And on another
occasion
he said very happily:
"Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing colours.
"Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing colours.
Tennyson
]
[Footnote 2: All up to and including 1850. Though. ]
[Footnote 3: The stanza beginning "The lily-white doe" is omitted in
1842 and 1843, and in the subsequent editions up to and including 1850
begins "A lily-white doe". ]
[Footnote 4: In a letter addressed to Tennyson the late Mr. Peter Bayne
ventured to object to the dramatic propriety of Lady Clare speaking of
herself as "a beggar born". Tennyson defended it by saying: "You make no
allowance for the shock of the fall from being Lady Clare to finding
herself the child of a nurse". But the expression is Miss Ferrier's: "Oh
that she had suffered me to remain the beggar I was born"; and again to
her lover: "You have loved an impostor and a beggar". ]
THE LORD OF BURLEIGH
Written, as we learn from 'Life', i. , 182, by 1835. First published in
1842. No alteration since with the exception of "tho'" for "though".
This poem tells the well-known story of Sarah Hoggins who married under
the circumstances related in the poem. She died in January, 1797,
sinking, so it was said, but without any authority for such a statement,
under the burden of an honour "unto which she was not born". The story
is that Henry Cecil, heir presumptive to his uncle, the ninth Earl of
Exeter, was staying at Bolas, a rural village in Shropshire, where he
met Sarah Hoggins and married her. They lived together at Bolas, where
the two eldest of his children were born, for two years before he came
into the title. She bore him two other children after she was Countess
of Exeter, dying at Burleigh House near Stamford at the early age of
twenty-four. The obituary notice runs thus: "January, 1797. At Burleigh
House near Stamford, aged twenty-four, to the inexpressible surprise and
concern of all acquainted with her, the Right Honbl. Countess of
Exeter. " For full information about this romantic incident see Walford's
'Tales of Great Families', first series, vol. i. , 65-82, and two
interesting papers signed W. O. Woodall in 'Notes and Queries', seventh
series, vol. xii. , 221-23; 'ibid. ', 281-84, and Napier's 'Homes and
Haunts of Tennyson', 104-111.
In her ear he whispers gaily,
"If my heart by signs can tell,
Maiden, I have watch'd thee daily,
And I think thou lov'st me well".
She replies, in accents fainter,
"There is none I love like thee".
He is but a landscape-painter,
And a village maiden she.
He to lips, that fondly falter,
Presses his without reproof:
Leads her to the village altar,
And they leave her father's roof.
"I can make no marriage present;
Little can I give my wife.
Love will make our cottage pleasant,
And I love thee more than life. "
They by parks and lodges going
See the lordly castles stand:
Summer woods, about them blowing,
Made a murmur in the land.
From deep thought himself he rouses,
Says to her that loves him well,
"Let us see these handsome houses
Where the wealthy nobles dwell".
So she goes by him attended,
Hears him lovingly converse,
Sees whatever fair and splendid
Lay betwixt his home and hers;
Parks with oak and chestnut shady,
Parks and order'd gardens great,
Ancient homes of lord and lady,
Built for pleasure and for state.
All he shows her makes him dearer:
Evermore she seems to gaze
On that cottage growing nearer,
Where they twain will spend their days.
O but she will love him truly!
He shall have a cheerful home;
She will order all things duly,
When beneath his roof they come.
Thus her heart rejoices greatly,
Till a gateway she discerns
With armorial bearings stately,
And beneath the gate she turns;
Sees a mansion more majestic
Than all those she saw before:
Many a gallant gay domestic
Bows before him at the door.
And they speak in gentle murmur,
When they answer to his call,
While he treads with footstep firmer,
Leading on from hall to hall.
And, while now she wonders blindly,
Nor the meaning can divine,
Proudly turns he round and kindly,
"All of this is mine and thine".
Here he lives in state and bounty,
Lord of Burleigh, fair and free,
Not a lord in all the county
Is so great a lord as he.
All at once the colour flushes
Her sweet face from brow to chin:
As it were with shame she blushes,
And her spirit changed within.
Then her countenance all over
Pale again as death did prove:
But he clasp'd her like a lover,
And he cheer'd her soul with love.
So she strove against her weakness,
Tho' at times her spirits sank:
Shaped her heart with woman's meekness
To all duties of her rank:
And a gentle consort made he,
And her gentle mind was such
That she grew a noble lady,
And the people loved her much.
But a trouble weigh'd upon her,
And perplex'd her, night and morn,
With the burthen of an honour
Unto which she was not born.
Faint she grew, and ever fainter,
As she murmur'd "Oh, that he
Were once more that landscape-painter
Which did win my heart from me! "
So she droop'd and droop'd before him,
Fading slowly from his side:
Three fair children first she bore him,
Then before her time she died.
Weeping, weeping late and early,
Walking up and pacing down,
Deeply mourn'd the Lord of Burleigh,
Burleigh-house by Stamford-town.
And he came to look upon her,
And he look'd at her and said,
"Bring the dress and put it on her,
That she wore when she was wed".
Then her people, softly treading,
Bore to earth her body, drest
In the dress that she was wed in,
That her spirit might have rest.
SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE
A FRAGMENT
First published in 1842. Not altered since 1853.
See for what may have given the hint for this fragment _Morte D'Arthur_,
bk. xix. , ch. i. , and bk. xx. , ch. i. , and _cf. Coming of Arthur:_--
And Launcelot pass'd away among the flowers,
For then was latter April, and return'd
Among the flowers in May with Guinevere.
Like souls that balance joy and pain,
With tears and smiles from heaven again
The maiden Spring upon the plain
Came in a sun-lit fall of rain.
In crystal vapour everywhere
Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between,
And, far in forest-deeps unseen,
The topmost elm-tree [1] gather'd green
From draughts of balmy air.
Sometimes the linnet piped his song:
Sometimes the throstle whistled strong:
Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along,
Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong:
By grassy capes with fuller sound
In curves the yellowing river ran,
And drooping chestnut-buds began
To spread into the perfect fan,
Above the teeming ground.
Then, in the boyhood of the year,
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Rode thro' the coverts of the deer,
With blissful treble ringing clear.
She seem'd a part of joyous Spring:
A gown of grass-green silk she wore,
Buckled with golden clasps before;
A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
Closed in a golden ring.
Now on some twisted ivy-net,
Now by some tinkling rivulet,
In mosses mixt [2] with violet
Her cream-white mule his pastern set:
And fleeter now [3] she skimm'd the plains
Than she whose elfin prancer springs
By night to eery warblings,
When all the glimmering moorland rings
With jingling bridle-reins.
As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her play'd,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid:
She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.
[Footnote 1: Up to 1848. Linden. ]
[Footnote 2: All editions up to and including 1850. On mosses thick. ]
[Footnote 3: 1842 to 1851. And now more fleet,]
A FAREWELL
First published in 1842. Not altered since 1843.
This poem was dedicated to the brook at Somersby described in the 'Ode
to Memory' and referred to so often in 'In Memoriam'. Possibly it may
have been written in 1837 when the Tennysons left Somersby. 'Cf. In
Memoriam', sect. ci.
Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
No where by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
But here will sigh thine alder tree,
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.
A thousand suns [1] will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
[Footnote 1: 1842. A hundred suns. ]
THE BEGGAR MAID
First published in 1842, not altered since.
Suggested probably by the fine ballad in Percy's _Reliques_, first
series, book ii. , ballad vi.
Her arms across her breast she laid;
She was more fair than words can say:
Bare-footed came the beggar maid
Before the king Cophetua.
In robe and crown the king stept down,
To meet and greet her on her way;
"It is no wonder," said the lords,
"She is more beautiful than day".
As shines the moon in clouded skies,
She in her poor attire was seen:
One praised her ancles, one her eyes,
One her dark hair and lovesome mien:
So sweet a face, such angel grace,
In all that land had never been:
Cophetua sware a royal oath:
"This beggar maid shall be my queen! "
THE VISION OF SIN
First published in 1842. No alteration made in it after 1851, except in
the insertion of a couplet afterwards omitted.
This remarkable poem may be regarded as a sort of companion poem to 'The
Palace of Art'; the one traces the effect of callous indulgence in mere
intellectual and aesthetic pleasures, the other of profligate indulgence
in the grosser forms of sensual enjoyment. At first all is ecstasy and
intoxication, then comes satiety, and all that satiety brings in its
train, cynicism, pessimism, the drying up of the very springs of life.
"The body chilled, jaded and ruined, the cup of pleasure drained to the
dregs, the senses exhausted of their power to enjoy, the spirit of its
wish to aspire, nothing left but loathing, craving and rottenness. " See
Spedding in 'Edinburgh Review' for April, 1843. The poem concludes by
leaving as an answer to the awful question, "can there be final
salvation for the poor wretch? " a reply undecipherable by man, and dawn
breaking in angry splendour. The best commentary on the poem would be
Byron's lyric: "There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes
away," and 'Don Juan'; biography and daily life are indeed full of
comments on the truth of this fine allegory.
1
I had a vision when the night was late:
A youth came riding toward a palace-gate.
He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown, [1]
But that his heavy rider kept him down.
And from the palace came a child of sin,
And took him by the curls, and led him in,
Where sat a company with heated eyes,
Expecting when a fountain should arise:
A sleepy light upon their brows and lips--
As when the sun, a crescent of eclipse,
Dreams over lake and lawn, and isles and capes--
Suffused them, sitting, lying, languid shapes,
By heaps of gourds, and skins of wine, and piles of grapes.
2
Then methought I heard a mellow sound,
Gathering up from all the lower ground; [2]
Narrowing in to where they sat assembled
Low voluptuous music winding trembled,
Wov'n in circles: they that heard it sigh'd,
Panted hand in hand with faces pale,
Swung themselves, and in low tones replied;
Till the fountain spouted, showering wide
Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail;
Then the music touch'd the gates and died;
Rose again from where it seem'd to fail,
Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale;
Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,
As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale,
The strong tempestuous treble throbb'd and palpitated;
Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,
Caught the sparkles, and in circles,
Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,
Flung the torrent rainbow round:
Then they started from their places,
Moved with violence, changed in hue,
Caught each other with wild grimaces,
Half-invisible to the view,
Wheeling with precipitate paces
To the melody, till they flew,
Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces,
Twisted hard in fierce embraces,
Like to Furies, like to Graces,
Dash'd together in blinding dew:
Till, kill'd with some luxurious agony,
The nerve-dissolving melody
Flutter'd headlong from the sky.
3
And then I look'd up toward a mountain-tract,
That girt the region with high cliff and lawn:
I saw that every morning, far withdrawn
Beyond the darkness and the cataract,
God made himself an awful rose of dawn, [3]
Unheeded: and detaching, fold by fold,
From those still heights, and, slowly drawing near,
A vapour heavy, hueless, formless, cold,
Came floating on for many a month and year,
Unheeded: and I thought I would have spoken,
And warn'd that madman ere it grew too late:
But, as in dreams, I could not. Mine was broken,
When that cold vapour touch'd the palace-gate,
And link'd again. I saw within my head
A gray and gap-tooth'd man as lean as death,
Who slowly rode across a wither'd heath,
And lighted at a ruin'd inn, and said:
4
"Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin!
Here is custom come your way;
Take my brute, and lead him in,
Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay.
"Bitter barmaid, waning fast!
See that sheets are on my bed;
What! the flower of life is past:
It is long before you wed.
"Slip-shod waiter, lank and sour,
At the Dragon on the heath!
Let us have a quiet hour,
Let us hob-and-nob with Death.
"I am old, but let me drink;
Bring me spices, bring me wine;
I remember, when I think,
That my youth was half divine.
"Wine is good for shrivell'd lips,
When a blanket wraps the day,
When the rotten woodland drips,
And the leaf is stamp'd in clay.
"Sit thee down, and have no shame,
Cheek by jowl, and knee by knee:
What care I for any name?
What for order or degree?
"Let me screw thee up a peg:
Let me loose thy tongue with wine:
Callest thou that thing a leg?
Which is thinnest? thine or mine?
"Thou shalt not be saved by works:
Thou hast been a sinner too:
Ruin'd trunks on wither'd forks,
Empty scarecrows, I and you!
"Fill the cup, and fill the can:
Have a rouse before the morn:
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born. [4]
"We are men of ruin'd blood;
Therefore comes it we are wise.
Fish are we that love the mud.
Rising to no fancy-flies.
"Name and fame! to fly sublime
Thro' the courts, the camps, the schools,
Is to be the ball of Time,
Bandied by the hands of fools.
"Friendship! --to be two in one--
Let the canting liar pack!
Well I know, when I am gone,
How she mouths behind my back.
"Virtue! --to be good and just--
Every heart, when sifted well,
Is a clot of warmer dust,
Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.
"O! we two as well can look
Whited thought and cleanly life
As the priest, above his book
Leering at his neighbour's wife.
"Fill the cup, and fill the can:
Have a rouse before the morn:
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born. [4]
"Drink, and let the parties rave:
They are fill'd with idle spleen;
Rising, falling, like a wave,
For they know not what they mean.
"He that roars for liberty
Faster binds a tyrant's [5] power;
And the tyrant's cruel glee
Forces on the freer hour.
"Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
"Greet her with applausive breath,
Freedom, gaily doth she tread;
In her right a civic wreath,
In her left a human head.
"No, I love not what is new;
She is of an ancient house:
And I think we know the hue
Of that cap upon her brows.
"Let her go! her thirst she slakes
Where the bloody conduit runs:
Then her sweetest meal she makes
On the first-born of her sons.
"Drink to lofty hopes that cool--
Visions of a perfect State:
Drink we, last, the public fool,
Frantic love and frantic hate.
"Chant me now some wicked stave,
Till thy drooping courage rise,
And the glow-worm of the grave
Glimmer in thy rheumy eyes.
"Fear not thou to loose thy tongue;
Set thy hoary fancies free;
What is loathsome to the young
Savours well to thee and me.
"Change, reverting to the years,
When thy nerves could understand
What there is in loving tears,
And the warmth of hand in hand.
"Tell me tales of thy first love--
April hopes, the fools of chance;
Till the graves begin to move,
And the dead begin to dance.
"Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
"Trooping from their mouldy dens
The chap-fallen circle spreads:
Welcome, fellow-citizens,
Hollow hearts and empty heads!
"You are bones, and what of that?
Every face, however full,
Padded round with flesh and fat,
Is but modell'd on a skull.
"Death is king, and Vivat Rex!
Tread a measure on the stones,
Madam--if I know your sex,
From the fashion of your bones.
"No, I cannot praise the fire
In your eye--nor yet your lip:
All the more do I admire
Joints of cunning workmanship.
"Lo! God's likeness--the ground-plan--
Neither modell'd, glazed, or framed:
Buss me thou rough sketch of man,
Far too naked to be shamed!
"Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance,
While we keep a little breath!
Drink to heavy Ignorance!
Hob-and-nob with brother Death!
"Thou art mazed, the night is long,
And the longer night is near:
What! I am not all as wrong
As a bitter jest is dear.
"Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,
When the locks are crisp and curl'd;
Unto me my maudlin gall
And my mockeries of the world.
"Fill the cup, and fill the can!
Mingle madness, mingle scorn!
Dregs of life, and lees of man:
Yet we will not die forlorn. "
5
The voice grew faint: there came a further change:
Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range:
Below were men and horses pierced with worms,
And slowly quickening into lower forms;
By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross,
Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd with moss,
Then some one spake [6]: "Behold! it was a crime
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time".
[7] Another said: "The crime of sense became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame".
And one: "He had not wholly quench'd his power;
A little grain of conscience made him sour".
At last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope? "
To which an answer peal'd from that high land.
But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn. [8]
[Footnote 1: A reference to the famous passage in the 'Phoedrus' where
Plato compares the soul to a chariot drawn by the two-winged steeds. ]
Footnote 2: Imitated apparently from the dance in Shelley's 'Triumph of
Life':--
The wild dance maddens in the van; and those
. . .
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music, wilder as it grows.
They, tortur'd by their agonising pleasure,
Convuls'd, and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
. . .
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air.
As their feet twinkle, etc. ]
[Footnote 3: See footnote to last line. ]
[Footnote 4: All up to and including 1850 read:--
Every _minute_ dies a man,
Every _minute_ one is born.
Mr. Babbage, the famous mathematician, is said to have addressed the
following letter to Tennyson in reference to this couplet:--
"I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to
keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual
equipoise, whereas it is a]**[Footnote: well-known fact that the said
sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the
liberty of suggesting that, in the next edition of your excellent
poem, the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected
as follows:--
Every moment dies a man,
And one and a sixteenth is born.
I may add that the exact figures are 1. 167, but something must, of
course, be conceded to the laws of metre. "]
[Footnote 5: 1842 and 1843. The tyrant's. ]
[Footnote 6: 1842. Said. ]
[Footnote 7: In the Selection published in 1865 Tennyson here inserted a
couplet which he afterwards omitted:--
Another answer'd: "But a crime of sense! "
"Give him new nerves with old experience. "]
[Footnote 8: In Professor Tyndall's reminiscences of Tennyson, inserted
in Tennyson's 'Life', he says he once asked him for some
explanation of this line, and the poet's reply was:
"The power of explaining such concentrated expressions of the
imagination was very different from that of writing them".
And on another occasion he said very happily:
"Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing colours. Every reader
must find his own interpretation, according to his ability, and
according to his sympathy with the poet".
Poetry in its essential forms always suggests infinitely more than it
expresses, and at once inspires and kindles the intelligence which is to
comprehend it; if that intelligence, which is perhaps only another name
for sympathy, does not exist, then, in Byron's happy sarcasm:--
"The gentle readers wax unkind,
And, not so studious for the poet's ease,
Insist on knowing what he 'means', a hard
And hapless situation for a bard".
Possibly Tennyson may have had in his mind Keats's line:--
"There was an awful rainbow once in heaven"]
COME NOT, WHEN I AM DEAD. . .
First published in 'The Keepsake' for 1851.
Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou, go by. [1]
Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
I care no longer, being all unblest:
Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, [2]
And I desire to rest.
Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie:
Go by, go by.
[Footnote 1: 'The Keepsake':--But go thou by. ]
[Footnote 2: 'The Keepsake' has a small 't' for Time. ]
THE EAGLE
{FRAGMENT}
First published in 1851. It has not been altered.
He clasps the crag with hooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; [1]
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
[Footnote 1: One of Tennyson's most magically descriptive lines; nothing
could exceed the vividness of the words "wrinkled" and "crawls" here. ]
MOVE EASTWARD, HAPPY EARTH. . .
First published in 1842.
Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow:
From fringes of the faded eve,
O, happy planet, eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-world, and rise
To glass herself in dewy eyes
That watch me from the glen below.
Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly [1] borne,
Dip forward under starry light,
And move me to my marriage-morn,
And round again to happy night.
[Footnote 1: 1842 to 1853. Lightly. ]
BREAK, BREAK, BREAK. . .
First published in 1842. No alteration.
This exquisite poem was composed in a very different scene from that to
which it refers, namely in "a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the
morning between blossoming hedges". See 'Life of Tennyson', vol. i. , p.
223.
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
THE POET'S SONG
First published in 1842.
The rain had fallen, the Poet arose,
He pass'd by the town and out of the street,
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
And waves of shadow went over the wheat,
And he sat him down in a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,
And the lark drop down at his feet.
The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee, [1]
The snake slipt under a spray,
The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak,
And stared, with his foot on the prey,
And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away".
[Footnote 1: 1889, Fly. ]
APPENDIX
The Poems published in MDCCCXXX and in MDCCCXXXIII which were
temporarily or finally suppressed.
POEMS PUBLISHED IN MDCCCXXX
ELEGIACS
Reprinted in Collected Works among 'Juvenilia', with title
altered to 'Leonine Elegiacs'. The only alterations made in the
text were "wood-dove" for "turtle," and the substitution of "or" for
"and" in the last line but one.
Lowflowing breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm'd in the
gloaming:
Thoro' the black-stemm'd pines only the far river shines.
Creeping thro' blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes,
Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall.
Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerily; the grasshopper carolleth clearly;
Deeply the turtle coos; shrilly the owlet halloos;
Winds creep; dews fell chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes
stilly:
Over the pools in the burn watergnats murmur and mourn.
Sadly the far kine loweth: the glimmering water outfloweth:
Twin peaks shadow'd with pine slope to the dark hyaline.
Lowthroned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad
Throbbing in mild unrest holds him beneath in her breast.
The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth,
Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind.
Thou comest morning and even; she cometh not morning or even.
False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind?
THE "HOW" AND THE "WHY"
I am any man's suitor,
If any will be my tutor:
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast:
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,
In eternity no past.
We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die,
Who will riddle me the _how_ and the _why_?
The bulrush nods unto its brother,
The wheatears whisper to each other:
What is it they say? What do they there?
Why two and two make four? Why round is not square?
Why the rocks stand still, and the light clouds fly?
Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh?
Why deep is not high, and high is not deep?
Whether we wake, or whether we sleep?
Whether we sleep, or whether we die?
How you are you? Why I am I?
Who will riddle me the _how_ and the _why_?
The world is somewhat; it goes on somehow;
But what is the meaning of _then_ and _now_?
I feel there is something; but how and what?
I know there is somewhat; but what and why?
I cannot tell if that somewhat be I.
The little bird pipeth, "why? why? "
In the summerwoods when the sun falls low
And the great bird sits on the opposite bough,
And stares in his face and shouts, "how? how? "
And the black owl scuds down the mellow twilight,
And chaunts, "how? how? " the whole of the night.
Why the life goes when the blood is spilt?
What the life is? where the soul may lie?
Why a church is with a steeple built;
And a house with a chimneypot?
Who will riddle me the how and the what?
Who will riddle me the what and the why?
SUPPOSED CONFESSIONS
OF A SECOND-RATE SENSITIVE MIND NOT IN UNITY WITH ITSELF
There has been only one important alteration made in this poem, when it
was reprinted among the 'Juvenilia' in 1871, and that was the
suppression of the verses beginning "A grief not uninformed and dull" to
"Indued with immortality" inclusive, and the substitution of "rosy" for
"waxen". Capitals are in all cases inserted in the reprint where the
Deity is referred to, "through" is altered into "thro'" all through the
poem, and hyphens are inserted in the double epithets. No further
alterations were made in the edition of 1830.
Oh God! my God! have mercy now.
I faint, I fall. Men say that thou
Didst die for me, for such as _me_,
Patient of ill, and death, and scorn,
And that my sin was as a thorn
Among the thorns that girt thy brow,
Wounding thy soul. --That even now,
In this extremest misery
Of ignorance, I should require
A sign! and if a bolt of fire
Would rive the slumbrous summernoon
While I do pray to thee alone,
Think my belief would stronger grow!
Is not my human pride brought low?
The boastings of my spirit still?
The joy I had in my freewill
All cold, and dead, and corpse-like grown?
And what is left to me, but thou,
And faith in thee? Men pass me by;
Christians with happy countenances--
And children all seem full of thee!
And women smile with saint-like glances
Like thine own mother's when she bow'd
Above thee, on that happy morn
When angels spake to men aloud,
And thou and peace to earth were born.
Goodwill to me as well as all--
I one of them: my brothers they:
Brothers in Christ--a world of peace
And confidence, day after day;
And trust and hope till things should cease,
And then one Heaven receive us all.
How sweet to have a common faith!
To hold a common scorn of death!
And at a burial to hear
The creaking cords which wound and eat
Into my human heart, whene'er
Earth goes to earth, with grief, not fear,
With hopeful grief, were passing sweet!
A grief not uninformed, and dull
Hearted with hope, of hope as full
As is the blood with life, or night
And a dark cloud with rich moonlight.
To stand beside a grave, and see
The red small atoms wherewith we
Are built, and smile in calm, and say--
"These little moles and graves shall be
Clothed on with immortality
More glorious than the noon of day--
All that is pass'd into the flowers
And into beasts and other men,
And all the Norland whirlwind showers
From open vaults, and all the sea
O'er washes with sharp salts, again
Shall fleet together all, and be
Indued with immortality. "
Thrice happy state again to be
The trustful infant on the knee!
Who lets his waxen fingers play
About his mother's neck, and knows
Nothing beyond his mother's eyes.
They comfort him by night and day;
They light his little life alway;
He hath no thought of coming woes;
He hath no care of life or death,
Scarce outward signs of joy arise,
Because the Spirit of happiness
And perfect rest so inward is;
And loveth so his innocent heart,
Her temple and her place of birth,
Where she would ever wish to dwell,
Life of the fountain there, beneath
Its salient springs, and far apart,
Hating to wander out on earth,
Or breathe into the hollow air,
Whose dullness would make visible
Her subtil, warm, and golden breath,
Which mixing with the infant's blood,
Fullfills him with beatitude.
Oh! sure it is a special care
Of God, to fortify from doubt,
To arm in proof, and guard about
With triple-mailed trust, and clear
Delight, the infant's dawning year.
Would that my gloomed fancy were
As thine, my mother, when with brows
Propped on thy knees, my hands upheld
In thine, I listen'd to thy vows,
For me outpour'd in holiest prayer--
For me unworthy! --and beheld
Thy mild deep eyes upraised, that knew
The beauty and repose of faith,
And the clear spirit shining through.
Oh! wherefore do we grow awry
From roots which strike so deep? why dare
Paths in the desert? Could not I
Bow myself down, where thou hast knelt,
To th' earth--until the ice would melt
Here, and I feel as thou hast felt?
What Devil had the heart to scathe
Flowers thou hadst rear'd--to brush the dew
From thine own lily, when thy grave
Was deep, my mother, in the clay?
Myself? Is it thus? Myself? Had I
So little love for thee? But why
Prevail'd not thy pure prayers? Why pray
To one who heeds not, who can save
But will not? Great in faith, and strong
Against the grief of circumstance
Wert thou, and yet unheard. What if
Thou pleadest still, and seest me drive
Thro' utter dark a fullsailed skiff,
Unpiloted i' the echoing dance
Of reboant whirlwinds, stooping low
Unto the death, not sunk! I know
At matins and at evensong,
That thou, if thou were yet alive,
In deep and daily prayers wouldst strive
To reconcile me with thy God.
Albeit, my hope is gray, and cold
At heart, thou wouldest murmur still--
"Bring this lamb back into thy fold,
My Lord, if so it be thy will".
Wouldst tell me I must brook the rod,
And chastisement of human pride;
That pride, the sin of devils, stood
Betwixt me and the light of God!
That hitherto I had defied
And had rejected God--that grace
Would drop from his o'erbrimming love,
As manna on my wilderness,
If I would pray--that God would move
And strike the hard hard rock, and thence,
Sweet in their utmost bitterness,
Would issue tears of penitence
Which would keep green hope's life. Alas!
I think that pride hath now no place
Nor sojourn in me. I am void,
Dark, formless, utterly destroyed.
Why not believe then? Why not yet
Anchor thy frailty there, where man
Hath moor'd and rested? Ask the sea
At midnight, when the crisp slope waves
After a tempest, rib and fret
The broadimbased beach, why he
Slumbers not like a mountain tarn?
Wherefore his ridges are not curls
And ripples of an inland mere?
Wherefore he moaneth thus, nor can
Draw down into his vexed pools
All that blue heaven which hues and paves
The other? I am too forlorn,
Too shaken: my own weakness fools
My judgment, and my spirit whirls,
Moved from beneath with doubt and fear.
"Yet" said I, in my morn of youth,
The unsunned freshness of my strength,
When I went forth in quest of truth,
"It is man's privilege to doubt,
If so be that from doubt at length,
Truth may stand forth unmoved of change,
An image with profulgent brows,
And perfect limbs, as from the storm
Of running fires and fluid range
Of lawless airs, at last stood out
This excellence and solid form
Of constant beauty. For the Ox
Feeds in the herb, and sleeps, or fills
The horned valleys all about,
And hollows of the fringed hills
In summerheats, with placid lows
Unfearing, till his own blood flows
About his hoof. And in the flocks
The lamb rejoiceth in the year,
And raceth freely with his fere,
And answers to his mother's calls
From the flower'd furrow. In a time,
Of which he wots not, run short pains
Through his warm heart; and then, from whence
He knows not, on his light there falls
A shadow; and his native slope,
Where he was wont to leap and climb,
Floats from his sick and filmed eyes,
And something in the darkness draws
His forehead earthward, and he dies.
Shall man live thus, in joy and hope
As a young lamb, who cannot dream,
Living, but that he shall live on?
Shall we not look into the laws
Of life and death, and things that seem,
And things that be, and analyse
Our double nature, and compare
All creeds till we have found the one,
If one there be? " Ay me! I fear
All may not doubt, but everywhere
Some must clasp Idols. Yet, my God,
Whom call I Idol? Let thy dove
Shadow me over, and my sins
Be unremembered, and thy love
Enlighten me. Oh teach me yet
Somewhat before the heavy clod
Weighs on me, and the busy fret
Of that sharpheaded worm begins
In the gross blackness underneath.
O weary life! O weary death!
O spirit and heart made desolate!
O damned vacillating state!
THE BURIAL OF LOVE
His eyes in eclipse,
Pale cold his lips,
The light of his hopes unfed,
Mute his tongue,
His bow unstrung
With the tears he hath shed,
Backward drooping his graceful head,
Love is dead;
His last arrow is sped;
He hath not another dart;
Go--carry him to his dark deathbed;
Bury him in the cold, cold heart--
Love is dead.
Oh, truest love! art thou forlorn,
And unrevenged? thy pleasant wiles
Forgotten, and thine innocent joy?
Shall hollowhearted apathy,
The cruellest form of perfect scorn,
With languor of most hateful smiles,
For ever write
In the withered light
Of the tearless eye,
An epitaph that all may spy?
No! sooner she herself shall die.
For her the showers shall not fall,
Nor the round sun that shineth to all;
Her light shall into darkness change;
For her the green grass shall not spring,
Nor the rivers flow, nor the sweet birds sing,
Till Love have his full revenge.
TO--
Sainted Juliet! dearest name!
If to love be life alone,
Divinest Juliet,
I love thee, and live; and yet
Love unreturned is like the fragrant flame
Folding the slaughter of the sacrifice
Offered to gods upon an altarthrone;
My heart is lighted at thine eyes,
Changed into fire, and blown about with sighs.
SONG
I
I' the glooming light
Of middle night
So cold and white,
Worn Sorrow sits by the moaning wave;
Beside her are laid
Her mattock and spade,
For she hath half delved her own deep grave.
Alone she is there:
The white clouds drizzle: her hair falls loose;
Her shoulders are bare;
Her tears are mixed with the bearded dews.
II
Death standeth by;
She will not die;
With glazed eye
She looks at her grave: she cannot sleep;
Ever alone
She maketh her moan:
She cannot speak; she can only weep;
For she will not hope.
The thick snow falls on her flake by flake,
The dull wave mourns down the slope,
The world will not change, and her heart will not break.
SONG
The lintwhite and the throstlecock
Have voices sweet and clear;
All in the bloomed May.
They from the blosmy brere
Call to the fleeting year,
If that he would them hear
And stay. Alas! that one so beautiful
Should have so dull an ear.
II
Fair year, fair year, thy children call,
But thou art deaf as death;
All in the bloomed May.
When thy light perisheth
That from thee issueth,
Our life evanisheth: Oh! stay.
Alas! that lips so cruel-dumb
Should have so sweet a breath!
III
Fair year, with brows of royal love
Thou comest, as a king,
All in the bloomed May.
Thy golden largess fling,
And longer hear us sing;
Though thou art fleet of wing,
Yet stay. Alas! that eyes so full of light
Should be so wandering!
IV
Thy locks are all of sunny sheen
In rings of gold yronne, [1]
All in the bloomed May,
We pri'thee pass not on;
If thou dost leave the sun,
Delight is with thee gone, Oh! stay.
Thou art the fairest of thy feres,
We pri'thee pass not on.
[Footnote 1: His crispe hair in ringis was yronne. --Chaucer, _Knight's
Tale. _ (Tennyson's note. )]
SONG
I
Every day hath its night:
Every night its morn:
Thorough dark and bright
Winged hours are borne;
Ah! welaway!
Seasons flower and fade;
Golden calm and storm
Mingle day by day.
There is no bright form
Doth not cast a shade--
Ah! welaway!
II
When we laugh, and our mirth
Apes the happy vein,
We're so kin to earth,
Pleasaunce fathers pain--
Ah! welaway!
Madness laugheth loud:
Laughter bringeth tears:
Eyes are worn away
Till the end of fears
Cometh in the shroud,
Ah!
[Footnote 2: All up to and including 1850. Though. ]
[Footnote 3: The stanza beginning "The lily-white doe" is omitted in
1842 and 1843, and in the subsequent editions up to and including 1850
begins "A lily-white doe". ]
[Footnote 4: In a letter addressed to Tennyson the late Mr. Peter Bayne
ventured to object to the dramatic propriety of Lady Clare speaking of
herself as "a beggar born". Tennyson defended it by saying: "You make no
allowance for the shock of the fall from being Lady Clare to finding
herself the child of a nurse". But the expression is Miss Ferrier's: "Oh
that she had suffered me to remain the beggar I was born"; and again to
her lover: "You have loved an impostor and a beggar". ]
THE LORD OF BURLEIGH
Written, as we learn from 'Life', i. , 182, by 1835. First published in
1842. No alteration since with the exception of "tho'" for "though".
This poem tells the well-known story of Sarah Hoggins who married under
the circumstances related in the poem. She died in January, 1797,
sinking, so it was said, but without any authority for such a statement,
under the burden of an honour "unto which she was not born". The story
is that Henry Cecil, heir presumptive to his uncle, the ninth Earl of
Exeter, was staying at Bolas, a rural village in Shropshire, where he
met Sarah Hoggins and married her. They lived together at Bolas, where
the two eldest of his children were born, for two years before he came
into the title. She bore him two other children after she was Countess
of Exeter, dying at Burleigh House near Stamford at the early age of
twenty-four. The obituary notice runs thus: "January, 1797. At Burleigh
House near Stamford, aged twenty-four, to the inexpressible surprise and
concern of all acquainted with her, the Right Honbl. Countess of
Exeter. " For full information about this romantic incident see Walford's
'Tales of Great Families', first series, vol. i. , 65-82, and two
interesting papers signed W. O. Woodall in 'Notes and Queries', seventh
series, vol. xii. , 221-23; 'ibid. ', 281-84, and Napier's 'Homes and
Haunts of Tennyson', 104-111.
In her ear he whispers gaily,
"If my heart by signs can tell,
Maiden, I have watch'd thee daily,
And I think thou lov'st me well".
She replies, in accents fainter,
"There is none I love like thee".
He is but a landscape-painter,
And a village maiden she.
He to lips, that fondly falter,
Presses his without reproof:
Leads her to the village altar,
And they leave her father's roof.
"I can make no marriage present;
Little can I give my wife.
Love will make our cottage pleasant,
And I love thee more than life. "
They by parks and lodges going
See the lordly castles stand:
Summer woods, about them blowing,
Made a murmur in the land.
From deep thought himself he rouses,
Says to her that loves him well,
"Let us see these handsome houses
Where the wealthy nobles dwell".
So she goes by him attended,
Hears him lovingly converse,
Sees whatever fair and splendid
Lay betwixt his home and hers;
Parks with oak and chestnut shady,
Parks and order'd gardens great,
Ancient homes of lord and lady,
Built for pleasure and for state.
All he shows her makes him dearer:
Evermore she seems to gaze
On that cottage growing nearer,
Where they twain will spend their days.
O but she will love him truly!
He shall have a cheerful home;
She will order all things duly,
When beneath his roof they come.
Thus her heart rejoices greatly,
Till a gateway she discerns
With armorial bearings stately,
And beneath the gate she turns;
Sees a mansion more majestic
Than all those she saw before:
Many a gallant gay domestic
Bows before him at the door.
And they speak in gentle murmur,
When they answer to his call,
While he treads with footstep firmer,
Leading on from hall to hall.
And, while now she wonders blindly,
Nor the meaning can divine,
Proudly turns he round and kindly,
"All of this is mine and thine".
Here he lives in state and bounty,
Lord of Burleigh, fair and free,
Not a lord in all the county
Is so great a lord as he.
All at once the colour flushes
Her sweet face from brow to chin:
As it were with shame she blushes,
And her spirit changed within.
Then her countenance all over
Pale again as death did prove:
But he clasp'd her like a lover,
And he cheer'd her soul with love.
So she strove against her weakness,
Tho' at times her spirits sank:
Shaped her heart with woman's meekness
To all duties of her rank:
And a gentle consort made he,
And her gentle mind was such
That she grew a noble lady,
And the people loved her much.
But a trouble weigh'd upon her,
And perplex'd her, night and morn,
With the burthen of an honour
Unto which she was not born.
Faint she grew, and ever fainter,
As she murmur'd "Oh, that he
Were once more that landscape-painter
Which did win my heart from me! "
So she droop'd and droop'd before him,
Fading slowly from his side:
Three fair children first she bore him,
Then before her time she died.
Weeping, weeping late and early,
Walking up and pacing down,
Deeply mourn'd the Lord of Burleigh,
Burleigh-house by Stamford-town.
And he came to look upon her,
And he look'd at her and said,
"Bring the dress and put it on her,
That she wore when she was wed".
Then her people, softly treading,
Bore to earth her body, drest
In the dress that she was wed in,
That her spirit might have rest.
SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE
A FRAGMENT
First published in 1842. Not altered since 1853.
See for what may have given the hint for this fragment _Morte D'Arthur_,
bk. xix. , ch. i. , and bk. xx. , ch. i. , and _cf. Coming of Arthur:_--
And Launcelot pass'd away among the flowers,
For then was latter April, and return'd
Among the flowers in May with Guinevere.
Like souls that balance joy and pain,
With tears and smiles from heaven again
The maiden Spring upon the plain
Came in a sun-lit fall of rain.
In crystal vapour everywhere
Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between,
And, far in forest-deeps unseen,
The topmost elm-tree [1] gather'd green
From draughts of balmy air.
Sometimes the linnet piped his song:
Sometimes the throstle whistled strong:
Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along,
Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong:
By grassy capes with fuller sound
In curves the yellowing river ran,
And drooping chestnut-buds began
To spread into the perfect fan,
Above the teeming ground.
Then, in the boyhood of the year,
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Rode thro' the coverts of the deer,
With blissful treble ringing clear.
She seem'd a part of joyous Spring:
A gown of grass-green silk she wore,
Buckled with golden clasps before;
A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
Closed in a golden ring.
Now on some twisted ivy-net,
Now by some tinkling rivulet,
In mosses mixt [2] with violet
Her cream-white mule his pastern set:
And fleeter now [3] she skimm'd the plains
Than she whose elfin prancer springs
By night to eery warblings,
When all the glimmering moorland rings
With jingling bridle-reins.
As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her play'd,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid:
She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.
[Footnote 1: Up to 1848. Linden. ]
[Footnote 2: All editions up to and including 1850. On mosses thick. ]
[Footnote 3: 1842 to 1851. And now more fleet,]
A FAREWELL
First published in 1842. Not altered since 1843.
This poem was dedicated to the brook at Somersby described in the 'Ode
to Memory' and referred to so often in 'In Memoriam'. Possibly it may
have been written in 1837 when the Tennysons left Somersby. 'Cf. In
Memoriam', sect. ci.
Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
No where by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
But here will sigh thine alder tree,
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.
A thousand suns [1] will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
[Footnote 1: 1842. A hundred suns. ]
THE BEGGAR MAID
First published in 1842, not altered since.
Suggested probably by the fine ballad in Percy's _Reliques_, first
series, book ii. , ballad vi.
Her arms across her breast she laid;
She was more fair than words can say:
Bare-footed came the beggar maid
Before the king Cophetua.
In robe and crown the king stept down,
To meet and greet her on her way;
"It is no wonder," said the lords,
"She is more beautiful than day".
As shines the moon in clouded skies,
She in her poor attire was seen:
One praised her ancles, one her eyes,
One her dark hair and lovesome mien:
So sweet a face, such angel grace,
In all that land had never been:
Cophetua sware a royal oath:
"This beggar maid shall be my queen! "
THE VISION OF SIN
First published in 1842. No alteration made in it after 1851, except in
the insertion of a couplet afterwards omitted.
This remarkable poem may be regarded as a sort of companion poem to 'The
Palace of Art'; the one traces the effect of callous indulgence in mere
intellectual and aesthetic pleasures, the other of profligate indulgence
in the grosser forms of sensual enjoyment. At first all is ecstasy and
intoxication, then comes satiety, and all that satiety brings in its
train, cynicism, pessimism, the drying up of the very springs of life.
"The body chilled, jaded and ruined, the cup of pleasure drained to the
dregs, the senses exhausted of their power to enjoy, the spirit of its
wish to aspire, nothing left but loathing, craving and rottenness. " See
Spedding in 'Edinburgh Review' for April, 1843. The poem concludes by
leaving as an answer to the awful question, "can there be final
salvation for the poor wretch? " a reply undecipherable by man, and dawn
breaking in angry splendour. The best commentary on the poem would be
Byron's lyric: "There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes
away," and 'Don Juan'; biography and daily life are indeed full of
comments on the truth of this fine allegory.
1
I had a vision when the night was late:
A youth came riding toward a palace-gate.
He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown, [1]
But that his heavy rider kept him down.
And from the palace came a child of sin,
And took him by the curls, and led him in,
Where sat a company with heated eyes,
Expecting when a fountain should arise:
A sleepy light upon their brows and lips--
As when the sun, a crescent of eclipse,
Dreams over lake and lawn, and isles and capes--
Suffused them, sitting, lying, languid shapes,
By heaps of gourds, and skins of wine, and piles of grapes.
2
Then methought I heard a mellow sound,
Gathering up from all the lower ground; [2]
Narrowing in to where they sat assembled
Low voluptuous music winding trembled,
Wov'n in circles: they that heard it sigh'd,
Panted hand in hand with faces pale,
Swung themselves, and in low tones replied;
Till the fountain spouted, showering wide
Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail;
Then the music touch'd the gates and died;
Rose again from where it seem'd to fail,
Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale;
Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,
As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale,
The strong tempestuous treble throbb'd and palpitated;
Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,
Caught the sparkles, and in circles,
Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,
Flung the torrent rainbow round:
Then they started from their places,
Moved with violence, changed in hue,
Caught each other with wild grimaces,
Half-invisible to the view,
Wheeling with precipitate paces
To the melody, till they flew,
Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces,
Twisted hard in fierce embraces,
Like to Furies, like to Graces,
Dash'd together in blinding dew:
Till, kill'd with some luxurious agony,
The nerve-dissolving melody
Flutter'd headlong from the sky.
3
And then I look'd up toward a mountain-tract,
That girt the region with high cliff and lawn:
I saw that every morning, far withdrawn
Beyond the darkness and the cataract,
God made himself an awful rose of dawn, [3]
Unheeded: and detaching, fold by fold,
From those still heights, and, slowly drawing near,
A vapour heavy, hueless, formless, cold,
Came floating on for many a month and year,
Unheeded: and I thought I would have spoken,
And warn'd that madman ere it grew too late:
But, as in dreams, I could not. Mine was broken,
When that cold vapour touch'd the palace-gate,
And link'd again. I saw within my head
A gray and gap-tooth'd man as lean as death,
Who slowly rode across a wither'd heath,
And lighted at a ruin'd inn, and said:
4
"Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin!
Here is custom come your way;
Take my brute, and lead him in,
Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay.
"Bitter barmaid, waning fast!
See that sheets are on my bed;
What! the flower of life is past:
It is long before you wed.
"Slip-shod waiter, lank and sour,
At the Dragon on the heath!
Let us have a quiet hour,
Let us hob-and-nob with Death.
"I am old, but let me drink;
Bring me spices, bring me wine;
I remember, when I think,
That my youth was half divine.
"Wine is good for shrivell'd lips,
When a blanket wraps the day,
When the rotten woodland drips,
And the leaf is stamp'd in clay.
"Sit thee down, and have no shame,
Cheek by jowl, and knee by knee:
What care I for any name?
What for order or degree?
"Let me screw thee up a peg:
Let me loose thy tongue with wine:
Callest thou that thing a leg?
Which is thinnest? thine or mine?
"Thou shalt not be saved by works:
Thou hast been a sinner too:
Ruin'd trunks on wither'd forks,
Empty scarecrows, I and you!
"Fill the cup, and fill the can:
Have a rouse before the morn:
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born. [4]
"We are men of ruin'd blood;
Therefore comes it we are wise.
Fish are we that love the mud.
Rising to no fancy-flies.
"Name and fame! to fly sublime
Thro' the courts, the camps, the schools,
Is to be the ball of Time,
Bandied by the hands of fools.
"Friendship! --to be two in one--
Let the canting liar pack!
Well I know, when I am gone,
How she mouths behind my back.
"Virtue! --to be good and just--
Every heart, when sifted well,
Is a clot of warmer dust,
Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.
"O! we two as well can look
Whited thought and cleanly life
As the priest, above his book
Leering at his neighbour's wife.
"Fill the cup, and fill the can:
Have a rouse before the morn:
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born. [4]
"Drink, and let the parties rave:
They are fill'd with idle spleen;
Rising, falling, like a wave,
For they know not what they mean.
"He that roars for liberty
Faster binds a tyrant's [5] power;
And the tyrant's cruel glee
Forces on the freer hour.
"Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
"Greet her with applausive breath,
Freedom, gaily doth she tread;
In her right a civic wreath,
In her left a human head.
"No, I love not what is new;
She is of an ancient house:
And I think we know the hue
Of that cap upon her brows.
"Let her go! her thirst she slakes
Where the bloody conduit runs:
Then her sweetest meal she makes
On the first-born of her sons.
"Drink to lofty hopes that cool--
Visions of a perfect State:
Drink we, last, the public fool,
Frantic love and frantic hate.
"Chant me now some wicked stave,
Till thy drooping courage rise,
And the glow-worm of the grave
Glimmer in thy rheumy eyes.
"Fear not thou to loose thy tongue;
Set thy hoary fancies free;
What is loathsome to the young
Savours well to thee and me.
"Change, reverting to the years,
When thy nerves could understand
What there is in loving tears,
And the warmth of hand in hand.
"Tell me tales of thy first love--
April hopes, the fools of chance;
Till the graves begin to move,
And the dead begin to dance.
"Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
"Trooping from their mouldy dens
The chap-fallen circle spreads:
Welcome, fellow-citizens,
Hollow hearts and empty heads!
"You are bones, and what of that?
Every face, however full,
Padded round with flesh and fat,
Is but modell'd on a skull.
"Death is king, and Vivat Rex!
Tread a measure on the stones,
Madam--if I know your sex,
From the fashion of your bones.
"No, I cannot praise the fire
In your eye--nor yet your lip:
All the more do I admire
Joints of cunning workmanship.
"Lo! God's likeness--the ground-plan--
Neither modell'd, glazed, or framed:
Buss me thou rough sketch of man,
Far too naked to be shamed!
"Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance,
While we keep a little breath!
Drink to heavy Ignorance!
Hob-and-nob with brother Death!
"Thou art mazed, the night is long,
And the longer night is near:
What! I am not all as wrong
As a bitter jest is dear.
"Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,
When the locks are crisp and curl'd;
Unto me my maudlin gall
And my mockeries of the world.
"Fill the cup, and fill the can!
Mingle madness, mingle scorn!
Dregs of life, and lees of man:
Yet we will not die forlorn. "
5
The voice grew faint: there came a further change:
Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range:
Below were men and horses pierced with worms,
And slowly quickening into lower forms;
By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross,
Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd with moss,
Then some one spake [6]: "Behold! it was a crime
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time".
[7] Another said: "The crime of sense became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame".
And one: "He had not wholly quench'd his power;
A little grain of conscience made him sour".
At last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope? "
To which an answer peal'd from that high land.
But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn. [8]
[Footnote 1: A reference to the famous passage in the 'Phoedrus' where
Plato compares the soul to a chariot drawn by the two-winged steeds. ]
Footnote 2: Imitated apparently from the dance in Shelley's 'Triumph of
Life':--
The wild dance maddens in the van; and those
. . .
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music, wilder as it grows.
They, tortur'd by their agonising pleasure,
Convuls'd, and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
. . .
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air.
As their feet twinkle, etc. ]
[Footnote 3: See footnote to last line. ]
[Footnote 4: All up to and including 1850 read:--
Every _minute_ dies a man,
Every _minute_ one is born.
Mr. Babbage, the famous mathematician, is said to have addressed the
following letter to Tennyson in reference to this couplet:--
"I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to
keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual
equipoise, whereas it is a]**[Footnote: well-known fact that the said
sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the
liberty of suggesting that, in the next edition of your excellent
poem, the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected
as follows:--
Every moment dies a man,
And one and a sixteenth is born.
I may add that the exact figures are 1. 167, but something must, of
course, be conceded to the laws of metre. "]
[Footnote 5: 1842 and 1843. The tyrant's. ]
[Footnote 6: 1842. Said. ]
[Footnote 7: In the Selection published in 1865 Tennyson here inserted a
couplet which he afterwards omitted:--
Another answer'd: "But a crime of sense! "
"Give him new nerves with old experience. "]
[Footnote 8: In Professor Tyndall's reminiscences of Tennyson, inserted
in Tennyson's 'Life', he says he once asked him for some
explanation of this line, and the poet's reply was:
"The power of explaining such concentrated expressions of the
imagination was very different from that of writing them".
And on another occasion he said very happily:
"Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing colours. Every reader
must find his own interpretation, according to his ability, and
according to his sympathy with the poet".
Poetry in its essential forms always suggests infinitely more than it
expresses, and at once inspires and kindles the intelligence which is to
comprehend it; if that intelligence, which is perhaps only another name
for sympathy, does not exist, then, in Byron's happy sarcasm:--
"The gentle readers wax unkind,
And, not so studious for the poet's ease,
Insist on knowing what he 'means', a hard
And hapless situation for a bard".
Possibly Tennyson may have had in his mind Keats's line:--
"There was an awful rainbow once in heaven"]
COME NOT, WHEN I AM DEAD. . .
First published in 'The Keepsake' for 1851.
Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou, go by. [1]
Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
I care no longer, being all unblest:
Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, [2]
And I desire to rest.
Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie:
Go by, go by.
[Footnote 1: 'The Keepsake':--But go thou by. ]
[Footnote 2: 'The Keepsake' has a small 't' for Time. ]
THE EAGLE
{FRAGMENT}
First published in 1851. It has not been altered.
He clasps the crag with hooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; [1]
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
[Footnote 1: One of Tennyson's most magically descriptive lines; nothing
could exceed the vividness of the words "wrinkled" and "crawls" here. ]
MOVE EASTWARD, HAPPY EARTH. . .
First published in 1842.
Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow:
From fringes of the faded eve,
O, happy planet, eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-world, and rise
To glass herself in dewy eyes
That watch me from the glen below.
Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly [1] borne,
Dip forward under starry light,
And move me to my marriage-morn,
And round again to happy night.
[Footnote 1: 1842 to 1853. Lightly. ]
BREAK, BREAK, BREAK. . .
First published in 1842. No alteration.
This exquisite poem was composed in a very different scene from that to
which it refers, namely in "a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the
morning between blossoming hedges". See 'Life of Tennyson', vol. i. , p.
223.
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
THE POET'S SONG
First published in 1842.
The rain had fallen, the Poet arose,
He pass'd by the town and out of the street,
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
And waves of shadow went over the wheat,
And he sat him down in a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,
And the lark drop down at his feet.
The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee, [1]
The snake slipt under a spray,
The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak,
And stared, with his foot on the prey,
And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away".
[Footnote 1: 1889, Fly. ]
APPENDIX
The Poems published in MDCCCXXX and in MDCCCXXXIII which were
temporarily or finally suppressed.
POEMS PUBLISHED IN MDCCCXXX
ELEGIACS
Reprinted in Collected Works among 'Juvenilia', with title
altered to 'Leonine Elegiacs'. The only alterations made in the
text were "wood-dove" for "turtle," and the substitution of "or" for
"and" in the last line but one.
Lowflowing breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm'd in the
gloaming:
Thoro' the black-stemm'd pines only the far river shines.
Creeping thro' blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes,
Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall.
Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerily; the grasshopper carolleth clearly;
Deeply the turtle coos; shrilly the owlet halloos;
Winds creep; dews fell chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes
stilly:
Over the pools in the burn watergnats murmur and mourn.
Sadly the far kine loweth: the glimmering water outfloweth:
Twin peaks shadow'd with pine slope to the dark hyaline.
Lowthroned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad
Throbbing in mild unrest holds him beneath in her breast.
The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth,
Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind.
Thou comest morning and even; she cometh not morning or even.
False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind?
THE "HOW" AND THE "WHY"
I am any man's suitor,
If any will be my tutor:
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast:
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,
In eternity no past.
We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die,
Who will riddle me the _how_ and the _why_?
The bulrush nods unto its brother,
The wheatears whisper to each other:
What is it they say? What do they there?
Why two and two make four? Why round is not square?
Why the rocks stand still, and the light clouds fly?
Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh?
Why deep is not high, and high is not deep?
Whether we wake, or whether we sleep?
Whether we sleep, or whether we die?
How you are you? Why I am I?
Who will riddle me the _how_ and the _why_?
The world is somewhat; it goes on somehow;
But what is the meaning of _then_ and _now_?
I feel there is something; but how and what?
I know there is somewhat; but what and why?
I cannot tell if that somewhat be I.
The little bird pipeth, "why? why? "
In the summerwoods when the sun falls low
And the great bird sits on the opposite bough,
And stares in his face and shouts, "how? how? "
And the black owl scuds down the mellow twilight,
And chaunts, "how? how? " the whole of the night.
Why the life goes when the blood is spilt?
What the life is? where the soul may lie?
Why a church is with a steeple built;
And a house with a chimneypot?
Who will riddle me the how and the what?
Who will riddle me the what and the why?
SUPPOSED CONFESSIONS
OF A SECOND-RATE SENSITIVE MIND NOT IN UNITY WITH ITSELF
There has been only one important alteration made in this poem, when it
was reprinted among the 'Juvenilia' in 1871, and that was the
suppression of the verses beginning "A grief not uninformed and dull" to
"Indued with immortality" inclusive, and the substitution of "rosy" for
"waxen". Capitals are in all cases inserted in the reprint where the
Deity is referred to, "through" is altered into "thro'" all through the
poem, and hyphens are inserted in the double epithets. No further
alterations were made in the edition of 1830.
Oh God! my God! have mercy now.
I faint, I fall. Men say that thou
Didst die for me, for such as _me_,
Patient of ill, and death, and scorn,
And that my sin was as a thorn
Among the thorns that girt thy brow,
Wounding thy soul. --That even now,
In this extremest misery
Of ignorance, I should require
A sign! and if a bolt of fire
Would rive the slumbrous summernoon
While I do pray to thee alone,
Think my belief would stronger grow!
Is not my human pride brought low?
The boastings of my spirit still?
The joy I had in my freewill
All cold, and dead, and corpse-like grown?
And what is left to me, but thou,
And faith in thee? Men pass me by;
Christians with happy countenances--
And children all seem full of thee!
And women smile with saint-like glances
Like thine own mother's when she bow'd
Above thee, on that happy morn
When angels spake to men aloud,
And thou and peace to earth were born.
Goodwill to me as well as all--
I one of them: my brothers they:
Brothers in Christ--a world of peace
And confidence, day after day;
And trust and hope till things should cease,
And then one Heaven receive us all.
How sweet to have a common faith!
To hold a common scorn of death!
And at a burial to hear
The creaking cords which wound and eat
Into my human heart, whene'er
Earth goes to earth, with grief, not fear,
With hopeful grief, were passing sweet!
A grief not uninformed, and dull
Hearted with hope, of hope as full
As is the blood with life, or night
And a dark cloud with rich moonlight.
To stand beside a grave, and see
The red small atoms wherewith we
Are built, and smile in calm, and say--
"These little moles and graves shall be
Clothed on with immortality
More glorious than the noon of day--
All that is pass'd into the flowers
And into beasts and other men,
And all the Norland whirlwind showers
From open vaults, and all the sea
O'er washes with sharp salts, again
Shall fleet together all, and be
Indued with immortality. "
Thrice happy state again to be
The trustful infant on the knee!
Who lets his waxen fingers play
About his mother's neck, and knows
Nothing beyond his mother's eyes.
They comfort him by night and day;
They light his little life alway;
He hath no thought of coming woes;
He hath no care of life or death,
Scarce outward signs of joy arise,
Because the Spirit of happiness
And perfect rest so inward is;
And loveth so his innocent heart,
Her temple and her place of birth,
Where she would ever wish to dwell,
Life of the fountain there, beneath
Its salient springs, and far apart,
Hating to wander out on earth,
Or breathe into the hollow air,
Whose dullness would make visible
Her subtil, warm, and golden breath,
Which mixing with the infant's blood,
Fullfills him with beatitude.
Oh! sure it is a special care
Of God, to fortify from doubt,
To arm in proof, and guard about
With triple-mailed trust, and clear
Delight, the infant's dawning year.
Would that my gloomed fancy were
As thine, my mother, when with brows
Propped on thy knees, my hands upheld
In thine, I listen'd to thy vows,
For me outpour'd in holiest prayer--
For me unworthy! --and beheld
Thy mild deep eyes upraised, that knew
The beauty and repose of faith,
And the clear spirit shining through.
Oh! wherefore do we grow awry
From roots which strike so deep? why dare
Paths in the desert? Could not I
Bow myself down, where thou hast knelt,
To th' earth--until the ice would melt
Here, and I feel as thou hast felt?
What Devil had the heart to scathe
Flowers thou hadst rear'd--to brush the dew
From thine own lily, when thy grave
Was deep, my mother, in the clay?
Myself? Is it thus? Myself? Had I
So little love for thee? But why
Prevail'd not thy pure prayers? Why pray
To one who heeds not, who can save
But will not? Great in faith, and strong
Against the grief of circumstance
Wert thou, and yet unheard. What if
Thou pleadest still, and seest me drive
Thro' utter dark a fullsailed skiff,
Unpiloted i' the echoing dance
Of reboant whirlwinds, stooping low
Unto the death, not sunk! I know
At matins and at evensong,
That thou, if thou were yet alive,
In deep and daily prayers wouldst strive
To reconcile me with thy God.
Albeit, my hope is gray, and cold
At heart, thou wouldest murmur still--
"Bring this lamb back into thy fold,
My Lord, if so it be thy will".
Wouldst tell me I must brook the rod,
And chastisement of human pride;
That pride, the sin of devils, stood
Betwixt me and the light of God!
That hitherto I had defied
And had rejected God--that grace
Would drop from his o'erbrimming love,
As manna on my wilderness,
If I would pray--that God would move
And strike the hard hard rock, and thence,
Sweet in their utmost bitterness,
Would issue tears of penitence
Which would keep green hope's life. Alas!
I think that pride hath now no place
Nor sojourn in me. I am void,
Dark, formless, utterly destroyed.
Why not believe then? Why not yet
Anchor thy frailty there, where man
Hath moor'd and rested? Ask the sea
At midnight, when the crisp slope waves
After a tempest, rib and fret
The broadimbased beach, why he
Slumbers not like a mountain tarn?
Wherefore his ridges are not curls
And ripples of an inland mere?
Wherefore he moaneth thus, nor can
Draw down into his vexed pools
All that blue heaven which hues and paves
The other? I am too forlorn,
Too shaken: my own weakness fools
My judgment, and my spirit whirls,
Moved from beneath with doubt and fear.
"Yet" said I, in my morn of youth,
The unsunned freshness of my strength,
When I went forth in quest of truth,
"It is man's privilege to doubt,
If so be that from doubt at length,
Truth may stand forth unmoved of change,
An image with profulgent brows,
And perfect limbs, as from the storm
Of running fires and fluid range
Of lawless airs, at last stood out
This excellence and solid form
Of constant beauty. For the Ox
Feeds in the herb, and sleeps, or fills
The horned valleys all about,
And hollows of the fringed hills
In summerheats, with placid lows
Unfearing, till his own blood flows
About his hoof. And in the flocks
The lamb rejoiceth in the year,
And raceth freely with his fere,
And answers to his mother's calls
From the flower'd furrow. In a time,
Of which he wots not, run short pains
Through his warm heart; and then, from whence
He knows not, on his light there falls
A shadow; and his native slope,
Where he was wont to leap and climb,
Floats from his sick and filmed eyes,
And something in the darkness draws
His forehead earthward, and he dies.
Shall man live thus, in joy and hope
As a young lamb, who cannot dream,
Living, but that he shall live on?
Shall we not look into the laws
Of life and death, and things that seem,
And things that be, and analyse
Our double nature, and compare
All creeds till we have found the one,
If one there be? " Ay me! I fear
All may not doubt, but everywhere
Some must clasp Idols. Yet, my God,
Whom call I Idol? Let thy dove
Shadow me over, and my sins
Be unremembered, and thy love
Enlighten me. Oh teach me yet
Somewhat before the heavy clod
Weighs on me, and the busy fret
Of that sharpheaded worm begins
In the gross blackness underneath.
O weary life! O weary death!
O spirit and heart made desolate!
O damned vacillating state!
THE BURIAL OF LOVE
His eyes in eclipse,
Pale cold his lips,
The light of his hopes unfed,
Mute his tongue,
His bow unstrung
With the tears he hath shed,
Backward drooping his graceful head,
Love is dead;
His last arrow is sped;
He hath not another dart;
Go--carry him to his dark deathbed;
Bury him in the cold, cold heart--
Love is dead.
Oh, truest love! art thou forlorn,
And unrevenged? thy pleasant wiles
Forgotten, and thine innocent joy?
Shall hollowhearted apathy,
The cruellest form of perfect scorn,
With languor of most hateful smiles,
For ever write
In the withered light
Of the tearless eye,
An epitaph that all may spy?
No! sooner she herself shall die.
For her the showers shall not fall,
Nor the round sun that shineth to all;
Her light shall into darkness change;
For her the green grass shall not spring,
Nor the rivers flow, nor the sweet birds sing,
Till Love have his full revenge.
TO--
Sainted Juliet! dearest name!
If to love be life alone,
Divinest Juliet,
I love thee, and live; and yet
Love unreturned is like the fragrant flame
Folding the slaughter of the sacrifice
Offered to gods upon an altarthrone;
My heart is lighted at thine eyes,
Changed into fire, and blown about with sighs.
SONG
I
I' the glooming light
Of middle night
So cold and white,
Worn Sorrow sits by the moaning wave;
Beside her are laid
Her mattock and spade,
For she hath half delved her own deep grave.
Alone she is there:
The white clouds drizzle: her hair falls loose;
Her shoulders are bare;
Her tears are mixed with the bearded dews.
II
Death standeth by;
She will not die;
With glazed eye
She looks at her grave: she cannot sleep;
Ever alone
She maketh her moan:
She cannot speak; she can only weep;
For she will not hope.
The thick snow falls on her flake by flake,
The dull wave mourns down the slope,
The world will not change, and her heart will not break.
SONG
The lintwhite and the throstlecock
Have voices sweet and clear;
All in the bloomed May.
They from the blosmy brere
Call to the fleeting year,
If that he would them hear
And stay. Alas! that one so beautiful
Should have so dull an ear.
II
Fair year, fair year, thy children call,
But thou art deaf as death;
All in the bloomed May.
When thy light perisheth
That from thee issueth,
Our life evanisheth: Oh! stay.
Alas! that lips so cruel-dumb
Should have so sweet a breath!
III
Fair year, with brows of royal love
Thou comest, as a king,
All in the bloomed May.
Thy golden largess fling,
And longer hear us sing;
Though thou art fleet of wing,
Yet stay. Alas! that eyes so full of light
Should be so wandering!
IV
Thy locks are all of sunny sheen
In rings of gold yronne, [1]
All in the bloomed May,
We pri'thee pass not on;
If thou dost leave the sun,
Delight is with thee gone, Oh! stay.
Thou art the fairest of thy feres,
We pri'thee pass not on.
[Footnote 1: His crispe hair in ringis was yronne. --Chaucer, _Knight's
Tale. _ (Tennyson's note. )]
SONG
I
Every day hath its night:
Every night its morn:
Thorough dark and bright
Winged hours are borne;
Ah! welaway!
Seasons flower and fade;
Golden calm and storm
Mingle day by day.
There is no bright form
Doth not cast a shade--
Ah! welaway!
II
When we laugh, and our mirth
Apes the happy vein,
We're so kin to earth,
Pleasaunce fathers pain--
Ah! welaway!
Madness laugheth loud:
Laughter bringeth tears:
Eyes are worn away
Till the end of fears
Cometh in the shroud,
Ah!
