Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v25 - Tas to Tur
It is
a unique group of lyrics, finished each one with an exquisite artist's
care, which is only surpassed by the intense and steady passion which
fuses them into a single poem. It is the English classic on the love
of immortality and the immortality of love.
―
## p. 14583 (#153) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14583
In the same year with the appearance of this poem happened the
two most important events of Tennyson's career. He was married in
June to Miss Emily Sellwood, a lady of rare and beautiful endow-
ments, who proved herself, through a long life of unselfish devotion,
the true partner of a poet's existence. And he was appointed in
November to succeed Wordsworth as poet laureate.
His first official poem was the stately 'Ode on the Death of the
'Duke of Wellington,' in 1852. The majestic march of the verse, its
freedom, its organ-toned music, its patriotic vigor, and the lofty
solemnity with which it closes, give it a higher place than can be
claimed for any other poetical production of an English laureate for
a public occasion. The Charge of the Light Brigade,' written in
1854, was a trumpet-note that rang through England and echoed
around the world.
'Maud' was published in 1855. It is a lyrical monodrama, in
which the hero, a sensitive and morbid man, with a hereditary tend-
ency to madness, tells the story of his redemption from misanthropy
and despair by the power of a pure love, unhappy but victorious.
The variety of the metrical forms in this poem, the passionate ten-
derness of the love songs, the beautiful truth of the descriptive pass-
ages, and the intense personality of its spirit, give it a singular
charm, which is felt most deeply perhaps by those who are young
and in love. Tennyson himself said to me, "I think Maud' is one
of my most original poems. "
<
(
In 1859 began the publication of the epical sequence called 'Idylls
of the King'; the largest, and in some respects the most important,
of the works of Tennyson. The first group contained 'Enid,' 'Vivien,'
'Elaine,' and 'Guinevere. ' The second group appeared in 1870, and
consisted of The Coming of Arthur,' The Holy Grail,' 'Pelleas and
Ettarre,' and 'The Passing of Arthur. ' In 1872 Gareth and Lynette'
and 'The Last Tournament' were published; and in 1885 Balin and
Balan' was printed in the volume entitled 'Tiresias and Other Poems. '
The division of 'Enid' into two parts - The Marriage of Geraint'
and 'Geraint and Enid' - makes the epic as it now stands consist
of twelve idylls. Each of these idylls clothes an ancient legend from
the history of King Arthur of Britain, in the richest and most har-
monious of modern blank verse. They are so far independent that
any one of them might stand alone as a complete poem. But there
is a connecting thread running through them all in the threefold
love-story of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, though the separate
pearls often hide the string. The underlying motive of the whole.
series is to shadow forth the war of Sense against the Soul. The
idylls are to be interpreted therefore as movements in a symphony,
the theme of which is the rightful royalty of man's spiritual nature,
## p. 14584 (#154) ##########################################
14584
ALFRED TENNYSON
seeking to establish itself in a settled reign of law, and constantly
opposed by the disorderly and disintegrating elements of humanity.
In The Coming of Arthur' it is doubt that threatens the kingdom;
in 'Gareth and Lynette' the conflict is with ambition; in 'The Mar-
riage of Geraint,' with pride; in 'Geraint and Enid,' with jealousy;
in 'Balin and Balan,' with suspicion; in 'Merlin and Vivien,' with
lust; in 'The Holy Grail,' with superstition; until at last the poison
of unlawful love has crept through all the court, and Arthur's Round
Table is dissolved in ruin,- but not without a vision of peace for
the king who has kept his soul unstained, and a dim promise of new
hope for some future age, when he shall return to bloodless victory.
Tennyson has not allowed the ethical purpose of these poems to
confuse their interest or bedim their beauty. They are not in any
sense an allegory. The tales of love and knight-errantry, of tourna-
ment and battle and quest, are vividly told in the true romantic spirit,
lighting up the olden story with the thoughts and feelings of to-day.
There is perhaps a touch of over-elaborateness in the style; but after
all the figures stand out to the full as distinctly as they ought to do
in such a large tapestry. In the finer idylls, like Guinevere' and
'The Passing of Arthur,' the verse moves with a grandeur and dig-
nity, a broad, measured, fluent harmony, unrivaled in England since
the days when Milton's organ voice was stilled.
The rest of Tennyson's poetical work includes his dramas,—
'Queen Mary,' 'Harold,' 'Becket,' The Cup and the Falcon,' and
a few others, and several volumes of miscellaneous poems: Enoch
Arden' (1864), 'The Lover's Tale' (1879), 'Ballads' (1880), 'Tiresias'
(1885), Locksley Hall Sixty Years After' (1886), 'Demeter' (1889), and
"The Death of Enone,' published posthumously in 1892. The great
age to which his life was prolonged, the unswerving fidelity with
which he devoted himself to the sole pursuit of his chosen art, the
freshness of spirit which made him delight in labor to the very last,
and the fine versatility of mind with which he turned from one field
of production to another,- brought it to pass that both in amount
and in variety of work, Tennyson stands in the front rank of English
poets.
I can think of but two-Shakespeare and Robert Browning —
who produced more.
In 1883 a title of nobility was offered to Tennyson through Mr.
Gladstone. This honor, which he had declined at least once before,
he now accepted; and in January 1884 he was admitted (we can
hardly say elevated) to the peerage,- taking his title, Baron of Ald-
worth and Farringford, from his two country houses, in Sussex and in
the Isle of Wight.
It would be difficult, of course, to characterize the style and esti-
mate the value of such a varied and fertile poet in a brief essay.
## p. 14585 (#155) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14585
But there are certain qualities in the poetry of Tennyson which are
unmistakable and vital.
He
1. His diction is singularly lucid, smooth, and melodious.
avoids sharp and strident effects. Not only in his choice of metres,
but also in his choice of words and cadences, we feel a musical
influence controlling his verse. Sometimes this results in a loss of
force or definiteness. But it makes his poetry, whether in the long
swinging lines of 'Locksley Hall,' or in the brief simple measures of
the shorter songs, eminently readable. Any one who recites it aloud
will find how natural it is to fall, as Tennyson always did, into a
rhythmical tone, almost like chanting. And this close relation of his
poetry to music may be felt also in the quality of subtle suggestive-
ness, of intimate and indefinable charm, which makes his brief lyrics
as perfect as anything of their kind in the world's literature. He
has the power of expressing the vague, delicate, yet potent emotions,
the feelings that belong to the twilight of the heart, when the glow
of love and the shadow of regret are mingled, in melodies of words
as simple and as magical as the chime of far-off bells, or the echoes
of a bugle-call dying among the hills.
2. He has an extraordinary truthfulness and delicacy of touch
in natural description. This appears equally in minute, pre-Raphaelite
work, where he speaks of the color of the buds on different trees in
early spring; or of the way in which a wave-crest is reflected in the
smooth hollow before it breaks; and in wide, vague landscapes, where
he renders the turbulence of the coming storm or the still glory of
an autumnal morning in a few broad lines. Add to this the quality
of blending and interfusing all his epithets and descriptions with
the sentiment of the poem, so that they do not distract the feeling
but enhance and deepen it, and you have one of the traits by which
the poetry of Tennyson is most easily distinguished.
3. His range of imaginative sympathy, as shown in his ballads
and character pieces, is very wide; but it moves for the most part
along natural and normal rather than strange and eccentric lines.
His dramatic lyrics differ in this respect from those of Browning.
Tennyson expresses the feeling of the philosopher in Lucretius,'
of the peasant in 'Rizpah,' of the child in 'The Children's Hospital,'
of the old sea-fighter in 'The Revenge,' of the intellectual advent-
urer in Ulysses,' in order to bring out in each, not that which is
exceptional and rare, but that which is most deeply human and typ-
ical.
4. His work reflects with singular fidelity the scientific and social
movements of the age. The discoveries and inventions of modern
times are translated into poetic language, and turned to poetic use.
In his verse the earth moves, the planets are molded of star-dust,
## p. 14586 (#156) ##########################################
14586
ALFRED TENNYSON
and the mystery of an unfinished creation is still in evolution. It is
possible, often, to assign dates to his poems by an allusion to some
newly seen moon or comet, or some critical event in the social his-
tory of mankind. It is true that he mistrusts many of the new
devices to bring in the millennium. He takes a dark view of some
of the elements of nineteenth-century civilization. But still he feels
the forward movement of the world; and his poetry mirrors truly the
spirit of modern optimism, with shadows.
5. As in its form, so in its spirit, the verse of Tennyson expresses
a constant and controlling sense of law and order. He is in the
opposite camp from the poets of revolt. Harmony is essential to his
conception of beauty. His patriotism is sober, steadfast, thoughtful,
law-abiding. His love moves within the bounds of order, purity, and
reverence. His conception of power is never akin to blind force, but
carries within itself the higher elements of intelligence and voluntary
restraint.
"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,—
These three alone lead life to sovereign power. »
6. The poetry of Tennyson is pervaded by a profoundly religious
spirit. His view of the world - his view even of the smallest flower
that blossoms in the world -is illuminated through and through by
his faith in the Divine presence and goodness and beauty. He can-
not conceive of a purely physical universe. Nothing that he has
written could have been written as it is, if he had been an atheist
or an agnostic. Even his poems of doubt and conflict are the resur-
gent protests of the heart against the cold negations which destroy
personal trust in the unseen God, in whom we live and move and
have our being. His method in dealing with religious subjects
not theological, like that of Milton or Wordsworth; nor philosophical,
like that of Browning or Arnold or Clough. Tennyson speaks more
from the side of the feelings, the ultimate spiritual instincts and crav-
ings of humanity. The strongest of these is the desire and hope of
a life beyond the grave. To this passion for immortality he gives
full play, and it evokes some of the strongest and sweetest tones of
his music. From The Deserted House' to 'Crossing the Bar,' his
poetry is an evidence of his conviction that death cannot end all. This
faith in the life that is to come elevates and purifies his conception
of the life that now is. It gives a new meaning to duty and to love.
And when we think of the many noble poems in which it has found
expression,- 'The Two Voices,' 'The May Queen,' 'Locksley Hall,'
'Enoch Arden,' 'The Leper's Bride,' 'Guinevere,' 'In Memoriam,'
'Vastness,' 'Wages,' we may well call Tennyson the poet of the
endless life.
## p. 14587 (#157) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14587
His influence upon the thought and feeling of the age has been
far-reaching and potent. He has stood among the doubts and confus-
ions of these latter days, as a witness for the things that are invisi-
ble and eternal,- the things that men may forget if they will, but if
they forget them, their hearts wither and the springs of poesy run
dry. His verse has brought new cheer and courage to the youth of
to-day who would fain defend their spiritual heritage against the in-
vasions of materialism. In the vital conflict for the enlargement of
faith to embrace the real results of science, he stood forth as a leader.
In the great silent reaction of our age from the desperate solitude
of a consistent skepticism, his voice was a clear-toned bell, calling
the unwilling exiles of belief to turn again. And when at last, on
the 6th of October 1892, he passed away from his quiet home at Ald-
worth, with the moonlight falling on closed eyes and voiceless lips,
the world mourned for him as for a mighty prophet, and rejoiced for
him as a poet who had finished his course and kept the faith.
Henry randyke
THE LADY OF SHALOTT
ON
PART I
N EITHER Side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot:
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers.
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle embowers
The Lady of Shalott.
## p. 14588 (#158) ##########################################
14588
ALFRED TENNYSON
By the margin, willow-veiled,
Slide the heavy barges trailed
By slow horses; and unhailed
The shallop flitteth silken-sailed
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand? .
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers "Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott. "
PART II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
## p. 14589 (#159) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14589
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-haired page in crimson clad,
Goes by towered Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two; –
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
-
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights:
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.
PART III
A bowshot from her bower eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves;
The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneeled
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot;
And from his blazoned baldric slung,
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jeweled shone the saddle leather;
The helmet and the helmet feather
Burned like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot:
## p. 14590 (#160) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14590
As often through the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed;
On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror;
«Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room;
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side:
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
PART IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over towered Camelot:
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river's dim expanse,
Like some bold seër in a trance
Seeing all his own mischance,
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
## p. 14591 (#161) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14591
Lying robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right-
The leaves upon her falling light-
Through the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot;
And as the boat-head wound along,
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape, she floated by
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name.
The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot :
But Lancelot mused a little space:
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott. "
## p. 14592 (#162) ##########################################
14592
ALFRED TENNYSON
CHORIC SONG
From The Lotos-Eaters>
I
TH
HERE is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
II
Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
"There is no joy but calm! "
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?
III
Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
## p. 14593 (#163) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14593
All its allotted length of days,
The flower ripens in its place;
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
IV
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life: ah, why
Should life all labor be?
Let us alone.
Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
XXV-913
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death; dark death, or dreamful ease.
V
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other's whispered speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heaped over with a mound of grass,-
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!
VI
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
## p. 14594 (#164) ##########################################
14594
ALFRED TENNYSON
And their. warm tears; but all hath suffered change:
For surely now our household hearths are cold;
Our sons inherit us; our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The gods are hard to reconcile :
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
VII
But propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill —
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave through the thick-twinèd vine -
To watch the emerald-colored water falling
Through many a woven acanthus wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine.
VIII
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak;
The Lotos blows by every winding creek;
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;
Through every hollow cave and alley lone,
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething
free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
## p. 14595 (#165) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14595
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind:
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and
fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and pray-
ing hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning though the words are strong,—
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine, and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer-some, 'tis whispered-down in
hell
Suffer endless anguish; others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
ULYSSES
T LITTLE profits that, an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name:
For always roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known,- cities of men,
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
## p. 14596 (#166) ##########################################
14596
ALFRED TENNYSON
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence,-something more,
A bringer of new things: and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle:
Well loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,— you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil:
Death closes all; but something, ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
## p. 14597 (#167) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14597
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven-that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
LOCKSLEY HALL
C
OMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn;
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-
horn.
'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.
Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed;
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,-
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. —
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so
young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.
## p. 14598 (#168) ##########################################
14598
ALFRED TENNYSON
And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me:
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee. "
On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.
-
And she turned her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs-
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes -
Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;"
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin? " weeping, "I have loved thee
long. "
Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands:
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with
might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.
Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,
And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fullness of the Spring.
Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.
O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!
Oh the dreary, dreary moorland! Oh the barren, barren shore!
Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!
Is it well to wish thee happy? —having known me, to decline
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!
Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day;
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.
As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with
wine.
Go to him-it is thy duty: kiss him; take his hand in thine.
It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.
H
## p. 14599 (#169) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14599
He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand –
Better thou wert dead before me, though I slew thee with my hand!
Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace,
Rolled in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.
Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule!
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool!
Well-'tis well that I should bluster! - Hadst thou less unworthy
proved-
Would to God-for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.
Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?
I will pluck it from my bosom, though my heart be at the root.
Never, though my mortal summers to such length of years should
come
As the many-wintered crow that leads the clanging rookery home.
Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?
I remember one that perished; sweetly did she speak and move:
Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.
Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore.
Comfort? comfort scorned of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.
Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.
Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,
To thy widowed marriage pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.
Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whispered by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;
And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain. —
Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to thy rest again.
## p. 14600 (#170) ##########################################
14600
ALFRED TENNYSON
Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry.
'Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.
Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival brings thee rest.
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.
Oh, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due
Half is thine and half is his; it will be worthy of the two.
Oh, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.
"They were dangerous guides the feelings-she herself was not ex-
empt-
Truly, she herself had suffered-» Perish in thy self-contempt!
Overlive it lower yet - be happy! wherefore should I care?
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.
What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys.
Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow.
I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?
I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,
When the ranks are rolled in vapor, and the winds are laid with
sound.
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels,
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.
Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.
Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!
Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life:
Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field,
And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;
And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men:
Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new;
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall
do:
## p. 14601 (#171) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14601
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-
storm;
Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common-sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
So I triumphed ere my passion sweeping through me left me dry,
Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;
Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint:
Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point;
Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire.
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Though the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's?
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.
Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn,
They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn:
Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moldered string?
I am shamed through all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.
Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's
pain-
Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain;
## p. 14602 (#172) ##########################################
14602
ALFRED TENNYSON
Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched with mine,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine —
Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat
Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;
-
Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starred; -
I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.
Or to burst all links of habit- there to wander far away,
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day;
Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.
Never comes the trader, never floats a European flag,
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the
crag;
Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree-
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.
There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of
mind,
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.
There the passions, cramped no longer, shall have scope and breath-
ing-space:
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.
Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive, and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;
Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks,
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books—
Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,-
But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.
I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!
Mated with a squalid savage — what to me were sun or clime?
I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time—
I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,
Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon!
Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range;
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
## p. 14603 (#173) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14603
Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day:
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun:
Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun.
Oh, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set:
Ancient founts of inspiration well through all my fancy yet.
Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!
Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.
Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over heath and holt,
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.
Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.
BR
"BREAK, BREAK, BREAK»
REAK, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
Oh, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
Oh, 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 oh! for the touch of a vanished 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.
## p. 14604 (#174) ##########################################
14604
ALFRED TENNYSON
THE BROOK
"H
ERE, by this brook, we parted;
And he for Italy - too late
One whom the strong sons of the world despise:
For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share,
And mellow metres more than cent. for cent. ;
Nor could he understand how money breeds. -
Thought it a dead thing,-yet himself could make
The thing that is not as the thing that is.
Oh, had he lived! In our schoolbooks we say,
Of those that held their heads above the crowd,
They flourished then or then; but life in him
Could scarce be said to flourish,-only touched
On such a time as goes before the leaf,
When all the wood stands in a mist of green,
And nothing perfect: yet the brook he loved,
For which, in branding summers of Bengal,
Or even the sweet half-English Neilgherry air
I panted, seems, as I re-listen to it,
Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy,
To me that loved him; for 'O brook,' he says,
'O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme,
'Whence come you? ' and the brook-why not? -replies:
-
I to the East
too late.
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river:
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
I chatter over stony ways,
"Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out,
Traveling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge-
It has more ivy: there the river; and there
Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet.
In little sharps and trebles,
## p. 14605 (#175) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14605
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret,
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.
I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river:
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
"But Philip chattered more than brook or bird-
Old Philip; all about the fields you caught
His weary daylong chirping, like the dry
High-elbowed grigs that leap in summer grass.
I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,
And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery water-break
Above the golden gravel;
And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river:
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
"O darling Katie Willows, his one child!
A maiden of our century, yet most meek;
A daughter of our meadows, yet not coarse;
Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand;
Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair
In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within.
"Sweet Katie, once I did her a good turn,-
Her and her far-off cousin and betrothed,
James Willows, of one name and heart with her.
For here I came, twenty years back-the week
Before I parted with poor Edmund; crost
By that old bridge which, half in ruins then,
Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam
Beyond it, where the waters marry-crost,
Whistling a random bar of 'Bonny Doon,'
## p. 14606 (#176) ##########################################
14606
ALFRED TENNYSON
And pushed at Philip's garden gate. The gate,
Half parted from a weak and scolding hinge,
Stuck; and he clamored from a casement, 'Run! '
To Katie somewhere in the walks below,
'Run, Katie! Katie never ran: she moved
To meet me, winding under woodbine bowers,
A little fluttered, with her eyelids down,-
Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon.
"What was it? -Less of sentiment than sense
Had Katie: not illiterate; nor of those
Who dabbling in the fount of fictive tears,
And nursed by mealy-mouthed philanthropies,
Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed.
"She told me. She and James had quarreled. Why?
What cause of quarrel? None, she said, no cause;
James had no cause: but when I prest the cause,
I learnt that James had flickering jealousies
Which angered her. Who angered James? I said.
But Katie snatched her eyes at once from mine,
And sketching with her slender pointed foot
Some figure like a wizard pentagram
On garden gravel, let my query pass
Unclaimed, in flushing silence, till I asked
If James were coming. Coming every day,'
She answered, 'ever longing to explain:
But evermore her father came across
With some long-winded tale, and broke him short;
And James departed, vext with him and her. '
How could I help her? Would I was it wrong? '
(Claspt hands and that petitionary grace
Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she spoke)
'Oh, would I take her father for one hour,
For one half-hour, and let him talk to me! '
And even while she spoke, I saw where James
Made toward us, like a wader in the surf,
Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow-sweet.
"O Katie, what I suffered for your sake!
For in I went, and called old Philip out
To show the farm: full willingly he rose;
He led me through the short sweet-smelling lanes
Of his wheat suburb, babbling as he went.
He praised his land, his horses, his machines;
## p. 14607 (#177) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14607
He praised his plows, his cows, his hogs, his dogs;
He praised his hens, his geese, his guinea-hens;
His pigeons, who in session on their roofs
Approved him, bowing at their own deserts:
Then from the plaintive mother's teat he took
Her blind and shuddering puppies, naming each,
And naming those, his friends, for whom they were:
Then crost the common into Darnley chase
To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse and fern
Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail.
Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech,
He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said,
That was the four-year-old I sold the Squire. '
And there he told a long long-winded tale
Of how the Squire had seen the colt at grass,
And how it was the thing his daughter wished,
And how he sent the bailiff to the farm
To learn the price, and what the price he asked,
And how the bailiff swore that he was mad,
But he stood firm: and so the matter hung;
He gave them line: and five days after that
He met the bailiff at the Golden Fleece,
Who then and there had offered something more,
But he stood firm: and so the matter hung;
He knew the man; the colt would fetch its price;
He gave them line: and how by chance at last
(It might be May or April, he forgot,
The last of April or the first of May)
He found the bailiff riding by the farm,
And, talking from the point, he drew him in,
And there he mellowed all his heart with ale,
Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand.
"Then, while I breathed in sight of haven, he-
Poor fellow, could he help it? -recommenced,
And ran through all the coltish chronicle,
Wild Will, Black Bess, Tantivy, Tallyho,
Reform, White Rose, Bellerophon, the Jilt,
Arbaces, and Phenomenon, and the rest,-
Till, not to die a listener, I arose.
And with me Philip, talking still; and so
We turned our foreheads from the falling sun,
And following our own shadows thrice as long
As when they followed us from Philip's door,
-
## p. 14608 (#178) ##########################################
14608
ALFRED TENNYSON
Arrived, and found the sun of sweet content
Re-risen in Katie's eyes, and all things well.
I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river:
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
"Yes, men may come and go; and these are gone,
All gone.
My dearest brother Edmund sleeps,
Not by the well-known stream and rustic spire,
But unfamiliar Arno, and the dome
Of Brunelleschi - sleeps in peace; and he,
Poor Philip, of all his lavish waste of words
Remains the lean P. W. on his tomb-
I scraped the lichen from it; Katie walks
By the long wash of Australasian seas
Far off, and holds her head to other stars,
And breathes in April-autumns. All are gone. "
So Lawrence Aylmer, seated on a stile
In the long hedge, and rolling in his mind
Old waifs of rhyme, and bowing o'er the brook
A tonsured head in middle age forlorn,
Mused, and was mute. On a sudden a low breath
Of tender air made tremble in the hedge
The fragile bindweed bells and briony rings;
And he looked up. There stood a maiden near,
Waiting to pass. In much amaze he stared
On eyes a bashful azure, and on hair
In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within;
Then, wondering, asked her, “Are you from the farm? »
## p. 14609 (#179) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14609
"Yes," answered she. -"Pray stay a little: pardon me—
What do they call you? "-"Katie. ” — “That were strange.
What surname ? » — « "Willows. " » — “No! ” —"That is my
d
-
name. ».
-
"Indeed! " and here he looked so self-perplext
That Katie laughed, and laughing blushed, till he
Laughed also, but as one before he wakes,
Who feels a glimmering strangeness in his dream.
Then looking at her-"Too happy, fresh, and fair,
Too fresh and fair in our sad world's best bloom,
To be the ghost of one who bore your name
About these meadows, twenty years ago. "
"Have you not heard? " said Katie: "we came back.
We bought the farm we tenanted before.
Am I so like her? so they said on board.
Sir, if you knew her in her English days,
My mother, as it seems you did,- the days
That most she loves to talk of,-come with me.
My brother James is in the harvest-field;
But she- you will be welcome-oh, come in! "
SONG: "THE SPLENDOR FALLS ON CASTLE WALLS »
From The Princess'
THE
HE splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
a unique group of lyrics, finished each one with an exquisite artist's
care, which is only surpassed by the intense and steady passion which
fuses them into a single poem. It is the English classic on the love
of immortality and the immortality of love.
―
## p. 14583 (#153) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14583
In the same year with the appearance of this poem happened the
two most important events of Tennyson's career. He was married in
June to Miss Emily Sellwood, a lady of rare and beautiful endow-
ments, who proved herself, through a long life of unselfish devotion,
the true partner of a poet's existence. And he was appointed in
November to succeed Wordsworth as poet laureate.
His first official poem was the stately 'Ode on the Death of the
'Duke of Wellington,' in 1852. The majestic march of the verse, its
freedom, its organ-toned music, its patriotic vigor, and the lofty
solemnity with which it closes, give it a higher place than can be
claimed for any other poetical production of an English laureate for
a public occasion. The Charge of the Light Brigade,' written in
1854, was a trumpet-note that rang through England and echoed
around the world.
'Maud' was published in 1855. It is a lyrical monodrama, in
which the hero, a sensitive and morbid man, with a hereditary tend-
ency to madness, tells the story of his redemption from misanthropy
and despair by the power of a pure love, unhappy but victorious.
The variety of the metrical forms in this poem, the passionate ten-
derness of the love songs, the beautiful truth of the descriptive pass-
ages, and the intense personality of its spirit, give it a singular
charm, which is felt most deeply perhaps by those who are young
and in love. Tennyson himself said to me, "I think Maud' is one
of my most original poems. "
<
(
In 1859 began the publication of the epical sequence called 'Idylls
of the King'; the largest, and in some respects the most important,
of the works of Tennyson. The first group contained 'Enid,' 'Vivien,'
'Elaine,' and 'Guinevere. ' The second group appeared in 1870, and
consisted of The Coming of Arthur,' The Holy Grail,' 'Pelleas and
Ettarre,' and 'The Passing of Arthur. ' In 1872 Gareth and Lynette'
and 'The Last Tournament' were published; and in 1885 Balin and
Balan' was printed in the volume entitled 'Tiresias and Other Poems. '
The division of 'Enid' into two parts - The Marriage of Geraint'
and 'Geraint and Enid' - makes the epic as it now stands consist
of twelve idylls. Each of these idylls clothes an ancient legend from
the history of King Arthur of Britain, in the richest and most har-
monious of modern blank verse. They are so far independent that
any one of them might stand alone as a complete poem. But there
is a connecting thread running through them all in the threefold
love-story of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, though the separate
pearls often hide the string. The underlying motive of the whole.
series is to shadow forth the war of Sense against the Soul. The
idylls are to be interpreted therefore as movements in a symphony,
the theme of which is the rightful royalty of man's spiritual nature,
## p. 14584 (#154) ##########################################
14584
ALFRED TENNYSON
seeking to establish itself in a settled reign of law, and constantly
opposed by the disorderly and disintegrating elements of humanity.
In The Coming of Arthur' it is doubt that threatens the kingdom;
in 'Gareth and Lynette' the conflict is with ambition; in 'The Mar-
riage of Geraint,' with pride; in 'Geraint and Enid,' with jealousy;
in 'Balin and Balan,' with suspicion; in 'Merlin and Vivien,' with
lust; in 'The Holy Grail,' with superstition; until at last the poison
of unlawful love has crept through all the court, and Arthur's Round
Table is dissolved in ruin,- but not without a vision of peace for
the king who has kept his soul unstained, and a dim promise of new
hope for some future age, when he shall return to bloodless victory.
Tennyson has not allowed the ethical purpose of these poems to
confuse their interest or bedim their beauty. They are not in any
sense an allegory. The tales of love and knight-errantry, of tourna-
ment and battle and quest, are vividly told in the true romantic spirit,
lighting up the olden story with the thoughts and feelings of to-day.
There is perhaps a touch of over-elaborateness in the style; but after
all the figures stand out to the full as distinctly as they ought to do
in such a large tapestry. In the finer idylls, like Guinevere' and
'The Passing of Arthur,' the verse moves with a grandeur and dig-
nity, a broad, measured, fluent harmony, unrivaled in England since
the days when Milton's organ voice was stilled.
The rest of Tennyson's poetical work includes his dramas,—
'Queen Mary,' 'Harold,' 'Becket,' The Cup and the Falcon,' and
a few others, and several volumes of miscellaneous poems: Enoch
Arden' (1864), 'The Lover's Tale' (1879), 'Ballads' (1880), 'Tiresias'
(1885), Locksley Hall Sixty Years After' (1886), 'Demeter' (1889), and
"The Death of Enone,' published posthumously in 1892. The great
age to which his life was prolonged, the unswerving fidelity with
which he devoted himself to the sole pursuit of his chosen art, the
freshness of spirit which made him delight in labor to the very last,
and the fine versatility of mind with which he turned from one field
of production to another,- brought it to pass that both in amount
and in variety of work, Tennyson stands in the front rank of English
poets.
I can think of but two-Shakespeare and Robert Browning —
who produced more.
In 1883 a title of nobility was offered to Tennyson through Mr.
Gladstone. This honor, which he had declined at least once before,
he now accepted; and in January 1884 he was admitted (we can
hardly say elevated) to the peerage,- taking his title, Baron of Ald-
worth and Farringford, from his two country houses, in Sussex and in
the Isle of Wight.
It would be difficult, of course, to characterize the style and esti-
mate the value of such a varied and fertile poet in a brief essay.
## p. 14585 (#155) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14585
But there are certain qualities in the poetry of Tennyson which are
unmistakable and vital.
He
1. His diction is singularly lucid, smooth, and melodious.
avoids sharp and strident effects. Not only in his choice of metres,
but also in his choice of words and cadences, we feel a musical
influence controlling his verse. Sometimes this results in a loss of
force or definiteness. But it makes his poetry, whether in the long
swinging lines of 'Locksley Hall,' or in the brief simple measures of
the shorter songs, eminently readable. Any one who recites it aloud
will find how natural it is to fall, as Tennyson always did, into a
rhythmical tone, almost like chanting. And this close relation of his
poetry to music may be felt also in the quality of subtle suggestive-
ness, of intimate and indefinable charm, which makes his brief lyrics
as perfect as anything of their kind in the world's literature. He
has the power of expressing the vague, delicate, yet potent emotions,
the feelings that belong to the twilight of the heart, when the glow
of love and the shadow of regret are mingled, in melodies of words
as simple and as magical as the chime of far-off bells, or the echoes
of a bugle-call dying among the hills.
2. He has an extraordinary truthfulness and delicacy of touch
in natural description. This appears equally in minute, pre-Raphaelite
work, where he speaks of the color of the buds on different trees in
early spring; or of the way in which a wave-crest is reflected in the
smooth hollow before it breaks; and in wide, vague landscapes, where
he renders the turbulence of the coming storm or the still glory of
an autumnal morning in a few broad lines. Add to this the quality
of blending and interfusing all his epithets and descriptions with
the sentiment of the poem, so that they do not distract the feeling
but enhance and deepen it, and you have one of the traits by which
the poetry of Tennyson is most easily distinguished.
3. His range of imaginative sympathy, as shown in his ballads
and character pieces, is very wide; but it moves for the most part
along natural and normal rather than strange and eccentric lines.
His dramatic lyrics differ in this respect from those of Browning.
Tennyson expresses the feeling of the philosopher in Lucretius,'
of the peasant in 'Rizpah,' of the child in 'The Children's Hospital,'
of the old sea-fighter in 'The Revenge,' of the intellectual advent-
urer in Ulysses,' in order to bring out in each, not that which is
exceptional and rare, but that which is most deeply human and typ-
ical.
4. His work reflects with singular fidelity the scientific and social
movements of the age. The discoveries and inventions of modern
times are translated into poetic language, and turned to poetic use.
In his verse the earth moves, the planets are molded of star-dust,
## p. 14586 (#156) ##########################################
14586
ALFRED TENNYSON
and the mystery of an unfinished creation is still in evolution. It is
possible, often, to assign dates to his poems by an allusion to some
newly seen moon or comet, or some critical event in the social his-
tory of mankind. It is true that he mistrusts many of the new
devices to bring in the millennium. He takes a dark view of some
of the elements of nineteenth-century civilization. But still he feels
the forward movement of the world; and his poetry mirrors truly the
spirit of modern optimism, with shadows.
5. As in its form, so in its spirit, the verse of Tennyson expresses
a constant and controlling sense of law and order. He is in the
opposite camp from the poets of revolt. Harmony is essential to his
conception of beauty. His patriotism is sober, steadfast, thoughtful,
law-abiding. His love moves within the bounds of order, purity, and
reverence. His conception of power is never akin to blind force, but
carries within itself the higher elements of intelligence and voluntary
restraint.
"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,—
These three alone lead life to sovereign power. »
6. The poetry of Tennyson is pervaded by a profoundly religious
spirit. His view of the world - his view even of the smallest flower
that blossoms in the world -is illuminated through and through by
his faith in the Divine presence and goodness and beauty. He can-
not conceive of a purely physical universe. Nothing that he has
written could have been written as it is, if he had been an atheist
or an agnostic. Even his poems of doubt and conflict are the resur-
gent protests of the heart against the cold negations which destroy
personal trust in the unseen God, in whom we live and move and
have our being. His method in dealing with religious subjects
not theological, like that of Milton or Wordsworth; nor philosophical,
like that of Browning or Arnold or Clough. Tennyson speaks more
from the side of the feelings, the ultimate spiritual instincts and crav-
ings of humanity. The strongest of these is the desire and hope of
a life beyond the grave. To this passion for immortality he gives
full play, and it evokes some of the strongest and sweetest tones of
his music. From The Deserted House' to 'Crossing the Bar,' his
poetry is an evidence of his conviction that death cannot end all. This
faith in the life that is to come elevates and purifies his conception
of the life that now is. It gives a new meaning to duty and to love.
And when we think of the many noble poems in which it has found
expression,- 'The Two Voices,' 'The May Queen,' 'Locksley Hall,'
'Enoch Arden,' 'The Leper's Bride,' 'Guinevere,' 'In Memoriam,'
'Vastness,' 'Wages,' we may well call Tennyson the poet of the
endless life.
## p. 14587 (#157) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14587
His influence upon the thought and feeling of the age has been
far-reaching and potent. He has stood among the doubts and confus-
ions of these latter days, as a witness for the things that are invisi-
ble and eternal,- the things that men may forget if they will, but if
they forget them, their hearts wither and the springs of poesy run
dry. His verse has brought new cheer and courage to the youth of
to-day who would fain defend their spiritual heritage against the in-
vasions of materialism. In the vital conflict for the enlargement of
faith to embrace the real results of science, he stood forth as a leader.
In the great silent reaction of our age from the desperate solitude
of a consistent skepticism, his voice was a clear-toned bell, calling
the unwilling exiles of belief to turn again. And when at last, on
the 6th of October 1892, he passed away from his quiet home at Ald-
worth, with the moonlight falling on closed eyes and voiceless lips,
the world mourned for him as for a mighty prophet, and rejoiced for
him as a poet who had finished his course and kept the faith.
Henry randyke
THE LADY OF SHALOTT
ON
PART I
N EITHER Side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot:
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers.
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle embowers
The Lady of Shalott.
## p. 14588 (#158) ##########################################
14588
ALFRED TENNYSON
By the margin, willow-veiled,
Slide the heavy barges trailed
By slow horses; and unhailed
The shallop flitteth silken-sailed
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand? .
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers "Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott. "
PART II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
## p. 14589 (#159) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14589
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-haired page in crimson clad,
Goes by towered Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two; –
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
-
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights:
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.
PART III
A bowshot from her bower eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves;
The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneeled
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot;
And from his blazoned baldric slung,
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jeweled shone the saddle leather;
The helmet and the helmet feather
Burned like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot:
## p. 14590 (#160) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14590
As often through the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed;
On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror;
«Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room;
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side:
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
PART IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over towered Camelot:
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river's dim expanse,
Like some bold seër in a trance
Seeing all his own mischance,
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
## p. 14591 (#161) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14591
Lying robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right-
The leaves upon her falling light-
Through the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot;
And as the boat-head wound along,
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape, she floated by
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name.
The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot :
But Lancelot mused a little space:
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott. "
## p. 14592 (#162) ##########################################
14592
ALFRED TENNYSON
CHORIC SONG
From The Lotos-Eaters>
I
TH
HERE is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
II
Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
"There is no joy but calm! "
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?
III
Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
## p. 14593 (#163) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14593
All its allotted length of days,
The flower ripens in its place;
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
IV
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life: ah, why
Should life all labor be?
Let us alone.
Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
XXV-913
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death; dark death, or dreamful ease.
V
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other's whispered speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heaped over with a mound of grass,-
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!
VI
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
## p. 14594 (#164) ##########################################
14594
ALFRED TENNYSON
And their. warm tears; but all hath suffered change:
For surely now our household hearths are cold;
Our sons inherit us; our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The gods are hard to reconcile :
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
VII
But propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill —
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave through the thick-twinèd vine -
To watch the emerald-colored water falling
Through many a woven acanthus wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine.
VIII
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak;
The Lotos blows by every winding creek;
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;
Through every hollow cave and alley lone,
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething
free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
## p. 14595 (#165) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14595
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind:
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and
fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and pray-
ing hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning though the words are strong,—
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine, and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer-some, 'tis whispered-down in
hell
Suffer endless anguish; others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
ULYSSES
T LITTLE profits that, an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name:
For always roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known,- cities of men,
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
## p. 14596 (#166) ##########################################
14596
ALFRED TENNYSON
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence,-something more,
A bringer of new things: and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle:
Well loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,— you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil:
Death closes all; but something, ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
## p. 14597 (#167) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14597
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven-that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
LOCKSLEY HALL
C
OMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn;
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-
horn.
'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.
Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed;
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,-
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. —
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so
young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.
## p. 14598 (#168) ##########################################
14598
ALFRED TENNYSON
And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me:
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee. "
On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.
-
And she turned her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs-
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes -
Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;"
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin? " weeping, "I have loved thee
long. "
Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands:
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with
might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.
Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,
And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fullness of the Spring.
Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.
O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!
Oh the dreary, dreary moorland! Oh the barren, barren shore!
Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!
Is it well to wish thee happy? —having known me, to decline
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!
Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day;
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.
As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with
wine.
Go to him-it is thy duty: kiss him; take his hand in thine.
It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.
H
## p. 14599 (#169) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14599
He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand –
Better thou wert dead before me, though I slew thee with my hand!
Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace,
Rolled in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.
Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule!
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool!
Well-'tis well that I should bluster! - Hadst thou less unworthy
proved-
Would to God-for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.
Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?
I will pluck it from my bosom, though my heart be at the root.
Never, though my mortal summers to such length of years should
come
As the many-wintered crow that leads the clanging rookery home.
Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?
I remember one that perished; sweetly did she speak and move:
Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.
Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore.
Comfort? comfort scorned of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.
Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.
Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,
To thy widowed marriage pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.
Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whispered by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;
And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain. —
Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to thy rest again.
## p. 14600 (#170) ##########################################
14600
ALFRED TENNYSON
Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry.
'Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.
Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival brings thee rest.
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.
Oh, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due
Half is thine and half is his; it will be worthy of the two.
Oh, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.
"They were dangerous guides the feelings-she herself was not ex-
empt-
Truly, she herself had suffered-» Perish in thy self-contempt!
Overlive it lower yet - be happy! wherefore should I care?
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.
What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys.
Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow.
I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?
I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,
When the ranks are rolled in vapor, and the winds are laid with
sound.
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels,
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.
Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.
Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!
Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life:
Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field,
And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;
And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men:
Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new;
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall
do:
## p. 14601 (#171) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14601
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-
storm;
Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common-sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
So I triumphed ere my passion sweeping through me left me dry,
Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;
Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint:
Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point;
Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire.
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Though the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's?
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.
Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn,
They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn:
Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moldered string?
I am shamed through all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.
Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's
pain-
Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain;
## p. 14602 (#172) ##########################################
14602
ALFRED TENNYSON
Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched with mine,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine —
Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat
Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;
-
Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starred; -
I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.
Or to burst all links of habit- there to wander far away,
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day;
Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.
Never comes the trader, never floats a European flag,
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the
crag;
Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree-
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.
There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of
mind,
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.
There the passions, cramped no longer, shall have scope and breath-
ing-space:
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.
Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive, and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;
Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks,
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books—
Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,-
But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.
I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!
Mated with a squalid savage — what to me were sun or clime?
I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time—
I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,
Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon!
Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range;
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
## p. 14603 (#173) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14603
Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day:
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun:
Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun.
Oh, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set:
Ancient founts of inspiration well through all my fancy yet.
Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!
Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.
Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over heath and holt,
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.
Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.
BR
"BREAK, BREAK, BREAK»
REAK, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
Oh, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
Oh, 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 oh! for the touch of a vanished 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.
## p. 14604 (#174) ##########################################
14604
ALFRED TENNYSON
THE BROOK
"H
ERE, by this brook, we parted;
And he for Italy - too late
One whom the strong sons of the world despise:
For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share,
And mellow metres more than cent. for cent. ;
Nor could he understand how money breeds. -
Thought it a dead thing,-yet himself could make
The thing that is not as the thing that is.
Oh, had he lived! In our schoolbooks we say,
Of those that held their heads above the crowd,
They flourished then or then; but life in him
Could scarce be said to flourish,-only touched
On such a time as goes before the leaf,
When all the wood stands in a mist of green,
And nothing perfect: yet the brook he loved,
For which, in branding summers of Bengal,
Or even the sweet half-English Neilgherry air
I panted, seems, as I re-listen to it,
Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy,
To me that loved him; for 'O brook,' he says,
'O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme,
'Whence come you? ' and the brook-why not? -replies:
-
I to the East
too late.
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river:
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
I chatter over stony ways,
"Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out,
Traveling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge-
It has more ivy: there the river; and there
Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet.
In little sharps and trebles,
## p. 14605 (#175) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14605
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret,
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.
I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river:
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
"But Philip chattered more than brook or bird-
Old Philip; all about the fields you caught
His weary daylong chirping, like the dry
High-elbowed grigs that leap in summer grass.
I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,
And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery water-break
Above the golden gravel;
And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river:
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
"O darling Katie Willows, his one child!
A maiden of our century, yet most meek;
A daughter of our meadows, yet not coarse;
Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand;
Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair
In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within.
"Sweet Katie, once I did her a good turn,-
Her and her far-off cousin and betrothed,
James Willows, of one name and heart with her.
For here I came, twenty years back-the week
Before I parted with poor Edmund; crost
By that old bridge which, half in ruins then,
Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam
Beyond it, where the waters marry-crost,
Whistling a random bar of 'Bonny Doon,'
## p. 14606 (#176) ##########################################
14606
ALFRED TENNYSON
And pushed at Philip's garden gate. The gate,
Half parted from a weak and scolding hinge,
Stuck; and he clamored from a casement, 'Run! '
To Katie somewhere in the walks below,
'Run, Katie! Katie never ran: she moved
To meet me, winding under woodbine bowers,
A little fluttered, with her eyelids down,-
Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon.
"What was it? -Less of sentiment than sense
Had Katie: not illiterate; nor of those
Who dabbling in the fount of fictive tears,
And nursed by mealy-mouthed philanthropies,
Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed.
"She told me. She and James had quarreled. Why?
What cause of quarrel? None, she said, no cause;
James had no cause: but when I prest the cause,
I learnt that James had flickering jealousies
Which angered her. Who angered James? I said.
But Katie snatched her eyes at once from mine,
And sketching with her slender pointed foot
Some figure like a wizard pentagram
On garden gravel, let my query pass
Unclaimed, in flushing silence, till I asked
If James were coming. Coming every day,'
She answered, 'ever longing to explain:
But evermore her father came across
With some long-winded tale, and broke him short;
And James departed, vext with him and her. '
How could I help her? Would I was it wrong? '
(Claspt hands and that petitionary grace
Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she spoke)
'Oh, would I take her father for one hour,
For one half-hour, and let him talk to me! '
And even while she spoke, I saw where James
Made toward us, like a wader in the surf,
Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow-sweet.
"O Katie, what I suffered for your sake!
For in I went, and called old Philip out
To show the farm: full willingly he rose;
He led me through the short sweet-smelling lanes
Of his wheat suburb, babbling as he went.
He praised his land, his horses, his machines;
## p. 14607 (#177) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14607
He praised his plows, his cows, his hogs, his dogs;
He praised his hens, his geese, his guinea-hens;
His pigeons, who in session on their roofs
Approved him, bowing at their own deserts:
Then from the plaintive mother's teat he took
Her blind and shuddering puppies, naming each,
And naming those, his friends, for whom they were:
Then crost the common into Darnley chase
To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse and fern
Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail.
Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech,
He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said,
That was the four-year-old I sold the Squire. '
And there he told a long long-winded tale
Of how the Squire had seen the colt at grass,
And how it was the thing his daughter wished,
And how he sent the bailiff to the farm
To learn the price, and what the price he asked,
And how the bailiff swore that he was mad,
But he stood firm: and so the matter hung;
He gave them line: and five days after that
He met the bailiff at the Golden Fleece,
Who then and there had offered something more,
But he stood firm: and so the matter hung;
He knew the man; the colt would fetch its price;
He gave them line: and how by chance at last
(It might be May or April, he forgot,
The last of April or the first of May)
He found the bailiff riding by the farm,
And, talking from the point, he drew him in,
And there he mellowed all his heart with ale,
Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand.
"Then, while I breathed in sight of haven, he-
Poor fellow, could he help it? -recommenced,
And ran through all the coltish chronicle,
Wild Will, Black Bess, Tantivy, Tallyho,
Reform, White Rose, Bellerophon, the Jilt,
Arbaces, and Phenomenon, and the rest,-
Till, not to die a listener, I arose.
And with me Philip, talking still; and so
We turned our foreheads from the falling sun,
And following our own shadows thrice as long
As when they followed us from Philip's door,
-
## p. 14608 (#178) ##########################################
14608
ALFRED TENNYSON
Arrived, and found the sun of sweet content
Re-risen in Katie's eyes, and all things well.
I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river:
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
"Yes, men may come and go; and these are gone,
All gone.
My dearest brother Edmund sleeps,
Not by the well-known stream and rustic spire,
But unfamiliar Arno, and the dome
Of Brunelleschi - sleeps in peace; and he,
Poor Philip, of all his lavish waste of words
Remains the lean P. W. on his tomb-
I scraped the lichen from it; Katie walks
By the long wash of Australasian seas
Far off, and holds her head to other stars,
And breathes in April-autumns. All are gone. "
So Lawrence Aylmer, seated on a stile
In the long hedge, and rolling in his mind
Old waifs of rhyme, and bowing o'er the brook
A tonsured head in middle age forlorn,
Mused, and was mute. On a sudden a low breath
Of tender air made tremble in the hedge
The fragile bindweed bells and briony rings;
And he looked up. There stood a maiden near,
Waiting to pass. In much amaze he stared
On eyes a bashful azure, and on hair
In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell
Divides threefold to show the fruit within;
Then, wondering, asked her, “Are you from the farm? »
## p. 14609 (#179) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14609
"Yes," answered she. -"Pray stay a little: pardon me—
What do they call you? "-"Katie. ” — “That were strange.
What surname ? » — « "Willows. " » — “No! ” —"That is my
d
-
name. ».
-
"Indeed! " and here he looked so self-perplext
That Katie laughed, and laughing blushed, till he
Laughed also, but as one before he wakes,
Who feels a glimmering strangeness in his dream.
Then looking at her-"Too happy, fresh, and fair,
Too fresh and fair in our sad world's best bloom,
To be the ghost of one who bore your name
About these meadows, twenty years ago. "
"Have you not heard? " said Katie: "we came back.
We bought the farm we tenanted before.
Am I so like her? so they said on board.
Sir, if you knew her in her English days,
My mother, as it seems you did,- the days
That most she loves to talk of,-come with me.
My brother James is in the harvest-field;
But she- you will be welcome-oh, come in! "
SONG: "THE SPLENDOR FALLS ON CASTLE WALLS »
From The Princess'
THE
HE splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
