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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:43:41 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:43:41 -0700 |
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diff --git a/14094-h/14094-h.htm b/14094-h/14094-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..93c4433 --- /dev/null +++ b/14094-h/14094-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4067 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= + "text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, edited by J.C. Thomson. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + } + HR { width: 60%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + .section {width: 35%;} + + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .note {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} /* footnote */ + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 1em; font-size: smaller; float: right; clear: right;} + .greek {cursor: help;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .title {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; font-weight: bold;} + .poem .heading {font-weight: bold;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem .line {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem .line2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem .line3 {display: block; margin-left: 3em;} + .poem .line4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + .poem .line5 {display: block; margin-left: 5em;} + .poem .line6 {display: block; margin-left: 6em;} + .poem .line8 {display: block; margin-left: 8em;} + .poem .line9 {display: block; margin-left: 9em;} + .poem .line10 {display: block; margin-left: 10em;} + .poem .line12 {display: block; margin-left: 12em;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14094 ***</div> + +<p><a name='Page_1'></a><a name='Page_2'></a><a name='Page_3'></a></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> <a name='Page_4'></a> +<b>Contents</b> +<a name='Page_5'></a></p> +<ul> + <li><a href='#Page_8'>EDITOR'S NOTE</a><br /> </li> + <li><a href='#Page_9'>TIMBUCTOO</a><br /> </li> + <li><a href='#Page_21'>POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL</a> + <ul> + <li><a href='#Page_23'>i. The How and the Why</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_25'>ii. The Burial of Love</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_27'>iii. To ——</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_28'>iv. Song <i>'I' the gloaming light'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_29'>v. Song <i>'Every day hath its night'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_31'>vi. Hero to Leander</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_33'>vii. The Mystic</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_35'>viii. The Grasshopper</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_37'>ix. Love, Pride and Forgetfulness</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_38'>x. Chorus <i>'The varied earth, the moving heaven'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_40'>xi. Lost Hope</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_41'>xii. The Tears of Heaven</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_42'>xiii. Love and Sorrow</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_43'>xiv. To a Lady sleeping</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_44'>xv. Sonnet <i>'Could I outwear my present state of woe'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_45'>xvi. Sonnet <i>'Though night hath climbed'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_46'>xvii. Sonnet <i>'Shall the hag Evil die'</i></a></li> + <li><a name='Page_6'></a><a href='#Page_47'>xviii. Sonnet <i>'The pallid thunder stricken sigh for gain'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_48'>xix. Love</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_50'>xx. English War Song</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_52'>xxi. National Song</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_54'>xxii. Dualisms</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_55'>xxiii. <span class="greek" title="[Greek: ohi rheontes]">οἱ ρἑοντες</span></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_56'>xxiv. Song <i>'The lintwhite and the throstlecock'</i></a><br /> </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li><a href='#Page_59'>CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS, 1831-32</a> + <ul> + <li><a href='#Page_61'>xxv. A Fragment</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_63'>xxvi. Anacreontics</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_64'>xxvii. <i>'O sad no more! O sweet no more'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_65'>xxviii. Sonnet <i>'Check every outflash, every ruder sally'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_66'>xxix. Sonnet <i>'Me my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_67'>xxx. Sonnet <i>'There are three things that fill my heart with sighs'</i></a><br /> </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li><a href='#Page_69'>POEMS, 1833</a> + <ul> + <li><a href='#Page_71'>xxxi. Sonnet <i>'Oh beauty, passing beauty'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_72'>xxxii. The Hesperides</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_77'>xxxiii. Rosalind</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_79'>xxxiv. Song <i>'Who can say'</i></a></li> + <li><a name='Page_7'></a><a href='#Page_80'>xxxv. Sonnet <i>'Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_81'>xxxvi. O Darling Room</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_82'>xxxvii. To Christopher North</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_83'>xxxviii. The Lotos-Eaters</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_85'>xxxix. A Dream of Fair Women</a><br /> </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li><a href='#Page_87'>MISCELLANEOUS POEMS AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS, 1833-68</a> + <ul> + <li><a href='#Page_89'>xl. Cambridge</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_90'>xli. The Germ of 'Maud'</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_92'>xlii. <i>'A gate and afield half ploughed'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_93'>xliii. The Skipping-Rope</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_94'>xliv. The New Timon and the Poets</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_97'>xlv. Mablethorpe</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_98'>xlvi. <i>'What time I wasted youthful hours'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_99'>xlvii. Britons, guard your own</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_102'>xlviii. Hands all round</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_105'>xlix. Suggested by reading an article in a newspaper</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_110'>l. <i>'God bless our Prince and Bride'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_111'>li. The Ringlet</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_114'>lii. Song <i>'Home they brought him slain with spears'</i></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_115'>liii. 1865-1866</a><br /> </li> + </ul> + </li> + <li><a href='#Page_117'>THE LOVER'S TALE, 1833</a><br /> </li> + <li><a href='#Page_159'>INDEX OF FIRST LINES</a></li> +</ul> + +<hr class='section' /> + +<p><a name='Page_8'></a><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> +<a name='Page_9'></a> +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><a name='Page_10'></a>[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><a name='Page_11'></a><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.<a name='FNanchor_A_1'></a><a href='#Footnote_A_1'><sup>[A]</sup></a></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><a name='Page_12'></a> + <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><a name='Page_13'></a> + <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><a name='Page_14'></a> + <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><a name='Page_15'></a> + <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><a name='Page_16'></a> + <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><a name='Page_17'></a> + <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><a name='Page_18'></a> + <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.<a name='FNanchor_B_2'></a><a href='#Footnote_B_2'><sup>[B]</sup></a> 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><a name='Page_19'></a> + <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:<a name='Page_20'></a></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><a name='Page_21'></a>Poems Chiefly Lyrical</h2> + +<p><a name='Page_22'></a>[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><a name='Page_23'></a>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><a name='Page_24'></a> + <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><a name='Page_25'></a>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><a name='Page_26'></a> + <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><a name='Page_27'></a>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><a name='Page_28'></a>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><a name='Page_29'></a>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><a name='Page_31'></a>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><a name='Page_32'></a> + <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><a name='Page_33'></a>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><a name='Page_34'></a> + <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><a name='Page_35'></a>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><a name='Page_37'></a>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><a name='Page_38'></a>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><a name='Page_39'></a> + <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><a name='Page_40'></a>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><a name='Page_41'></a>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><a name='Page_42'></a>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><a name='Page_43'></a>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><a name='Page_44'></a>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><a name='Page_45'></a>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><a name='Page_46'></a>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><a name='Page_47'></a>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><a name='Page_48'></a>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><a name='Page_49'></a> + <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><a name='Page_50'></a>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><a name='Page_51'></a> + <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><a name='Page_52'></a>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><a name='Page_53'></a> + <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><a name='Page_54'></a>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><a name='Page_55'></a>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><a name='Page_56'></a>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<a name='Page_57'></a></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,<a name='FNanchor_C_3'></a><a href='#Footnote_C_3'><sup>[C]</sup></a></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><a name='Page_59'></a><a name='Page_58'></a>Contributions to Periodicals 1831-32<a name='Page_60'></a></h2> + +<h2><a name='Page_61'></a>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><a name='Page_62'></a> + <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><a name='Page_63'></a>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><a name='Page_64'></a>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><a name='Page_65'></a>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><a name='Page_66'></a>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><a name='Page_67'></a>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><a name='Page_69'></a>Poems, 1833</h2> + +<p><a name='Page_70'></a>[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><a name='Page_71'></a>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><a name='Page_72'></a>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><a name='Page_73'></a> + <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><a name='Page_74'></a> + <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<a name='Page_75'></a></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><a name='Page_76'></a> + <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><a name='Page_77'></a>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><a name='Page_78'></a> + <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><a name='Page_79'></a>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><a name='Page_80'></a>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><a name='Page_81'></a>XXXVI</h2> + +<div class='poem'> + <div class='title'>O Darling Room<a name='FNanchor_D_4'></a><a href='#Footnote_D_4'><sup>[D]</sup></a></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><a name='Page_82'></a>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><a name='Page_83'></a>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><a name='Page_84'></a> + <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><a name='Page_85'></a>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><a name='Page_87'></a>Miscellaneous Poems and Contributions to Periodicals<br /> +1833-1868<a name='Page_88'></a></h2> + +<h2><a name='Page_89'></a>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><a name='Page_90'></a>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><a name='Page_91'></a> + <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><a name='Page_92'></a>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><a name='Page_93'></a>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><a name='Page_94'></a>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><a name='Page_95'></a> + <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><a name='Page_96'></a> + <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><a name='Page_97'></a>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><a name='Page_98'></a>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><a name='Page_99'></a>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><a name='Page_100'></a> + <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><a name='Page_101'></a> + <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><a name='Page_102'></a>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><a name='Page_103'></a> + <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><a name='Page_104'></a> + <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><a name='Page_105'></a>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><a name='Page_106'></a> + <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><a name='Page_107'></a> + <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><a name='Page_108'></a> + <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><a name='Page_109'></a> + <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><a name='Page_110'></a>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><a name='Page_111'></a>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><a name='Page_112'></a> + <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><a name='Page_113'></a> + <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><a name='Page_114'></a>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><a name='Page_115'></a>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><a name='Page_116'></a><a name='Page_117'></a>The Lover's Tale<br /> +1833</h2> + +<p><a name='Page_118'></a>[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><a name='Page_119'></a><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><a name='Page_120'></a> + <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><a name='Page_121'></a> + <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><a name='Page_122'></a> + <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><a name='Page_123'></a> + <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><a name='Page_124'></a> + <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><a name='Page_125'></a> + <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><a name='Page_126'></a> + <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><a name='Page_127'></a> + <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><a name='Page_128'></a> + <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><a name='Page_129'></a> + <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><a name='Page_130'></a> + <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><a name='Page_131'></a> + <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><a name='Page_132'></a> + <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><a name='Page_133'></a> + <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><a name='Page_134'></a> + <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><a name='Page_135'></a> + <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><a name='Page_136'></a> + <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><a name='Page_137'></a> + <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><a name='Page_138'></a> + <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><a name='Page_139'></a> + <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><a name='Page_140'></a> + <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><a name='Page_141'></a> + <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><a name='Page_142'></a> + <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><a name='Page_143'></a> + <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><a name='Page_144'></a> + <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><a name='Page_145'></a> + <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><a name='Page_146'></a> + <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><a name='Page_147'></a> + <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><a name='Page_148'></a> + <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><a name='Page_149'></a> + <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><a name='Page_150'></a> + <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<a name='Page_151'></a></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><a name='Page_152'></a> + <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><a name='Page_153'></a> + <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><a name='Page_154'></a> + <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><a name='Page_155'></a> + <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><a name='Page_156'></a> + <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><a name='Page_157'></a> + <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><a name='Page_158'></a> + <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><a name='Page_159'></a>Index to First Lines</h2> +<ul> + <li><a href='#Page_92'>A gate and a field half ploughed</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_55'>All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams, are true</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_33'>Angels have talked with him and showed him thrones</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_85'>As when a man, that sails in a balloon</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_80'>Blow ye the trumpets, gather from afar</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_90'>But she tarries in her place</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_65'>Check every outflash, every ruder sally</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_44'>Could I outwear my present state of woe</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_37'>Ere yet my heart was sweet Love's tomb</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_29'>Every day hath its night</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_102'>First drink a health, this solemn night</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_110'>God bless our Prince and Bride</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_41'>Heaven weeps above the earth all night</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_119'>Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_25'>His eyes in eclipse</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_114'>Home they brought him slain with spears</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_105'>How much I love this writer's manly style</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_97'>How often, when a child I lay reclined</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_23'>I am any man's suitor</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_115'>I stood on a tower in the wet</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_11'>I stood upon the Mountain which o'erlooks</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_28'>I' the glooming light</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_66'>Me my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_77'>My Rosalind, my Rosalind</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_81'>O darling room, my heart's delight</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_71'>Oh, Beauty, passing beauty! sweetest sweet!</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_31'>Oh, go not yet, my love</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_42'>O maiden fresher than the first green leaf</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_64'>O sad <i>No more</i>! O sweet <i>No more</i></a><a name='Page_160'></a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_43'>O thou whose fringèd lids I gaze upon</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_99'>Rise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_27'>Sainted Juliet! dearest name</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_46'>Shall the hag Evil die with the child of Good</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_93'>Sure never yet was Antelope</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_56'>The lintwhite and the throstlecock</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_72'>The Northwind fall'n in the new starréd night</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_47'>The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_67'>There are three things that fill my heart with sighs</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_89'>Therefore your halls, your ancient colleges</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_52'>There is no land like England</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_38'>The varied earth, the moving heaven</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_48'>Thou, from the first, unborn, undying love</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_45'>Though Night hath climbed her peak</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_54'>Two bees within a chrystal flowerbell rockèd</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_35'>Voice of the summerwind</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_83'>We have had enough of motion</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_94'>We know him, out of Shakespeare's art</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_98'>What time I wasted youthful hours</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_61'>Where is the Giant of the Sun, which stood</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_79'>Who can say</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_50'>Who fears to die? Who fears to die</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_63'>With roses musky breathed</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_40'>You cast to ground the hope which once was mine</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_82'>You did late review my lays</a></li> + <li><a href='#Page_111'>Your ringlets, your ringlets</a></li> +</ul> + + +<hr /> +<h4>Footnotes<a name='Page_161'></a></h4> + +<div class='note'><a name='Footnote_A_1'></a><a href='#FNanchor_A_1'>[A]</a> 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'><a name='Footnote_B_2'></a><a href='#FNanchor_B_2'>[B]</a> Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.</div> + +<div class='note'><a name='Footnote_C_3'></a><a href='#FNanchor_C_3'>[C]</a> His crispè hair in ringis was yronne.—Chaucer, <i>Knight's +Tale</i>. (Tennyson's note.)</div> + +<div class='note'><a name='Footnote_D_4'></a><a href='#FNanchor_D_4'>[D]</a> '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 /> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14094 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + + + + + |