Take heed of your wide
privileges!
Tennyson
Number, tell them over and number
How many the mystic fruit-tree holds,
Lest the redcombed dragon slumber
Rolled together in purple folds.
Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stol'n away,
For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day,
Round about the hallowed fruit tree curled--
Sing away, sing aloud and evermore in the wind, without stop,
Lest his scaled eyelid drop,
For he is older than the world.
If he waken, we waken,
Rapidly levelling eager eyes.
If he sleep, we sleep,
Dropping the eyelid over the eyes.
If the golden apple be taken
The world will be overwise.
Five links, a golden chain, are we,
Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three,
Bound about the golden tree.
III
Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, watch, night and day,
Lest the old wound of the world be healed,
The glory unsealed,
The golden apple stol'n away,
And the ancient secret revealed.
Look from west to east along:
Father, old Himla weakens, Caucasus is bold and strong.
Wandering waters unto wandering waters call;
Let them clash together, foam and fall.
Out of watchings, out of wiles,
Comes the bliss of secret smiles,
All things are not told to all,
Half round the mantling night is drawn,
Purplefringed with even and dawn.
Hesper hateth Phosphor, evening hateth morn.
IV
Every flower and every fruit the redolent breath
Of this warm seawind ripeneth,
Arching the billow in his sleep;
But the land-wind wandereth,
Broken by the highland-steep,
Two streams upon the violet deep:
For the western sun and the western star,
And the low west wind, breathing afar,
The end of day and beginning of night
Make the apple holy and bright,
Holy and bright, round and full, bright and blest,
Mellowed in a land of rest;
Watch it warily day and night;
All good things are in the west,
Till midnoon the cool east light
Is shut out by the round of the tall hillbrow;
But when the fullfaced sunset yellowly
Stays on the flowering arch of the bough,
The luscious fruitage clustereth mellowly,
Goldenkernelled, goldencored,
Sunset ripened, above on the tree,
The world is wasted with fire and sword,
But the apple of gold hangs over the sea,
Five links, a golden chain, are we,
Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three,
Daughters three,
Bound about
All round about
The gnarled bole of the charmed tree,
The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,
Guard it well, guard it warily,
Watch it warily,
Singing airily,
Standing about the charmed root.
XXXIII
=Rosalind=
My Rosalind, my Rosalind,
Bold, subtle, careless Rosalind,
Is one of those who know no strife
Of inward woe or outward fear;
To whom the slope and stream of life,
The life before, the life behind,
In the ear, from far and near,
Chimeth musically clear.
My falconhearted Rosalind
Fullsailed before a vigorous wind,
Is one of those who cannot weep
For others' woes, but overleap
All the petty shocks and fears
That trouble life in early years,
With a flash of frolic scorn
And keen delight, that never falls
Away from freshness, self-upborne
With such gladness, as, whenever
The freshflushing springtime calls
To the flooding waters cool,
Young fishes, on an April morn,
Up and down a rapid river,
Leap the little waterfalls
That sing into the pebbled pool.
My happy falcon, Rosalind,
Hath daring fancies of her own,
Fresh as the dawn before the day,
Fresh as the early seasmell blown
Through vineyards from an inland bay.
My Rosalind, my Rosalind,
Because no shadow on you falls,
Think you hearts are tennis balls
To play with, wanton Rosalind?
XXXIV
=Song=
Who can say
Why To-day
To-morrow will be yesterday?
Who can tell
Why to smell
The violet, recalls the dewy prime
Of youth and buried time?
The cause is nowhere found in rhyme.
XXXV
=Sonnet=
_Written on hearing of the outbreak of the Polish Insurrection. _
Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar
The hosts to battle: be not bought and sold.
Arise, brave Poles, the boldest of the bold;
Break through your iron shackles--fling them far.
O for those days of Piast, ere the Czar
Grew to this strength among his deserts cold;
When even to Moscow's cupolas were rolled
The growing murmurs of the Polish war!
Now must your noble anger blaze out more
Than when from Sobieski, clan by clan,
The Moslem myriads fell, and fled before--
Than when Zamoysky smote the Tartar Khan,
Than earlier, when on the Baltic shore
Boleslas drove the Pomeranian.
XXXVI
=O Darling Room=[D]
I
O darling room, my heart's delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight,
With thy two couches soft and white,
There is no room so exquisite,
No little room so warm and bright
Wherein to read, wherein to write.
II
For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
And Oberwinter's vineyards green,
Musical Lurlei; and between
The hills to Bingen have I been,
Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene
Curves towards Mentz, a woody scene.
III
Yet never did there meet my sight,
In any town, to left or right,
A little room so exquisite,
With two such couches soft and white;
Not any room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.
[Footnote D: 'As soon as this poem was published, I altered the second
line to "All books and pictures ranged aright"; yet "Dear room, the
apple of my sight" (which was much abused) is not as bad as "Do go,
dear rain, do go away. "' [Note initialed 'A. T. ' in _Life_, vol. I, p.
89. ] The worthlessness of much of the criticism lavished on Tennyson
by his coterie of adulating friends may be judged from the fact that
Arthur Hallam wrote to Tennyson that this poem was 'mighty
pleasant. ']
XXXVII
=To Christopher North=
You did late review my lays,
Crusty Christopher;
You did mingle blame and praise,
Rusty Christopher.
When I learnt from whom it came,
I forgave you all the blame,
Musty Christopher;
I could _not_ forgive the praise,
Fusty Christopher.
[This epigram was Tennyson's reply to an article by Professor
Wilson--'Christopher North'--in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for May 1832,
dealing in sensible fashion with Tennyson's 1830 volume, and
ridiculing the fulsome praise lavished on him by his inconsiderate
friends--especially referring to Arthur Hallam's article in the
_Englishman's Magazine_ for August, 1831. ]
XXXVIII
=The Lotos-Eaters=
[These forty lines formed the conclusion to the original (1833)
version of the poem. When the poem was reprinted in the 1842 volumes
these lines were suppressed. ]
We have had enough of motion,
Weariness and wild alarm,
Tossing on the tossing ocean,
Where the tusked seahorse walloweth
In a stripe of grassgreen calm,
At noon-tide beneath the lea;
And the monstrous narwhale swalloweth
His foamfountains in the sea.
Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry.
This is lovelier and sweeter,
Men of Ithaca, this is meeter,
In the hollow rosy vale to tarry,
Like a dreamy Lotos-eater, a delirious Lotos-eater!
We will eat the Lotos, sweet
As the yellow honeycomb,
In the valley some, and some
On the ancient heights divine;
And no more roam,
On the loud hoar foam,
To the melancholy home
At the limit of the brine,
The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline.
We'll lift no more the shattered oar,
No more unfurl the straining sail;
With the blissful Lotos-eaters pale
We will abide in the golden vale
Of the Lotos-land, till the Lotos fail;
We will not wander more.
Hark! how sweet the horned ewes bleat
On the solitary steeps,
And the merry lizard leaps,
And the foam-white waters pour;
And the dark pine weeps,
And the lithe vine creeps,
And the heavy melon sleeps
On the level of the shore:
Oh! islanders of Ithaca, we will not wander more,
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the ocean, and rowing with the oar,
Oh! islanders of Ithaca, we will return no more.
XXXIX
=A Dream of Fair Women=
[In the 1833 volume the poem opened with the following four verses,
suppressed after 1842. These Fitz Gerald considered made 'a perfect
poem by themselves. ']
As when a man, that sails in a balloon,
Downlooking sees the solid shining ground
Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon,
Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound:
And takes his flags and waves them to the mob
That shout below, all faces turned to where
Glows rubylike the far-up crimson globe,
Filled with a finer air:
So, lifted high, the poet at his will
Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all,
Higher thro' secret splendours mounting still,
Self-poised, nor fears to fall.
Hearing apart the echoes of his fame.
While I spoke thus, the seedsman, Memory,
Sowed my deep-furrowed thought with many a name
Whose glory will not die.
=Miscellaneous Poems and Contributions to Periodicals=
=1833-1868=
XL
=Cambridge=
[This poem is written in pencil on the fly-leaf of a copy of _Poems_
1833 in the Dyce Collection in South Kensington Museum. Reprinted with
many alterations in _Life_, vol. I, p. 67. ]
Therefore your halls, your ancient colleges,
Your portals statued with old kings and queens,
Your bridges and your busted libraries,
Wax-lighted chapels and rich carved screens,
Your doctors and your proctors and your deans
Shall not avail you when the day-beam sports
New-risen o'er awakened Albion--No,
Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow
Melodious thunders through your vacant courts
At morn and even; for your manner sorts
Not with this age, nor with the thoughts that roll,
Because the words of little children preach
Against you,--ye that did profess to teach
And have taught nothing, feeding on the soul.
XLI
=The Germ of 'Maud'=
[There was published in 1837 in _The Tribute_, (a collection of
original poems by various authors, edited by Lord Northampton), a
contribution by Tennyson entitled 'Stanzas,' consisting of xvi stanzas
of varying lengths (110 lines in all). In 1855 the first xii stanzas
were published as the fourth section of the second part of 'Maud. '
Some verbal changes and transpositions of lines were made; a new
stanza (the present sixth) and several new lines were introduced, and
the xth stanza of 1837 became the xiiith of 1855. But stanzas xiii-xvi
of 1837 have never been reprinted in any edition of Tennyson's works,
though quoted in whole or part in various critical studies of the
poet. Swinburne refers to this poem as 'the poem of deepest charm and
fullest delight of pathos and melody ever written, even by Mr
Tennyson. ' This poem in _The Tribute_ gained Tennyson his first notice
in the _Edinburgh Review_, which had till then ignored him. ]
XIII
But she tarries in her place
And I paint the beauteous face
Of the maiden, that I lost,
In my inner eyes again,
Lest my heart be overborne,
By the thing I hold in scorn,
By a dull mechanic ghost
And a juggle of the brain.
XIV
I can shadow forth my bride
As I knew her fair and kind
As I woo'd her for my wife;
She is lovely by my side
In the silence of my life--
'Tis a phantom of the mind.
XV
'Tis a phantom fair and good
I can call it to my side,
So to guard my life from ill,
Tho' its ghastly sister glide
And be moved around me still
With the moving of the blood
That is moved not of the will.
XVI
Let it pass, the dreary brow,
Let the dismal face go by,
Will it lead me to the grave?
Then I lose it: it will fly:
Can it overlast the nerves?
Can it overlive the eye?
But the other, like a star,
Thro' the channel windeth far
Till it fade and fail and die,
To its Archetype that waits
Clad in light by golden gates,
Clad in light the Spirit waits
To embrace me in the sky.
XLII
[On the fly-leaf of a book illustrated by Bewick, in the library of
the late Lord Ravensworth, the following lines in Tennyson's autograph
were discovered in 1903. ]
A gate and a field half ploughed,
A solitary cow,
A child with a broken slate,
And a titmarsh in the bough.
But where, alack, is Bewick
To tell the meaning now?
XLIII
=The Skipping-Rope=
[This poem, published in the second volume of _Poems by Alfred
Tennyson_ (in two volumes, London, Edward Moxon, MDCCCXLII), was
reprinted in every edition until 1851, when it was suppressed. ]
Sure never yet was Antelope
Could skip so lightly by.
Stand off, or else my skipping-rope
Will hit you in the eye.
How lightly whirls the skipping-rope!
How fairy-like you fly!
Go, get you gone, you muse and mope--
I hate that silly sigh.
Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope,
Or tell me how to die.
There, take it, take my skipping-rope
And hang yourself thereby.
XLIV
=The New Timon and the Poets=
[From _Punch_, February 28, 1846. Bulwer Lytton published in 1845 his
satirical poem 'New Timon: a Romance of London,' in which he bitterly
attacked Tennyson for the civil list pension granted the previous
year, particularly referring to the poem 'O Darling Room' in the 1833
volume. Tennyson replied in the following vigorous verses, which made
the literary sensation of the year. Tennyson afterwards declared: 'I
never sent my lines to _Punch_. John Forster did. They were too
bitter. I do not think that I should ever have published
them. '--_Life_, vol. I, p. 245. ]
We know him, out of Shakespeare's art,
And those fine curses which he spoke;
The old Timon, with his noble heart,
That, strongly loathing, greatly broke.
So died the Old: here comes the New:
Regard him: a familiar face:
I _thought_ we knew him: What, it's you
The padded man--that wears the stays--
Who killed the girls and thrill'd the boys
With dandy pathos when you wrote,
A Lion, you, that made a noise,
And shook a mane en papillotes.
And once you tried the Muses too:
You fail'd, Sir: therefore now you turn,
You fall on those who are to you
As captain is to subaltern.
But men of long enduring hopes,
And careless what this hour may bring,
Can pardon little would-be Popes
And Brummels, when they try to sting.
An artist, Sir, should rest in art,
And wave a little of his claim;
To have the deep poetic heart
Is more than all poetic fame.
But you, Sir, you are hard to please;
You never look but half content:
Nor like a gentleman at ease
With moral breadth of temperament.
And what with spites and what with fears,
You cannot let a body be:
It's always ringing in your ears,
'They call this man as good as _me_. '
What profits now to understand
The merits of a spotless shirt--
A dapper boot--a little hand--
If half the little soul is dirt?
_You_ talk of tinsel! why we see
The old mark of rouge upon your cheeks.
_You_ prate of nature! you are he
That spilt his life about the cliques.
A Timon you! Nay, nay, for shame:
It looks too arrogant a jest--
The fierce old man--to take _his_ name
You bandbox. Off, and let him rest.
XLV
=Mablethorpe=
[Published in _Manchester Athaenaum Album_, 1850. Written, 1837.
Republished, altered, in _Life_, vol. I, p. 161. ]
How often, when a child I lay reclined,
I took delight in this locality!
Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind,
And here the Grecian ships did seem to be.
And here again I come and only find
The drain-cut levels of the marshy lea,--
Gray sand banks and pale sunsets--dreary wind,
Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy clouded sea.
XLVI
[Published in _The Keepsake for 1851: an illustrated annual_, edited
by Miss Power. London: David Bogue. To this issue of the Keepsake
Tennyson also contributed 'Come not when I am dead' now included in
the collected Works. ]
What time I wasted youthful hours
One of the shining winged powers,
Show'd me vast cliffs with crown of towers,
As towards the gracious light I bow'd,
They seem'd high palaces and proud,
Hid now and then with sliding cloud.
He said, 'The labour is not small;
Yet winds the pathway free to all:--
Take care thou dost not fear to fall! '
XLVII
=Britons, Guard your Own=
[Published in _The Examiner_, January 31, 1852. Verses 1 (considerably
altered), 7, 8 and 10, are reprinted in Life, vol. I, p. 344. ]
Rise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead;
The world's last tempest darkens overhead;
The Pope has bless'd him;
The Church caress'd him;
He triumphs; maybe, we shall stand alone:
Britons, guard your own.
His ruthless host is bought with plunder'd gold,
By lying priest's the peasant's votes controlled.
All freedom vanish'd,
The true men banished,
He triumphs; maybe, we shall stand alone.
Britons, guard your own.
Peace-lovers we--sweet Peace we all desire--
Peace-lovers we--but who can trust a liar? --
Peace-lovers, haters
Of shameless traitors,
We hate not France, but this man's heart of stone.
Britons, guard your own.
We hate not France, but France has lost her voice
This man is France, the man they call her choice.
By tricks and spying,
By craft and lying,
And murder was her freedom overthrown.
Britons, guard your own.
'Vive l'Empereur' may follow by and bye;
'God save the Queen' is here a truer cry.
God save the Nation,
The toleration,
And the free speech that makes a Briton known.
Britons, guard your own.
Rome's dearest daughter now is captive France,
The Jesuit laughs, and reckoning on his chance,
Would, unrelenting,
Kill all dissenting,
Till we were left to fight for truth alone.
Britons, guard your own.
Call home your ships across Biscayan tides,
To blow the battle from their oaken sides.
Why waste they yonder
Their idle thunder?
Why stay they there to guard a foreign throne?
Seamen, guard your own.
We were the best of marksmen long ago,
We won old battles with our strength, the bow.
Now practise, yeomen,
Like those bowmen,
Till your balls fly as their true shafts have flown.
Yeomen, guard your own.
His soldier-ridden Highness might incline
To take Sardinia, Belgium, or the Rhine:
Shall we stand idle,
Nor seek to bridle
His vile aggressions, till we stand alone?
Make their cause your own.
Should he land here, and for one hour prevail,
There must no man go back to bear the tale:
No man to bear it--
Swear it! We swear it!
Although we fought the banded world alone,
We swear to guard our own.
XLVIII
=Hands all Round=
[Published in _The Examiner_, February 7, 1852. Reprinted, slightly
altered, in Life, vol. I, p. 345. Included, almost entirely
re-written, in collected Works. ]
First drink a health, this solemn night,
A health to England, every guest;
That man's the best cosmopolite
Who loves his native country best.
May Freedom's oak for ever live
With stronger life from day to day;
That man's the best Conservative
Who lops the mouldered branch away.
Hands all round!
God the tyrant's hope confound!
To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,
And the great name of England round and round.
A health to Europe's honest men!
Heaven guard them from her tyrants' jails!
From wronged Poerio's noisome den,
From iron limbs and tortured nails!
We curse the crimes of Southern kings,
The Russian whips and Austrian rods--
We likewise have our evil things;
Too much we make our Ledgers, Gods.
Yet hands all round!
God the tyrant's cause confound!
To Europe's better health we drink, my friends,
And the great name of England round and round.
What health to France, if France be she
Whom martial progress only charms?
Yet tell her--better to be free
Than vanquish all the world in arms.
Her frantic city's flashing heats
But fire, to blast the hopes of men.
Why change the titles of your streets?
You fools, you'll want them all again.
Hands all round!
God the tyrant's cause confound!
To France, the wiser France, we drink, my friends,
And the great name of England round and round.
Gigantic daughter of the West,
We drink to thee across the flood,
We know thee most, we love thee best,
For art thou not of British blood?
Should war's mad blast again be blown,
Permit not thou the tyrant powers
To fight thy mother here alone,
But let thy broadsides roar with ours.
Hands all round!
God the tyrant's cause confound!
To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends,
And the great name of England round and round.
O rise, our strong Atlantic sons,
When war against our freedom springs!
O speak to Europe through your guns!
They _can_ be understood by kings.
You must not mix our Queen with those
That wish to keep their people fools;
Our freedom's foemen are her foes,
She comprehends the race she rules.
Hands all round!
God the tyrant's cause confound!
To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends,
And the great name of England round and round.
XLIX
=Suggested by Reading an Article in a Newspaper=
[Published in _The Examiner_, February 14, 1852, and never reprinted
nor acknowledged. The proof sheets of the poem, with alterations in
Tennyson's autograph, were offered for public sale in 1906. ]
To the Editor of _The Examiner_.
SIR,--I have read with much interest the poems of Merlin. The enclosed
is longer than either of those, and certainly not so good: yet as I
flatter myself that it has a smack of Merlin's style in it, and as I
feel that it expresses forcibly enough some of the feelings of our
time, perhaps you may be induced to admit it.
TALIESSEN.
How much I love this writer's manly style!
By such men led, our press had ever been
The public conscience of our noble isle,
Severe and quick to feel a civic sin,
To raise the people and chastise the times
With such a heat as lives in great creative rhymes.
O you, the Press! what good from you might spring!
What power is yours to blast a cause or bless!
I fear for you, as for some youthful king,
Lest you go wrong from power in excess.
Take heed of your wide privileges! we
The thinking men of England, loathe a tyranny.
A freeman is, I doubt not, freest here;
The single voice may speak his mind aloud;
An honest isolation need not fear
The Court, the Church, the Parliament, the crowd.
No, nor the Press! and look you well to that--
We must not dread in you the nameless autocrat.
And you, dark Senate of the public pen,
You may not, like yon tyrant, deal in spies.
Yours are the public acts of public men,
But yours are not their household privacies.
I grant you one of the great Powers on earth,
But be not you the blatant traitors of the hearth.
You hide the hand that writes: it must be so,
For better so you fight for public ends;
But some you strike can scarce return the blow;
You should be all the nobler, O my friends.
Be noble, you! nor work with faction's tools
To charm a lower sphere of fulminating fools.
But knowing all your power to heat or cool,
To soothe a civic wound or keep it raw,
Be loyal, if you wish for wholesome rule:
Our ancient boast is this--we reverence law.
We still were loyal in our wildest fights,
Or loyally disloyal battled for our rights.
O Grief and Shame if while I preach of laws
Whereby to guard our Freedom from offence--
And trust an ancient manhood and the cause
Of England and her health of commonsense--
There hang within the heavens a dark disgrace,
Some vast Assyrian doom to burst upon our race.
I feel the thousand cankers of our State,
I fain would shake their triple-folded ease,
The hogs who can believe in nothing great,
Sneering bedridden in the down of Peace
Over their scrips and shares, their meats and wine,
With stony smirks at all things human and divine!
I honour much, I say, this man's appeal.
We drag so deep in our commercial mire,
We move so far from greatness, that I feel
Exception to be character'd in fire.
Who looks for Godlike greatness here shall see
The British Goddess, sleek Respectability.
Alas for her and all her small delights!
She feels not how the social frame is rack'd.
She loves a little scandal which excites;
A little feeling is a want of tact.
For her there lie in wait millions of foes,
And yet the 'not too much' is all the rule she knows.
Poor soul! behold her: what decorous calm!
She, with her week-day worldliness sufficed,
Stands in her pew and hums her decent psalm
With decent dippings at the name of Christ!
And she has mov'd in that smooth way so long,
She hardly can believe that she shall suffer wrong.
Alas, our Church! alas, her growing ills,
And those who tolerate not her tolerance,
But needs must sell the burthen of their wills
To that half-pagan harlot kept by France!
Free subjects of the kindliest of all thrones,
Headlong they plunge their doubts among old rags and bones.
Alas, Church writers, altercating tribes--
The vessel and your Church may sink in storms.
Christ cried: Woe, woe, to Pharisees and Scribes!
Like them, you bicker less for truth than forms.
I sorrow when I read the things you write,
What unheroic pertness! what un-Christian spite!
Alas, our youth, so clever yet so small,
Thin dilletanti deep in nature's plan,
Who make the emphatic One, by whom is all,
An essence less concentred than a man!
Better wild Mahmoud's war-cry once again!
O fools, we want a manlike God and Godlike men!
Go, frightful omens. Yet once more I turn
To you that mould men's thoughts; I call on you
To make opinion warlike, lest we learn
A sharper lesson than we ever knew.
I hear a thunder though the skies are fair,
But shrill you, loud and long, the warning-note:
Prepare!
L
[Lord Tennyson wrote, by Royal request, two stanzas which were sung as
part of _God Save the Queen_ at a State concert in connection with the
Princess Royal's marriage: these were printed in the _Times_ of
January 26, 1858. ]
God bless our Prince and Bride!
God keep their lands allied,
God save the Queen!
Clothe them with righteousness,
Crown them with happiness,
Them with all blessings bless,
God save the Queen.
Fair fall this hallow'd hour,
Farewell our England's flower,
God save the Queen!
Farewell, fair rose of May!
Let both the peoples say,
God bless thy marriage-day,
God bless the Queen.
LI
=The Ringlet=
[Published in _Enoch Arden_ volume (London: E. Moxon & Co, 1864) and
never reprinted. ]
'Your ringlets, your ringlets,
That look so golden-gay,
If you will give me one, but one,
To kiss it night and day,
Then never chilling touch of Time
Will turn it silver-gray;
And then shall I know it is all true gold
To flame and sparkle and stream as of old,
Till all the comets in heaven are cold,
And all her stars decay. '
'Then take it, love, and put it by;
This cannot change, nor yet can I. '
'My ringlet, my ringlet,
That art so golden-gay,
Now never chilling touch of Time
Can turn thee silver-gray;
And a lad may wink, and a girl may hint,
And a fool may say his say;
For my doubts and fears were all amiss,
And I swear henceforth by this and this,
That a doubt will only come for a kiss,
And a fear to be kissed away. '
'Then kiss it, love, and put it by:
If this can change, why so can I. '
O Ringlet, O Ringlet,
I kiss'd you night and day,
And Ringlet, O Ringlet,
You still are golden-gay,
But Ringlet, O Ringlet,
You should be silver-gray:
For what is this which now I'm told,
I that took you for true gold,
She that gave you's bought and sold,
Sold, sold.
O Ringlet, O Ringlet,
She blush'd a rosy red,
When Ringlet, O Ringlet,
She clipt you from her head,
And Ringlet, O Ringlet,
She gave you me, and said,
'Come, kiss it, love, and put it by:
If this can change, why so can I. '
O fie, you golden nothing, fie
You golden lie.
O Ringlet, O Ringlet,
I count you much to blame,
For Ringlet, O Ringlet,
You put me much to shame,
So Ringlet, O Ringlet,
I doom you to the flame.
For what is this which now I learn,
Has given all my faith a turn?
Burn, you glossy heretic, burn,
Burn, burn.
LII
=Song=
[This first form of the Song in _The Princess_ ('Home they brought her
warrior dead') was published only in _Selections from Tennyson_.
London: E. Moxon & Co, 1864. ]
Home they brought him slain with spears.
They brought him home at even-fall:
All alone she sits and hears
Echoes in his empty hall,
Sounding on the morrow.
The Sun peeped in from open field,
The boy began to leap and prance,
Rode upon his father's lance,
Beat upon his father's shield--
'Oh hush, my joy, my sorrow. '
LIII
=1865-1866=
[Published in _Good Words_ for March 1, 1868 as a decorative page,
with an accompanying full page plate by T. Dalziel. The lines were
never reprinted. ]
I stood on a tower in the wet,
And New Year and Old Year met,
And winds were roaring and blowing;
And I said, 'O years that meet in tears,
Have ye aught that is worth the knowing?
'Science enough and exploring
Wanderers coming and going
Matter enough for deploring
But aught that is worth the knowing? '
Seas at my feet were flowing
Waves on the shingle pouring,
Old Year roaring and blowing
And New Year blowing and roaring.
=The Lover's Tale=
1833
[It was originally intended by Tennyson that this poem should
form part of his 1833 volume. It was put in type and, according to
custom, copies were distributed among his friends, when, on the eve of
publication, he decided to omit it. Again, in 1869, it was sent to
press with a new third part added, and was again withdrawn, the third
part only--'The Golden Supper,' founded on a story in Boccaccio's
_Decameron_--being published in the volume, 'The Holy Grail. ' In 1866,
1870 and 1875, attempts had been made by Mr Herne Shepherd to publish
editions of 'The Lover's Tale,' reprinted from stray proof copies of
the 1833 printing. Each of these attempts was repressed by Tennyson,
and at last in 1879 the complete poem, as now included in the
collected Works, was issued, with an apologetic reference to the
necessity of reprinting the poem to prevent its circulation in an
unauthorised form. But the 1879 issue is considerably altered from the
original issue of 1833, as written by Tennyson in his nineteenth year.
Since only as a product of Tennyson's youth does the poem merit any
attention, it has seemed good to reprint it here as originally
written. ]
A FRAGMENT
The Poem of the Lover's Tale (the lover is supposed to be himself a
poet) was written in my nineteenth year, and consequently contains
nearly as many faults as words. That I deemed it not wholly unoriginal
is my only apology for its publication--an apology lame and poor, and
somewhat impertinent to boot: so that if its infirmities meet with
more laughter than charity in the world, I shall not raise my voice in
its defence. I am aware how deficient the Poem is in point of art, and
it is not without considerable misgivings that I have ventured to
publish even this fragment of it. 'Enough,' says the old proverb, 'is
as good as a feast. '--(Tennyson's original introductory note. )
Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff,
Filling with purple gloom the vacancies
Between the tufted hills the sloping seas
Hung in mid-heaven, and half-way down rare sails,
White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky.
Oh! pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay,
Like to a quiet mind in the loud world,
Where the chafed breakers of the outer sea
Sunk powerless, even as anger falls aside,
And withers on the breast of peaceful love,
Thou didst receive that belt of pines, that fledged
The hills that watch'd thee, as Love watcheth Love,--
In thine own essence, and delight thyself
To make it wholly thine on sunny days.
Keep thou thy name of 'Lover's bay': See, Sirs,
Even now the Goddess of the Past, that takes
The heart, and sometimes toucheth but one string,
That quivers, and is silent, and sometimes
Sweeps suddenly all its half-moulder'd chords
To an old melody, begins to play
On those first-moved fibres of the brain.
I come, Great mistress of the ear and eye:
Oh! lead me tenderly, for fear the mind
Rain thro' my sight, and strangling sorrow weigh
Mine utterance with lameness. Tho' long years
Have hallowed out a valley and a gulf
Betwixt the native land of Love and me,
Breathe but a little on me, and the sail
Will draw me to the rising of the sun,
The lucid chambers of the morning star,
And East of life.
Permit me, friend, I prithee,
To pass my hand across my brows, and muse
On those dear hills, that nevermore will meet
The sight that throbs and aches beneath my touch,
As tho' there beat a heart in either eye;
For when the outer lights are darken'd thus,
The memory's vision hath a keener edge.
It grows upon me now--the semicircle
Of dark blue waters and the narrow fringe
Of curving beach--its wreaths of dripping green--
Its pale pink shells--the summer-house aloft
That open'd on the pines with doors of glass,
A mountain nest the pleasure boat that rock'd
Light-green with its own shadow, keel to keel,
Upon the crispings of the dappled waves
That blanched upon its side.
O Love, O Hope,
They come, they crowd upon me all at once,
Moved from the cloud of unforgotten things,
That sometimes on the horizon of the mind
Lies folded--often sweeps athwart in storm--
They flash across the darkness of my brain,
The many pleasant days, the moolit nights,
The dewy dawnings and the amber eyes,
When thou and I, Camilla, thou and I
Were borne about the bay, or safely moor'd
Beneath some low brow'd cavern, where the wave
Plash'd sapping its worn ribs (the while without,
And close above us, sang the wind-tost pine,
And shook its earthly socket, for we heard,
In rising and in falling with the tide,
Close by our ears, the huge roots strain and creak),
Eye feeding upon eye with deep intent;
And mine, with love too high to be express'd
Arrested in its sphere, and ceasing from
All contemplation of all forms, did pause
To worship mine own image, laved in light,
The centre of the splendours, all unworthy
Of such a shrine--mine image in her eyes,
By diminution made most glorious,
Moved with their motions, as those eyes were moved
With motions of the soul, as my heart beat
Twice to the melody of hers. Her face
Was starry-fair, not pale, tenderly flush'd
As 'twere with dawn. She was dark-hair'd, dark-eyed;
Oh, such dark eyes! A single glance of them
Will govern a whole life from birth to death,
Careless of all things else, led on with light
In trances and in visions: look at them,
You lose yourself in utter ignorance,
You cannot find their depth; for they go back,
And farther back, and still withdraw themselves
Quite into the deep soul, that evermore,
Fresh springing from her fountains in the brain,
Still pouring thro', floods with redundant light
Her narrow portals.
Trust me, long ago
I should have died, if it were possible
To die in gazing on that perfectness
Which I do bear within me; I had died
But from my farthest lapse, my latest ebb,
Thine image, like a charm of light and strength
Upon the waters, pushed me back again
On these deserted sands of barren life.
Tho' from the deep vault, where the heart of hope
Fell into dust, and crumbled in the dark--
Forgetting who to render beautiful
Her countenance with quick and healthful blood--
Thou didst not sway me upward, could I perish
With such a costly casket in the grasp
Of memory? He, that saith it, hath o'erstepp'd
The slippery footing of his narrow wit,
And fall'n away from judgment. Thou art light,
To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers,
And length of days, and immortality
Of thought, and freshness ever self-renew'd.
For Time and Grief abode too long with Life,
And like all other friends i' the world, at last
They grew aweary of her fellowship:
So Time and Grief did beckon unto Death,
And Death drew nigh and beat the doors of Life;
But thou didst sit alone in the inner house,
A wakeful port'ress and didst parle with Death,
'This is a charmed dwelling which I hold';
So Death gave back, and would no further come.
Yet is my life nor in the present time,
Nor in the present place. To me alone,
Pushed from his chair of regal heritage,
The Present is the vassal of the Past:
So that, in that I _have_ lived, do I live,
And cannot die, and am, in having been,
A portion of the pleasant yesterday,
Thrust forward on to-day and out of place;
A body journeying onward, sick with toil,
The lithe limbs bow'd as with a heavy weight
And all the senses weaken'd in all save that
Which, long ago, they had glean'd and garner'd up
Into the granaries of memory--
The clear brow, bulwark of the precious brain,
Now seam'd and chink'd with years--and all the while
The light soul twines and mingles with the growths
Of vigorous early days, attracted, won,
Married, made one with, molten into all
The beautiful in Past of act or place.
Even as the all-enduring camel, driven
Far from the diamond fountain by the palms,
Toils onward thro' the middle moonlight nights,
Shadow'd and crimson'd with the drifting dust,
Or when the white heats of the blinding noons
Beat from the concave sand; yet in him keeps
A draught of that sweet fountain that he loves,
To stay his feet from falling, and his spirit
From bitterness of death.
Ye ask me, friends,
When I began to love. How should I tell ye?
Or from the after fulness of my heart,
Flow back again unto my slender spring
And first of love, tho' every turn and depth
Between is clearer in my life than all
Its present flow. Ye know not what ye ask.
How should the broad and open flower tell
What sort of bud it was, when press'd together
In its green sheath, close lapt in silken folds?
It seemed to keep its sweetness to itself,
Yet was not the less sweet for that it seem'd.
For young Life knows not when young Life was born,
But takes it all for granted: neither Love,
Warm in the heart, his cradle can remember
Love in the womb, but resteth satisfied,
Looking on her that brought him to the light:
Or as men know not when they fall asleep
Into delicious dreams, our other life,
So know I not when I began to love.
This is my sum of knowledge--that my love
Grew with myself--and say rather, was my growth,
My inward sap, the hold I have on earth,
My outward circling air wherein I breathe,
Which yet upholds my life, and evermore
Was to me daily life and daily death:
For how should I have lived and not have loved?
Can ye take off the sweetness from the flower,
The colour and the sweetness from the rose,
And place them by themselves? or set apart
Their motions and their brightness from the stars,
And then point out the flower or the star?
Or build a wall betwixt my life and love,
And tell me where I am? 'Tis even thus:
In that I live I love; because I love
I live: whate'er is fountain to the one
Is fountain to the other; and whene'er
Our God unknits the riddle of the one,
There is no shade or fold of mystery
Swathing the other.
Many, many years,
For they seem many and my most of life,
And well I could have linger'd in that porch,
So unproportioned to the dwelling place,
In the maydews of childhood, opposite
The flush and dawn of youth, we lived together,
Apart, alone together on those hills.
Before he saw my day my father died,
And he was happy that he saw it not:
But I and the first daisy on his grave
From the same clay came into light at once.
As Love and I do number equal years
So she, my love, is of an age with me.
How like each other was the birth of each!
The sister of my mother--she that bore
Camilla close beneath her beating heart,
Which to the imprisoned spirit of the child,
With its true touched pulses in the flow
And hourly visitation of the blood,
Sent notes of preparation manifold,
And mellow'd echoes of the outer world--
My mother's sister, mother of my love,
Who had a twofold claim upon my heart,
One twofold mightier than the other was,
In giving so much beauty to the world,
And so much wealth as God had charged her with,
Loathing to put it from herself for ever,
Crown'd with her highest act the placid face
And breathless body of her good deeds past.
So we were born, so orphan'd. She was motherless,
And I without a father. So from each
Of those two pillars which from earth uphold
Our childhood, one had fall'n away, and all
The careful burthen of our tender years
Trembled upon the other. He that gave
Her life, to me delightedly fulfill'd
All loving-kindnesses, all offices
Of watchful care and trembling tenderness.
He worked for both: he pray'd for both: he slept
Dreaming of both; nor was his love the less
Because it was divided, and shot forth
Boughs on each side, laden with wholesome shade,
Wherein we rested sleeping or awake,
And sung aloud the matin-song of life.
She was my foster-sister: on one arm
The flaxen ringlets of our infancies
Wander'd, the while we rested: one soft lap
Pillow'd us both: one common light of eyes
Was on us as we lay: our baby lips,
Kissing one bosom, ever drew from thence
The stream of life, one stream, one life, one blood,
One sustenance, which, still as thought grew large,
Still larger moulding all the house of thought,
Perchance assimilated all our tastes
And future fancies. 'Tis a beautiful
And pleasant meditation, what whate'er
Our general mother meant for me alone,
Our mutual mother dealt to both of us:
So what was earliest mine in earliest life,
I shared with her in whom myself remains.
As was our childhood, so our infancy,
They tell me, was a very miracle
Of fellow-feeling and communion.
They tell me that we would not be alone,--
We cried when we were parted; when I wept,
Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears,
Stay'd on the clouds of sorrow; that we loved
The sound of one another's voices more
Than the grey cuckoo loves his name, and learn'd
To lisp in tune together; that we slept
In the same cradle always, face to face,
Heart beating time to heart, lip pressing lip,
Folding each other, breathing on each other,
Dreaming together (dreaming of each other
They should have added) till the morning light
Sloped thro' the pines, upon the dewy pane
Falling, unseal'd our eyelids, and we woke
To gaze upon each other. If this be true,
At thought of which my whole soul languishes
And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath, as tho'
A man in some still garden should infuse
Rich attar in the bosom of the rose,
Till, drunk with its own wine and overfull
Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself,
It fall on its own thorns--if this be true--
And that way my wish leaneth evermore
Still to believe it--'tis so sweet a thought,
Why in the utter stillness of the soul
Doth question'd memory answer not, nor tell,
Of this our earliest, our closest drawn,
Most loveliest, most delicious union?
Oh, happy, happy outset of my days!
Green springtide, April promise, glad new year
Of Being, which with earliest violets,
And lavish carol of clear-throated larks,
Fill'd all the march of life. --I will not speak of thee;
These have not seen thee, these can never know thee,
They cannot understand me. Pass on then
A term of eighteen years. Ye would but laugh
If I should tell ye how I heard in thought
Those rhymes, 'The Lion and the Unicorn'
'The Four-and-twenty Blackbirds' 'Banbury Cross,'
'The Gander' and 'The man of Mitylene,'
And all the quaint old scraps of ancient crones,
Which are as gems set in my memory,
Because she learn'd them with me. Or what profits it
To tell ye that her father died, just ere
The daffodil was blown; or how we found
The drowned seaman on the shore? These things
Unto the quiet daylight of your minds
Are cloud and smoke, but in the dark of mine
Show traced with flame. Move with me to that hour,
Which was the hinge on which the door of Hope,
Once turning, open'd far into the outward,
And never closed again.
I well remember,
It was a glorious morning, such a one
As dawns but once a season. Mercury
On such a morning would have flung himself
From cloud to cloud, and swum with balanced wings
To some tall mountain. On that day the year
First felt his youth and strength, and from his spring
Moved smiling toward his summer. On that day,
Love working shook his wings (that charged the winds
With spiced May-sweets from bound to bound) and blew
Fresh fire into the sun, and from within
Burst thro' the heated buds, and sent his soul
Into the songs of birds, and touch'd far-off
His mountain-altars, his high hills, with flame
Milder and purer. Up the rocks we wound;
The great pine shook with lovely sounds of joy,
That came on the sea-wind. As mountain brooks
Our blood ran free: the sunshine seem'd to brood
More warmly on the heart than on the brow.
We often paused, and looking back, we saw
The clefts and openings in the hills all fill'd
With the blue valley and the glistening brooks,
And with the low dark groves--a land of Love;
Where Love was worshipp'd upon every height,
Where Love was worshipp'd under every tree--
A land of promise, flowing with the milk
And honey of delicious memories
Down to the sea, as far as eye could ken,
From verge to verge it was a holy land,
Still growing holier as you near'd the bay,
For where the temple stood. When we had reach'd
The grassy platform on some hill, I stoop'd,
I gather'd the wild herbs, and for her brows
And mine wove chaplets of the self-same flower,
Which she took smiling, and with my work there
Crown'd her clear forehead. Once or twice she told me
(For I remember all things), to let grow
The flowers that run poison in their veins.
She said, 'The evil flourish in the world';
Then playfully she gave herself the lie:
'Nothing in nature is unbeautiful,
So, brother, pluck and spare not. ' So I wove
Even the dull-blooded poppy, 'whose red flower
Hued with the scarlet of a fierce sunrise,
Like to the wild youth of an evil king,
Is without sweetness, but who crowns himself
Above the secret poisons of his heart
In his old age'--a graceful thought of hers
Graven on my fancy! As I said, with these
She crown'd her forehead. O how like a nymph,
A stately mountain-nymph, she look'd! how native
Unto the hills she trod on! What an angel!
How clothed with beams! My eyes, fix'd upon hers,
Almost forgot even to move again.
My spirit leap'd as with those thrills of bliss
That shoot across the soul in prayer, and show us
That we are surely heard. Methought a light
Burst from the garland I had woven, and stood
A solid glory on her bright black hair:
A light, methought, broke from her dark, dark eyes,
And shot itself into the singing winds;
A light, methought, flash'd even from her white robe,
As from a glass in the sun, and fell about
My footsteps on the mountains.
About sunset
We came unto the hill of woe, so call'd
Because the legend ran that, long time since,
One rainy night, when every wind blew loud,
A woful man had thrust his wife and child
With shouts from off the bridge, and following, plunged
Into the dizzy chasm below. Below,
Sheer thro' the black-wall'd cliff the rapid brook
Shot down his inner thunders, built above
With matted bramble and the shining gloss
Of ivy-leaves, whose low-hung tresses, dipp'd
In the fierce stream, bore downward with the wave.
The path was steep and loosely strewn with crags
We mounted slowly: yet to both of us
It was delight, not hindrance: unto both
Delight from hardship to be overcome,
And scorn of perilous seeming: unto me
Intense delight and rapture that I breathed,
As with a sense of nigher Deity,
With her to whom all outward fairest things
Were by the busy mind referr'd, compared,
As bearing no essential fruits of excellence.
Save as they were the types and shadowings
Of hers--and then that I became to her
A tutelary angel as she rose,
And with a fearful self-impelling joy
Saw round her feet the country far away,
Beyond the nearest mountain's bosky brows,
Burst into open prospect--heath and hill,
And hollow lined and wooded to the lips--
And steep down walls of battlemented rock
Girded with broom or shiver'd into peaks--
And glory of broad waters interfused,
Whence rose as it were breath and steam of gold;
And over all the great wood rioting
And climbing, starr'd at slender intervals
With blossom tufts of purest white; and last,
Framing the mighty landskip to the West,
A purple range of purple cones, between
Whose interspaces gush'd, in blinding bursts,
The incorporate light of sun and sea.
At length,
Upon the tremulous bridge, that from beneath
Seemed with a cobweb firmament to link
The earthquake-shattered chasm, hung with shrubs,
We passed with tears of rapture. All the West,
And even unto the middle South, was ribb'd
And barr'd with bloom on bloom. The sun beneath,
Held for a space 'twixt cloud and wave, shower'd down
Rays of a mighty circle, weaving over
That varied wilderness a tissue of light
Unparallel'd. On the other side the moon,
Half-melted into thin blue air, stood still
And pale and fibrous as a wither'd leaf,
Nor yet endured in presence of his eyes
To imbue his lustre; most unloverlike;
Since in his absence full of light and joy
And giving light to others. But this chiefest,
Next to her presence whom I loved so well,
Spoke loudly, even into my inmost heart,
As to my outward hearing: the loud stream,
Forth issuing from his portals in the crag
(A visible link unto the home of my heart),
Ran amber toward the West, and nigh the sea,
Parting my own loved mountains, was received
Shorn of its strength, into the sympathy
Of that small bay, which into open main
Glow'd intermingling close beneath the sun
Spirit of Love! That little hour was bound,
Shut in from Time, and dedicate to thee;
Thy fires from heav'n had touch'd it, and the earth
They fell on became hallow'd evermore.
We turn'd: our eyes met: her's were bright, and mine
Were dim with floating tears, that shot the sunset,
In light rings round me; and my name was borne
Upon her breath. Henceforth my name has been
A hallow'd memory, like the names of old;
A center'd, glory-circled memory,
And a peculiar treasure, brooking not
Exchange or currency; and in that hour
A hope flow'd round me, like a golden mist
Charm'd amid eddies of melodious airs,
A moment, ere the onward whirlwind shatter it,
Waver'd and floated--which was less than Hope,
Because it lack'd the power of perfect Hope;
But which was more and higher than all Hope,
Because all other Hope hath lower aim;
Even that this name to which her seraph lips
Did lend such gentle utterance, this one name
In some obscure hereafter, might inwreathe
(How lovelier, nobler then! ) her life, her love,
With my life, love, soul, spirit and heart and strength.
'Brother,' she said, 'let this be call'd henceforth
The Hill of Hope'; and I replied: 'O sister,
My will is one with thine; the Hill of Hope. '
Nevertheless, we did not change the name.
Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths:
Love wraps her wings on either side the heart,
Constraining it with kisses close and warm,
Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts
So that they pass not to the shrine of sound.
Else had the life of that delighted hour
Drunk in the largeness of the utterance
Of Love; but how should earthly measure mete
The heavenly unmeasured or unlimited Love,
Which scarce can tune his high majestic sense
Unto the thunder-song that wheels the spheres;
Scarce living in the Aeolian harmony,
And flowing odour of the spacious air;
Scarce housed in the circle of this earth:
Be cabin'd up in words and syllables,
Which waste with the breath that made 'em.
Sooner earth
Might go round heaven, and the straight girth of Time
Inswathe the fullness of Eternity,
Than language grasp the infinite of Love.
O day, which did enwomb that happy hour,
Thou art blest in the years, divinest day!
O Genius of that hour which dost uphold
Thy coronal of glory like a God,
Amid thy melancholy mates far-seen,
Who walk before thee, and whose eyes are dim
With gazing on the light and depth of thine
Thy name is ever worshipp'd among hours!
Had I died then, I had not seem'd to die
For bliss stood round me like the lights of heaven,
That cannot fade, they are so burning bright.
Had I died then, I had not known the death;
Planting my feet against this mound of time
I had thrown me on the vast, and from this impulse
Continuing and gathering ever, ever,
Agglomerated swiftness, I had lived
That intense moment thro' eternity.
Oh, had the Power from whose right hand the light
Of Life issueth, and from whose left hand floweth
The shadow of Death, perennial effluences,
Whereof to all that draw the wholesome air,
Somewhile the one must overflow the other;
Then had he stemm'd my day with night and driven
My current to the fountain whence it sprang--
Even his own abiding excellence--
On me, methinks, that shock of gloom had fall'n
Unfelt, and like the sun I gazed upon,
Which, lapt in seeming dissolution,
And dipping his head low beneath the verge,
Yet bearing round about him his own day,
In confidence of unabated strength,
Steppeth from heaven to heaven, from light to light,
And holding his undimmed forehead far
Into a clearer zenith, pure of cloud;
So bearing on thro' Being limitless
The triumph of this foretaste, I had merged
Glory in glory, without sense of change.
We trod the shadow of the downward hill;
We pass'd from light to dark. On the other side
Is scooped a cavern and a mountain-hall,
Which none have fathom'd. If you go far in
(The country people rumour) you may hear
The moaning of the woman and the child,
Shut in the secret chambers of the rock.
I too have heard a sound--perchance of streams
Running far-off within its inmost halls,
The home of darkness, but the cavern mouth,
Half overtrailed with a wanton weed
Gives birth to a brawling stream, that stepping lightly
Adown a natural stair of tangled roots,
Is presently received in a sweet grove
Of eglantine, a place of burial
Far lovelier than its cradle; for unseen
But taken with the sweetness of the place,
It giveth out a constant melody
That drowns the nearer echoes. Lower down
Spreads out a little lake, that, flooding, makes
Cushions of yellow sand; and from the woods
That belt it rise three dark tall cypresses;
Three cypresses, symbols of mortal woe,
That men plant over graves.
Hither we came,
And sitting down upon the golden moss
Held converse sweet and low--low converse sweet,
In which our voices bore least part. The wind
Told a love-tale beside us, how he woo'd
The waters, and the crisp'd waters lisp'd
The kisses of the wind, that, sick with love,
Fainted at intervals, and grew again
To utterance of passion. Ye cannot shape
Fancy so fair as is this memory.
Methought all excellence that ever was
Had drawn herself from many thousand years,
And all the separate Edens of this earth,
To centre in this place and time. I listen'd,
And her words stole with most prevailing sweetness
Into my heart, as thronged fancies come,
All unawares, into the poet's brain;
Or as the dew-drops on the petal hung,
When summer winds break their soft sleep with sighs,
Creep down into the bottom of the flower.
Her words were like a coronal of wild blooms
Strung in the very negligence of Art,
Or in the art of Nature, where each rose
Doth faint upon the bosom of the other,
Flooding its angry cheek with odorous tears.
So each with each inwoven lived with each,
And were in union more than double-sweet.
What marvel my Camilla told me all?
It was so happy an hour, so sweet a place,
And I was as the brother of her blood,
And by that name was wont to live in her speech,
Dear name! which had too much of nearness in it
And heralded the distance of this time.
At first her voice was very sweet and low,
As tho' she were afeard of utterance;
But in the onward current of her speech,
(As echoes of the hollow-banked brooks
Are fashioned by the channel which they keep)
His words did of their meaning borrow sound,
Her cheek did catch the colour of her words,
I heard and trembled, yet I could but hear;
My heart paused,--my raised eyelids would not fall,
But still I kept my eyes upon the sky.
I seem'd the only part of Time stood still,
And saw the motion of all other things;
While her words, syllable by syllable,
Like water, drop by drop, upon my ear
Fell, and I wish'd, yet wish'd her not to speak,
But she spoke on, for I did name no wish.
What marvel my Camilla told me all
Her maiden dignities of Hope and Love,
'Perchance' she said 'return'd. ' Even then the stars
Did tremble in their stations as I gazed;
But she spake on, for I did name no wish,
No wish--no hope. Hope was not wholly dead,
But breathing hard at the approach of Death,
Updrawn in expectation of her change--
Camilla, my Camilla, who was mine
No longer in the dearest use of mine--
The written secrets of her inmost soul
Lay like an open scroll before my view,
And my eyes read, they read aright, her heart
Was Lionel's: it seem'd as tho' a link
Of some light chain within my inmost frame
Was riven in twain: that life I heeded not
Flow'd from me, and the darkness of the grave,
The darkness of the grave and utter night,
Did swallow up my vision: at her feet,
Even the feet of her I loved, I fell,
Smit with exceeding sorrow unto death.
