats, far off</div> <div class='line'>Seen by the high-necked camel on the verge</div> <div class='line'>Journeying southward? Where are thy monuments</div> <SPAN name='Page_62'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Piled by the strong and sunborn Anakim</div> <div class='line'>Over their crowned brethren <span class="greek" title="[Greek: ON]">ΟΝ</span> and <span class="greek" title="[Greek: ORÊ]">ΟΡΕ</span>?</div> <div class='line'>Thy Memnon, when his peaceful lips are kissed</div> <div class='line'>With earliest rays, that from his mother's eyes</div> <div class='line'>Flow over the Arabian bay, no more</div> <div class='line'>Breathes low into the charmed ears of morn</div> <div class='line'>Clear melody flattering the crisped Nile</div> <div class='line'>By columned Thebes. Old Memphis hath gone down:</div> <div class='line'>The Pharaohs are no more: somewhere in death</div> <div class='line'>They sleep with staring eyes and gilded lips,</div> <div class='line'>Wrapped round with spiced cerements in old grots</div> <div class='line'>Rock-hewn and sealed for ever.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_63'></SPAN>XXVI</h2> <p><b>Anacreontics</b></p> <p>[Published in <i>The Gem: a Literary Annual</i>. London: W. Marshall, Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>With roses musky breathed,</div> <div class='line'>And drooping daffodilly,</div> <div class='line'>And silverleaved lily,</div> <div class='line'>And ivy darkly-wreathed,</div> <div class='line'>I wove a crown before her,</div> <div class='line'>For her I love so dearly,</div> <div class='line'>A garland for Lenora.</div> <div class='line'>With a silken cord I bound it.</div> <div class='line'>Lenora, laughing clearly</div> <div class='line'>A light and thrilling laughter,</div> <div class='line'>About her forehead wound it,</div> <div class='line'>And loved me ever after.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_64'></SPAN>XXVII</h2> <p>[Published in <i>The Gem: a Literary Annual</i>. London: W. Marshall, Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line3'>O sad <i>No more!</i> O sweet <i>No more!</i></div> <div class='line8'>O strange <i>No more!</i></div> <div class='line3'>By a mossed brookbank on a stone</div> <div class='line3'>I smelt a wildweed flower alone;</div> <div class='line3'>There was a ringing in my ears,</div> <div class='line3'>And both my eyes gushed out with tears.</div> <div class='line'>Surely all pleasant things had gone before,</div> <div class='line'>Low-buried fathom deep beneath with thee,</div> <div class='line8'>NO MORE!</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_65'></SPAN>XXVIII</h2> <p><b>Sonnet</b></p> <p>[Published in the <i>Englishman's Magazine</i>, August, 1831. London: Edward Moxon, 64 New Bond Street. Reprinted in <i>Friendship's Offering: a Literary Album</i> for 1833. London; Smith and Elder.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Check every outflash, every ruder sally</div> <div class='line2'>Of thought and speech; speak low, and give up wholly</div> <div class='line2'>Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy;</div> <div class='line'>This is the place. Through yonder poplar alley</div> <div class='line'>Below, the blue-green river windeth slowly;</div> <div class='line2'>But in the middle of the sombre valley</div> <div class='line2'>The crispèd waters whisper musically,</div> <div class='line'>And all the haunted place is dark and holy.</div> <div class='line'>The nightingale, with long and low preamble,</div> <div class='line2'>Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn larches,</div> <div class='line2'>And in and out the woodbine's flowery arches</div> <div class='line'>The summer midges wove their wanton gambol,</div> <div class='line2'>And all the white-stemmed pinewood slept above—</div> <div class='line2'>When in this valley first I told my love.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_66'></SPAN>XXIX</h2> <p><b>Sonnet</b></p> <p>[Published in <i>Friendships Offering: a Literary Album</i> for 1832. London: Smith and Elder.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Me my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh:</div> <div class='line2'>Thy woes are birds of passage, transitory:</div> <div class='line2'>Thy spirit, circled with a living glory,</div> <div class='line'>In summer still a summer joy resumeth.</div> <div class='line'>Alone my hopeless melancholy gloometh,</div> <div class='line2'>Like a lone cypress, through the twilight hoary,</div> <div class='line'>From an old garden where no flower bloometh,</div> <div class='line2'>One cypress on an inland promontory.</div> <div class='line'>But yet my lonely spirit follows thine,</div> <div class='line2'>As round the rolling earth night follows day:</div> <div class='line'>But yet thy lights on my horizon shine</div> <div class='line2'>Into my night when thou art far away;</div> <div class='line'>I am so dark, alas! and thou so bright,</div> <div class='line'>When we two meet there's never perfect light.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_67'></SPAN>XXX</h2> <p><b>Sonnet</b></p> <p>[Published in the <i>Yorkshire Literary Annual</i> for 1832. Edited by C.F. Edgar, London: Longman and Co. Reprinted in the <i>Athenæum</i>, 4 May, 1867.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>There are three things that fill my heart with sighs</div> <div class='line'>And steep my soul in laughter (when I view</div> <div class='line'>Fair maiden forms moving like melodies),</div> <div class='line'>Dimples, roselips, and eyes of any hue.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>There are three things beneath the blessed skies</div> <div class='line'>For which I live—black eyes, and brown and blue;</div> <div class='line'>I hold them all most dear; but oh! black eyes,</div> <div class='line'>I live and die, and only die for you.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Of late such eyes looked at me—while I mused</div> <div class='line'>At sunset, underneath a shadowy plane</div> <div class='line'>In old Bayona, nigh the Southern Sea—</div> <div class='line'>From an half-open lattice looked at <i>me</i>.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>I saw no more only those eyes—confused</div> <div class='line'>And dazzled to the heart with glorious pain.</div> </div></div> <hr /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_69'></SPAN>Poems, 1833</h2> <p><SPAN name='Page_70'></SPAN>[The poems numbered XXXI-XXXIX were published in the 1832 volume (<i>Poems by Alfred Tennyson</i>. London: Edward Moxon, 94 New Bond Street. MDCCCXXXIII; published December, 1832), and were thereafter suppressed.]</p> <h2><SPAN name='Page_71'></SPAN>XXXI</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Sonnet</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Oh, Beauty, passing beauty! sweetest Sweet!</div> <div class='line2'>How canst thou let me waste my youth in sighs;</div> <div class='line'>I only ask to sit beside thy feet.</div> <div class='line2'>Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes,</div> <div class='line'>Might I but kiss thy hand! I dare not fold</div> <div class='line2'>My arms about thee—scarcely dare to speak.</div> <div class='line'>And nothing seems to me so wild and bold,</div> <div class='line2'>As with one kiss to touch thy blessèd cheek.</div> <div class='line'>Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control</div> <div class='line2'>Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat</div> <div class='line2'>The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke,</div> <div class='line'>The bare word KISS hath made my inner soul</div> <div class='line2'>To tremble like a lutestring, ere the note</div> <div class='line2'>Hath melted in the silence that it broke.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_72'></SPAN>XXXII</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>The Hesperides</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line2'>Hesperus and his daughters three</div> <div class='line2'>That sing about the golden tree.</div> <div class='line2'>—COMUS.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The Northwind fall'n, in the newstarréd night</div> <div class='line'>Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond</div> <div class='line'>The hoary promontory of Soloë</div> <div class='line'>Past Thymiaterion, in calmèd bays,</div> <div class='line'>Between the Southern and the Western Horn,</div> <div class='line'>Heard neither warbling of the nightingale,</div> <div class='line'>Nor melody o' the Lybian lotusflute</div> <div class='line'>Blown seaward from the shore; but from a slope</div> <div class='line'>That ran bloombright into the Atlantic blue,</div> <div class='line'>Beneath a highland leaning down a weight</div> <div class='line'>Of cliffs, and zoned below with cedarshade,</div> <div class='line'>Came voices, like the voices in a dream,</div> <div class='line'>Continuous till he reached the other sea.</div> </div></div> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Song</div> <div class='heading'>I</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,</div> <div class='line'>Guard it well, guard it warily,</div> <div class='line'>Singing airily,</div> <div class='line'>Standing about the charméd root.</div> <div class='line'>Round about all is mute,</div> <div class='line'>As the snowfield on the mountain-peaks,</div> <SPAN name='Page_73'></SPAN> <div class='line'>As the sandfield at the mountain-foot.</div> <div class='line'>Crocodiles in briny creeks</div> <div class='line'>Sleep and stir not: all is mute.</div> <div class='line'>If ye sing not, if ye make false measure,</div> <div class='line'>We shall lose eternal pleasure,</div> <div class='line'>Worth eternal want of rest.</div> <div class='line'>Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure</div> <div class='line'>Of the wisdom of the West.</div> <div class='line'>In a corner wisdom whispers. Five and three</div> <div class='line'>(Let it not be preached abroad) make an awful mystery.</div> <div class='line'>For the blossom unto three-fold music bloweth;</div> <div class='line'>Evermore it is born anew;</div> <div class='line'>And the sap to three-fold music floweth,</div> <div class='line'>From the root</div> <div class='line'>Drawn in the dark,</div> <div class='line'>Up to the fruit,</div> <div class='line'>Creeping under the fragrant bark,</div> <div class='line'>Liquid gold, honeysweet thro' and thro'.</div> <div class='line'>Keen-eyed Sisters, singing airily,</div> <div class='line'>Looking warily</div> <div class='line'>Every way,</div> <div class='line'>Guard the apple night and day,</div> <div class='line'>Lest one from the East come and take it away.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>II</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, watch, ever and aye,</div> <div class='line'>Looking under silver hair with a silver eye.</div> <div class='line'>Father, twinkle not thy stedfast sight;</div> <SPAN name='Page_74'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Kingdoms lapse, and climates change, and races die;</div> <div class='line'>Honour comes with mystery;</div> <div class='line'>Hoarded wisdom brings delight.</div> <div class='line'>Number, tell them over and number</div> <div class='line'>How many the mystic fruit-tree holds,</div> <div class='line'>Lest the redcombed dragon slumber</div> <div class='line'>Rolled together in purple folds.</div> <div class='line'>Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stol'n away,</div> <div class='line'>For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day,</div> <div class='line'>Round about the hallowed fruit tree curled—</div> <div class='line'>Sing away, sing aloud and evermore in the wind, without stop,</div> <div class='line'>Lest his scalèd eyelid drop,</div> <div class='line'>For he is older than the world.</div> <div class='line'>If he waken, we waken,</div> <div class='line'>Rapidly levelling eager eyes.</div> <div class='line'>If he sleep, we sleep,</div> <div class='line'>Dropping the eyelid over the eyes.</div> <div class='line'>If the golden apple be taken</div> <div class='line'>The world will be overwise.</div> <div class='line'>Five links, a golden chain, are we,</div> <div class='line'>Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three,</div> <div class='line'>Bound about the golden tree.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>III<SPAN name='Page_75'></SPAN></div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, watch, night and day,</div> <div class='line'>Lest the old wound of the world be healèd,</div> <div class='line'>The glory unsealèd,</div> <div class='line'>The golden apple stol'n away,</div> <div class='line'>And the ancient secret revealèd.</div> <div class='line'>Look from west to east along:</div> <div class='line'>Father, old Himla weakens, Caucasus is bold and strong.</div> <div class='line'>Wandering waters unto wandering waters call;</div> <div class='line'>Let them clash together, foam and fall.</div> <div class='line'>Out of watchings, out of wiles,</div> <div class='line'>Comes the bliss of secret smiles,</div> <div class='line'>All things are not told to all,</div> <div class='line'>Half round the mantling night is drawn,</div> <div class='line'>Purplefringed with even and dawn.</div> <div class='line'>Hesper hateth Phosphor, evening hateth morn.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>IV</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Every flower and every fruit the redolent breath</div> <div class='line'>Of this warm seawind ripeneth,</div> <div class='line'>Arching the billow in his sleep;</div> <div class='line'>But the land-wind wandereth,</div> <div class='line'>Broken by the highland-steep,</div> <div class='line'>Two streams upon the violet deep:</div> <div class='line'>For the western sun and the western star,</div> <div class='line'>And the low west wind, breathing afar,</div> <div class='line'>The end of day and beginning of night</div> <SPAN name='Page_76'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Make the apple holy and bright,</div> <div class='line'>Holy and bright, round and full, bright and blest,</div> <div class='line'>Mellowed in a land of rest;</div> <div class='line'>Watch it warily day and night;</div> <div class='line'>All good things are in the west,</div> <div class='line'>Till midnoon the cool east light</div> <div class='line'>Is shut out by the round of the tall hillbrow;</div> <div class='line'>But when the fullfaced sunset yellowly</div> <div class='line'>Stays on the flowering arch of the bough,</div> <div class='line'>The luscious fruitage clustereth mellowly,</div> <div class='line'>Goldenkernelled, goldencored,</div> <div class='line'>Sunset ripened, above on the tree,</div> <div class='line'>The world is wasted with fire and sword,</div> <div class='line'>But the apple of gold hangs over the sea,</div> <div class='line'>Five links, a golden chain, are we,</div> <div class='line'>Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three,</div> <div class='line3'>Daughters three,</div> <div class='line3'>Bound about</div> <div class='line3'>All round about</div> <div class='line'>The gnarlèd bole of the charmèd tree,</div> <div class='line'>The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,</div> <div class='line'>Guard it well, guard it warily,</div> <div class='line3'>Watch it warily,</div> <div class='line3'>Singing airily,</div> <div class='line'>Standing about the charmèd root.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_77'></SPAN>XXXIII</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Rosalind</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line2'>My Rosalind, my Rosalind,</div> <div class='line'>Bold, subtle, careless Rosalind,</div> <div class='line'>Is one of those who know no strife</div> <div class='line'>Of inward woe or outward fear;</div> <div class='line'>To whom the slope and stream of life,</div> <div class='line'>The life before, the life behind,</div> <div class='line'>In the ear, from far and near,</div> <div class='line'>Chimeth musically clear.</div> <div class='line'>My falconhearted Rosalind</div> <div class='line'>Fullsailed before a vigorous wind,</div> <div class='line'>Is one of those who cannot weep</div> <div class='line'>For others' woes, but overleap</div> <div class='line'>All the petty shocks and fears</div> <div class='line'>That trouble life in early years,</div> <div class='line'>With a flash of frolic scorn</div> <div class='line'>And keen delight, that never falls</div> <div class='line'>Away from freshness, self-upborne</div> <div class='line'>With such gladness, as, whenever</div> <div class='line'>The freshflushing springtime calls</div> <div class='line'>To the flooding waters cool,</div> <div class='line'>Young fishes, on an April morn,</div> <div class='line'>Up and down a rapid river,</div> <SPAN name='Page_78'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Leap the little waterfalls</div> <div class='line'>That sing into the pebbled pool.</div> <div class='line'>My happy falcon, Rosalind,</div> <div class='line'>Hath daring fancies of her own,</div> <div class='line'>Fresh as the dawn before the day,</div> <div class='line'>Fresh as the early seasmell blown</div> <div class='line'>Through vineyards from an inland bay.</div> <div class='line'>My Rosalind, my Rosalind,</div> <div class='line'>Because no shadow on you falls,</div> <div class='line'>Think you hearts are tennis balls</div> <div class='line'>To play with, wanton Rosalind?</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_79'></SPAN>XXXIV</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Song</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Who can say</div> <div class='line'>Why To-day</div> <div class='line'>To-morrow will be yesterday?</div> <div class='line'>Who can tell</div> <div class='line'>Why to smell</div> <div class='line'>The violet, recalls the dewy prime</div> <div class='line'>Of youth and buried time?</div> <div class='line'>The cause is nowhere found in rhyme.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_80'></SPAN>XXXV</h2> <p><i>Written on hearing of the outbreak of the Polish Insurrection.</i></p> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>Sonnet</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar</div> <div class='line2'>The hosts to battle: be not bought and sold.</div> <div class='line2'>Arise, brave Poles, the boldest of the bold;</div> <div class='line'>Break through your iron shackles—fling them far.</div> <div class='line'>O for those days of Piast, ere the Czar</div> <div class='line2'>Grew to this strength among his deserts cold;</div> <div class='line2'>When even to Moscow's cupolas were rolled</div> <div class='line'>The growing murmurs of the Polish war!</div> <div class='line'>Now must your noble anger blaze out more</div> <div class='line2'>Than when from Sobieski, clan by clan,</div> <div class='line'>The Moslem myriads fell, and fled before—</div> <div class='line2'>Than when Zamoysky smote the Tartar Khan,</div> <div class='line'>Than earlier, when on the Baltic shore</div> <div class='line2'>Boleslas drove the Pomeranian.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_81'></SPAN>XXXVI</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>O Darling Room<SPAN name='FNanchor_D_4'></SPAN><SPAN href='#Footnote_D_4'><sup>[D]</sup></SPAN></div> <div class='heading'>I</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>O darling room, my heart's delight,</div> <div class='line'>Dear room, the apple of my sight,</div> <div class='line'>With thy two couches soft and white,</div> <div class='line'>There is no room so exquisite,</div> <div class='line'>No little room so warm and bright</div> <div class='line'>Wherein to read, wherein to write.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>II</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,</div> <div class='line'>And Oberwinter's vineyards green,</div> <div class='line'>Musical Lurlei; and between</div> <div class='line'>The hills to Bingen have I been,</div> <div class='line'>Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene</div> <div class='line'>Curves towards Mentz, a woody scene.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>III</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Yet never did there meet my sight,</div> <div class='line'>In any town, to left or right,</div> <div class='line'>A little room so exquisite,</div> <div class='line'>With two such couches soft and white;</div> <div class='line'>Not any room so warm and bright,</div> <div class='line'>Wherein to read, wherein to write.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_82'></SPAN>XXXVII</h2> <div class='poem'> <div class='title'>To Christopher North</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>You did late review my lays,</div> <div class='line2'>Crusty Christopher;</div> <div class='line'>You did mingle blame and praise,</div> <div class='line2'>Rusty Christopher.</div> <div class='line'>When I learnt from whom it came,</div> <div class='line'>I forgave you all the blame,</div> <div class='line2'>Musty Christopher;</div> <div class='line'>I could <i>not</i> forgive the praise,</div> <div class='line2'>Fusty Christopher.</div> </div></div> <p>[This epigram was Tennyson's reply to an article by Professor Wilson—'Christopher North'—in <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i> for May 1832, dealing in sensible fashion with Tennyson's 1830 volume, and ridiculing the fulsome praise lavished on him by his inconsiderate friends—especially referring to Arthur Hallam's article in the <i>Englishman's Magazine</i> for August, 1831.]</p> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_83'></SPAN>XXXVIII</h2> <p><b>The Lotos-Eaters</b></p> <p>[These forty lines formed the conclusion to the original (1833) version of the poem. When the poem was reprinted in the 1842 volumes these lines were suppressed.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>We have had enough of motion,</div> <div class='line'>Weariness and wild alarm,</div> <div class='line'>Tossing on the tossing ocean,</div> <div class='line'>Where the tuskèd seahorse walloweth</div> <div class='line'>In a stripe of grassgreen calm,</div> <div class='line'>At noon-tide beneath the lea;</div> <div class='line'>And the monstrous narwhale swalloweth</div> <div class='line'>His foamfountains in the sea.</div> <div class='line'>Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry.</div> <div class='line'>This is lovelier and sweeter,</div> <div class='line'>Men of Ithaca, this is meeter,</div> <div class='line'>In the hollow rosy vale to tarry,</div> <div class='line'>Like a dreamy Lotos-eater, a delirious Lotos-eater!</div> <div class='line'>We will eat the Lotos, sweet</div> <div class='line'>As the yellow honeycomb,</div> <div class='line'>In the valley some, and some</div> <div class='line'>On the ancient heights divine;</div> <div class='line'>And no more roam,</div> <SPAN name='Page_84'></SPAN> <div class='line'>On the loud hoar foam,</div> <div class='line'>To the melancholy home</div> <div class='line'>At the limit of the brine,</div> <div class='line'>The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline.</div> <div class='line'>We'll lift no more the shattered oar,</div> <div class='line'>No more unfurl the straining sail;</div> <div class='line'>With the blissful Lotos-eaters pale</div> <div class='line'>We will abide in the golden vale</div> <div class='line'>Of the Lotos-land, till the Lotos fail;</div> <div class='line'>We will not wander more.</div> <div class='line'>Hark! how sweet the horned ewes bleat</div> <div class='line'>On the solitary steeps,</div> <div class='line'>And the merry lizard leaps,</div> <div class='line'>And the foam-white waters pour;</div> <div class='line'>And the dark pine weeps,</div> <div class='line'>And the lithe vine creeps,</div> <div class='line'>And the heavy melon sleeps</div> <div class='line'>On the level of the shore:</div> <div class='line'>Oh! islanders of Ithaca, we will not wander more,</div> <div class='line'>Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore</div> <div class='line'>Than labour in the ocean, and rowing with the oar,</div> <div class='line'>Oh! islanders of Ithaca, we will return no more.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_85'></SPAN>XXXIX</h2> <p><b>A Dream of Fair Women</b></p> <p>[In the 1833 volume the poem opened with the following four verses, suppressed after 1842. These Fitz Gerald considered made 'a perfect poem by themselves.']</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>As when a man, that sails in a balloon,</div> <div class='line2'>Downlooking sees the solid shining ground</div> <div class='line'>Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon,</div> <div class='line2'>Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound:</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>And takes his flags and waves them to the mob</div> <div class='line2'>That shout below, all faces turned to where</div> <div class='line'>Glows rubylike the far-up crimson globe,</div> <div class='line2'>Filled with a finer air:</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>So, lifted high, the poet at his will</div> <div class='line2'>Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all,</div> <div class='line'>Higher thro' secret splendours mounting still,</div> <div class='line2'>Self-poised, nor fears to fall.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Hearing apart the echoes of his fame.</div> <div class='line2'>While I spoke thus, the seedsman, Memory,</div> <div class='line'>Sowed my deep-furrowed thought with many a name</div> <div class='line2'>Whose glory will not die.</div> </div></div> <hr /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_87'></SPAN>Miscellaneous Poems and Contributions to Periodicals<br/> 1833-1868<SPAN name='Page_88'></SPAN></h2> <h2><SPAN name='Page_89'></SPAN>XL</h2> <p><b>Cambridge</b></p> <p>[This poem is written in pencil on the fly-leaf of a copy of <i>Poems</i> 1833 in the Dyce Collection in South Kensington Museum. Reprinted with many alterations in <i>Life</i>, vol. I, p. 67.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Therefore your halls, your ancient colleges,</div> <div class='line2'>Your portals statued with old kings and queens,</div> <div class='line'>Your bridges and your busted libraries,</div> <div class='line2'>Wax-lighted chapels and rich carved screens,</div> <div class='line2'>Your doctors and your proctors and your deans</div> <div class='line'>Shall not avail you when the day-beam sports</div> <div class='line2'>New-risen o'er awakened Albion—No,</div> <div class='line2'>Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow</div> <div class='line'>Melodious thunders through your vacant courts</div> <div class='line'>At morn and even; for your manner sorts</div> <div class='line2'>Not with this age, nor with the thoughts that roll,</div> <div class='line'>Because the words of little children preach</div> <div class='line'>Against you,—ye that did profess to teach</div> <div class='line2'>And have taught nothing, feeding on the soul.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_90'></SPAN>XLI</h2> <p><b>The Germ of 'Maud'</b></p> <p>[There was published in 1837 in <i>The Tribute</i>, (a collection of original poems by various authors, edited by Lord Northampton), a contribution by Tennyson entitled 'Stanzas,' consisting of xvi stanzas of varying lengths (110 lines in all). In 1855 the first xii stanzas were published as the fourth section of the second part of 'Maud.' Some verbal changes and transpositions of lines were made; a new stanza (the present sixth) and several new lines were introduced, and the xth stanza of 1837 became the xiiith of 1855. But stanzas xiii-xvi of 1837 have never been reprinted in any edition of Tennyson's works, though quoted in whole or part in various critical studies of the poet. Swinburne refers to this poem as 'the poem of deepest charm and fullest delight of pathos and melody ever written, even by Mr Tennyson.' This poem in <i>The Tribute</i> gained Tennyson his first notice in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, which had till then ignored him.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='heading'>XIII</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>But she tarries in her place</div> <div class='line'>And I paint the beauteous face</div> <div class='line3'>Of the maiden, that I lost,</div> <div class='line5'>In my inner eyes again,</div> <div class='line'>Lest my heart be overborne,</div> <div class='line'>By the thing I hold in scorn,</div> <div class='line3'>By a dull mechanic ghost</div> <div class='line5'>And a juggle of the brain.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>XIV</div> <SPAN name='Page_91'></SPAN> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>I can shadow forth my bride</div> <div class='line3'>As I knew her fair and kind</div> <div class='line5'>r for my wife;</div> <div class='line'>She is lovely by my side</div> <div class='line3'>In the silence of my life—</div> <div class='line5'>'Tis a phantom of the mind.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>XV</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>'Tis a phantom fair and good</div> <div class='line3'>I can call it to my side,</div> <div class='line5'>So to guard my life from ill,</div> <div class='line3'>Tho' its ghastly sister glide</div> <div class='line5'>And be moved around me still</div> <div class='line'>With the moving of the blood</div> <div class='line3'>That is moved not of the will.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>XVI</div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Let it pass, the dreary brow,</div> <div class='line3'>Let the dismal face go by,</div> <div class='line'>Will it lead me to the grave?</div> <div class='line3'>Then I lose it: it will fly:</div> <div class='line'>Can it overlast the nerves?</div> <div class='line3'>Can it overlive the eye?</div> <div class='line'>But the other, like a star,</div> <div class='line'>Thro' the channel windeth far</div> <div class='line3'>Till it fade and fail and die,</div> <div class='line'>To its Archetype that waits</div> <div class='line'>Clad in light by golden gates,</div> <div class='line'>Clad in light the Spirit waits</div> <div class='line3'>To embrace me in the sky.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_92'></SPAN>XLII</h2> <p>[On the fly-leaf of a book illustrated by Bewick, in the library of the late Lord Ravensworth, the following lines in Tennyson's autograph were discovered in 1903.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>A gate and a field half ploughed,</div> <div class='line'>A solitary cow,</div> <div class='line'>A child with a broken slate,</div> <div class='line'>And a titmarsh in the bough.</div> <div class='line'>But where, alack, is Bewick</div> <div class='line'>To tell the meaning now?</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_93'></SPAN>XLIII</h2> <p><b>The Skipping-Rope</b></p> <p>[This poem, published in the second volume of <i>Poems by Alfred Tennyson</i> (in two volumes, London, Edward Moxon, MDCCCXLII), was reprinted in every edition until 1851, when it was suppressed.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Sure never yet was Antelope</div> <div class='line2'>Could skip so lightly by.</div> <div class='line'>Stand off, or else my skipping-rope</div> <div class='line2'>Will hit you in the eye.</div> <div class='line'>How lightly whirls the skipping-rope!</div> <div class='line2'>How fairy-like you fly!</div> <div class='line'>Go, get you gone, you muse and mope—</div> <div class='line2'>I hate that silly sigh.</div> <div class='line'>Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope,</div> <div class='line2'>Or tell me how to die.</div> <div class='line'>There, take it, take my skipping-rope</div> <div class='line2'>And hang yourself thereby.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_94'></SPAN>XLIV</h2> <p><b>The New Timon and the Poets</b></p> <p>[From <i>Punch</i>, February 28, 1846. Bulwer Lytton published in 1845 his satirical poem 'New Timon: a Romance of London,' in which he bitterly attacked Tennyson for the civil list pension granted the previous year, particularly referring to the poem 'O Darling Room' in the 1833 volume. Tennyson replied in the following vigorous verses, which made the literary sensation of the year. Tennyson afterwards declared: 'I never sent my lines to <i>Punch</i>. John Forster did. They were too bitter. I do not think that I should ever have published them.'—<i>Life</i>, vol. I, p. 245.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>We know him, out of Shakespeare's art,</div> <div class='line2'>And those fine curses which he spoke;</div> <div class='line'>The old Timon, with his noble heart,</div> <div class='line2'>That, strongly loathing, greatly broke.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>So died the Old: here comes the New:</div> <div class='line2'>Regard him: a familiar face:</div> <div class='line'>I <i>thought</i> we knew him: What, it's you</div> <div class='line2'>The padded man—that wears the stays—</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Who killed the girls and thrill'd the boys</div> <div class='line2'>With dandy pathos when you wrote,</div> <div class='line'>A Lion, you, that made a noise,</div> <div class='line2'>And shook a mane en papillotes.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>And once you tried the Muses too:</div> <SPAN name='Page_95'></SPAN> <div class='line2'>You fail'd, Sir: therefore now you turn,</div> <div class='line'>You fall on those who are to you</div> <div class='line2'>As captain is to subaltern.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>But men of long enduring hopes,</div> <div class='line2'>And careless what this hour may bring,</div> <div class='line'>Can pardon little would-be Popes</div> <div class='line2'>And Brummels, when they try to sting.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>An artist, Sir, should rest in art,</div> <div class='line2'>And wave a little of his claim;</div> <div class='line'>To have the deep poetic heart</div> <div class='line2'>Is more than all poetic fame.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>But you, Sir, you are hard to please;</div> <div class='line2'>You never look but half content:</div> <div class='line'>Nor like a gentleman at ease</div> <div class='line2'>With moral breadth of temperament.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>And what with spites and what with fears,</div> <div class='line2'>You cannot let a body be:</div> <div class='line'>It's always ringing in your ears,</div> <div class='line2'>'They call this man as good as <i>me</i>.'</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>What profits now to understand</div> <div class='line2'>The merits of a spotless shirt—</div> <div class='line'>A dapper boot—a little hand—</div> <div class='line2'>If half the little soul is dirt?</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'><i>You</i> talk of tinsel! why we see</div> <SPAN name='Page_96'></SPAN> <div class='line2'>The old mark of rouge upon your cheeks.</div> <div class='line'><i>You</i> prate of nature! you are he</div> <div class='line'>That spilt his life about the cliques.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>A Timon you! Nay, nay, for shame:</div> <div class='line2'>It looks too arrogant a jest—</div> <div class='line'>The fierce old man—to take <i>his</i> name</div> <div class='line'>You bandbox. Off, and let him rest.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_97'></SPAN>XLV</h2> <p><b>Mablethorpe</b></p> <p>[Published in <i>Manchester Athænaum Album</i>, 1850. Written, 1837. Republished, altered, in <i>Life</i>, vol. I, p. 161.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>How often, when a child I lay reclined,</div> <div class='line2'>I took delight in this locality!</div> <div class='line'>Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind,</div> <div class='line2'>And here the Grecian ships did seem to be.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>And here again I come and only find</div> <div class='line2'>The drain-cut levels of the marshy lea,—</div> <div class='line'>Gray sand banks and pale sunsets—dreary wind,</div> <div class='line2'>Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy clouded sea.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_98'></SPAN>XLVI</h2> <p>[Published in <i>The Keepsake for 1851: an illustrated annual</i>, edited by Miss Power. London: David Bogue. To this issue of the Keepsake Tennyson also contributed 'Come not when I am dead' now included in the collected Works.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>What time I wasted youthful hours</div> <div class='line'>One of the shining wingèd powers,</div> <div class='line'>Show'd me vast cliffs with crown of towers,</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>As towards the gracious light I bow'd,</div> <div class='line'>They seem'd high palaces and proud,</div> <div class='line'>Hid now and then with sliding cloud.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>He said, 'The labour is not small;</div> <div class='line'>Yet winds the pathway free to all:—</div> <div class='line'>Take care thou dost not fear to fall!'</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_99'></SPAN>XLVII</h2> <p><b>Britons, Guard your Own</b></p> <p>[Published in <i>The Examiner</i>, January 31, 1852. Verses 1 (considerably altered), 7, 8 and 10, are reprinted in Life, vol. I, p. 344.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Rise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead;</div> <div class='line'>The world's last tempest darkens overhead;</div> <div class='line4'>The Pope has bless'd him;</div> <div class='line4'>The Church caress'd him;</div> <div class='line'>He triumphs; maybe, we shall stand alone:</div> <div class='line4'>Britons, guard your own.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>His ruthless host is bought with plunder'd gold,</div> <div class='line'>By lying priest's the peasant's votes controlled.</div> <div class='line4'>All freedom vanish'd,</div> <div class='line4'>The true men banished,</div> <div class='line'>He triumphs; maybe, we shall stand alone.</div> <div class='line4'>Britons, guard your own.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Peace-lovers we—sweet Peace we all desire—</div> <div class='line'>Peace-lovers we—but who can trust a liar?—</div> <div class='line4'>Peace-lovers, haters</div> <div class='line4'>Of shameless traitors,</div> <div class='line'>We hate not France, but this man's heart of stone.</div> <div class='line4'>Britons, guard your own.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>We hate not France, but France has lost her voice</div> <SPAN name='Page_100'></SPAN> <div class='line'>This man is France, the man they call her choice.</div> <div class='line4'>By tricks and spying,</div> <div class='line4'>By craft and lying,</div> <div class='line'>And murder was her freedom overthrown.</div> <div class='line4'>Britons, guard your own.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>'Vive l'Empereur' may follow by and bye;</div> <div class='line'>'God save the Queen' is here a truer cry.</div> <div class='line4'>God save the Nation,</div> <div class='line4'>The toleration,</div> <div class='line'>And the free speech that makes a Briton known.</div> <div class='line4'>Britons, guard your own.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Rome's dearest daughter now is captive France,</div> <div class='line'>The Jesuit laughs, and reckoning on his chance,</div> <div class='line4'>Would, unrelenting,</div> <div class='line4'>Kill all dissenting,</div> <div class='line'>Till we were left to fight for truth alone.</div> <div class='line4'>Britons, guard your own.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Call home your ships across Biscayan tides,</div> <div class='line'>To blow the battle from their oaken sides.</div> <div class='line4'>Why waste they yonder</div> <div class='line4'>Their idle thunder?</div> <div class='line'>Why stay they there to guard a foreign throne?</div> <div class='line4'>Seamen, guard your own.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>We were the best of marksmen long ago,</div> <SPAN name='Page_101'></SPAN> <div class='line'>We won old battles with our strength, the bow.</div> <div class='line4'>Now practise, yeomen,</div> <div class='line4'>Like those bowmen,</div> <div class='line'>Till your balls fly as their true shafts have flown.</div> <div class='line4'>Yeomen, guard your own.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>His soldier-ridden Highness might incline</div> <div class='line'>To take Sardinia, Belgium, or the Rhine:</div> <div class='line4'>Shall we stand idle,</div> <div class='line4'>Nor seek to bridle</div> <div class='line'>His vile aggressions, till we stand alone?</div> <div class='line4'>Make their cause your own.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Should he land here, and for one hour prevail,</div> <div class='line'>There must no man go back to bear the tale:</div> <div class='line4'>No man to bear it—</div> <div class='line4'>Swear it! We swear it!</div> <div class='line'>Although we fought the banded world alone,</div> <div class='line4'>We swear to guard our own.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_102'></SPAN>XLVIII</h2> <p><b>Hands all Round</b></p> <p>[Published in <i>The Examiner</i>, February 7, 1852. Reprinted, slightly altered, in Life, vol. I, p. 345. Included, almost entirely re-written, in collected Works.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>First drink a health, this solemn night,</div> <div class='line2'>A health to England, every guest;</div> <div class='line'>That man's the best cosmopolite</div> <div class='line2'>Who loves his native country best.</div> <div class='line'>May Freedom's oak for ever live</div> <div class='line2'>With stronger life from day to day;</div> <div class='line'>That man's the best Conservative</div> <div class='line2'>Who lops the mouldered branch away.</div> <div class='line5'>Hands all round!</div> <div class='line'>God the tyrant's hope confound!</div> <div class='line'>To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,</div> <div class='line2'>And the great name of England round and round.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>A health to Europe's honest men!</div> <div class='line2'>Heaven guard them from her tyrants' jails!</div> <div class='line'>From wronged Poerio's noisome den,</div> <div class='line2'>From iron limbs and tortured nails!</div> <div class='line'>We curse the crimes of Southern kings,</div> <div class='line2'>The Russian whips and Austrian rods—</div> <div class='line'>We likewise have our evil things;</div> <div class='line2'>Too much we make our Ledgers, Gods.</div> <div class='line5'>Yet hands all round!</div> <div class='line2'>God the tyrant's cause confound!</div> <SPAN name='Page_103'></SPAN> <div class='line'>To Europe's better health we drink, my friends,</div> <div class='line2'>And the great name of England round and round.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>What health to France, if France be she</div> <div class='line2'>Whom martial progress only charms?</div> <div class='line'>Yet tell her—better to be free</div> <div class='line2'>Than vanquish all the world in arms.</div> <div class='line'>Her frantic city's flashing heats</div> <div class='line2'>But fire, to blast the hopes of men.</div> <div class='line'>Why change the titles of your streets?</div> <div class='line2'>You fools, you'll want them all again.</div> <div class='line5'>Hands all round!</div> <div class='line2'>God the tyrant's cause confound!</div> <div class='line'>To France, the wiser France, we drink, my friends,</div> <div class='line2'>And the great name of England round and round.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Gigantic daughter of the West,</div> <div class='line2'>We drink to thee across the flood,</div> <div class='line'>We know thee most, we love thee best,</div> <div class='line2'>For art thou not of British blood?</div> <div class='line'>Should war's mad blast again be blown,</div> <div class='line2'>Permit not thou the tyrant powers</div> <div class='line'>To fight thy mother here alone,</div> <div class='line2'>But let thy broadsides roar with ours.</div> <div class='line5'>Hands all round!</div> <div class='line2'>God the tyrant's cause confound!</div> <SPAN name='Page_104'></SPAN> <div class='line'>To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends,</div> <div class='line2'>And the great name of England round and round.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>O rise, our strong Atlantic sons,</div> <div class='line2'>When war against our freedom springs!</div> <div class='line'>O speak to Europe through your guns!</div> <div class='line'>They <i>can</i> be understood by kings.</div> <div class='line'>You must not mix our Queen with those</div> <div class='line2'>That wish to keep their people fools;</div> <div class='line'>Our freedom's foemen are her foes,</div> <div class='line2'>She comprehends the race she rules.</div> <div class='line5'>Hands all round!</div> <div class='line2'>God the tyrant's cause confound!</div> <div class='line'>To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends,</div> <div class='line2'>And the great name of England round and round.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_105'></SPAN>XLIX</h2> <p><b>Suggested by Reading an Article in a Newspaper</b></p> <p>[Published in <i>The Examiner</i>, February 14, 1852, and never reprinted nor acknowledged. The proof sheets of the poem, with alterations in Tennyson's autograph, were offered for public sale in 1906.]</p> <p>To the Editor of <i>The Examiner</i>.</p> <p>SIR,—I have read with much interest the poems of Merlin. The enclosed is longer than either of those, and certainly not so good: yet as I flatter myself that it has a smack of Merlin's style in it, and as I feel that it expresses forcibly enough some of the feelings of our time, perhaps you may be induced to admit it.</p> <p>TALIESSEN.</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>How much I love this writer's manly style!</div> <div class='line2'>By such men led, our press had ever been</div> <div class='line'>The public conscience of our noble isle,</div> <div class='line2'>Severe and quick to feel a civic sin,</div> <div class='line'>To raise the people and chastise the times</div> <div class='line'>With such a heat as lives in great creative rhymes.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>O you, the Press! what good from you might spring!</div> <div class='line2'>What power is yours to blast a cause or bless!</div> <div class='line'>I fear for you, as for some youthful king,</div> <div class='line2'>Lest you go wrong from power in excess.</div> <div class='line'>Take heed of your wide privileges! we</div> <div class='line'>The thinking men of England, loathe a tyranny.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>A freeman is, I doubt not, freest here;</div> <SPAN name='Page_106'></SPAN> <div class='line2'>The single voice may speak his mind aloud;</div> <div class='line'>An honest isolation need not fear</div> <div class='line2'>The Court, the Church, the Parliament, the crowd.</div> <div class='line'>No, nor the Press! and look you well to that—</div> <div class='line'>We must not dread in you the nameless autocrat.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>And you, dark Senate of the public pen,</div> <div class='line2'>You may not, like yon tyrant, deal in spies.</div> <div class='line'>Yours are the public acts of public men,</div> <div class='line2'>But yours are not their household privacies.</div> <div class='line'>I grant you one of the great Powers on earth,</div> <div class='line'>But be not you the blatant traitors of the hearth.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>You hide the hand that writes: it must be so,</div> <div class='line2'>For better so you fight for public ends;</div> <div class='line'>But some you strike can scarce return the blow;</div> <div class='line2'>You should be all the nobler, O my friends.</div> <div class='line'>Be noble, you! nor work with faction's tools</div> <div class='line'>To charm a lower sphere of fulminating fools.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>But knowing all your power to heat or cool,</div> <div class='line2'>To soothe a civic wound or keep it raw,</div> <div class='line'>Be loyal, if you wish for wholesome rule:</div> <div class='line2'>Our ancient boast is this—we reverence law.</div> <div class='line'>We still were loyal in our wildest fights,</div> <div class='line'>Or loyally disloyal battled for our rights.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>O Grief and Shame if while I preach of laws</div> <SPAN name='Page_107'></SPAN> <div class='line2'>Whereby to guard our Freedom from offence—</div> <div class='line'>And trust an ancient manhood and the cause</div> <div class='line2'>Of England and her health of commonsense—</div> <div class='line'>There hang within the heavens a dark disgrace,</div> <div class='line'>Some vast Assyrian doom to burst upon our race.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>I feel the thousand cankers of our State,</div> <div class='line2'>I fain would shake their triple-folded ease,</div> <div class='line'>The hogs who can believe in nothing great,</div> <div class='line2'>Sneering bedridden in the down of Peace</div> <div class='line'>Over their scrips and shares, their meats and wine,</div> <div class='line'>With stony smirks at all things human and divine!</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>I honour much, I say, this man's appeal.</div> <div class='line2'>We drag so deep in our commercial mire,</div> <div class='line'>We move so far from greatness, that I feel</div> <div class='line2'>Exception to be character'd in fire.</div> <div class='line'>Who looks for Godlike greatness here shall see</div> <div class='line'>The British Goddess, sleek Respectability.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Alas for her and all her small delights!</div> <div class='line2'>She feels not how the social frame is rack'd.</div> <div class='line'>She loves a little scandal which excites;</div> <div class='line2'>A little feeling is a want of tact.</div> <div class='line'>For her there lie in wait millions of foes,</div> <div class='line'>And yet the 'not too much' is all the rule she knows.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Poor soul! behold her: what decorous calm!</div> <SPAN name='Page_108'></SPAN> <div class='line2'>She, with her week-day worldliness sufficed,</div> <div class='line'>Stands in her pew and hums her decent psalm</div> <div class='line2'>With decent dippings at the name of Christ!</div> <div class='line'>And she has mov'd in that smooth way so long,</div> <div class='line'>She hardly can believe that she shall suffer wrong.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Alas, our Church! alas, her growing ills,</div> <div class='line2'>And those who tolerate not her tolerance,</div> <div class='line'>But needs must sell the burthen of their wills</div> <div class='line2'>To that half-pagan harlot kept by France!</div> <div class='line'>Free subjects of the kindliest of all thrones,</div> <div class='line'>Headlong they plunge their doubts among old rags and bones.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Alas, Church writers, altercating tribes—</div> <div class='line2'>The vessel and your Church may sink in storms.</div> <div class='line'>Christ cried: Woe, woe, to Pharisees and Scribes!</div> <div class='line2'>Like them, you bicker less for truth than forms.</div> <div class='line'>I sorrow when I read the things you write,</div> <div class='line'>What unheroic pertness! what un-Christian spite!</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Alas, our youth, so clever yet so small,</div> <div class='line2'>Thin dilletanti deep in nature's plan,</div> <div class='line'>Who make the emphatic One, by whom is all,</div> <div class='line2'>An essence less concentred than a man!</div> <div class='line'>Better wild Mahmoud's war-cry once again!</div> <div class='line'>O fools, we want a manlike God and Godlike men!</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Go, frightful omens. Yet once more I turn</div> <SPAN name='Page_109'></SPAN> <div class='line2'>To you that mould men's thoughts; I call on you</div> <div class='line'>To make opinion warlike, lest we learn</div> <div class='line2'>A sharper lesson than we ever knew.</div> <div class='line'>I hear a thunder though the skies are fair,</div> <div class='line'>But shrill you, loud and long, the warning-note:</div> <div class='line3'>Prepare!</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_110'></SPAN>L</h2> <p>[Lord Tennyson wrote, by Royal request, two stanzas which were sung as part of <i>God Save the Queen</i> at a State concert in connection with the Princess Royal's marriage: these were printed in the <i>Times</i> of January 26, 1858.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>God bless our Prince and Bride!</div> <div class='line'>God keep their lands allied,</div> <div class='line2'>God save the Queen!</div> <div class='line'>Clothe them with righteousness,</div> <div class='line'>Crown them with happiness,</div> <div class='line'>Them with all blessings bless,</div> <div class='line2'>God save the Queen.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Fair fall this hallow'd hour,</div> <div class='line'>Farewell our England's flower,</div> <div class='line2'>God save the Queen!</div> <div class='line'>Farewell, fair rose of May!</div> <div class='line'>Let both the peoples say,</div> <div class='line'>God bless thy marriage-day,</div> <div class='line2'>God bless the Queen.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_111'></SPAN>LI</h2> <p><b>The Ringlet</b></p> <p>[Published in <i>Enoch Arden</i> volume (London: E. Moxon & Co, 1864) and never reprinted.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>'Your ringlets, your ringlets,</div> <div class='line2'>That look so golden-gay,</div> <div class='line'>If you will give me one, but one,</div> <div class='line2'>To kiss it night and day,</div> <div class='line'>Then never chilling touch of Time</div> <div class='line2'>Will turn it silver-gray;</div> <div class='line'>And then shall I know it is all true gold</div> <div class='line'>To flame and sparkle and stream as of old,</div> <div class='line'>Till all the comets in heaven are cold,</div> <div class='line2'>And all her stars decay.'</div> <div class='line'>'Then take it, love, and put it by;</div> <div class='line'>This cannot change, nor yet can I.'</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>'My ringlet, my ringlet,</div> <div class='line2'>That art so golden-gay,</div> <div class='line'>Now never chilling touch of Time</div> <div class='line2'>Can turn thee silver-gray;</div> <div class='line'>And a lad may wink, and a girl may hint,</div> <div class='line2'>And a fool may say his say;</div> <div class='line'>For my doubts and fears were all amiss,</div> <SPAN name='Page_112'></SPAN> <div class='line'>And I swear henceforth by this and this,</div> <div class='line'>That a doubt will only come for a kiss,</div> <div class='line2'>And a fear to be kissed away.'</div> <div class='line'>'Then kiss it, love, and put it by:</div> <div class='line'>If this can change, why so can I.'</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>O Ringlet, O Ringlet,</div> <div class='line2'>I kiss'd you night and day,</div> <div class='line'>And Ringlet, O Ringlet,</div> <div class='line2'>You still are golden-gay,</div> <div class='line'>But Ringlet, O Ringlet,</div> <div class='line2'>You should be silver-gray:</div> <div class='line'>For what is this which now I'm told,</div> <div class='line'>I that took you for true gold,</div> <div class='line'>She that gave you's bought and sold,</div> <div class='line5'>Sold, sold.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>O Ringlet, O Ringlet,</div> <div class='line2'>She blush'd a rosy red,</div> <div class='line'>When Ringlet, O Ringlet,</div> <div class='line2'>She clipt you from her head,</div> <div class='line'>And Ringlet, O Ringlet,</div> <div class='line2'>She gave you me, and said,</div> <div class='line'>'Come, kiss it, love, and put it by:</div> <div class='line'>If this can change, why so can I.'</div> <div class='line'>O fie, you golden nothing, fie</div> <div class='line5'>You golden lie.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>O Ringlet, O Ringlet,</div> <SPAN name='Page_113'></SPAN> <div class='line2'>I count you much to blame,</div> <div class='line'>For Ringlet, O Ringlet,</div> <div class='line2'>You put me much to shame,</div> <div class='line'>So Ringlet, O Ringlet,</div> <div class='line2'>I doom you to the flame.</div> <div class='line'>For what is this which now I learn,</div> <div class='line'>Has given all my faith a turn?</div> <div class='line'>Burn, you glossy heretic, burn,</div> <div class='line5'>Burn, burn.</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_114'></SPAN>LII</h2> <p><b>Song</b></p> <p>[This first form of the Song in <i>The Princess</i> ('Home they brought her warrior dead') was published only in <i>Selections from Tennyson</i>. London: E. Moxon & Co, 1864.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Home they brought him slain with spears.</div> <div class='line2'>They brought him home at even-fall:</div> <div class='line'>All alone she sits and hears</div> <div class='line2'>Echoes in his empty hall,</div> <div class='line3'>Sounding on the morrow.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The Sun peeped in from open field,</div> <div class='line2'>The boy began to leap and prance,</div> <div class='line2'>Rode upon his father's lance,</div> <div class='line'>Beat upon his father's shield—</div> <div class='line3'>'Oh hush, my joy, my sorrow.'</div> </div></div> <hr class='section' /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_115'></SPAN>LIII</h2> <p><b>1865-1866</b></p> <p>[Published in <i>Good Words</i> for March 1, 1868 as a decorative page, with an accompanying full page plate by T. Dalziel. The lines were never reprinted.]</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>I stood on a tower in the wet,</div> <div class='line'>And New Year and Old Year met,</div> <div class='line'>And winds were roaring and blowing;</div> <div class='line'>And I said, 'O years that meet in tears,</div> <div class='line'>Have ye aught that is worth the knowing?</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>'Science enough and exploring</div> <div class='line'>Wanderers coming and going</div> <div class='line'>Matter enough for deploring</div> <div class='line'>But aught that is worth the knowing?'</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Seas at my feet were flowing</div> <div class='line'>Waves on the shingle pouring,</div> <div class='line'>Old Year roaring and blowing</div> <div class='line'>And New Year blowing and roaring.</div> </div></div> <hr /> <h2><SPAN name='Page_116'></SPAN><SPAN name='Page_117'></SPAN>The Lover's Tale<br/> 1833</h2> <p><SPAN name='Page_118'></SPAN>[It was originally intended by Tennyson that this poem should form part of his 1833 volume. It was put in type and, according to custom, copies were distributed among his friends, when, on the eve of publication, he decided to omit it. Again, in 1869, it was sent to press with a new third part added, and was again withdrawn, the third part only—'The Golden Supper,' founded on a story in Boccaccio's <i>Decameron</i>—being published in the volume, 'The Holy Grail.' In 1866, 1870 and 1875, attempts had been made by Mr Herne Shepherd to publish editions of 'The Lover's Tale,' reprinted from stray proof copies of the 1833 printing. Each of these attempts was repressed by Tennyson, and at last in 1879 the complete poem, as now included in the collected Works, was issued, with an apologetic reference to the necessity of reprinting the poem to prevent its circulation in an unauthorised form. But the 1879 issue is considerably altered from the original issue of 1833, as written by Tennyson in his nineteenth year. Since only as a product of Tennyson's youth does the poem merit any attention, it has seemed good to reprint it here as originally written.]</p> <p><SPAN name='Page_119'></SPAN><b><br/>A FRAGMENT</b></p> <p>The Poem of the Lover's Tale (the lover is supposed to be himself a poet) was written in my nineteenth year, and consequently contains nearly as many faults as words. That I deemed it not wholly unoriginal is my only apology for its publication—an apology lame and poor, and somewhat impertinent to boot: so that if its infirmities meet with more laughter than charity in the world, I shall not raise my voice in its defence. I am aware how deficient the Poem is in point of art, and it is not without considerable misgivings that I have ventured to publish even this fragment of it. 'Enough,' says the old proverb, 'is as good as a feast.'—(Tennyson's original introductory note.)</p> <div class='poem'> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff,</div> <div class='line'>Filling with purple gloom the vacancies</div> <div class='line'>Between the tufted hills the sloping seas</div> <div class='line'>Hung in mid-heaven, and half-way down rare sails,</div> <div class='line'>White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky.</div> <div class='line'>Oh! pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay,</div> <div class='line'>Like to a quiet mind in the loud world,</div> <div class='line'>Where the chafed breakers of the outer sea</div> <div class='line'>Sunk powerless, even as anger falls aside,</div> <div class='line'>And withers on the breast of peaceful love,</div> <div class='line'>Thou didst receive that belt of pines, that fledged</div> <div class='line'>The hills that watch'd thee, as Love watcheth Love,—</div> <div class='line'>In thine own essence, and delight thyself</div> <SPAN name='Page_120'></SPAN> <div class='line'>To make it wholly thine on sunny days.</div> <div class='line'>Keep thou thy name of 'Lover's bay': See, Sirs,</div> <div class='line'>Even now the Goddess of the Past, that takes</div> <div class='line'>The heart, and sometimes toucheth but one string,</div> <div class='line'>That quivers, and is silent, and sometimes</div> <div class='line'>Sweeps suddenly all its half-moulder'd chords</div> <div class='line'>To an old melody, begins to play</div> <div class='line'>On those first-moved fibres of the brain.</div> <div class='line'>I come, Great mistress of the ear and eye:</div> <div class='line'>Oh! lead me tenderly, for fear the mind</div> <div class='line'>Rain thro' my sight, and strangling sorrow weigh</div> <div class='line'>Mine utterance with lameness. Tho' long years</div> <div class='line'>Have hallowed out a valley and a gulf</div> <div class='line'>Betwixt the native land of Love and me,</div> <div class='line'>Breathe but a little on me, and the sail</div> <div class='line'>Will draw me to the rising of the sun,</div> <div class='line'>The lucid chambers of the morning star,</div> <div class='line'>And East of life.</div> <div class='line10'>Permit me, friend, I prithee,</div> <div class='line'>To pass my hand across my brows, and muse</div> <div class='line'>On those dear hills, that nevermore will meet</div> <div class='line'>The sight that throbs and aches beneath my touch,</div> <div class='line'>As tho' there beat a heart in either eye;</div> <div class='line'>For when the outer lights are darken'd thus,</div> <div class='line'>The memory's vision hath a keener edge.</div> <div class='line'>It grows upon me now—the semicircle</div> <div class='line'>Of dark blue waters and the narrow fringe</div> <div class='line'>Of curving beach—its wreaths of dripping green—</div> <div class='line'>Its pale pink shells—the summer-house aloft</div> <div class='line'>That open'd on the pines with doors of glass,</div> <SPAN name='Page_121'></SPAN> <div class='line'>A mountain nest the pleasure boat that rock'd</div> <div class='line'>Light-green with its own shadow, keel to keel,</div> <div class='line'>Upon the crispings of the dappled waves</div> <div class='line'>That blanched upon its side.</div> <div class='line12'>O Love, O Hope,</div> <div class='line'>They come, they crowd upon me all at once,</div> <div class='line'>Moved from the cloud of unforgotten things,</div> <div class='line'>That sometimes on the horizon of the mind</div> <div class='line'>Lies folded—often sweeps athwart in storm—</div> <div class='line'>They flash across the darkness of my brain,</div> <div class='line'>The many pleasant days, the moolit nights,</div> <div class='line'>The dewy dawnings and the amber eyes,</div> <div class='line'>When thou and I, Camilla, thou and I</div> <div class='line'>Were borne about the bay, or safely moor'd</div> <div class='line'>Beneath some low brow'd cavern, where the wave</div> <div class='line'>Plash'd sapping its worn ribs (the while without,</div> <div class='line'>And close above us, sang the wind-tost pine,</div> <div class='line'>And shook its earthly socket, for we heard,</div> <div class='line'>In rising and in falling with the tide,</div> <div class='line'>Close by our ears, the huge roots strain and creak),</div> <div class='line'>Eye feeding upon eye with deep intent;</div> <div class='line'>And mine, with love too high to be express'd</div> <div class='line'>Arrested in its sphere, and ceasing from</div> <div class='line'>All contemplation of all forms, did pause</div> <div class='line'>To worship mine own image, laved in light,</div> <div class='line'>The centre of the splendours, all unworthy</div> <div class='line'>Of such a shrine—mine image in her eyes,</div> <div class='line'>By diminution made most glorious,</div> <SPAN name='Page_122'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Moved with their motions, as those eyes were moved</div> <div class='line'>With motions of the soul, as my heart beat</div> <div class='line'>Twice to the melody of hers. Her face</div> <div class='line'>Was starry-fair, not pale, tenderly flush'd</div> <div class='line'>As 'twere with dawn. She was dark-hair'd, dark-eyed;</div> <div class='line'>Oh, such dark eyes! A single glance of them</div> <div class='line'>Will govern a whole life from birth to death,</div> <div class='line'>Careless of all things else, led on with light</div> <div class='line'>In trances and in visions: look at them,</div> <div class='line'>You lose yourself in utter ignorance,</div> <div class='line'>You cannot find their depth; for they go back,</div> <div class='line'>And farther back, and still withdraw themselves</div> <div class='line'>Quite into the deep soul, that evermore,</div> <div class='line'>Fresh springing from her fountains in the brain,</div> <div class='line'>Still pouring thro', floods with redundant light</div> <div class='line'>Her narrow portals.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line12'>Trust me, long ago</div> <div class='line'>I should have died, if it were possible</div> <div class='line'>To die in gazing on that perfectness</div> <div class='line'>Which I do bear within me; I had died</div> <div class='line'>But from my farthest lapse, my latest ebb,</div> <div class='line'>Thine image, like a charm of light and strength</div> <div class='line'>Upon the waters, pushed me back again</div> <div class='line'>On these deserted sands of barren life.</div> <div class='line'>Tho' from the deep vault, where the heart of hope</div> <div class='line'>Fell into dust, and crumbled in the dark—</div> <SPAN name='Page_123'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Forgetting who to render beautiful</div> <div class='line'>Her countenance with quick and healthful blood—</div> <div class='line'>Thou didst not sway me upward, could I perish</div> <div class='line'>With such a costly casket in the grasp</div> <div class='line'>Of memory? He, that saith it, hath o'erstepp'd</div> <div class='line'>The slippery footing of his narrow wit,</div> <div class='line'>And fall'n away from judgment. Thou art light,</div> <div class='line'>To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers,</div> <div class='line'>And length of days, and immortality</div> <div class='line'>Of thought, and freshness ever self-renew'd.</div> <div class='line'>For Time and Grief abode too long with Life,</div> <div class='line'>And like all other friends i' the world, at last</div> <div class='line'>They grew aweary of her fellowship:</div> <div class='line'>So Time and Grief did beckon unto Death,</div> <div class='line'>And Death drew nigh and beat the doors of Life;</div> <div class='line'>But thou didst sit alone in the inner house,</div> <div class='line'>A wakeful port'ress and didst parle with Death,</div> <div class='line'>'This is a charmed dwelling which I hold';</div> <div class='line'>So Death gave back, and would no further come.</div> <div class='line'>Yet is my life nor in the present time,</div> <div class='line'>Nor in the present place. To me alone,</div> <div class='line'>Pushed from his chair of regal heritage,</div> <div class='line'>The Present is the vassal of the Past:</div> <div class='line'>So that, in that I <i>have</i> lived, do I live,</div> <div class='line'>And cannot die, and am, in having been,</div> <div class='line'>A portion of the pleasant yesterday,</div> <div class='line'>Thrust forward on to-day and out of place;</div> <div class='line'>A body journeying onward, sick with toil,</div> <div class='line'>The lithe limbs bow'd as with a heavy weight</div> <div class='line'>And all the senses weaken'd in all save that</div> <SPAN name='Page_124'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Which, long ago, they had glean'd and garner'd up</div> <div class='line'>Into the granaries of memory—</div> <div class='line'>The clear brow, bulwark of the precious brain,</div> <div class='line'>Now seam'd and chink'd with years—and all the while</div> <div class='line'>The light soul twines and mingles with the growths</div> <div class='line'>Of vigorous early days, attracted, won,</div> <div class='line'>Married, made one with, molten into all</div> <div class='line'>The beautiful in Past of act or place.</div> <div class='line'>Even as the all-enduring camel, driven</div> <div class='line'>Far from the diamond fountain by the palms,</div> <div class='line'>Toils onward thro' the middle moonlight nights,</div> <div class='line'>Shadow'd and crimson'd with the drifting dust,</div> <div class='line'>Or when the white heats of the blinding noons</div> <div class='line'>Beat from the concave sand; yet in him keeps</div> <div class='line'>A draught of that sweet fountain that he loves,</div> <div class='line'>To stay his feet from falling, and his spirit</div> <div class='line'>From bitterness of death.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line12'>Ye ask me, friends,</div> <div class='line'>When I began to love. How should I tell ye?</div> <div class='line'>Or from the after fulness of my heart,</div> <div class='line'>Flow back again unto my slender spring</div> <div class='line'>And first of love, tho' every turn and depth</div> <div class='line'>Between is clearer in my life than all</div> <div class='line'>Its present flow. Ye know not what ye ask.</div> <div class='line'>How should the broad and open flower tell</div> <div class='line'>What sort of bud it was, when press'd together</div> <div class='line'>In its green sheath, close lapt in silken folds?</div> <SPAN name='Page_125'></SPAN> <div class='line'>It seemed to keep its sweetness to itself,</div> <div class='line'>Yet was not the less sweet for that it seem'd.</div> <div class='line'>For young Life knows not when young Life was born,</div> <div class='line'>But takes it all for granted: neither Love,</div> <div class='line'>Warm in the heart, his cradle can remember</div> <div class='line'>Love in the womb, but resteth satisfied,</div> <div class='line'>Looking on her that brought him to the light:</div> <div class='line'>Or as men know not when they fall asleep</div> <div class='line'>Into delicious dreams, our other life,</div> <div class='line'>So know I not when I began to love.</div> <div class='line'>This is my sum of knowledge—that my love</div> <div class='line'>Grew with myself—and say rather, was my growth,</div> <div class='line'>My inward sap, the hold I have on earth,</div> <div class='line'>My outward circling air wherein I breathe,</div> <div class='line'>Which yet upholds my life, and evermore</div> <div class='line'>Was to me daily life and daily death:</div> <div class='line'>For how should I have lived and not have loved?</div> <div class='line'>Can ye take off the sweetness from the flower,</div> <div class='line'>The colour and the sweetness from the rose,</div> <div class='line'>And place them by themselves? or set apart</div> <div class='line'>Their motions and their brightness from the stars,</div> <div class='line'>And then point out the flower or the star?</div> <div class='line'>Or build a wall betwixt my life and love,</div> <div class='line'>And tell me where I am? 'Tis even thus:</div> <div class='line'>In that I live I love; because I love</div> <div class='line'>I live: whate'er is fountain to the one</div> <div class='line'>Is fountain to the other; and whene'er</div> <div class='line'>Our God unknits the riddle of the one,</div> <SPAN name='Page_126'></SPAN> <div class='line'>There is no shade or fold of mystery</div> <div class='line'>Swathing the other.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line12'>Many, many years,</div> <div class='line'>For they seem many and my most of life,</div> <div class='line'>And well I could have linger'd in that porch,</div> <div class='line'>So unproportioned to the dwelling place,</div> <div class='line'>In the maydews of childhood, opposite</div> <div class='line'>The flush and dawn of youth, we lived together,</div> <div class='line'>Apart, alone together on those hills.</div> <div class='line'>Before he saw my day my father died,</div> <div class='line'>And he was happy that he saw it not:</div> <div class='line'>But I and the first daisy on his grave</div> <div class='line'>From the same clay came into light at once.</div> <div class='line'>As Love and I do number equal years</div> <div class='line'>So she, my love, is of an age with me.</div> <div class='line'>How like each other was the birth of each!</div> <div class='line'>The sister of my mother—she that bore</div> <div class='line'>Camilla close beneath her beating heart,</div> <div class='line'>Which to the imprisoned spirit of the child,</div> <div class='line'>With its true touched pulses in the flow</div> <div class='line'>And hourly visitation of the blood,</div> <div class='line'>Sent notes of preparation manifold,</div> <div class='line'>And mellow'd echoes of the outer world—</div> <div class='line'>My mother's sister, mother of my love,</div> <div class='line'>Who had a twofold claim upon my heart,</div> <div class='line'>One twofold mightier than the other was,</div> <div class='line'>In giving so much beauty to the world,</div> <div class='line'>And so much wealth as God had charged her with,</div> <div class='line'>Loathing to put it from herself for ever,</div> <SPAN name='Page_127'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Crown'd with her highest act the placid face</div> <div class='line'>And breathless body of her good deeds past.</div> <div class='line'>So we were born, so orphan'd. She was motherless,</div> <div class='line'>And I without a father. So from each</div> <div class='line'>Of those two pillars which from earth uphold</div> <div class='line'>Our childhood, one had fall'n away, and all</div> <div class='line'>The careful burthen of our tender years</div> <div class='line'>Trembled upon the other. He that gave</div> <div class='line'>Her life, to me delightedly fulfill'd</div> <div class='line'>All loving-kindnesses, all offices</div> <div class='line'>Of watchful care and trembling tenderness.</div> <div class='line'>He worked for both: he pray'd for both: he slept</div> <div class='line'>Dreaming of both; nor was his love the less</div> <div class='line'>Because it was divided, and shot forth</div> <div class='line'>Boughs on each side, laden with wholesome shade,</div> <div class='line'>Wherein we rested sleeping or awake,</div> <div class='line'>And sung aloud the matin-song of life.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>She was my foster-sister: on one arm</div> <div class='line'>The flaxen ringlets of our infancies</div> <div class='line'>Wander'd, the while we rested: one soft lap</div> <div class='line'>Pillow'd us both: one common light of eyes</div> <div class='line'>Was on us as we lay: our baby lips,</div> <div class='line'>Kissing one bosom, ever drew from thence</div> <div class='line'>The stream of life, one stream, one life, one blood,</div> <div class='line'>One sustenance, which, still as thought grew large,</div> <div class='line'>Still larger moulding all the house of thought,</div> <div class='line'>Perchance assimilated all our tastes</div> <div class='line'>And future fancies. 'Tis a beautiful</div> <SPAN name='Page_128'></SPAN> <div class='line'>And pleasant meditation, what whate'er</div> <div class='line'>Our general mother meant for me alone,</div> <div class='line'>Our mutual mother dealt to both of us:</div> <div class='line'>So what was earliest mine in earliest life,</div> <div class='line'>I shared with her in whom myself remains.</div> <div class='line'>As was our childhood, so our infancy,</div> <div class='line'>They tell me, was a very miracle</div> <div class='line'>Of fellow-feeling and communion.</div> <div class='line'>They tell me that we would not be alone,—</div> <div class='line'>We cried when we were parted; when I wept,</div> <div class='line'>Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears,</div> <div class='line'>Stay'd on the clouds of sorrow; that we loved</div> <div class='line'>The sound of one another's voices more</div> <div class='line'>Than the grey cuckoo loves his name, and learn'd</div> <div class='line'>To lisp in tune together; that we slept</div> <div class='line'>In the same cradle always, face to face,</div> <div class='line'>Heart beating time to heart, lip pressing lip,</div> <div class='line'>Folding each other, breathing on each other,</div> <div class='line'>Dreaming together (dreaming of each other</div> <div class='line'>They should have added) till the morning light</div> <div class='line'>Sloped thro' the pines, upon the dewy pane</div> <div class='line'>Falling, unseal'd our eyelids, and we woke</div> <div class='line'>To gaze upon each other. If this be true,</div> <div class='line'>At thought of which my whole soul languishes</div> <div class='line'>And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath, as tho'</div> <div class='line'>A man in some still garden should infuse</div> <div class='line'>Rich attar in the bosom of the rose,</div> <div class='line'>Till, drunk with its own wine and overfull</div> <div class='line'>Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself,</div> <div class='line'>It fall on its own thorns—if this be true—</div> <SPAN name='Page_129'></SPAN> <div class='line'>And that way my wish leaneth evermore</div> <div class='line'>Still to believe it—'tis so sweet a thought,</div> <div class='line'>Why in the utter stillness of the soul</div> <div class='line'>Doth question'd memory answer not, nor tell,</div> <div class='line'>Of this our earliest, our closest drawn,</div> <div class='line'>Most loveliest, most delicious union?</div> <div class='line'>Oh, happy, happy outset of my days!</div> <div class='line'>Green springtide, April promise, glad new year</div> <div class='line'>Of Being, which with earliest violets,</div> <div class='line'>And lavish carol of clear-throated larks,</div> <div class='line'>Fill'd all the march of life.—I will not speak of thee;</div> <div class='line'>These have not seen thee, these can never know thee,</div> <div class='line'>They cannot understand me. Pass on then</div> <div class='line'>A term of eighteen years. Ye would but laugh</div> <div class='line'>If I should tell ye how I heard in thought</div> <div class='line'>Those rhymes, 'The Lion and the Unicorn'</div> <div class='line'>'The Four-and-twenty Blackbirds' 'Banbury Cross,'</div> <div class='line'>'The Gander' and 'The man of Mitylene,'</div> <div class='line'>And all the quaint old scraps of ancient crones,</div> <div class='line'>Which are as gems set in my memory,</div> <div class='line'>Because she learn'd them with me. Or what profits it</div> <div class='line'>To tell ye that her father died, just ere</div> <div class='line'>The daffodil was blown; or how we found</div> <div class='line'>The drowned seaman on the shore? These things</div> <div class='line'>Unto the quiet daylight of your minds</div> <div class='line'>Are cloud and smoke, but in the dark of mine</div> <SPAN name='Page_130'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Show traced with flame. Move with me to that hour,</div> <div class='line'>Which was the hinge on which the door of Hope,</div> <div class='line'>Once turning, open'd far into the outward,</div> <div class='line'>And never closed again.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line12'>I well remember,</div> <div class='line'>It was a glorious morning, such a one</div> <div class='line'>As dawns but once a season. Mercury</div> <div class='line'>On such a morning would have flung himself</div> <div class='line'>From cloud to cloud, and swum with balanced wings</div> <div class='line'>To some tall mountain. On that day the year</div> <div class='line'>First felt his youth and strength, and from his spring</div> <div class='line'>Moved smiling toward his summer. On that day,</div> <div class='line'>Love working shook his wings (that charged the winds</div> <div class='line'>With spiced May-sweets from bound to bound) and blew</div> <div class='line'>Fresh fire into the sun, and from within</div> <div class='line'>Burst thro' the heated buds, and sent his soul</div> <div class='line'>Into the songs of birds, and touch'd far-off</div> <div class='line'>His mountain-altars, his high hills, with flame</div> <div class='line'>Milder and purer. Up the rocks we wound;</div> <div class='line'>The great pine shook with lovely sounds of joy,</div> <div class='line'>That came on the sea-wind. As mountain brooks</div> <div class='line'>Our blood ran free: the sunshine seem'd to brood</div> <div class='line'>More warmly on the heart than on the brow.</div> <SPAN name='Page_131'></SPAN> <div class='line'>We often paused, and looking back, we saw</div> <div class='line'>The clefts and openings in the hills all fill'd</div> <div class='line'>With the blue valley and the glistening brooks,</div> <div class='line'>And with the low dark groves—a land of Love;</div> <div class='line'>Where Love was worshipp'd upon every height,</div> <div class='line'>Where Love was worshipp'd under every tree—</div> <div class='line'>A land of promise, flowing with the milk</div> <div class='line'>And honey of delicious memories</div> <div class='line'>Down to the sea, as far as eye could ken,</div> <div class='line'>From verge to verge it was a holy land,</div> <div class='line'>Still growing holier as you near'd the bay,</div> <div class='line'>For where the temple stood. When we had reach'd</div> <div class='line'>The grassy platform on some hill, I stoop'd,</div> <div class='line'>I gather'd the wild herbs, and for her brows</div> <div class='line'>And mine wove chaplets of the self-same flower,</div> <div class='line'>Which she took smiling, and with my work there</div> <div class='line'>Crown'd her clear forehead. Once or twice she told me</div> <div class='line'>(For I remember all things), to let grow</div> <div class='line'>The flowers that run poison in their veins.</div> <div class='line'>She said, 'The evil flourish in the world';</div> <div class='line'>Then playfully she gave herself the lie:</div> <div class='line'>'Nothing in nature is unbeautiful,</div> <div class='line'>So, brother, pluck and spare not.' So I wove</div> <div class='line'>Even the dull-blooded poppy, 'whose red flower</div> <div class='line'>Hued with the scarlet of a fierce sunrise,</div> <div class='line'>Like to the wild youth of an evil king,</div> <div class='line'>Is without sweetness, but who crowns himself</div> <div class='line'>Above the secret poisons of his heart</div> <SPAN name='Page_132'></SPAN> <div class='line'>In his old age'—a graceful thought of hers</div> <div class='line'>Graven on my fancy! As I said, with these</div> <div class='line'>She crown'd her forehead. O how like a nymph,</div> <div class='line'>A stately mountain-nymph, she look'd! how native</div> <div class='line'>Unto the hills she trod on! What an angel!</div> <div class='line'>How clothed with beams! My eyes, fix'd upon hers,</div> <div class='line'>Almost forgot even to move again.</div> <div class='line'>My spirit leap'd as with those thrills of bliss</div> <div class='line'>That shoot across the soul in prayer, and show us</div> <div class='line'>That we are surely heard. Methought a light</div> <div class='line'>Burst from the garland I had woven, and stood</div> <div class='line'>A solid glory on her bright black hair:</div> <div class='line'>A light, methought, broke from her dark, dark eyes,</div> <div class='line'>And shot itself into the singing winds;</div> <div class='line'>A light, methought, flash'd even from her white robe,</div> <div class='line'>As from a glass in the sun, and fell about</div> <div class='line'>My footsteps on the mountains.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line12'>About sunset</div> <div class='line'>We came unto the hill of woe, so call'd</div> <div class='line'>Because the legend ran that, long time since,</div> <div class='line'>One rainy night, when every wind blew loud,</div> <div class='line'>A woful man had thrust his wife and child</div> <div class='line'>With shouts from off the bridge, and following, plunged</div> <div class='line'>Into the dizzy chasm below. Below,</div> <div class='line'>Sheer thro' the black-wall'd cliff the rapid brook</div> <SPAN name='Page_133'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Shot down his inner thunders, built above</div> <div class='line'>With matted bramble and the shining gloss</div> <div class='line'>Of ivy-leaves, whose low-hung tresses, dipp'd</div> <div class='line'>In the fierce stream, bore downward with the wave.</div> <div class='line'>The path was steep and loosely strewn with crags</div> <div class='line'>We mounted slowly: yet to both of us</div> <div class='line'>It was delight, not hindrance: unto both</div> <div class='line'>Delight from hardship to be overcome,</div> <div class='line'>And scorn of perilous seeming: unto me</div> <div class='line'>Intense delight and rapture that I breathed,</div> <div class='line'>As with a sense of nigher Deity,</div> <div class='line'>With her to whom all outward fairest things</div> <div class='line'>Were by the busy mind referr'd, compared,</div> <div class='line'>As bearing no essential fruits of excellence.</div> <div class='line'>Save as they were the types and shadowings</div> <div class='line'>Of hers—and then that I became to her</div> <div class='line'>A tutelary angel as she rose,</div> <div class='line'>And with a fearful self-impelling joy</div> <div class='line'>Saw round her feet the country far away,</div> <div class='line'>Beyond the nearest mountain's bosky brows,</div> <div class='line'>Burst into open prospect—heath and hill,</div> <div class='line'>And hollow lined and wooded to the lips—</div> <div class='line'>And steep down walls of battlemented rock</div> <div class='line'>Girded with broom or shiver'd into peaks—</div> <div class='line'>And glory of broad waters interfused,</div> <div class='line'>Whence rose as it were breath and steam of gold;</div> <div class='line'>And over all the great wood rioting</div> <div class='line'>And climbing, starr'd at slender intervals</div> <div class='line'>With blossom tufts of purest white; and last,</div> <div class='line'>Framing the mighty landskip to the West,</div> <SPAN name='Page_134'></SPAN> <div class='line'>A purple range of purple cones, between</div> <div class='line'>Whose interspaces gush'd, in blinding bursts,</div> <div class='line'>The incorporate light of sun and sea.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line12'>At length,</div> <div class='line'>Upon the tremulous bridge, that from beneath</div> <div class='line'>Seemed with a cobweb firmament to link</div> <div class='line'>The earthquake-shattered chasm, hung with shrubs,</div> <div class='line'>We passed with tears of rapture. All the West,</div> <div class='line'>And even unto the middle South, was ribb'd</div> <div class='line'>And barr'd with bloom on bloom. The sun beneath,</div> <div class='line'>Held for a space 'twixt cloud and wave, shower'd down</div> <div class='line'>Rays of a mighty circle, weaving over</div> <div class='line'>That varied wilderness a tissue of light</div> <div class='line'>Unparallel'd. On the other side the moon,</div> <div class='line'>Half-melted into thin blue air, stood still</div> <div class='line'>And pale and fibrous as a wither'd leaf,</div> <div class='line'>Nor yet endured in presence of his eyes</div> <div class='line'>To imbue his lustre; most unloverlike;</div> <div class='line'>Since in his absence full of light and joy</div> <div class='line'>And giving light to others. But this chiefest,</div> <div class='line'>Next to her presence whom I loved so well,</div> <div class='line'>Spoke loudly, even into my inmost heart,</div> <div class='line'>As to my outward hearing: the loud stream,</div> <div class='line'>Forth issuing from his portals in the crag</div> <div class='line'>(A visible link unto the home of my heart),</div> <div class='line'>Ran amber toward the West, and nigh the sea,</div> <div class='line'>Parting my own loved mountains, was received</div> <SPAN name='Page_135'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Shorn of its strength, into the sympathy</div> <div class='line'>Of that small bay, which into open main</div> <div class='line'>Glow'd intermingling close beneath the sun</div> <div class='line'>Spirit of Love! That little hour was bound,</div> <div class='line'>Shut in from Time, and dedicate to thee;</div> <div class='line'>Thy fires from heav'n had touch'd it, and the earth</div> <div class='line'>They fell on became hallow'd evermore.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>We turn'd: our eyes met: her's were bright, and mine</div> <div class='line'>Were dim with floating tears, that shot the sunset,</div> <div class='line'>In light rings round me; and my name was borne</div> <div class='line'>Upon her breath. Henceforth my name has been</div> <div class='line'>A hallow'd memory, like the names of old;</div> <div class='line'>A center'd, glory-circled memory,</div> <div class='line'>And a peculiar treasure, brooking not</div> <div class='line'>Exchange or currency; and in that hour</div> <div class='line'>A hope flow'd round me, like a golden mist</div> <div class='line'>Charm'd amid eddies of melodious airs,</div> <div class='line'>A moment, ere the onward whirlwind shatter it,</div> <div class='line'>Waver'd and floated—which was less than Hope,</div> <div class='line'>Because it lack'd the power of perfect Hope;</div> <div class='line'>But which was more and higher than all Hope,</div> <div class='line'>Because all other Hope hath lower aim;</div> <div class='line'>Even that this name to which her seraph lips</div> <div class='line'>Did lend such gentle utterance, this one name</div> <div class='line'>In some obscure hereafter, might inwreathe</div> <div class='line'>(How lovelier, nobler then!) her life, her love,</div> <SPAN name='Page_136'></SPAN> <div class='line'>With my life, love, soul, spirit and heart and strength.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>'Brother,' she said, 'let this be call'd henceforth</div> <div class='line'>The Hill of Hope'; and I replied: 'O sister,</div> <div class='line'>My will is one with thine; the Hill of Hope.'</div> <div class='line'>Nevertheless, we did not change the name.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths:</div> <div class='line'>Love wraps her wings on either side the heart,</div> <div class='line'>Constraining it with kisses close and warm,</div> <div class='line'>Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts</div> <div class='line'>So that they pass not to the shrine of sound.</div> <div class='line'>Else had the life of that delighted hour</div> <div class='line'>Drunk in the largeness of the utterance</div> <div class='line'>Of Love; but how should earthly measure mete</div> <div class='line'>The heavenly unmeasured or unlimited Love,</div> <div class='line'>Which scarce can tune his high majestic sense</div> <div class='line'>Unto the thunder-song that wheels the spheres;</div> <div class='line'>Scarce living in the Aeolian harmony,</div> <div class='line'>And flowing odour of the spacious air;</div> <div class='line'>Scarce housed in the circle of this earth:</div> <div class='line'>Be cabin'd up in words and syllables,</div> <div class='line'>Which waste with the breath that made 'em.</div> <div class='line12'>Sooner earth</div> <div class='line'>Might go round heaven, and the straight girth of Time</div> <div class='line'>Inswathe the fullness of Eternity,</div> <div class='line'>Than language grasp the infinite of Love.</div> <div class='line'>O day, which did enwomb that happy hour,</div> <SPAN name='Page_137'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Thou art blest in the years, divinest day!</div> <div class='line'>O Genius of that hour which dost uphold</div> <div class='line'>Thy coronal of glory like a God,</div> <div class='line'>Amid thy melancholy mates far-seen,</div> <div class='line'>Who walk before thee, and whose eyes are dim</div> <div class='line'>With gazing on the light and depth of thine</div> <div class='line'>Thy name is ever worshipp'd among hours!</div> <div class='line'>Had I died then, I had not seem'd to die</div> <div class='line'>For bliss stood round me like the lights of heaven,</div> <div class='line'>That cannot fade, they are so burning bright.</div> <div class='line'>Had I died then, I had not known the death;</div> <div class='line'>Planting my feet against this mound of time</div> <div class='line'>I had thrown me on the vast, and from this impulse</div> <div class='line'>Continuing and gathering ever, ever,</div> <div class='line'>Agglomerated swiftness, I had lived</div> <div class='line'>That intense moment thro' eternity.</div> <div class='line'>Oh, had the Power from whose right hand the light</div> <div class='line'>Of Life issueth, and from whose left hand floweth</div> <div class='line'>The shadow of Death, perennial effluences,</div> <div class='line'>Whereof to all that draw the wholesome air,</div> <div class='line'>Somewhile the one must overflow the other;</div> <div class='line'>Then had he stemm'd my day with night and driven</div> <div class='line'>My current to the fountain whence it sprang—</div> <div class='line'>Even his own abiding excellence—</div> <div class='line'>On me, methinks, that shock of gloom had fall'n</div> <div class='line'>Unfelt, and like the sun I gazed upon,</div> <div class='line'>Which, lapt in seeming dissolution,</div> <SPAN name='Page_138'></SPAN> <div class='line'>And dipping his head low beneath the verge,</div> <div class='line'>Yet bearing round about him his own day,</div> <div class='line'>In confidence of unabated strength,</div> <div class='line'>Steppeth from heaven to heaven, from light to light,</div> <div class='line'>And holding his undimmed forehead far</div> <div class='line'>Into a clearer zenith, pure of cloud;</div> <div class='line'>So bearing on thro' Being limitless</div> <div class='line'>The triumph of this foretaste, I had merged</div> <div class='line'>Glory in glory, without sense of change.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>We trod the shadow of the downward hill;</div> <div class='line'>We pass'd from light to dark. On the other side</div> <div class='line'>Is scooped a cavern and a mountain-hall,</div> <div class='line'>Which none have fathom'd. If you go far in</div> <div class='line'>(The country people rumour) you may hear</div> <div class='line'>The moaning of the woman and the child,</div> <div class='line'>Shut in the secret chambers of the rock.</div> <div class='line'>I too have heard a sound—perchance of streams</div> <div class='line'>Running far-off within its inmost halls,</div> <div class='line'>The home of darkness, but the cavern mouth,</div> <div class='line'>Half overtrailed with a wanton weed</div> <div class='line'>Gives birth to a brawling stream, that stepping lightly</div> <div class='line'>Adown a natural stair of tangled roots,</div> <div class='line'>Is presently received in a sweet grove</div> <div class='line'>Of eglantine, a place of burial</div> <div class='line'>Far lovelier than its cradle; for unseen</div> <div class='line'>But taken with the sweetness of the place,</div> <div class='line'>It giveth out a constant melody</div> <SPAN name='Page_139'></SPAN> <div class='line'>That drowns the nearer echoes. Lower down</div> <div class='line'>Spreads out a little lake, that, flooding, makes</div> <div class='line'>Cushions of yellow sand; and from the woods</div> <div class='line'>That belt it rise three dark tall cypresses;</div> <div class='line'>Three cypresses, symbols of mortal woe,</div> <div class='line'>That men plant over graves.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line10'>Hither we came,</div> <div class='line'>And sitting down upon the golden moss</div> <div class='line'>Held converse sweet and low—low converse sweet,</div> <div class='line'>In which our voices bore least part. The wind</div> <div class='line'>Told a love-tale beside us, how he woo'd</div> <div class='line'>The waters, and the crisp'd waters lisp'd</div> <div class='line'>The kisses of the wind, that, sick with love,</div> <div class='line'>Fainted at intervals, and grew again</div> <div class='line'>To utterance of passion. Ye cannot shape</div> <div class='line'>Fancy so fair as is this memory.</div> <div class='line'>Methought all excellence that ever was</div> <div class='line'>Had drawn herself from many thousand years,</div> <div class='line'>And all the separate Edens of this earth,</div> <div class='line'>To centre in this place and time. I listen'd,</div> <div class='line'>And her words stole with most prevailing sweetness</div> <div class='line'>Into my heart, as thronged fancies come,</div> <div class='line'>All unawares, into the poet's brain;</div> <div class='line'>Or as the dew-drops on the petal hung,</div> <div class='line'>When summer winds break their soft sleep with sighs,</div> <div class='line'>Creep down into the bottom of the flower.</div> <div class='line'>Her words were like a coronal of wild blooms</div> <SPAN name='Page_140'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Strung in the very negligence of Art,</div> <div class='line'>Or in the art of Nature, where each rose</div> <div class='line'>Doth faint upon the bosom of the other,</div> <div class='line'>Flooding its angry cheek with odorous tears.</div> <div class='line'>So each with each inwoven lived with each,</div> <div class='line'>And were in union more than double-sweet.</div> <div class='line'>What marvel my Camilla told me all?</div> <div class='line'>It was so happy an hour, so sweet a place,</div> <div class='line'>And I was as the brother of her blood,</div> <div class='line'>And by that name was wont to live in her speech,</div> <div class='line'>Dear name! which had too much of nearness in it</div> <div class='line'>And heralded the distance of this time.</div> <div class='line'>At first her voice was very sweet and low,</div> <div class='line'>As tho' she were afeard of utterance;</div> <div class='line'>But in the onward current of her speech,</div> <div class='line'>(As echoes of the hollow-banked brooks</div> <div class='line'>Are fashioned by the channel which they keep)</div> <div class='line'>His words did of their meaning borrow sound,</div> <div class='line'>Her cheek did catch the colour of her words,</div> <div class='line'>I heard and trembled, yet I could but hear;</div> <div class='line'>My heart paused,—my raised eyelids would not fall,</div> <div class='line'>But still I kept my eyes upon the sky.</div> <div class='line'>I seem'd the only part of Time stood still,</div> <div class='line'>And saw the motion of all other things;</div> <div class='line'>While her words, syllable by syllable,</div> <div class='line'>Like water, drop by drop, upon my ear</div> <div class='line'>Fell, and I wish'd, yet wish'd her not to speak,</div> <div class='line'>But she spoke on, for I did name no wish.</div> <SPAN name='Page_141'></SPAN> <div class='line'>What marvel my Camilla told me all</div> <div class='line'>Her maiden dignities of Hope and Love,</div> <div class='line'>'Perchance' she said 'return'd.' Even then the stars</div> <div class='line'>Did tremble in their stations as I gazed;</div> <div class='line'>But she spake on, for I did name no wish,</div> <div class='line'>No wish—no hope. Hope was not wholly dead,</div> <div class='line'>But breathing hard at the approach of Death,</div> <div class='line'>Updrawn in expectation of her change—</div> <div class='line'>Camilla, my Camilla, who was mine</div> <div class='line'>No longer in the dearest use of mine—</div> <div class='line'>The written secrets of her inmost soul</div> <div class='line'>Lay like an open scroll before my view,</div> <div class='line'>And my eyes read, they read aright, her heart</div> <div class='line'>Was Lionel's: it seem'd as tho' a link</div> <div class='line'>Of some light chain within my inmost frame</div> <div class='line'>Was riven in twain: that life I heeded not</div> <div class='line'>Flow'd from me, and the darkness of the grave,</div> <div class='line'>The darkness of the grave and utter night,</div> <div class='line'>Did swallow up my vision: at her feet,</div> <div class='line'>Even the feet of her I loved, I fell,</div> <div class='line'>Smit with exceeding sorrow unto death.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Then had the earth beneath me yawning given</div> <div class='line'>Sign of convulsion; and tho' horrid rifts</div> <div class='line'>Sent up the moaning of unhappy spirits</div> <div class='line'>Imprison'd in her centre, with the heat</div> <div class='line'>Of their infolding element; had the angels,</div> <div class='line'>The watchers at heaven's gate, push'd them apart,</div> <div class='line'>And from the golden threshold had down-roll'd</div> <SPAN name='Page_142'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Their heaviest thunder, I had lain as still,</div> <div class='line'>And blind and motionless as then I lay!</div> <div class='line'>White as quench'd ashes, cold as were the hopes</div> <div class='line'>Of my lorn love! What happy air shall woo</div> <div class='line'>The wither'd leaf fall'n in the woods, or blasted</div> <div class='line'>Upon this bough? a lightning stroke had come</div> <div class='line'>Even from that Heaven in whose light I bloom'd</div> <div class='line'>And taken away the greenness of my life,</div> <div class='line'>The blossom and the fragrance. Who was cursed</div> <div class='line'>But I? who miserable but I? even Misery</div> <div class='line'>Forgot herself in that extreme distress,</div> <div class='line'>And with the overdoing of her part</div> <div class='line'>Did fall away into oblivion.</div> <div class='line'>The night in pity took away my day</div> <div class='line'>Because my grief as yet was newly born,</div> <div class='line'>Of too weak eyes to look upon the light,</div> <div class='line'>And with the hasty notice of the ear,</div> <div class='line'>Frail life was startled from the tender love</div> <div class='line'>Of him she brooded over. Would I had lain</div> <div class='line'>Until the pleached ivy tress had wound</div> <div class='line'>Round my worn limbs, and the wild briar had driven</div> <div class='line'>Its knotted thorns thro' my unpaining brows</div> <div class='line'>Leaning its roses on my faded eyes.</div> <div class='line'>The wind had blown above me, and the rain</div> <div class='line'>Had fall'n upon me, and the gilded snake</div> <div class='line'>Had nestled in this bosomthrone of love,</div> <div class='line'>But I had been at rest for evermore.</div> <div class='line'>Long time entrancement held me: all too soon,</div> <SPAN name='Page_143'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Life (like a wanton too-officious friend</div> <div class='line'>Who will not hear denial, vain and rude</div> <div class='line'>With proffer of unwished for services)</div> <div class='line'>Entering all the avenues of sense,</div> <div class='line'>Pass'd thro' into his citadel, the brain</div> <div class='line'>With hated warmth of apprehensiveness:</div> <div class='line'>And first the chillness of the mountain stream</div> <div class='line'>Smote on my brow, and then I seem'd to hear</div> <div class='line'>Its murmur, as the drowning seaman hears,</div> <div class='line'>Who with his head below the surface dropt,</div> <div class='line'>Listens the dreadful murmur indistinct</div> <div class='line'>Of the confused seas, and knoweth not</div> <div class='line'>Beyond the sound he lists: and then came in</div> <div class='line'>O'erhead the white light of the weary moon,</div> <div class='line'>Diffused and molten into flaky cloud.</div> <div class='line'>Was my sight drunk, that it did shape to me</div> <div class='line'>Him who should own that name? or had my fancy</div> <div class='line'>So lethargised discernment in the sense,</div> <div class='line'>That she did act the step-dame to mine eyes,</div> <div class='line'>Warping their nature, till they minister'd</div> <div class='line'>Unto her swift conceits? 'Twere better thus</div> <div class='line'>If so be that the memory of that sound</div> <div class='line'>With mighty evocation, had updrawn</div> <div class='line'>The fashion and the phantasm of the form</div> <div class='line'>It should attach to. There was no such thing.—</div> <div class='line'>It was the man she loved, even Lionel,</div> <div class='line'>The lover Lionel, the happy Lionel,</div> <div class='line'>All joy; who drew the happy atmosphere</div> <div class='line'>Of my unhappy sighs, fed with my tears,</div> <SPAN name='Page_144'></SPAN> <div class='line'>To him the honey dews of orient hope.</div> <div class='line'>Oh! rather had some loathly ghastful brow,</div> <div class='line'>Half-bursten from the shroud, in cere cloth bound,</div> <div class='line'>The dead skin withering on the fretted bone,</div> <div class='line'>The very spirit of Paleness made still paler</div> <div class='line'>By the shuddering moonlight, fix'd his eyes on mine</div> <div class='line'>Horrible with the anger and the heat</div> <div class='line'>Of the remorseful soul alive within,</div> <div class='line'>And damn'd unto his loathed tenement.</div> <div class='line'>Methinks I could have sooner met that gaze!</div> <div class='line'>Oh, how her choice did leap forth from his eyes!</div> <div class='line'>Oh, how her love did clothe itself in smiles</div> <div class='line'>About his lips! This was the very arch-mock</div> <div class='line'>And insolence of uncontrolled Fate,</div> <div class='line'>When the effect weigh'd seas upon my head</div> <div class='line'>To twit me with the cause.</div> <div class='line12'>Why how was this?</div> <div class='line'>Could he not walk what paths he chose, nor breathe</div> <div class='line'>What airs he pleased! Was not the wide world free,</div> <div class='line'>With all her interchange of hill and plain</div> <div class='line'>To him as well as me? I know not, faith:</div> <div class='line'>But Misery, like a fretful, wayward child,</div> <div class='line'>Refused to look his author in the face,</div> <div class='line'>Must he come my way too? Was not the South,</div> <div class='line'>The East, the West, all open, if he had fall'n</div> <div class='line'>In love in twilight? Why should he come my way,</div> <div class='line'>Robed in those robes of light I must not wear,</div> <SPAN name='Page_145'></SPAN> <div class='line'>With that great crown of beams about his brows?</div> <div class='line'>Come like an angel to a damned soul?</div> <div class='line'>To tell him of the bliss he had with God;</div> <div class='line'>Come like a careless and a greedy heir,</div> <div class='line'>That scarce can wait the reading of the will</div> <div class='line'>Before he takes possession? Was mine a mood</div> <div class='line'>To be invaded rudely, and not rather</div> <div class='line'>A sacred, secret, unapproached woe</div> <div class='line'>Unspeakable? I was shut up with grief;</div> <div class='line'>She took the body of my past delight,</div> <div class='line'>Narded, and swathed and balm'd it for herself,</div> <div class='line'>And laid it in a new-hewn sepulchre,</div> <div class='line'>Where man had never lain. I was led mute</div> <div class='line'>Into her temple like a sacrifice;</div> <div class='line'>I was the high-priest in her holiest place,</div> <div class='line'>Not to be loudly broken in upon.</div> <div class='line'>Oh! friend, thoughts deep and heavy as these well-nigh</div> <div class='line'>O'erbore the limits of my brain; but he</div> <div class='line'>Bent o'er me, and my neck his arm upstay'd</div> <div class='line'>From earth. I thought it was an adder's fold,</div> <div class='line'>And once I strove to disengage myself,</div> <div class='line'>But fail'd, I was so feeble. She was there too:</div> <div class='line'>She bent above me too: her cheek was pale,</div> <div class='line'>Oh! very fair and pale: rare pity had stolen</div> <div class='line'>The living bloom away, as tho' a red rose</div> <div class='line'>Should change into a white one suddenly.</div> <div class='line'>Her eyes, I saw, were full of tears in the morn,</div> <div class='line'>And some few drops of that distressful rain</div> <div class='line'>Being wafted on the wind, drove in my sight,</div> <SPAN name='Page_146'></SPAN> <div class='line'>And being there they did break forth afresh</div> <div class='line'>In a new birth, immingled with my own,</div> <div class='line'>And still bewept my grief. Keeping unchanged</div> <div class='line'>The purport of their coinage. Her long ringlets,</div> <div class='line'>Drooping and beaten with the plaining wind,</div> <div class='line'>Did brush my forehead in their to-and-fro:</div> <div class='line'>For in the sudden anguish of her heart</div> <div class='line'>Loosed from their simple thrall they had flowed abroad,</div> <div class='line'>And onward floating in a full, dark wave,</div> <div class='line'>Parted on either side her argent neck,</div> <div class='line'>Mantling her form half way. She, when I woke,</div> <div class='line'>After my refluent health made tender quest</div> <div class='line'>Unanswer'd, for I spoke not: for the sound</div> <div class='line'>Of that dear voice so musically low,</div> <div class='line'>And now first heard with any sense of pain,</div> <div class='line'>As it had taken life away before,</div> <div class='line'>Choked all the syllables that in my throat</div> <div class='line'>Strove to uprise, laden with mournful thanks,</div> <div class='line'>From my full heart: and ever since that hour,</div> <div class='line'>My voice hath somewhat falter'd—and what wonder</div> <div class='line'>That when hope died, part of her eloquence</div> <div class='line'>Died with her? He, the blissful lover, too,</div> <div class='line'>From his great hoard of happiness distill'd</div> <div class='line'>Some drops of solace; like a vain rich man,</div> <div class='line'>That, having always prosper'd in the world,</div> <div class='line'>Folding his hands deals comfortable words</div> <div class='line'>To hearts wounded for ever; yet, in truth,</div> <div class='line'>Fair speech was his and delicate of phrase,</div> <SPAN name='Page_147'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Falling in whispers on the sense, address'd</div> <div class='line'>More to the inward than the outward ear,</div> <div class='line'>As rain of the midsummer midnight soft</div> <div class='line'>Scarce-heard, recalling fragrance and the green</div> <div class='line'>Of the dead spring—such as in other minds</div> <div class='line'>Had film'd the margents of the recent wound.</div> <div class='line'>And why was I to darken their pure love,</div> <div class='line'>If, as I knew, they two did love each other,</div> <div class='line'>Because my own was darken'd? Why was I</div> <div class='line'>To stand within the level of their hopes,</div> <div class='line'>Because my hope was widow'd, like the cur</div> <div class='line'>In the child's adage? Did I love Camilla?</div> <div class='line'>Ye know that I did love her: to this present</div> <div class='line'>My full-orb'd love hath waned not. Did I love her,</div> <div class='line'>And could I look upon her tearful eyes?</div> <div class='line'>Tears wept for me; for me—weep at my grief?</div> <div class='line'>What had <i>she</i> done to weep—let my heart</div> <div class='line'>Break rather—whom the gentlest airs of heaven</div> <div class='line'>Should kiss with an unwonted gentleness.</div> <div class='line'>Her love did murder mine; what then? she deem'd</div> <div class='line'>I wore a brother's mind: she call'd me brother:</div> <div class='line'>She told me all her love: she shall not weep.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>The brightness of a burning thought awhile</div> <div class='line'>Battailing with the glooms of my dark will,</div> <div class='line'>Moonlike emerged, lit up unto itself,</div> <div class='line'>Upon the depths of an unfathom'd woe,</div> <div class='line'>Reflex of action, starting up at once,</div> <SPAN name='Page_148'></SPAN> <div class='line'>As men do from a vague and horrid dream,</div> <div class='line'>And throwing by all consciousness of self,</div> <div class='line'>In eager haste I shook him by the hand;</div> <div class='line'>Then flinging myself down upon my knees</div> <div class='line'>Even where the grass was warm where I had lain,</div> <div class='line'>I pray'd aloud to God that he would hold</div> <div class='line'>The hand of blessing over Lionel,</div> <div class='line'>And her whom he would make his wedded wife,</div> <div class='line'>Camilla! May their days be golden days,</div> <div class='line'>And their long life a dream of linked love,</div> <div class='line'>From which may rude Death never startle them,</div> <div class='line'>But grow upon them like a glorious vision</div> <div class='line'>Of unconceived and awful happiness,</div> <div class='line'>Solemn but splendid, full of shapes and sounds,</div> <div class='line'>Swallowing its precedent in victory.</div> <div class='line'>Let them so love that men and boys may say,</div> <div class='line'>Lo! how they love each other! till their love</div> <div class='line'>Shall ripen to a proverb unto all,</div> <div class='line'>Known when their faces are forgot in the land.</div> <div class='line'>And as for me, Camilla, as for me,</div> <div class='line'>Think not thy tears will make my name grow green,—</div> <div class='line'>The dew of tears is an unwholesome dew.</div> <div class='line'>The course of Hope is dried,—the life o' the plant—</div> <div class='line'>They will but sicken the sick plant more.</div> <div class='line'>Deem then I love thee but as brothers do,</div> <div class='line'>So shalt thou love me still as sisters do;</div> <div class='line'>Or if thou dream'st aught farther, dream but how</div> <div class='line'>I could have loved thee, had there been none else</div> <SPAN name='Page_149'></SPAN> <div class='line'>To love as lovers, loved again by thee.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Or this, or somewhat like to this, I spoke,</div> <div class='line'>When I did see her weep so ruefully;</div> <div class='line'>For sure my love should ne'er induce the front</div> <div class='line'>And mask of Hate, whom woful ailments</div> <div class='line'>Of unavailing tears and heart deep moans</div> <div class='line'>Feed and envenom, as the milky blood</div> <div class='line'>Of hateful herbs a subtle-fanged snake.</div> <div class='line'>Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter draughts,</div> <div class='line'>And batten on his poisons? Love forbid!</div> <div class='line'>Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate,</div> <div class='line'>And Hate is strange beneath the roof of Love.</div> <div class='line'>O Love, if thou be'st Love, dry up these tears</div> <div class='line'>Shed for the love of Love; for tho' mine image,</div> <div class='line'>The subject of thy power, be cold in her,</div> <div class='line'>Yet, like cold snow, it melteth in the source</div> <div class='line'>Of these sad tears, and feeds their downward flow.</div> <div class='line'>So Love, arraign'd to judgment and to death,</div> <div class='line'>Received unto himself a part of blame.</div> <div class='line'>Being guiltless, as an innocent prisoner,</div> <div class='line'>Who when the woful sentence hath been past,</div> <div class='line'>And all the clearness of his fame hath gone</div> <div class='line'>Beneath the shadow of the curse of men,</div> <div class='line'>First falls asleep in swoon. Wherefrom awaked</div> <div class='line'>And looking round upon his tearful friends,</div> <div class='line'>Forthwith and in his agony conceives</div> <div class='line'>A shameful sense as of a cleaving crime—</div> <div class='line'>For whence without some guilt should such grief be?</div> <div class='line'>So died that hour, and fell into the abysm</div> <SPAN name='Page_150'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Of forms outworn, but not to be outworn,</div> <div class='line'>Who never hail'd another worth the Life</div> <div class='line'>That made it sensible. So died that hour,</div> <div class='line'>Like odour wrapt into the winged wind</div> <div class='line'>Borne into alien lands and far away.</div> <div class='line'>There be some hearts so airy-fashioned,</div> <div class='line'>That in the death of love, if e'er they loved,</div> <div class='line'>On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride highly</div> <div class='line'>Above the perilous seas of change and chance;</div> <div class='line'>Nay, more, holds out the lights of cheerfulness;</div> <div class='line'>As the tall ship, that many a dreary year</div> <div class='line'>Knit to some dismal sandbank far at sea,</div> <div class='line'>All through the lifelong hours of utter dark,</div> <div class='line'>Showers slanting light upon the dolorous wave.</div> <div class='line'>For me all other Hopes did sway from that</div> <div class='line'>Which hung the frailest: falling, they fell too,</div> <div class='line'>Crush'd link on link into the beaten earth,</div> <div class='line'>And Love did walk with banish'd Hope no more,</div> <div class='line'>It was ill-done to part ye, Sisters fair;</div> <div class='line'>Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,</div> <div class='line'>And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath</div> <div class='line'>In that close kiss, and drank her whisper'd tales.</div> <div class='line'>They said that Love would die when Hope was gone,</div> <div class='line'>And Love mourned long, and sorrowed after Hope;</div> <div class='line'>At last she sought out memory, and they trod</div> <div class='line'>The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,</div> <div class='line'>And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.</div> </div> <div class='heading'>II<SPAN name='Page_151'></SPAN></div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>From that time forth I would not see her more,</div> <div class='line'>But many weary moons I lived alone—</div> <div class='line'>Alone, and in the heart of the great forest.</div> <div class='line'>Sometimes upon the hills beside the sea</div> <div class='line'>All day I watched the floating isles of shade,</div> <div class='line'>And sometimes on the shore, upon the sands</div> <div class='line'>Insensibly I drew her name, until</div> <div class='line'>The meaning of the letters shot into</div> <div class='line'>My brain: anon the wanton billow wash'd</div> <div class='line'>Them over, till they faded like my love.</div> <div class='line'>The hollow caverns heard me—the black brooks</div> <div class='line'>Of the mid-forest heard me—the soft winds,</div> <div class='line'>Laden with thistledown and seeds of flowers,</div> <div class='line'>Paused in their course to hear me, for my voice</div> <div class='line'>Was all of thee: the merry linnet knew me,</div> <div class='line'>The squirrel knew me, and the dragon-fly</div> <div class='line'>Shot by me like a flash of purple fire.</div> <div class='line'>The rough briar tore my bleeding palms; the hemlock,</div> <div class='line'>Brow high, did strike my forehead as I pas'd;</div> <div class='line'>Yet trod I not the wild-flower in my path,</div> <div class='line'>Nor bruised the wild-bird's egg.</div> <div class='line12'>Was this the end?</div> <div class='line'>Why grew we then together i' the same plot?</div> <div class='line'>Why fed we the same fountain? drew the same sun?</div> <div class='line'>Why were our mothers branches of one stem?</div> <div class='line'>Why were we one in all things, save in that</div> <div class='line'>Where to have been one had been the roof and crown</div> <SPAN name='Page_152'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Of all I hoped and fear'd? if that same nearness</div> <div class='line'>Were father to this distance, and that <i>one</i></div> <div class='line'>Vauntcourier this <i>double</i>? If affection</div> <div class='line'>Living slew Love, and Sympathy hew'd out</div> <div class='line'>The bosom-sepulchre of Sympathy.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Chiefly I sought the cavern and the hill</div> <div class='line'>Where last we roam'd together, for the sound</div> <div class='line'>Of the loud stream was pleasant, and the wind</div> <div class='line'>Came wooingly with violet smells. Sometimes</div> <div class='line'>All day I sat within the cavern-mouth,</div> <div class='line'>Fixing my eyes on those three cypress-cones</div> <div class='line'>Which spired above the wood; and with mad hand</div> <div class='line'>Tearing the bright leaves of the ivy-screen,</div> <div class='line'>I cast them in the noisy brook beneath,</div> <div class='line'>And watch'd them till they vanished from my sight</div> <div class='line'>Beneath the bower of wreathed eglantines:</div> <div class='line'>And all the fragments of the living rock,</div> <div class='line'>(Huge splinters, which the sap of earliest showers,</div> <div class='line'>Or moisture of the vapour, left in clinging,</div> <div class='line'>When the shrill storm-blast feeds it from behind,</div> <div class='line'>And scatters it before, had shatter'd from</div> <div class='line'>The mountain, till they fell, and with the shock</div> <div class='line'>Half dug their own graves), in mine agony,</div> <div class='line'>Did I make bear of all the deep rich moss</div> <div class='line'>Wherewith the dashing runnel in the spring</div> <div class='line'>Had liveried them all over. In my brain</div> <SPAN name='Page_153'></SPAN> <div class='line'>The spirit seem'd to flag from thought to thought,</div> <div class='line'>Like moonlight wandering through a mist: my blood</div> <div class='line'>Crept like the drains of a marsh thro' all my body;</div> <div class='line'>The motions of my heart seem'd far within me,</div> <div class='line'>Unfrequent, low, as tho' it told its pulses;</div> <div class='line'>And yet it shook me, that my frame did shudder,</div> <div class='line'>As it were drawn asunder by the rack.</div> <div class='line'>But over the deep graves of Hope and Fear,</div> <div class='line'>The wreck of ruin'd life and shatter'd thought,</div> <div class='line'>Brooded one master-passion evermore,</div> <div class='line'>Like to a low hung and a fiery sky</div> <div class='line'>Above some great metropolis, earth shock'd</div> <div class='line'>Hung round with ragged-rimmed burning folds,</div> <div class='line'>Embathing all with wild and woful hues—</div> <div class='line'>Great hills of ruins, and collapsed masses</div> <div class='line'>Of thunder-shaken columns, indistinct</div> <div class='line'>And fused together in the tyrannous light.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>So gazed I on the ruins of that thought</div> <div class='line'>Which was the playmate of my youth—for which</div> <div class='line'>I lived and breathed: the dew, the sun, the rain,</div> <div class='line'>Unto the growth of body and of mind;</div> <div class='line'>The blood, the breath, the feeling and the motion,</div> <div class='line'>The slope into the current of my years,</div> <div class='line'>Which drove them onward—made them sensible;</div> <div class='line'>The precious jewel of my honour'd life,</div> <div class='line'>Erewhile close couch'd in golden happiness,</div> <div class='line'>Now proved counterfeit, was shaken out,</div> <div class='line'>And, trampled on, left to its own decay.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Sometimes I thought Camilla was no more,</div> <SPAN name='Page_154'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Some one had told me she was dead, and ask'd me</div> <div class='line'>If I would see her burial: then I seem'd</div> <div class='line'>To rise, and thro' the forest-shadow borne</div> <div class='line'>With more than mortal swiftness, I ran down</div> <div class='line'>The sleepy sea-bank, till I came upon</div> <div class='line'>The rear of a procession, curving round</div> <div class='line'>The silver-sheeted bay: in front of which</div> <div class='line'>Six stately virgins, all in white, upbare</div> <div class='line'>A broad earth-sweeping pall of whitest lawn,</div> <div class='line'>Wreathed round the bier with garlands: in the distance,</div> <div class='line'>From out the yellow woods, upon the hill,</div> <div class='line'>Look'd forth the summit and the pinnacles</div> <div class='line'>Of a grey steeple. All the pageantry,</div> <div class='line'>Save those six virgins which upheld the bier,</div> <div class='line'>Were stoled from head to foot in flowing black;</div> <div class='line'>One walk'd abreast with me, and veiled his brow,</div> <div class='line'>And he was loud in weeping and in praise</div> <div class='line'>Of the departed: a strong sympathy</div> <div class='line'>Shook all my soul: I flung myself upon him</div> <div class='line'>In tears and cries: I told him all my love,</div> <div class='line'>How I had loved her from the first; whereat</div> <div class='line'>He shrunk and howl'd, and from his brow drew back</div> <div class='line'>His hand to push me from him; and the face</div> <div class='line'>The very face and form of Lionel,</div> <div class='line'>Flash'd through my eyes into my innermost brain,</div> <div class='line'>And at his feet I seemed to faint and fall,</div> <div class='line'>To fall and die away. I could not rise,</div> <div class='line'>Albeit I strove to follow. They pass'd on,</div> <SPAN name='Page_155'></SPAN> <div class='line'>The lordly Phantasms; in their floating folds</div> <div class='line'>They pass'd and were no more: but I had fall'n</div> <div class='line'>Prone by the dashing runnel on the grass.</div> </div> <div class='stanza'> <div class='line'>Always th' inaudible, invisible thought</div> <div class='line'>Artificer and subject, lord and slave</div> <div class='line'>Shaped by the audible and visible,</div> <div class='line'>Moulded the audible and visible;</div> <div class='line'>All crisped sounds of wave, and leaf and wind,</div> <div class='line'>Flatter'd the fancy of my fading brain;</div> <div class='line'>The storm-pavilion'd element, the wood,</div> <div class='line'>The mountain, the three cypresses, the cave,</div> <div class='line'>Were wrought into the tissue of my dream.</div> <div class='line'>The moanings in the forest, the loud stream,</div> <div class='line'>Awoke me not, but were a part of sleep;</div> <div class='line'>And voices in the distance, calling to me,</div> <div class='line'>And in my vision bidding me dream on,</div> <div class='line'>Like sounds within the twilight realms of dreams,</div> <div class='line'>Which wander round the bases of the hills,</div> <div class='line'>And murmur in the low-dropt eaves of sleep,</div> <div class='line'>But faint within the portals. Oftentimes</div> <div class='line'>The vision had fair prelude, in the end</div> <div class='line'>Opening on darkness, stately vestibules</div> <div class='line'>To cares and shows of Death; whether the mind,</div> <div class='line'>With a revenge even to itself unknown,</div> <div class='line'>Made strange division of its suffering</div> <div class='line'>With her, whom to have suffering view'd had been</div> <div class='line'>Extremest pain; or that the clear-eyed Spirit,</div> <div class='line'>Being blasted in the Present, grew at length</div> <SPAN name='Page_156'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Prophetical and prescient of whate'er</div> <div class='line'>The Future had in store; or that which most</div> <div class='line'>Enchains belief, the sorrow of my spirit</div> <div class='line'>Was of so wide a compass it took in</div> <div class='line'>All I had loved, and my dull agony.</div> <div class='line'>Ideally to her transferred, became</div> <div class='line'>Anguish intolerable.</div> <div class='line8'>The day waned;</div> <div class='line'>Alone I sat with her: about my brow</div> <div class='line'>Her warm breath floated in the utterance</div> <div class='line'>Of silver-chorded tones: her lips were sunder'd</div> <div class='line'>With smiles of tranquil bliss, which broke in light</div> <div class='line'>Like morning from her eyes—her eloquent eyes</div> <div class='line'>(As I have seen them many hundred times),</div> <div class='line'>Fill'd all with clear pure fire, thro' mine down rain'd</div> <div class='line'>Their spirit-searching splendours. As a vision</div> <div class='line'>Unto a haggard prisoner, iron-stay'd</div> <div class='line'>In damp and dismal dungeons underground</div> <div class='line'>Confined on points of faith, when strength is shock'd</div> <div class='line'>With torment, and expectancy of worse</div> <div class='line'>Upon the morrow, thro' the ragged walls,</div> <div class='line'>All unawares before his half-shut eyes,</div> <div class='line'>Comes in upon him in the dead of night,</div> <div class='line'>And with th' excess of sweetness and of awe,</div> <div class='line'>Makes the heart tremble, and the eyes run over</div> <div class='line'>Upon his steely gyves; so those fair eyes</div> <div class='line'>Shone on my darkness forms which ever stood</div> <div class='line'>Within the magic cirque of memory,</div> <SPAN name='Page_157'></SPAN> <div class='line'>Invisible but deathless, waiting still</div> <div class='line'>The edict of the will to reassume</div> <div class='line'>The semblance of those rare realities</div> <div class='line'>Of which they were the mirrors. Now the light,</div> <div class='line'>Which was their life, burst through the cloud of thought</div> <div class='line'>Keen, irrepressible.</div> <div class='line12'>It was a room</div> <div class='line'>Within the summer-house of which I spoke,</div> <div class='line'>Hung round with paintings of the sea, and one</div> <div class='line'>A vessel in mid-ocean, her heaved prow</div> <div class='line'>Clambering, the mast bent, and the revin wind</div> <div class='line'>In her sail roaring. From the outer day,</div> <div class='line'>Betwixt the closest ivies came a broad</div> <div class='line'>And solid beam of isolated light,</div> <div class='line'>Crowded with driving atomies, and fell</div> <div class='line'>Slanting upon that picture, from prime youth</div> <div class='line'>Well-known, well-loved. She drew it long ago</div> <div class='line'>Forth gazing on the waste and open sea,</div> <div class='line'>One morning when the upblown billow ran</div> <div class='line'>Shoreward beneath red clouds, and I had pour'd</div> <div class='line'>Into the shadowing pencil's naked forms</div> <div class='line'>Colour and life: it was a bond and seal</div> <div class='line'>Of friendship, spoken of with tearful smiles;</div> <div class='line'>A monument of childhood and of love,</div> <div class='line'>The poesy of childhood; my lost love</div> <div class='line'>Symbol'd in storm. We gazed on it together</div> <div class='line'>In mute and glad remembrance, and each heart</div> <div class='line'>Grew closer to the other, and the eye</div> <div class='line'>Was riveted and charm-bound, gazing like</div> <SPAN name='Page_158'></SPAN> <div class='line'>The Indian on a still-eyed snake, low crouch'd</div> <div class='line'>A beauty which is death, when all at once</div> <div class='line'>That painted vessel, as with inner life,</div> <div class='line'>'Gan rock and heave upon that painted sea;</div> <div class='line'>An earthquake, my loud heartbeats, made the ground</div> <div class='line'>Roll under us, and all at once soul, life,</div> <div class='line'>And breath, and motion, pass'd and flow'd away</div> <div class='line'>To those unreal billows: round and round</div> <div class='line'>A whirlwind caught and bore us; mighty gyves,</div> <div class='line'>Rapid and vast, of hissing spray wind-driven</div> <div class='line'>Far through the dizzy dark. Aloud she shriek'd—</div> <div class='line'>My heart was cloven with pain. I wound my arms</div> <div class='line'>About her: we whirl'd giddily: the wind</div> <div class='line'>Sung: but I clasp'd her without fear: her weight</div> <div class='line'>Shrank in my grasp, and over my dim eyes</div> <div class='line'>And parted lips which drank her breath, down hung</div> <div class='line'>The jaws of Death: I, screaming, from me flung</div> <div class='line'>The empty phantom: all the sway and whirl</div> <div class='line'>Of the storm dropt to windless calm, and I</div> <div class='line'>Down welter'd thro' the dark ever and ever.</div> </div></div> <p> </p> <hr /><p> </p> <h2><SPAN name='Page_159'></SPAN>Index to First Lines</h2> <ul> <li><SPAN href='#Page_92'>A gate and a field half ploughed</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_55'>All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams, are true</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_33'>Angels have talked with him and showed him thrones</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_85'>As when a man, that sails in a balloon</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_80'>Blow ye the trumpets, gather from afar</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_90'>But she tarries in her place</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_65'>Check every outflash, every ruder sally</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_44'>Could I outwear my present state of woe</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_37'>Ere yet my heart was sweet Love's tomb</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_29'>Every day hath its night</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_102'>First drink a health, this solemn night</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_110'>God bless our Prince and Bride</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_41'>Heaven weeps above the earth all night</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_119'>Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_25'>His eyes in eclipse</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_114'>Home they brought him slain with spears</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_105'>How much I love this writer's manly style</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_97'>How often, when a child I lay reclined</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_23'>I am any man's suitor</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_115'>I stood on a tower in the wet</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_11'>I stood upon the Mountain which o'erlooks</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_28'>I' the glooming light</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_66'>Me my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_77'>My Rosalind, my Rosalind</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_81'>O darling room, my heart's delight</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_71'>Oh, Beauty, passing beauty! sweetest sweet!</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_31'>Oh, go not yet, my love</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_42'>O maiden fresher than the first green leaf</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_64'>O sad <i>No more</i>! O sweet <i>No more</i></SPAN><SPAN name='Page_160'></SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_43'>O thou whose fringèd lids I gaze upon</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_99'>Rise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_27'>Sainted Juliet! dearest name</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_46'>Shall the hag Evil die with the child of Good</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_93'>Sure never yet was Antelope</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_56'>The lintwhite and the throstlecock</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_72'>The Northwind fall'n in the new starréd night</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_47'>The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_67'>There are three things that fill my heart with sighs</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_89'>Therefore your halls, your ancient colleges</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_52'>There is no land like England</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_38'>The varied earth, the moving heaven</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_48'>Thou, from the first, unborn, undying love</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_45'>Though Night hath climbed her peak</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_54'>Two bees within a chrystal flowerbell rockèd</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_35'>Voice of the summerwind</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_83'>We have had enough of motion</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_94'>We know him, out of Shakespeare's art</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_98'>What time I wasted youthful hours</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_61'>Where is the Giant of the Sun, which stood</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_79'>Who can say</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_50'>Who fears to die? Who fears to die</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_63'>With roses musky breathed</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_40'>You cast to ground the hope which once was mine</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_82'>You did late review my lays</SPAN></li> <li><SPAN href='#Page_111'>Your ringlets, your ringlets</SPAN></li> </ul> <hr /> <h4>Footnotes<SPAN name='Page_161'></SPAN></h4> <div class='note'><SPAN name='Footnote_A_1'></SPAN><SPAN href='#FNanchor_A_1'>[A]</SPAN> Mr Swinburne failed to find this couplet in any of Chapman's original poems or translations, and was of opinion that it is Tennyson's own.</div> <div class='note'><SPAN name='Footnote_B_2'></SPAN><SPAN href='#FNanchor_B_2'>[B]</SPAN> Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.</div> <div class='note'><SPAN name='Footnote_C_3'></SPAN><SPAN href='#FNanchor_C_3'>[C]</SPAN> His crispè hair in ringis was yronne.—Chaucer, <i>Knight's Tale</i>. (Tennyson's note.)</div> <div class='note'><SPAN name='Footnote_D_4'></SPAN><SPAN href='#FNanchor_D_4'>[D]</SPAN> 'As soon as this poem was published, I altered the second line to "All books and pictures ranged aright"; yet "Dear room, the apple of my sight" (which was much abused) is not as bad as "Do go, dear rain, do go away."' [Note initialed 'A.T.' in <i>Life</i>, vol. I, p. 89.] The worthlessness of much of the criticism lavished on Tennyson by his coterie of adulating friends may be judged from the fact that Arthur Hallam wrote to Tennyson that this poem was 'mighty pleasant.'</div> <hr /> <SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />

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