No More Learning

I hold it good, good things should pass:
With time I will not quarrel:
It is but yonder empty glass
That makes me maudlin-moral.

Head-waiter of the chop-house here,
To which I most resort,
I too must part: I hold thee dear
For this good pint of port.
For this, thou shalt from all things suck
Marrow of mirth and laughter;
And, wheresoe'er thou move, good luck
Shall fling her old shoe after.

But thou wilt never move from hence,
The sphere thy fate allots:
Thy latter days increased with pence
Go down among the pots:
Thou battenest by the greasy gleam
In haunts of hungry sinners,
Old boxes, larded with the steam
Of thirty thousand dinners.

_We_ fret, _we_ fume, would shift our skins,
Would quarrel with our lot;
_Thy_ care is, under polish'd tins,
To serve the hot-and-hot;
To come and go, and come again,
Returning like the pewit,
And watch'd by silent gentlemen,
That trifle with the cruet.

Live long, ere from thy topmost head
The thick-set hazel dies;
Long, ere the hateful crow shall tread
The corners of thine eyes:
Live long, nor feel in head or chest
Our changeful equinoxes,
Till mellow Death, like some late guest,
Shall call thee from the boxes.

But when he calls, and thou shalt cease
To pace the gritted floor,
And, laying down an unctuous lease
Of life, shalt earn no more;
No carved cross-bones, the types of Death,
Shall show thee past to Heaven:
But carved cross-pipes, and, underneath,
A pint-pot neatly graven.


[Footnote 1: 1842 and all previous to 1853. To full and kindly. ]

[Footnote 2: All previous to 1853:--

Like Hezekiah's, backward runs
The shadow of my days. ]


[Footnote 3: All previous to 1853. Though. ]

[Footnote 4: The expression is Shakespeare's, 'Twelfth Night', v. , i. ,

"and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges". ]


[Footnote 5: 1842 to 1843. With motion less or greater. ]




TO----

AFTER READING A LIFE AND LETTERS

Originally published in the 'Examiner' for 24th March, 1849; then in the
sixth edition of the poems, 1850, with the second part of the title and
the alterations noted. When reprinted in 1851 one more slight alteration
was made. It has not been altered since. The work referred to was
Moncton Milne's (afterwards Lord Houghton) 'Letters and Literary Remains
of Keats' published in 1848, and the person to whom the poem may have
been addressed was Tennyson's brother Charles, afterwards Charles
Tennyson Turner, to the facts of whose life and to whose character it
would exactly apply. See Napier,'Homes and Haunts of Tennyson', 48-50.
But Sir Franklin Lushington tells me that it was most probably addressed
to some imaginary person, as neither he nor such of Tennyson's surviving
friends as he kindly consulted for me are able to identify the person.


You might have won the Poet's name
If such be worth the winning now,
And gain'd a laurel for your brow
Of sounder leaf than I can claim;
But you have made the wiser choice,
A life that moves to gracious ends
Thro' troops of unrecording friends,
A deedful life, a silent voice:

And you have miss'd the irreverent doom
Of those that wear the Poet's crown:
Hereafter, neither knave nor clown
Shall hold their orgies at your tomb.

For now the Poet cannot die
Nor leave his music as of old,
But round him ere he scarce be cold
Begins the scandal and the cry:

"Proclaim the faults he would not show:
Break lock and seal: betray the trust:
Keep nothing sacred: 'tis but just
The many-headed beast should know".

Ah, shameless! for he did but sing.
A song that pleased us from its worth;
No public life was his on earth,
No blazon'd statesman he, nor king.

He gave the people of his best:
His worst he kept, his best he gave.
My Shakespeare's curse on [1] clown and knave
Who will not let his ashes rest!

Who make it seem more sweet [2] to be
The little life of bank and brier,
The bird that pipes his lone desire
And dies unheard within his tree,

Than he that warbles long and loud
And drops at Glory's temple-gates,
For whom the carrion vulture waits
To tear his heart before the crowd!


[Footnote 1: In Examiner and in 1850. My curse upon the. ]

[Footnote 2: In Examiner. Sweeter seem. For the sentiment 'cf'. Goethe:--

Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt
Der in den Zweigen wohnet;
Das Lied das aus dem Seele dringt
Ist Lohn, der reichlich lohnet.

--'Der Sanger'. ]








TO E. L. ,

ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE

This was first printed in 1853. It has not been altered since. The poem
was addressed to Edward Lear, the landscape painter, and refers to his
travels.


Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Peneian pass, [1]
The vast Akrokeraunian walls, [2]

Tomohrit, [3] Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there:

And trust me, while I turn'd the page,
And track'd you still on classic ground,
I grew in gladness till I found
My spirits in the golden age.

For me the torrent ever pour'd
And glisten'd--here and there alone
The broad-limb'd Gods at random thrown
By fountain-urns;-and Naiads oar'd

A glimmering shoulder under gloom
Of cavern pillars; on the swell
The silver lily heaved and fell;
And many a slope was rich in bloom

From him that on the mountain lea
By dancing rivulets fed his flocks,
To him who sat upon the rocks,
And fluted to the morning sea.


[Footnote 1: 'Cf'. Lear's description of Tempe:

"It is not a vale, it is a narrow pass, and although extremely
beautiful on account of the precipitous rocks on each side, the Peneus
flowing deep in the midst between the richest overhanging plane woods,
still its character is distinctly that of a ravine. "

--'Journal', 409. ]


[Footnote 2: The Akrokeraunian walls: the promontory now called Glossa. ]

[Footnote 3: Tomohr, Tomorit, or Tomohritt is a lofty mountain in
Albania not far from Elbassan. Lear's account of it is very graphic:

"That calm blue plain with Tomohr in the midst like an azure island in
a boundless sea haunts my mind's eye and varies the present with the
past". ]








LADY CLARE

First published 1842. After 1851 no alterations were made.

This poem was suggested by Miss Ferrier's powerful novel 'The
Inheritance'. A comparison with the plot of Miss Ferrier's novel will
show with what tact and skill Tennyson has adapted the tale to his
ballad. Thomas St. Clair, youngest son of the Earl of Rossville, marries
a Miss Sarah Black, a girl of humble and obscure birth. He dies, leaving
a widow and as is supposed a daughter, Gertrude, who claim the
protection of Lord Rossville, as the child is heiress presumptive to the
earldom. On Lord Rossville's death she accordingly becomes Countess of
Rossville. She has two lovers, both distant connections, Colonel Delmour
and Edward Lyndsay. At last it is discovered that she was not the
daughter of Thomas St. Clair and her supposed mother, but of one Marion
La Motte and Jacob Leviston, and that Mrs. St. Clair had adopted her
when a baby and passed her off as her own child, that she might succeed
to the title. Meanwhile Delmour by the death of his elder brother
succeeds to the title and estates forfeited by the detected foundling,
but instead of acting as Tennyson's Lord Ronald does, he repudiates her
and marries a duchess. But her other lover Lyndsay is true to her and
marries her. Delmour not long afterwards dies without issue, and Lyndsay
succeeds to the title, Gertrude then becoming after all Countess of
Rossville. In details Tennyson follows the novel sometimes very closely.
Thus the "single rose," the poor dress, the bitter exclamation about her
being a beggar born, are from the novel.

The 1842 and all editions up to and including 1850 begin with the
following stanza and omit stanza 2:--



Lord Ronald courted Lady Clare,
I trow they did not part in scorn;
Lord Ronald, her cousin, courted her
And they will wed the morrow morn.


It was the time when lilies blow,
And clouds are highest up in air,
Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe
To give his cousin Lady Clare.

I trow they did not part in scorn:
Lovers long-betroth'd were they:
They two will wed the morrow morn!
God's blessing on the day!

"He does not love me for my birth,
Nor for my lands so broad and fair;
He loves me for my own true worth,
And that is well," said Lady Clare.

In there came old Alice the nurse,
Said, "Who was this that went from thee? "
"It was my cousin," said Lady Clare,
"To-morrow he weds with me. "

"O God be thank'd! " said Alice the nurse,
"That all comes round so just and fair:
Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands,
And you are not the Lady Clare. "

"Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse? "
Said Lady Clare, "that ye speak so wild";
"As God's above," said Alice the nurse,
"I speak the truth: you are my child.

"The old Earl's daughter died at my breast;
I speak the truth, as I live by bread!
I buried her like my own sweet child,
And put my child in her stead. "

"Falsely, falsely have ye done,
O mother," she said, "if this be true,
To keep the best man under the sun
So many years from his due. "

"Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse,
"But keep the secret for your life,
And all you have will be Lord Ronald's,
When you are man and wife. "

"If I'm a beggar born," she said,
"I will speak out, for I dare not lie.
Pull off, pull off, the broach [1] of gold,
And fling the diamond necklace by. "

"Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse,
"But keep the secret all ye can. "
She said, "Not so: but I will know
If there be any faith in man".

"Nay now, what faith? " said Alice the nurse,
"The man will cleave unto his right. "
"And he shall have it," the lady replied,
"Tho' [2] I should die to-night. "

"Yet give one kiss to your mother dear!
Alas, my child, I sinn'd for thee. "
"O mother, mother, mother," she said,
"So strange it seems to me.

"Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear,
My mother dear, if this be so,
And lay your hand upon my head,
And bless me, mother, ere I go. "

She clad herself in a russet gown,
She was no longer Lady Clare:
She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair.

The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought
Leapt up from where she lay,
Dropt her head in the maiden's hand,
And follow'd her all the way. [3]

Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower:
"O Lady Clare, you shame your worth!
Why come you drest like a village maid,
That are the flower of the earth? "

"If I come drest like a village maid,
I am but as my fortunes are:
I am a beggar born," she said, [4]
"And not the Lady Clare. "

"Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,
"For I am yours in word and in deed.
Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,
"Your riddle is hard to read. "

O and proudly stood she up!
Her heart within her did not fail:
She look'd into Lord Ronald's eyes,
And told him all her nurse's tale.

He laugh'd a laugh of merry scorn:
He turn'd, and kiss'd her where she stood:
"If you are not the heiress born,
And I," said he, "the next in blood--

"If you are not the heiress born,
And I," said he, "the lawful heir,
We two will wed to-morrow morn,
And you shall still be Lady Clare. "


[Footnote 1: All up to and including 1850. Brooch. ]

[Footnote 2: All up to and including 1850. Though. ]

[Footnote 3: The stanza beginning "The lily-white doe" is omitted in
1842 and 1843, and in the subsequent editions up to and including 1850
begins "A lily-white doe". ]

[Footnote 4: In a letter addressed to Tennyson the late Mr. Peter Bayne
ventured to object to the dramatic propriety of Lady Clare speaking of
herself as "a beggar born". Tennyson defended it by saying: "You make no
allowance for the shock of the fall from being Lady Clare to finding
herself the child of a nurse". But the expression is Miss Ferrier's: "Oh
that she had suffered me to remain the beggar I was born"; and again to
her lover: "You have loved an impostor and a beggar". ]











THE LORD OF BURLEIGH

Written, as we learn from 'Life', i. , 182, by 1835. First published in
1842. No alteration since with the exception of "tho'" for "though".

This poem tells the well-known story of Sarah Hoggins who married under
the circumstances related in the poem. She died in January, 1797,
sinking, so it was said, but without any authority for such a statement,
under the burden of an honour "unto which she was not born". The story
is that Henry Cecil, heir presumptive to his uncle, the ninth Earl of
Exeter, was staying at Bolas, a rural village in Shropshire, where he
met Sarah Hoggins and married her. They lived together at Bolas, where
the two eldest of his children were born, for two years before he came
into the title. She bore him two other children after she was Countess
of Exeter, dying at Burleigh House near Stamford at the early age of
twenty-four. The obituary notice runs thus: "January, 1797. At Burleigh
House near Stamford, aged twenty-four, to the inexpressible surprise and
concern of all acquainted with her, the Right Honbl. Countess of
Exeter. " For full information about this romantic incident see Walford's
'Tales of Great Families', first series, vol. i. , 65-82, and two
interesting papers signed W. O. Woodall in 'Notes and Queries', seventh
series, vol. xii. , 221-23; 'ibid. ', 281-84, and Napier's 'Homes and
Haunts of Tennyson', 104-111.


In her ear he whispers gaily,
"If my heart by signs can tell,
Maiden, I have watch'd thee daily,
And I think thou lov'st me well".
She replies, in accents fainter,
"There is none I love like thee".
He is but a landscape-painter,
And a village maiden she.
He to lips, that fondly falter,
Presses his without reproof:
Leads her to the village altar,
And they leave her father's roof.
"I can make no marriage present;
Little can I give my wife.
Love will make our cottage pleasant,
And I love thee more than life. "
They by parks and lodges going
See the lordly castles stand:
Summer woods, about them blowing,
Made a murmur in the land.
From deep thought himself he rouses,
Says to her that loves him well,
"Let us see these handsome houses
Where the wealthy nobles dwell".
So she goes by him attended,
Hears him lovingly converse,
Sees whatever fair and splendid
Lay betwixt his home and hers;
Parks with oak and chestnut shady,
Parks and order'd gardens great,
Ancient homes of lord and lady,
Built for pleasure and for state.
All he shows her makes him dearer:
Evermore she seems to gaze
On that cottage growing nearer,
Where they twain will spend their days.
O but she will love him truly!
He shall have a cheerful home;
She will order all things duly,
When beneath his roof they come.
Thus her heart rejoices greatly,
Till a gateway she discerns
With armorial bearings stately,
And beneath the gate she turns;
Sees a mansion more majestic
Than all those she saw before:
Many a gallant gay domestic
Bows before him at the door.
And they speak in gentle murmur,
When they answer to his call,
While he treads with footstep firmer,
Leading on from hall to hall.
And, while now she wonders blindly,
Nor the meaning can divine,
Proudly turns he round and kindly,
"All of this is mine and thine".
Here he lives in state and bounty,
Lord of Burleigh, fair and free,
Not a lord in all the county
Is so great a lord as he.
All at once the colour flushes
Her sweet face from brow to chin:
As it were with shame she blushes,
And her spirit changed within.
Then her countenance all over
Pale again as death did prove:
But he clasp'd her like a lover,
And he cheer'd her soul with love.
So she strove against her weakness,
Tho' at times her spirits sank:
Shaped her heart with woman's meekness
To all duties of her rank:
And a gentle consort made he,
And her gentle mind was such
That she grew a noble lady,
And the people loved her much.
But a trouble weigh'd upon her,
And perplex'd her, night and morn,
With the burthen of an honour
Unto which she was not born.
Faint she grew, and ever fainter,
As she murmur'd "Oh, that he
Were once more that landscape-painter
Which did win my heart from me! "
So she droop'd and droop'd before him,
Fading slowly from his side:
Three fair children first she bore him,
Then before her time she died.
Weeping, weeping late and early,
Walking up and pacing down,
Deeply mourn'd the Lord of Burleigh,
Burleigh-house by Stamford-town.
And he came to look upon her,
And he look'd at her and said,
"Bring the dress and put it on her,
That she wore when she was wed".
Then her people, softly treading,
Bore to earth her body, drest
In the dress that she was wed in,
That her spirit might have rest.







SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE

A FRAGMENT

First published in 1842. Not altered since 1853.

See for what may have given the hint for this fragment _Morte D'Arthur_,
bk. xix. , ch. i. , and bk. xx. , ch. i. , and _cf. Coming of Arthur:_--

And Launcelot pass'd away among the flowers,
For then was latter April, and return'd
Among the flowers in May with Guinevere.



Like souls that balance joy and pain,
With tears and smiles from heaven again
The maiden Spring upon the plain
Came in a sun-lit fall of rain.
In crystal vapour everywhere
Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between,
And, far in forest-deeps unseen,
The topmost elm-tree [1] gather'd green
From draughts of balmy air.

Sometimes the linnet piped his song:
Sometimes the throstle whistled strong:
Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel'd along,
Hush'd all the groves from fear of wrong:
By grassy capes with fuller sound
In curves the yellowing river ran,
And drooping chestnut-buds began
To spread into the perfect fan,
Above the teeming ground.

Then, in the boyhood of the year,
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere
Rode thro' the coverts of the deer,
With blissful treble ringing clear.
She seem'd a part of joyous Spring:
A gown of grass-green silk she wore,
Buckled with golden clasps before;
A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
Closed in a golden ring.

Now on some twisted ivy-net,
Now by some tinkling rivulet,
In mosses mixt [2] with violet
Her cream-white mule his pastern set:
And fleeter now [3] she skimm'd the plains
Than she whose elfin prancer springs
By night to eery warblings,
When all the glimmering moorland rings
With jingling bridle-reins.

As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her play'd,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid:
She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.


[Footnote 1: Up to 1848. Linden. ]

[Footnote 2: All editions up to and including 1850. On mosses thick. ]

[Footnote 3: 1842 to 1851. And now more fleet,]








A FAREWELL

First published in 1842. Not altered since 1843.

This poem was dedicated to the brook at Somersby described in the 'Ode
to Memory' and referred to so often in 'In Memoriam'. Possibly it may
have been written in 1837 when the Tennysons left Somersby. 'Cf. In
Memoriam', sect. ci.

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
No where by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree,
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns [1] will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.


[Footnote 1: 1842. A hundred suns. ]








THE BEGGAR MAID

First published in 1842, not altered since.

Suggested probably by the fine ballad in Percy's _Reliques_, first
series, book ii. , ballad vi.


Her arms across her breast she laid;
She was more fair than words can say:
Bare-footed came the beggar maid
Before the king Cophetua.
In robe and crown the king stept down,
To meet and greet her on her way;
"It is no wonder," said the lords,
"She is more beautiful than day".

As shines the moon in clouded skies,
She in her poor attire was seen:
One praised her ancles, one her eyes,
One her dark hair and lovesome mien:
So sweet a face, such angel grace,
In all that land had never been:
Cophetua sware a royal oath:
"This beggar maid shall be my queen! "







THE VISION OF SIN

First published in 1842. No alteration made in it after 1851, except in
the insertion of a couplet afterwards omitted.

This remarkable poem may be regarded as a sort of companion poem to 'The
Palace of Art'; the one traces the effect of callous indulgence in mere
intellectual and aesthetic pleasures, the other of profligate indulgence
in the grosser forms of sensual enjoyment. At first all is ecstasy and
intoxication, then comes satiety, and all that satiety brings in its
train, cynicism, pessimism, the drying up of the very springs of life.
"The body chilled, jaded and ruined, the cup of pleasure drained to the
dregs, the senses exhausted of their power to enjoy, the spirit of its
wish to aspire, nothing left but loathing, craving and rottenness. " See
Spedding in 'Edinburgh Review' for April, 1843. The poem concludes by
leaving as an answer to the awful question, "can there be final
salvation for the poor wretch? " a reply undecipherable by man, and dawn
breaking in angry splendour. The best commentary on the poem would be
Byron's lyric: "There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes
away," and 'Don Juan'; biography and daily life are indeed full of
comments on the truth of this fine allegory.


1

I had a vision when the night was late:
A youth came riding toward a palace-gate.
He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown, [1]
But that his heavy rider kept him down.
And from the palace came a child of sin,
And took him by the curls, and led him in,
Where sat a company with heated eyes,
Expecting when a fountain should arise:
A sleepy light upon their brows and lips--
As when the sun, a crescent of eclipse,
Dreams over lake and lawn, and isles and capes--
Suffused them, sitting, lying, languid shapes,
By heaps of gourds, and skins of wine, and piles of grapes.


2

Then methought I heard a mellow sound,
Gathering up from all the lower ground; [2]
Narrowing in to where they sat assembled
Low voluptuous music winding trembled,
Wov'n in circles: they that heard it sigh'd,
Panted hand in hand with faces pale,
Swung themselves, and in low tones replied;
Till the fountain spouted, showering wide
Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail;
Then the music touch'd the gates and died;
Rose again from where it seem'd to fail,
Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale;
Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,
As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale,
The strong tempestuous treble throbb'd and palpitated;
Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,
Caught the sparkles, and in circles,
Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,
Flung the torrent rainbow round:
Then they started from their places,
Moved with violence, changed in hue,
Caught each other with wild grimaces,
Half-invisible to the view,
Wheeling with precipitate paces
To the melody, till they flew,
Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces,
Twisted hard in fierce embraces,
Like to Furies, like to Graces,
Dash'd together in blinding dew:
Till, kill'd with some luxurious agony,
The nerve-dissolving melody
Flutter'd headlong from the sky.


3

And then I look'd up toward a mountain-tract,
That girt the region with high cliff and lawn:
I saw that every morning, far withdrawn
Beyond the darkness and the cataract,
God made himself an awful rose of dawn, [3]
Unheeded: and detaching, fold by fold,
From those still heights, and, slowly drawing near,
A vapour heavy, hueless, formless, cold,
Came floating on for many a month and year,
Unheeded: and I thought I would have spoken,
And warn'd that madman ere it grew too late:
But, as in dreams, I could not. Mine was broken,
When that cold vapour touch'd the palace-gate,
And link'd again. I saw within my head
A gray and gap-tooth'd man as lean as death,
Who slowly rode across a wither'd heath,
And lighted at a ruin'd inn, and said:


4

"Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin!
Here is custom come your way;
Take my brute, and lead him in,
Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay.

"Bitter barmaid, waning fast!
See that sheets are on my bed;
What! the flower of life is past:
It is long before you wed.

"Slip-shod waiter, lank and sour,
At the Dragon on the heath!
Let us have a quiet hour,
Let us hob-and-nob with Death.

"I am old, but let me drink;
Bring me spices, bring me wine;
I remember, when I think,
That my youth was half divine.

"Wine is good for shrivell'd lips,
When a blanket wraps the day,
When the rotten woodland drips,
And the leaf is stamp'd in clay.

"Sit thee down, and have no shame,
Cheek by jowl, and knee by knee:
What care I for any name?
What for order or degree?

"Let me screw thee up a peg:
Let me loose thy tongue with wine:
Callest thou that thing a leg?
Which is thinnest? thine or mine?

"Thou shalt not be saved by works:
Thou hast been a sinner too:
Ruin'd trunks on wither'd forks,
Empty scarecrows, I and you!

"Fill the cup, and fill the can:
Have a rouse before the morn:
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born. [4]

"We are men of ruin'd blood;
Therefore comes it we are wise.
Fish are we that love the mud.
Rising to no fancy-flies.

"Name and fame! to fly sublime
Thro' the courts, the camps, the schools,
Is to be the ball of Time,
Bandied by the hands of fools.

"Friendship! --to be two in one--
Let the canting liar pack!
Well I know, when I am gone,
How she mouths behind my back.

"Virtue! --to be good and just--
Every heart, when sifted well,
Is a clot of warmer dust,
Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.

"O! we two as well can look
Whited thought and cleanly life
As the priest, above his book
Leering at his neighbour's wife.

"Fill the cup, and fill the can:
Have a rouse before the morn:
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born. [4]

"Drink, and let the parties rave:
They are fill'd with idle spleen;
Rising, falling, like a wave,
For they know not what they mean.

"He that roars for liberty
Faster binds a tyrant's [5] power;
And the tyrant's cruel glee
Forces on the freer hour.

"Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.

"Greet her with applausive breath,
Freedom, gaily doth she tread;
In her right a civic wreath,
In her left a human head.

"No, I love not what is new;
She is of an ancient house:
And I think we know the hue
Of that cap upon her brows.

"Let her go! her thirst she slakes
Where the bloody conduit runs:
Then her sweetest meal she makes
On the first-born of her sons.

"Drink to lofty hopes that cool--
Visions of a perfect State:
Drink we, last, the public fool,
Frantic love and frantic hate.

"Chant me now some wicked stave,
Till thy drooping courage rise,
And the glow-worm of the grave
Glimmer in thy rheumy eyes.

"Fear not thou to loose thy tongue;
Set thy hoary fancies free;
What is loathsome to the young
Savours well to thee and me.

"Change, reverting to the years,
When thy nerves could understand
What there is in loving tears,
And the warmth of hand in hand.

"Tell me tales of thy first love--
April hopes, the fools of chance;
Till the graves begin to move,
And the dead begin to dance.

"Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.

"Trooping from their mouldy dens
The chap-fallen circle spreads:
Welcome, fellow-citizens,
Hollow hearts and empty heads!

"You are bones, and what of that?
Every face, however full,
Padded round with flesh and fat,
Is but modell'd on a skull.

"Death is king, and Vivat Rex!
Tread a measure on the stones,
Madam--if I know your sex,
From the fashion of your bones.

"No, I cannot praise the fire
In your eye--nor yet your lip:
All the more do I admire
Joints of cunning workmanship.

"Lo! God's likeness--the ground-plan--
Neither modell'd, glazed, or framed:
Buss me thou rough sketch of man,
Far too naked to be shamed!

"Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance,
While we keep a little breath!
Drink to heavy Ignorance!
Hob-and-nob with brother Death!

"Thou art mazed, the night is long,
And the longer night is near:
What! I am not all as wrong
As a bitter jest is dear.

"Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,
When the locks are crisp and curl'd;
Unto me my maudlin gall
And my mockeries of the world.

"Fill the cup, and fill the can!
Mingle madness, mingle scorn!
Dregs of life, and lees of man:
Yet we will not die forlorn. "


5

The voice grew faint: there came a further change:
Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range:
Below were men and horses pierced with worms,
And slowly quickening into lower forms;
By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross,
Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd with moss,
Then some one spake [6]: "Behold! it was a crime
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time".
[7] Another said: "The crime of sense became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame".
And one: "He had not wholly quench'd his power;
A little grain of conscience made him sour".
At last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope? "
To which an answer peal'd from that high land.
But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn. [8]


[Footnote 1: A reference to the famous passage in the 'Phoedrus' where
Plato compares the soul to a chariot drawn by the two-winged steeds. ]

Footnote 2: Imitated apparently from the dance in Shelley's 'Triumph of
Life':--

The wild dance maddens in the van; and those
. . .
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music, wilder as it grows.

They, tortur'd by their agonising pleasure,
Convuls'd, and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
. . .
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air.
As their feet twinkle, etc. ]


[Footnote 3: See footnote to last line. ]

[Footnote 4: All up to and including 1850 read:--

Every _minute_ dies a man,
Every _minute_ one is born.

Mr. Babbage, the famous mathematician, is said to have addressed the
following letter to Tennyson in reference to this couplet:--

"I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to
keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual
equipoise, whereas it is a]**[Footnote: well-known fact that the said
sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the
liberty of suggesting that, in the next edition of your excellent
poem, the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected
as follows:--

Every moment dies a man,
And one and a sixteenth is born.

I may add that the exact figures are 1. 167, but something must, of
course, be conceded to the laws of metre. "]


[Footnote 5: 1842 and 1843. The tyrant's. ]

[Footnote 6: 1842. Said. ]

[Footnote 7: In the Selection published in 1865 Tennyson here inserted a
couplet which he afterwards omitted:--

Another answer'd: "But a crime of sense! "
"Give him new nerves with old experience. "]


[Footnote 8: In Professor Tyndall's reminiscences of Tennyson, inserted
in Tennyson's 'Life', he says he once asked him for some
explanation of this line, and the poet's reply was:

"The power of explaining such concentrated expressions of the
imagination was very different from that of writing them".

And on another occasion he said very happily:

"Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing colours. Every reader
must find his own interpretation, according to his ability, and
according to his sympathy with the poet".

Poetry in its essential forms always suggests infinitely more than it
expresses, and at once inspires and kindles the intelligence which is to
comprehend it; if that intelligence, which is perhaps only another name
for sympathy, does not exist, then, in Byron's happy sarcasm:--

"The gentle readers wax unkind,
And, not so studious for the poet's ease,
Insist on knowing what he 'means', a hard
And hapless situation for a bard".

Possibly Tennyson may have had in his mind Keats's line:--

"There was an awful rainbow once in heaven"]







COME NOT, WHEN I AM DEAD. . .

First published in 'The Keepsake' for 1851.

Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou, go by. [1]

Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
I care no longer, being all unblest:
Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, [2]
And I desire to rest.
Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie:
Go by, go by.


[Footnote 1: 'The Keepsake':--But go thou by. ]

[Footnote 2: 'The Keepsake' has a small 't' for Time. ]








THE EAGLE

{FRAGMENT}

First published in 1851. It has not been altered.


He clasps the crag with hooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; [1]
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.


[Footnote 1: One of Tennyson's most magically descriptive lines; nothing
could exceed the vividness of the words "wrinkled" and "crawls" here. ]








MOVE EASTWARD, HAPPY EARTH. . .

First published in 1842.

Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow:
From fringes of the faded eve,
O, happy planet, eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-world, and rise
To glass herself in dewy eyes
That watch me from the glen below.

Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly [1] borne,
Dip forward under starry light,
And move me to my marriage-morn,
And round again to happy night.


[Footnote 1: 1842 to 1853. Lightly. ]







BREAK, BREAK, BREAK. . .

First published in 1842. No alteration.

This exquisite poem was composed in a very different scene from that to
which it refers, namely in "a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the
morning between blossoming hedges". See 'Life of Tennyson', vol. i. , p.
223.

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.






THE POET'S SONG

First published in 1842.

The rain had fallen, the Poet arose,
He pass'd by the town and out of the street,
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
And waves of shadow went over the wheat,
And he sat him down in a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet,
That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,
And the lark drop down at his feet.

The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee, [1]
The snake slipt under a spray,
The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak,
And stared, with his foot on the prey,
And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away".


[Footnote 1: 1889, Fly. ]






APPENDIX

The Poems published in MDCCCXXX and in MDCCCXXXIII which were
temporarily or finally suppressed.




POEMS PUBLISHED IN MDCCCXXX


ELEGIACS

Reprinted in Collected Works among 'Juvenilia', with title
altered to 'Leonine Elegiacs'. The only alterations made in the
text were "wood-dove" for "turtle," and the substitution of "or" for
"and" in the last line but one.

Lowflowing breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm'd in the
gloaming:
Thoro' the black-stemm'd pines only the far river shines.
Creeping thro' blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes,
Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall.
Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerily; the grasshopper carolleth clearly;
Deeply the turtle coos; shrilly the owlet halloos;
Winds creep; dews fell chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes
stilly:
Over the pools in the burn watergnats murmur and mourn.
Sadly the far kine loweth: the glimmering water outfloweth:
Twin peaks shadow'd with pine slope to the dark hyaline.
Lowthroned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad
Throbbing in mild unrest holds him beneath in her breast.

The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth,
Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind.
Thou comest morning and even; she cometh not morning or even.
False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind?




THE "HOW" AND THE "WHY"


I am any man's suitor,
If any will be my tutor:
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast:
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,
In eternity no past.
We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die,
Who will riddle me the _how_ and the _why_?

The bulrush nods unto its brother,
The wheatears whisper to each other:
What is it they say? What do they there?
Why two and two make four? Why round is not square?
Why the rocks stand still, and the light clouds fly?
Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh?
Why deep is not high, and high is not deep?
Whether we wake, or whether we sleep?
Whether we sleep, or whether we die?
How you are you? Why I am I?
Who will riddle me the _how_ and the _why_?

The world is somewhat; it goes on somehow;
But what is the meaning of _then_ and _now_?
I feel there is something; but how and what?
I know there is somewhat; but what and why?
I cannot tell if that somewhat be I.

The little bird pipeth, "why? why? "
In the summerwoods when the sun falls low
And the great bird sits on the opposite bough,
And stares in his face and shouts, "how? how? "
And the black owl scuds down the mellow twilight,
And chaunts, "how? how? " the whole of the night.

Why the life goes when the blood is spilt?
What the life is? where the soul may lie?
Why a church is with a steeple built;
And a house with a chimneypot?
Who will riddle me the how and the what?
Who will riddle me the what and the why?







SUPPOSED CONFESSIONS

OF A SECOND-RATE SENSITIVE MIND NOT IN UNITY WITH ITSELF

There has been only one important alteration made in this poem, when it
was reprinted among the 'Juvenilia' in 1871, and that was the
suppression of the verses beginning "A grief not uninformed and dull" to
"Indued with immortality" inclusive, and the substitution of "rosy" for
"waxen". Capitals are in all cases inserted in the reprint where the
Deity is referred to, "through" is altered into "thro'" all through the
poem, and hyphens are inserted in the double epithets. No further
alterations were made in the edition of 1830.

Oh God! my God!